Author

Stephen Kotkin

STEPHEN KOTKIN is Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and John P. Birkelund ’52 Professor Emeritus in History and International Affairs at Princeton University. His books include Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928, and Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941, volumes one and two, respectively, of his three-volume biography of former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

By this author

The Weakness of the Strongmen

What Really Threatens Authoritarians?

Best Of: What Drives Putin and Xi

A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell

Podcast August 7, 2025

Russia’s Murky Future

A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin

Podcast May 2, 2024

The Five Futures of Russia

And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next

The Five Futures of Russia

And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next

What Drives Putin and Xi (Part One)

A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell

Podcast June 30, 2023

What Putin Got Wrong About Ukraine, Russia, and the West

A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin

Podcast May 26, 2022

The Cold War Never Ended

Ukraine, the China Challenge, and the Revival of the West

Review Essay May/June 2022

American Hustle

What Mueller Found—and Didn’t Find—About Trump and Russia

Realist World

The Players Change, but the Game Remains

When Stalin Faced Hitler

Who Fooled Whom?

Russia’s Perpetual Geopolitics

Putin Returns to the Historical Pattern

The Resistible Rise of Vladimir Putin

Russia’s Nightmare Dressed Like a Daydream

Review Essay Mar/Apr 2015

Rouhani’s Gorbachev Moment

What Makes a Genuine Reformer?

November 24, 2013

What to Read on Communism

List November 4, 2009

The Unbalanced Triangle

What Chinese—Russian Relations Mean for the United States

Review Essay Sept/Oct 2009

Russian Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century and the Shadow of the Past

Reviewed by Stephen Kotkin

Review Sept/Oct 2007