The Weakness of the Despot

Stephen Kotkin is a professor of history at Princeton and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of nine works of history, including the first two volumes of his planned three-volume history of Russian power and Joseph Stalin, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 and Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941. The premise of this show is simple: Peter Robinson poses five questions to Dr. Kotkin: what Xi Jinping, the president of China believes; what Vladimir Putin believe

Historian Stephen Kotkin became the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution in 2022. He taught at Princeton for more than 30 years, and is the author of nine works of history, including the first two volumes of his biography of Joseph Stalin, Paradoxes of Power, 1878 to 1928 and Waiting for Hitler, 1929 to 1941. He is now completing the third and final volume. Since the war in Ukraine broke out a year ago, Kotkin has appeared regularly on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson to offe

Video Interview: Stephen Kotkin on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and

Video Interview: Stephen Kotkin on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and

Can #China’s current authoritarian model hold without destroying its economy, and what’s the near-term outlook for the war in Ukraine? In the latest episode of #GoodFellows, Stephen Kotkin, the Hoover Institution’s Kleinheinz Senior Fellow and an authority on geopolitics and authoritarian regimes (and a Joe Pesci soundalike) joins Niall Ferguson, H. R. McMaster, and John Cochrane to discuss the latest in Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s #Russia. Watch now: | Hoover Institution