Stephen Kotkin

Kotkin received a B.A. from the University of Rochester in 1981 and went on to the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, where he earned an M.A. in 1983.⁠[1]

In 1987 he moved to Magnitogorsk, an industrial city in the Urals, becoming the first American in nearly half a century to live there; the city had been built from scratch under Stalin in 1929 and then boasted the world’s largest steelworks. From this he wrote Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era, published by the University of California Press, describing how entrenched local leaders stymied restructuring and how glasnost opened political discussion.⁠[2]

He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988, and during his studies took a graduate seminar at Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry.⁠[3]

From 1989 he taught in Princeton University’s Department of History, with a joint appointment at the School of Public and International Affairs, and later held the John P. Birkelund ’52 Professorship in History and International Affairs.⁠[1]

In 1995 the University of California Press published his Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, with xxvi and 639 pages, an index, maps, plates and tables.⁠[4]

He planned a trilogy on communism’s demise, publishing Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970–2000 (Oxford, 2001; revised 2008) and, with Jan T. Gross, Uncivil Society; the third volume will cover the Soviet Union in the third world and Afghanistan.⁠[5]

Reviewing Armageddon Averted, Benjamin Schwarz wrote that Kotkin focuses on Soviet elites, arguing that the collapse resulted from Mikhail Gorbachev’s “pursuit of a romantic dream” of socialist reform, and stresses that the Soviet leadership’s restraint kept the collapse from turning into a cataclysmic war.⁠[6]

Uncivil Society uses East Germany, Romania and Poland as case studies of why communist regimes surrendered or were swept away in “political bank runs,” which the authors trace to huge failures of political and economic elites; Kotkin was then Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton.⁠[7]

Penguin Press published Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928, the 976-page first volume of his planned three-volume biography, following Stalin from his birth to his rise to absolute power.⁠[8]

Historian Robert Gellately judged the volume to be without rival in the literature on the Soviet Union and said that, once complete, the work would surely become the standard one, while noting that the author occasionally elides details.⁠[9]

Stanford historian Norman NaimarkNorman NaimarkNorman M. Naimark is a historian, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, emeritus, at Stanford University and a Hoover Institution scholar who studies modern Russian and East European history, postwar Soviet policy in Europe, and genocide and ethnic cleansing; his books include The Russians in Germany, Stalin’s Genocides and Genocide: A World History.Open the full entry wrote that Kotkin plays down the tradition of explaining Stalin’s brutality through his childhood and convincingly refutes Leon Trotsky’s portrayal of Stalin as a mediocre bureaucrat.⁠[10]

After the volume appeared in November 2014, Fred Williams of the World Socialist Web Site criticized the book as bloated and poorly written, accusing the author of recycling Cold War anti-communist narratives and of casting Stalin as a consistent Marxist and Lenin’s true disciple.⁠[11]

In 2015 the first Stalin volume was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography, cited as “A superbly researched tour de force of pre- and post-revolutionary Russian history told through the life of Joseph Stalin.”⁠[12]

The second volume, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941, was published by Penguin Press in 2017; H-Diplo devoted a roundtable to it, with an introduction by Silvio Pons and reviews by Gabriel Gorodetsky, Jonathan Haslam and Cynthia Roberts.⁠[13]

Geoffrey Roberts, emeritus professor at University College Cork, called the book a “flawed masterpiece,” praising its archival command and narrative while criticizing some sources as of dubious value and calling “fanciful” its counterfactual speculation that war might have been averted had Stalin appeased Hitler more.⁠[14]

On November 2, 2018, the Council on Foreign RelationsCouncil on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a nonpartisan, independent U.S. membership organization and think tank founded in 1921 and based in New York, which has published Foreign Affairs since 1922 and takes no institutional positions on policy; Michael Froman has been its 15th president since 2023.Open the full entry announced that Stalin: Waiting for Hitler had won the 17th Arthur Ross Book Award, with a $15,000 prize; the first volume had received the award’s silver medal in 2015.⁠[15]

On January 3, 2020, he appeared on the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast in an episode titled “Stalin, Putin, and the Nature of Power,” discussing the human craving for power, Russians and authoritarianism, Putin and corruption, Stalin’s rise and the ideal political system.⁠[16]

On March 3, 2022, the Hoover Institution program Uncommon Knowledge aired Peter Robinson’s interview with him devoted entirely to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; a month earlier he had answered five foreign-policy and history questions on the show.⁠[17]

In the post-invasion episode he argued that Russia’s long-standing geopolitical conundrum, not NATO expansion, lay behind the aggression.⁠[18]

On May 25, 2022, he returned to the Lex Fridman Podcast (episode #289), covering Putin and Stalin, Putin versus the West, a response to Oliver StoneOliver StoneOliver Stone is an American film director, screenwriter and producer and a Vietnam War veteran who has won three Academy Awards for films including Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, also known for Wall Street and JFK; in later years he turned to documentaries, and his interview films with leaders such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Vladimir Putin drew controversy.Open the full entry, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Henry KissingerHenry KissingerHenry Kissinger (1923–2023) was a German-born American diplomat and political scientist who served as US national security adviser from 1969 to 1975 and as the 56th secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, the first person to hold both posts at once. He led the opening to China, détente and arms control talks with the Soviet Union, the Vietnam ceasefire negotiations and shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, and shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho; his role in Chile, Cambodia, South Asia and East Timor drew lasting criticism.Open the full entry, nuclear war, China and Navalny.⁠[19]

From September 1, 2022, he became full-time Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, charged with launching Hoover’s History Lab, while retaining his Princeton chair as emeritus.⁠[18]

On the same date he became a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, based at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and affiliated with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.⁠[3]

On February 14, 2023, Uncommon Knowledge aired his third “five questions” interview; the program noted that he is the author of nine works of history, is completing the third and final volume of his Stalin biography, and has appeared regularly since the war in Ukraine began to analyze Russia’s aggression.⁠[20]

In February 2024 he was interviewed on the video program Endgame, hosted by APARC visiting scholar Gita Wirjawan, arguing that the war in Ukraine had shocked Western Europe out of dependence on Russian energy, calling this a revival of Transatlanticism and urging stronger U.S.–EU institutional ties to counter a rising China.⁠[21]

On May 2, 2024, he discussed Russia’s future and how the United States can prepare for it on the podcast The Foreign Affairs Interview, which introduced him as author of the forthcoming third volume, Stalin: Totalitarian Superpower, 1941–1990s.⁠[22]

On December 16, 2025, he published “The Weakness of the Strongmen: What Really Threatens Authoritarians?” in Foreign Affairs, identifying the common vulnerabilities of authoritarian regimes and how they can be used to widen cracks in their control.⁠[23]

In March 2026 he spoke with Foreign Affairs executive editor Justin Vogt, defining authoritarianism as the absence of institutional limits on executive power and setting out five dimensions that are at once strengths and vulnerabilities of authoritarian regimes, including the repressive apparatus, cash flow and control over people’s life chances; the conversation also covered the prospects of the American and Israeli war on Iran.⁠[24]

As of October 2026, besides his Hoover fellowship he is a joint senior fellow at FSI and holds his Princeton chair as emeritus; he consults on geopolitical risk for Conexus Financial and Mizuho Americas and has held fellowships including a Guggenheim.⁠[25]

Princeton University: Official website: https://www.princeton.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[7]

Hoover Institution: Official website: https://www.hoover.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[25]

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies: Official website: https://fsi.stanford.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[23]