Стивен Коэн: Американский исследователь России (1938–2020)

American scholar of Russian studies (1938–2020)

Stephen Frand Cohen (November 25, 1938September 18, 2020) was an American scholar of Russian studies. His academic work concentrated on modern Russian history since the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's relationship with the United States. Cohen was a contributing editor to The Nation magazine, published and partially owned by his wife Katrina vanden Heuvel. Cohen was a founding director of the 2015 reestablished American Committee for East–West Accord.

Cohen was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and later grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky, the son of Ruth (Frand) and Marvin Cohen, who owned a jewelry store and a golf course in Hollywood, Florida. His grandfather emigrated to the United States from Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). Cohen graduated from the Pine Crest School in Florida. He attended Indiana University Bloomington, where he earned a B. S. in economics and public policy in 1960 and an M. A. in government and Russian studies in 1962. While on an undergraduate study abroad program in England, he took a four week trip to the Soviet Union, where he became interested in its history and politics. After completing his Ph. D. in government and Russian studies at Columbia University in 1968, he became a professor of politics at Princeton University later that year and remained on its faculty until 1998, when he became Professor of Politics, Emeritus. He then taught at New York University until his retirement in 2011, when he became Professor Emeritus of Russian and Slavic Studies.

In an article for The Nation, published in the March 3, 2014 issue, Cohen wrote that "media malpractice" had resulted in the "relentless demonization of Putin" who was not an "autocrat". He wrote that the American media's coverage of Russia was "less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological" than it had been during the Cold War. In a follow up interview with Newsweek magazine, Cohen said Putin was the "best potential partner we had anywhere in the world to pursue our national security". In a CNN interview around March 2014, he said Putin was not "anti American". In a May 2014 Nation column coauthored with his wife, Cohen wrote that President Barack Obama had unilaterally declared a new Cold War against Russia and that those inside the Beltway were complicit in it by their silence. Julia Ioffe in The New Republic saw this as Cohen disagreeing with a consensus that did not exist. Cohen's views on US Russian relations were criticized by Ioffe and others as being pro Putin. In a July 2015 interview, Cohen said:Even Henry Kissinger—I think it was in March 2014 in The Washington Post—wrote this line: 'The demonization of Putin is not a policy. It's an alibi for not having a policy.' And then I wrote in reply to that: That's right, but it’s much worse than that, because it's also that the demonization of Putin is an obstacle to thinking rationally, having a rational discourse or debate about American national security. And it’s not just this catastrophe in Ukraine and the new Cold War; it's from there to Syria to Afghanistan, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, to fighting global terrorism. The demonization of Putin excludes a partner in the Kremlin that the U. S. needs, no matter who sits there. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on May 17, 2017, Cohen said: "You and I have to ask a subversive question: are there really three branches of government, or is there a fourth branch of government — these intel services?" He stated that a military alliance that President Obama had tried to establish with Putin against terrorism was "sabotaged by the Department of Defense and its allies in the intelligence services". Each of Trump's efforts to "cooperate with Russia" was "thwarted [by] a new leak of a story". According to Taras Kuzio, Cohen denies that there is a cult of Stalin in Russia. Kuzio also characterises Cohen as a "fan of populist nationalist Trump". In relation to Russia's annexation of Crimea, he said that "any Russian leader who has legitimacy at home would have had to do some version of what Putin is now doing. They'd push back". In 2014, Cohen disputed evidence that Russia shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, an event that killed all 298 passengers and crew. He said the Ukrainian government had possession of Russian Buk surface to air missiles, and suggested the country "was playing with its new toys and made a big mistake." Extensive analysis proved that the Buk missile launcher used to shoot down MH17 belonged to the Russian Army's 53rd Anti Aircraft Missile Brigade and was in the hands of a pro Russia separatist militia at the time of the shootdown. In a 2014 article in The Nation, Cohen wrote that "the US picked prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, referred to resisters in the Southeast as 'subhumans'." In a 2015 interview, Cohen stated that "this notion that this is all Putin’s aggression, or Russia’s aggression, is, if not 100 percent false, let us say, for the sake of being balanced and ecumenical, it's 50 percent false. And if Washington would admit that its narrative is 50 percent false, which means Russia's narrative is 50 percent correct, that's where negotiations begin and succeed." In 2020, Taras Kuzio criticized Cohen's approach to Ukraine in his 2019 book War with Russia?. Kuzio notes that Cohen doesn't believe Ukraine is a "real entity" because "eastern Ukraine has a ‘shared civilization’ with Russia", and perpetuates a "mythical stereotype of Ukraine" as composed of two distinct peoples, and therefore the 2014 conflict as a civil war. Kuzio points out that Cohen wrongly claims that "pro Yanukovych" parties were banned in post 2014 Ukraine. Cohen says that Ukrainian volunteer battalions were dominated by extreme right ideologies and western Ukrainians but Kuzio cites research finding they were largely filled by Russian speakers and national minorities. His views on Ukraine have been criticized and described as pro Putin and pro Kremlin. Cohen rejected such labels According to ThinkProgress, Cohen's writings for The Nation helped lead to "[s]taffers at The Nation [ ] openly revolting against the magazine's pro Russian tilt."

In 2015, a proposed deal with the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) for a fellowship that would bear Cohen's name caused controversy and was initially revoked after objections from some ASEEES members. Following a special meeting in May 2015, the board of ASEEES explained that it voted in favor of accepting "the Cohen–Tucker Fellowship as named, should the gift be re offered" and the establishment of the Cohen–Tucker fellowship programme was announced shortly afterwards. Also in 2015, Cohen with Gilbert Doctorow and others reestablished the American Committee for East–West Accord, which describes itself as a pro détente advocacy group. From 2015, Cohen was a member of the board of directors of the revived ACEWA. He appeared regularly on RT (formerly known as Russia Today) where he consistently advocated viewpoints supportive of the Putin government.

Cohen had a son and a daughter from his first marriage in 1962 to opera singer Lynn Blair, whom he later divorced. In 1988, Cohen married political journalist and magazine publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel, daughter of Jean Stein and William vanden Heuvel; the couple had a daughter. Cohen died from lung cancer on September 18, 2020, at his home in New York City, at the age of 81.

"The Friends and Foes of Change: Reformism and Conservatism in the Soviet Union" in: Alexander Dallin/Gail W. Lapidus (eds. ): The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse. Westview Press, Boulder/San Francisco/Oxford 2005
"Stalinism and Bolshevism" in: Robert C. Tucker (ed. ): Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1977.