Stephen Kotkin on Stalin, Power, and the Art of Biography | Conversations with Tyler

Video Description

Subscribe to the @CowenConvos channel for new interviews! In his landmark multi-volume biography of Stalin, Stephen Kotkin shows how totalitarian power worked not just through terror from above, but through millions of everyday decisions from below. Currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution after 33 years at Princeton, Kotkin brings both deep archival work and personal experience to his understanding of Soviet life, having lived in Magnitogorsk during the 1980s and seen firsthand how power operates in closed societies. Tyler sat down with Stephen to discuss the state of Russian Buddhism today, how shamanism persists in modern Siberia, whether Siberia might ever break away from Russia, what happened to the science city Akademgorodok, why Soviet obsession with cybernetics wasn't just a mistake, what life was really like in 1980s Magnitogorsk, how modernist urban planning failed there, why Prokofiev returned to the USSR in 1936, what Stalin actually understood about artistic genius, how Stalin's Georgian background influenced him (or not), what Michel Foucault taught him about power, why he risked his tenure case to study Japanese, how his wife's work as a curator opened his eyes to Korean folk art, how he's progressing on the next Stalin volume, and much more. Recorded November 13th, 2024 Transcript and links: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/stephen-kotkin/ Stay connected: Follow us on X, IG, and Facebook: @cowenconvos https://www.twitter.com/cowenconvos https://www.facebook.com/cowenconvos https://www.instagram.com/cowenconvos Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/JAVWP7vTxt https://conversationswithtyler.com https://mercatus.org Chapters 00:00:00 - On Russian Buddhism 00:01:27 - On Siberia 00:11:42 - On Akademgorodok, or Academic City 00:16:10 - On living in Magnitogorsk 00:33:35 - On Stalin 00:54:04 - On learning from Michel Foucault 01:09:06 - On East Asian art 01:16:57 - On his final Stalin volume