Stephen Kotkin: Scholar of Soviet history, encouraging mentor

Known for his exhaustive and rigorous HIS 362 class on the Soviet Empire,Stephen Kotkin is a history professor who holds a joint appointment at the Wilson School. Kotkin is also one of the University’s longest staying professors, having taught at the University for a total of 27 years.

Kotkin said that his enthusiasm for Soviet history developed from a “strange, unexpected turn of events.”

Kotkin explained that his great interest growing up had always been science and math.He noted that his academic career at the University of Rochester, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, almost ended with him being a pre-med student. However, after fainting in the hospital during a molecular biology fieldwork class, he graduated from the University of Rochesterin with a B.A. in English.

Kotkin explained that his love for history was prompted by the array of exceptionally good professors he had in his time at the University of Rochester, and later on, when he was getting his M.A and PhD in History at the University of Berkley, California.

He noted that during his studies he had a chance to visit Prague for a summer language program, and he read about communism and the impact that it had on the country to learn as much as he could before he went.

Despite his extensive reading, Kotkin said, he was surprised by the reality of communism that he witnessed when he arrived in Prague – the official, oppressive economy, was supplemented by a second shadow society, where people were doing creative thingslike creating an underground economyto survive in the system. Kotkinsaid that this surprisingly inventive society urged him to study communism seriously to find out more about how it was lived, invented and circumvented.

Elidor Mehili GS '11, who grew up in Albania, noted how even though both him and his parents had lived through communism, it wasn’t until he was in the Soviet History and Successor States seminar with Kotkin that he really came to gain a deeper and critical understanding of communism.

Mehili is a professor of 19th and 20th century European History, International History, and Dictatorships at the Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Philip Nord, Kotkin's colleague andUniversity’s Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, said that Kotkin has had a transformative impact on the study of Soviet Russia, especially in regards to his publication,Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization.

Mehili explained that he recently attended a conference in Philadelphia for scholars that study Eastern Europe and Eurasia, where people were fervently discussing this book by Kotkin 20 years after it had been published and despite the fact that Kotkin wasn’t present in the conference.

Mehili added that Kotkin's distinguished understanding of Soviet historyarose from his pursuit of historical thought and idea, and living through the remarkable moments of history himself researching and studying sourcesin a number of Soviet countries during the dismantling communist regime.

According to Mehili, not many other Americans were in the Soviet Union when the Berlin Wall collapsed. Mehili said that Kotkin's class, which gave University students access to the historical phenomenon, was like living inside of a documentary in the 1980s, as students were able to hear about the communist regime from a firsthand, extensively knowledgeable source.

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Cristina Florea GS '13, an advisee of Kotkin,said that when she was in Kotkin’s class, she had to read an unbelievable amount of text and work, which she didn’t think to be possibly managed. She added that after the class, she could read more than she deemed possible initially.

“I think he really believes in his students and knows very well how far to push you and when to push you," Florea said.

“Some people say to me, you know, you’re too hard. You’re too demanding. You’re too rigorous. But this is Princeton," Kotkin said, "There’s no such thing as too demanding. Kids here they can do it— it’s just that somebody’s got to ask them to try, make them show that they can do it. That’s the challenge of being a good teacher here, and that’s the joy of being a good teacher here.”

Florea noted how Kotkin would attendworkshops that weren't even in his own field and still ask the best questions.

Vicedean of the Wilson School Brandice Canes-Wrone said that Kotkin is anengaged and broad-thinking colleague.Canes-Wrone added that she and many others in the Wilson School look forward to Kotkin's contributions to faculty meetings.

William Jordan, History Department chair, noted that Kotkins’ students respect him for his honesty and for the way he encourages them to achieve their best.

“It's hard to say who the best teacher is in a department of great teachers,” Jordan said, “but Kotkin would get a great many votes if one took a poll.”

Florea said that many students come into the University not knowing what they want to do, but Kotkin was be able to discern his advisees' strengths and interests before the students themselves could.

Florea explained that when she was in graduate school, the dissertation research fellowship review committee rejected her project proposal. The feedback letter deemed the project as being too ambitious and unrealistic, on account of the requirement that she would have to learn Russian to analyze the sources she would use.

Florea said that afterwards, as her dissertation advisor, Kotkin encouraged her and told her; if this is what you want to do, it will be hard, but you can do it. When she was still in doubts, he told her “I’m your advisor, and that’s it,” Florea added.

“I came to Princeton because I believed professors here actually cared about being in the classroom and truly enjoyed interacting with naive undergrads.Kotkinis simply the real-life version of this professor,”Brian Kim ’16, who took Kotkin’s undergraduate seminar on authoritarianism last spring, said.

King added that Kotkin is personally invested in his students, not only in terms of academics but also in terms of lifelong success.

Kotkin described the process of watching some of his PhD students go on to become tenured professors as being “breathtaking to watch.”

“I frequently run into people that knew him 10 or 15 years ago. It’s something that I’ve always been amazed by; the generational impact he’s had,” Mehili added.

Kotkin explained that he considered teaching at the University as a huge privilege.

“Teaching is the best part of what I do here. There are a lot of other great things that we do here, but teaching—that’s the tops,” he said. “The thing you discover as a professor here is that if you don’t ask much from students then they don’t get much in return. But if you push them again and again and again, if you demand the utmost of them then they will deliver. They deliver things that they didn’t know they were capable of.”