Stephen F. Cohen

On his book Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War

Cover Interview of July 09, 2009

Editor’s note

Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline

“On Russia, with an open mind.”

We highlighted two quotes.

On the first page:

“My book includes an understanding that the political history of the twentieth century began with the Russian Revolution in 1917 and ended with the Soviet Union in December 1991.”

On the second:

“Russia reached its peak of democratization during Gorbachev’s reforms – in 1989 – 1991. The “de-democratization” of Russia, a word that’s used to characterize Putin, actually began in the 1990s, under Yeltsin. And the process was supported by the Clinton administration.”

history / america / race / 20th century / wwii / cold war / security / soviet union / reagan ronald / lincoln abraham /

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.

Carolyn J. Dean,
Interview of February 01, 2011

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.

Jerome Kagan,
Interview of September 17, 2009