“Cohen’s thesis is that Yeltsin, fairly than Russia’s first democratic chief, was a neo-czarist bumbler who destroyed a democratization course of that, in truth, ought to be credited to Mikhail Gorbachev,” Robert D. Kaplan wrote in a Times review. “Cohen is especially scathing towards American journalists, whom he depicts as overly influenced by the prosperity of a small, rapacious higher class within the main Russian cities, and who seldom ventured out into the countryside to see the horrible value of the reformers’ handiwork.”
Stephen Frand Cohen was born in Indianapolis on Nov. 25, 1938, the older of two youngsters of Marvin and Ruth (Frand) Cohen. His father owned a jewellery retailer and a golf course in Hollywood, Fla. Stephen and his sister, Judith, attended faculties in Owensboro, Ky., however Stephen graduated in 1956 from the Pine Crest College, a non-public faculty in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
He beloved the novels of Hemingway. As an undergraduate at Indiana College, he went to England on a study-abroad program. He had saved $300 for a aspect journey to Pamplona to run with the bulls. However an commercial he noticed for a 30-day, $300 journey to the united statesS.R. modified his life.
Again at Indiana College, he gave up plans to be a golf professional and took up Russian research. He earned a bachelor’s diploma in economics and public coverage in 1960 and a grasp’s in Russian research in 1962. In 1969, he acquired a doctorate in that topic from Columbia College.
Professor Cohen’s marriage in 1962 to the opera singer Lynn Blair resulted in divorce. He married Ms. vanden Heuvel in 1988. Along with her, he’s survived by a son, Andrew, and a daughter, Alexandra Cohen, from his first marriage; one other daughter, Nicola Cohen, from his second marriage; a sister, Judith Lefkowitz; and 4 grandchildren.
His Columbia dissertation on Mr. Bukharin’s financial concepts grew into his first ebook, copies of which reached Soviet dissidents, the Okay.G.B. in Moscow, and finally Mr. Gorbachev, who put Professor Cohen on his visitor record for the 1987 Gorbachev-Reagan summit in Washington.
Professor Cohen taught at Princeton from 1968 to 1998, rising to full professor of politics and Russian research, and at New York College thereafter till his retirement in 2011. His final ebook, printed in 2019, was “Conflict With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate.”
