Stephen Mark Kotkin is Professor of History

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 and director of the Program in Russian Studies

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 at Princeton University

Princeton University

Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

. He specializes in the history of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 and has recently begun to research Eurasia

Eurasia

Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...

 more generally.

Kotkin graduated from the University of Rochester

University of Rochester

The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...

 in 1981 and studied history under Reginald Zelnik and Martin Malia

Martin Malia

Martin Edward Malia was a historian specializing in Russian history. He taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1958 to 1991.One of his colleagues at Berkeley was another prominent Russian historian, Nicholas V. Riasanovsky...

 at the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, where he earned his M.A.

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 in 1983 and his Ph.D.

Ph.D.

A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in 1988.

He is perhaps best known for Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, which exposes the realities of everyday life in the Soviet city of Magnitogorsk

Magnitogorsk

Magnitogorsk is a mining and industrial city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern side of the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains by the Ural River. Population: 418,545 ;...

 during the 1930s. He published Armageddon Averted, a short history of the fall of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, in 2001. He is currently working on a multi-century history of Siberia, focusing on the Ob River

Ob River

The Ob River , also Obi, is a major river in western Siberia, Russia and is the world's seventh longest river. It is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean .The Gulf of Ob is the world's longest estuary.-Names:The Ob is known to the Khanty people as the...

 valley.

Kotkin frequently writes on Russian and Eurasian affairs for the popular American press, particularly The New Republic

The New Republic

The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

.
He is currently a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

's Hoover Institution

Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....

.

Works

• Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel (editor, author of preface), Indiana University Press, 1989.
• Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era, University of California Press, 1992.
• Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, University of California Press, 1995.
• Rediscovering Russia in Asia: Siberia and the Russian Far East, M. E. Sharpe, 1995.
• Mongolia in the 20th Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan (editor), M. E. Sharpe, 2000.
• Political Corruption in Transition: A Sceptic's Handbook Central European University Press, 2002.
• Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of the Modern World (1300 to the Present) (co-author), W. W. Norton & Company, 2002.
• Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000, Oxford University Press, 2003.
• The Cultural Gradient: The Transmission of Ideas in Europe, 1789-1991 (co-author), Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
• Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia (co-author), M. E. Sharpe, 2005.
• Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment (co-author), J. T. Gross, 2009.

External links

• Profile