Asian Investment Conference 2023

Stephen Kotkin is Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs, Emeritus, at Princeton University.

Prof. Kotkin’s research encompasses geopolitics and authoritarian regimes in history and in the present. His publications include Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 and Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928, two parts of a planned three-volume history of Russian power in the world and of Stalin’s power in Russia.

He is currently working on the final volume of his trilogy, Stalin: Totalitarian Superpower, 1941-1990s. He has also written a trilogy analyzing Communism’s demise, of which two volumes have appeared thus far: Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970–2000 and Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment, with a contribution by Jan T. Gross.

He was for many years the business book reviewer of the New York Times Sunday Business Section. His essays appear regularly in Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. He consults on geopolitical risk for a variety of private and government entities.