And then you say that, “these high-water marks aside, however, Russia has almost always been a relatively weak great power.” I wonder if you could expand on that and talk about how the internal dynamics of Russia have led to the present moment under Putin. Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of fifty square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass.” You go on to describe three “fleeting moments” of Russian ascendancy: first during the reign of Peter the Great, then Alexander I’s victory over Napoleon, and then, of course, Stalin’s victory over Hitler. When you talk about the internal dynamics of Russia, it brings to mind a piece that you wrote for Foreign Affairs, six years ago, which began, “For half a millennium, Russian foreign policy has been characterized by soaring ambitions that have exceeded the country’s capabilities. So George Kennan was an unbelievably important scholar and practitioner-the greatest Russia expert who ever lived-but I just don’t think blaming the West is the right analysis for where we are. In fact, you can argue that Russia broke its teeth twice on Poland: first in the nineteenth century, leading up to the twentieth century, and again at the end of the Soviet Union, with Solidarity. Unlike some of the other NATO countries, Poland has contested Russia many times over. In fact, Poland’s membership in NATO stiffened NATO’s spine. Where would we be now if Poland or the Baltic states were not in NATO? They would be in the same limbo, in the same world that Ukraine is in. I would say that NATO expansion has put us in a better place to deal with this historical pattern in Russia that we’re seeing again today. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. Way before NATO existed-in the nineteenth century-Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. The problem with their argument is that it assumes that, had NATO not expanded, Russia wouldn’t be the same or very likely close to what it is today. John Mearsheimer is a giant of a scholar. I have only the greatest respect for George Kennan. I thought we’d begin with your analysis of that argument. The great-power realist-school historian John Mearsheimer insists that a great deal of the blame for what we’re witnessing must go to the United States. We’ve been hearing voices both past and present saying that the reason for what has happened is, as George Kennan put it, the strategic blunder of the eastward expansion of NATO.
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. Ever since we met in Moscow, many years ago-Kotkin was doing research on the Stalinist industrial city of Magnitogorsk-I’ve found his guidance on everything from the structure of the Putin regime to its roots in Russian history to be invaluable.
Both principled and pragmatic, he is also more plugged in than any reporter or analyst I know. He has myriad sources in various realms of contemporary Russia: government, business, culture. He is a professor of history at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford University. Kotkin has a distinguished reputation in academic circles. Taking advantage of long-forbidden archives in Moscow and beyond, Kotkin has written a biography of Stalin that surpasses those by Isaac Deutscher, Robert Conquest, Robert C. So far he has published two volumes-“ Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and “ Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941.” A third volume will take the story through the Second World War Stalin’s death, in 1953 and the totalitarian legacy that shaped the remainder of the Soviet experience. His masterwork is a biography of Joseph Stalin. Stephen Kotkin is one of our most profound and prodigious scholars of Russian history. “The shock is that so much has changed, and yet we’re still seeing this pattern that they can’t escape from,” the Russia expert Stephen Kotkin says.
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