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| Stephen F. Cohen | |
Historian Stephen F. Cohen, "whose books and commentaries on Russia examined the rise and fall of Communism, Kremlin dictatorships and the emergence of a post-Soviet nation still struggling for identity in the 21st century," died September 18, the New York Times reported. He was 81. "Loosely identified with a revisionist historical view of the Soviet Union, Professor Cohen held views that made him a controversial public intellectual. He believed that early Bolshevism had held great promise, that it had been democratic and genuinely socialist, and that it had been corrupted only later by civil war, foreign hostility, Stalin's malignancy and a fatalism in Russian history."
Cohen first came to international attention in 1973 with Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, which was a finalist for a National Book Award. His other works include War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin; Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers (with Katrina vanden Heuvel); and Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917.
In a personal recollection, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of the Nation, wrote that the experiences she and her late husband shared in Moscow "beginning in 1980 are in many ways my life's most meaningful. Steve introduced me to realms of politics, history, and life I might never have experienced: to Bukharin's widow, the extraordinary Anna Mikhailovna Larina, matriarch of his second family, and to his eclectic and fascinating circle of friends--survivors of the Gulag (whom he later wrote about in The Victims Return), dissidents, and freethinkers--both outside and inside officialdom.
"From 1985 to 1991, when we lived frequently in Moscow, we shared the intellectual and political excitement, the hopes and the great achievements of those perestroika years. We later developed a close friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev, a man we both deeply admired as an individual and as a political leader who used his power so courageously to change his country and the world. Gorbachev also changed our lives in several ways."
Upon learning of Cohen's death, Gorbachev sent a letter of condolence to vanden Heuvel, writing: "He was one of the closest people to me in his views and understanding of the enormous events that occurred in the late 1980s in Russia and changed the world. Steve was a brilliant historian and a man of democratic convictions. He loved Russia, the Russian intelligentsia, and believed in our country's future. I always considered Steve and you my true friends."