For all the blood on his hands, Josef Stalin is indisputably one of the most important historical figures of the 20 th century. But where many biographers agree with Leon Trotsky's waspish dismissal ...

Stephen Kotkin, a Princeton historian and author of a new biography of Joseph Stalin, sees similarities in the former Soviet dictator’s leadership style and that of Russia’s incumbent strongman, ...

To history he will always be known as Joseph Stalin, the heir of Vladimir Lenin, the killer of Leon Trotsky, the unquestioned dictator of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. But he was born ...

Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941, volume II, Stephen Kotkin, Penguin Press 1119 pp. In April 1934, the poet Osip Mandelstam bumped into Boris Pasternak on a Moscow street. He recited verses that ...

Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Volume 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), 976 pp., $40.00. ANYONE UNFAMILIAR with the quality of Stephen Kotkin’s four earlier books on the ...

The first course historian Stephen Kotkin taught as a member of Princeton's faculty, "Seminar in the History of Soviet Russia," met for the first time 26 years ago, on Thursday, Sept. 21, 1989.

“Tell me a subject that’s bigger than Stalin,” Stephen Kotkin asked in his office on Thursday. “30 years in power. Military industrial complex. Victory over Hitler in World War II. The Cold War. Gold ...