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Stephen Kotkin

Biography

Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin is Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University, with a joint appointment as Professor of International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School. He is the author of the enormously influential books MAGNETIC MOUNTAIN: Stalinism as a Civilization and ARMAGEDDON AVERTED: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000, and contributes regularly to The New York Times, The New Republic and the BBC.

Stephen Kotkin

Books by Stephen Kotkin

by Stephen Kotkin - Biography, History, Nonfiction

In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world’s largest peasant economy into “socialist modernity,” otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost. What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over hundreds of millions, made Stalin into the uncanny figure he became. Stephen Kotkin’s STALIN: WAITING FOR HITLER, 1929–1941 is the story of how a political system forged an unparalleled personality and vice versa.

by Stephen Kotkin - Biography, History, Nonfiction

In STALIN, Stephen Kotkin offers a biography that, at long last, is equal to this shrewd, sociopathic, charismatic dictator in all his dimensions. The character of Stalin emerges as both astute and blinkered, cynical and true believing, people oriented and vicious, canny enough to see through people but prone to nonsensical beliefs. STALIN also gives an intimate view of the Bolshevik regime’s inner geography of power, bringing to the fore fresh materials from Soviet military intelligence and the secret police.