Nationality American Name Stephen Kotkin | Role Historian | |
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Born February 17, 1959 (age 65) ( 1959-02-17 ) Occupation historian, academic, author Alma mater University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of Rochester Genre Russian and Soviet Politics and History, Communism, Global History Subject Authoritarianism, Geopolitics Notable works Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (2014)Armageddon Averted: the Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (2001) Nominations Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography Books Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxe, Magnetic Mountain, Armageddon averted, Steeltown - USSR, Rediscovering Russia in Asia Similar People Bruce A Elleman, Andras Sajo, David Wolff, Jan T Gross | ||
Stalin s world stephen kotkin in conversation with david remnick
Stephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959) is an American historian, academic and author. He is currently a professor in history and international affairs at Princeton University and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Contents
- Stalin s world stephen kotkin in conversation with david remnick
- Uncommon knowledge part 1 stephen kotkin on stalin s rise to power
- Academic career
- Author
- References
Kotkin's most recent book is his first of three planned volumes, which discuss the life and times of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014).
Uncommon knowledge part 1 stephen kotkin on stalin s rise to power
Academic career
Kotkin graduated from the University of Rochester in 1981 with a B.A. in English. He studied Russian and Soviet history under Reginald E. Zelnik and Martin Malia at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his M.A. in 1983 and his Ph.D. in 1988, both in history.
Starting in 1986, Kotkin traveled to the former Soviet Union multiple times for academic research and fellowships. He was a visiting scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences (1993, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2012), and its predecessor, the USSR Academy of Sciences (1991). He was also a visiting scholar at University of Tokyo's Institute of Social Science Institute in 1994 and 1997
He joined the faculty at Princeton University in 1989, and was the director of the Russian and Eurasian Studies Program for 13 years (1995-2008). He is currently the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton. He is also a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Author
Kotkin has authored several nonfiction books on history as well as textbooks, and is perhaps best known for Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, which exposes the realities of everyday life in the Soviet city of Magnitogorsk during the 1930s. He published Armageddon Averted, a short history of the fall of the Soviet Union, in 2001.
Kotkin is a frequent contributor on Russian and Eurasian affairs and writes book and film reviews for various publications, including The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Financial Times, The New York Times and the Washington Post. He also contributed as a commentator for NPR and the BBC.
His first volume on the life of Joseph Stalin, a 900-page biography analyzing his life through 1928, received strong reviews. Jennifer Siegel of The New York Times called the biography "a riveting tale, one written with pace and aplomb.... this first volume leaves the reader longing for the story still to come.")
Kotkin is currently writing the second and third volumes on Stalin: Waiting for Hitler (Releasing on November 7, 2017) and Miscalculation and the Mao Eclipse (TBA). He is also working on a multi-century history of Siberia, focusing on the Ob River Valley.
His literary agent is Andrew Wylie.