書摘 | Stephen F. Cohen | War With Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate

編者按：2月17日，俄罗斯反对派领袖、普京最尖锐的批评者纳瓦尔尼（Alexei Navalny）据报在位于北极圈的监狱猝逝，终年47岁。《波士頓書評》昨日推薦三本有關俄羅斯的書，今天推薦兩位美國俄羅斯研究學者，第一位：

Stephen Mark Kotkin (born February 17, 1959) is an American historian, academic and author. He is currently a professor in history and international affairs at Princeton University and a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

Kotkin's most recent book is his first of three planned volumes, which discuss the life and times of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin: Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 (2014).

第二位是Stephen F. Cohen。學者費左右特別為他的書《War With Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate》寫下推薦語：

這本書其實就是評論文章集，而不是學術論文，儘管作者是蘇聯·俄羅斯專家。 這位作者原來是普林斯頓大學政治系，紐約大學歷史系的教授，專門教蘇聯與俄羅斯，他本來是美國很主流的媒體愛用的學者，但自從他有下面的觀點，他就被完全疏遠

書中精彩的東西很多，比如他很早就說俄羅斯門是民主黨搞出來的，作者是左派，而且他老婆是更左的The Nation的總編， 他判斷俄羅斯干預美國選舉屬於子虛烏。今天已經證明了，他2016-17就說了，理由是根據他所理解的俄羅斯，手法不一樣。

他另一個是預測是俄羅斯與烏克蘭戰爭，或者說美國與俄羅斯的代理戰爭，與米爾斯海默都在2014年就看到，如果美國不改弦易轍，戰爭肯定會發生。

War With Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate

by Stephen F. Cohen

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hot Books; 2nd edition (April 19, 2022)

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1510755462

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1510755468

Prescient and even more relevant than when originally released in 2019, this Memorial Edition of War With Russia ? provides keen perspective to help readers understand the current Ukraine crisis. Are we in a new Cold War with Russia? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? War With Russia? answers these questions and more.

America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s warlike demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril.

In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations.

Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.

War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?

Review

Praise for War With Russia?

“A fantastic new book, which you should read.” —Tucker Carlson

“Cohen sees himself as a balancer, getting readers to see the other side. He laments what he terms ‘Russophobia’ among much of the American political class as well as high-profile journalists and academics. … At times, Cohen is a provocateur, but if he compels us to sharpen our analysis by examining a contrarian position, this is not such a bad thing. He often brings to light questions that others have neglected. He is especially adept at taking sometimes unfocused or ideologically eccentric views emanating from Russia and turning them into succinct, declarative statements. This alone is helpful. In our current volatile climate, dissenting voices are necessary to the conversation.”—Military Review journal, review essay by Robert F. Baumann, PhD

“The title of Cohen’s book is intended not as a prophecy but a warning. In the overexcited debate about Putin and Trump, Cohen chooses to eschew moderation because he believes that in practice that results in conformity with an anti-Russia narrative that is not only wrong but dangerous. This book will delight his supporters and enrage his opponents, while readers of a moderate persuasion will be able to admire the passion and tenacity of his resistance to the trend towards provoking war with Russia.” —Irish Times, reviewed by Geoffrey Roberts, emeritus professor of history at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy

"It’s a page-turner."—Consortium News, reviewed by Ann Garrison

Praise for Stephen F. Cohen’s Books

Bukharin and The Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography
“This magnificent book will come to be regarded … as one of the two or three really outstanding studies in the history of the Soviet Union of the past 25 years.”—The New York Review of Books

Rethinking the Soviet Experience
“[Cohen] clarifies Russian issues better than anyone has in the past decade.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities
“A model of scholarly journalism, sound and wonderfully readable.”—Publishers Weekly

Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia
“A blistering, brilliant, and deeply felt critique of America’s decade-long daydream of a Russia in transition.”—Kirkus Reviews

The Victims Return
“A striking memoir … Russians today are inheritors of an unspeakably immense crime, and Cohen engages fully — and personally — with the debate on the way they continue to grapple with their Stalinist legacy.”—The New Yorker

Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives
“An extraordinarily rich book …an absolutely vital beginning point for anyone interested in a serious study of political and foreign policy developments involving Russia.”—Slavic Review

“Cohen’s ideas about Russia, which once got him invited to Camp David to advise a sitting president, now make him the most controversial expert in the field.”—The Chronicle Review

About the Author

Stephen F. Cohen passed away on September 18, 2020, at the age of 81. He was Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he was also director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. He grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky, and received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Indiana University and his Ph.D. at Columbia University.

Cohen’s other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917; Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities(with Katrina vanden Heuvel); Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin.

For his scholarly work, Cohen eceived several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.

Over the years, he had also been a frequent contributor to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. His “Sovieticus” column for The Nation won a 1985 Newspaper Guild Page One Award and for another Nation article a 1989 Olive Branch Award. For many years, Cohen was a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. With the producer Rosemary Reed, he was also project adviser and correspondent for three PBS documentary films about Russia: Conversations With Gorbachev; Russia Betrayed?; and Widow of the Revolution.

Cohen visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years.