Stephen Kotkin: Six Futures of Russia-Why We Need History (and Libraries) | LIVE from NYPL

To honor the 125th anniversary of the Library’s Slavic and East European collections, the award-winning expert on Russian history Stephen Kotkin delivers an original lecture on Russia’s possible futures. For event details and more, visit www.nypl.org/events/programs/...
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Vladimir Putin turned 71 on the same day that Hamas attacked Israel. Several weeks later, the Russian Federation president announced his intention to stand for a fifth term in elections that took place in March of this year. Putin’s predetermined victory will keep him in office until 2030, when he will be 78. But “self-styled tsars,” as historian Stephen Kotkin writes, face an acute succession crisis. Unable to rely on heirs through blood and compelled to simulate elections, Putin’s personalistic autocracy and, more broadly, Russia, face serious questions about the future.
Stephen Kotkin examines the uncertain times ahead, and the ways in which our understandings of the past can help us see potential paths forward. The program will open with a short talk by Bogdan Horbal, the curator for Slavic and East European collections.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Stephen Kotkin is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where he teaches grand strategy and directs the Hoover History Lab. He is also the Birkelund Professor of History and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University. He is the author of Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928 and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941. He is working on Stalin: Totalitarian Superpower, 1941-1990s. He has held a fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at NYPL.
Bogdan Horbal is the curator for Slavic and East European collections. In this capacity he oversees the development of collections in vernacular languages, provides reference assistance to researchers and does outreach to the scholarly world. Horbal has written many works on Lemkos, a small ethnic group in Poland. His PhD in history is from the University of Wrocław in Poland and his MLS is from Queens College, CUNY.
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