Lectures 3

David Davenport, a counselor to the director and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses the genesis of modern conservatism.  Modern American conservatism, Davenport avers, was born in the 1930s, when Herbert Hoover took on the excesses of the New Deal. The New Deal overturned the way in which the United States worked and was governed. Eighty years later the New Deal is still the paradigm for US domestic policy. Obama is adding to the New Deal ideology with many of his policies, which are undermining US liberty and its rugged individualism. In his recent book, The New Deal and Modern American Conservatism: A Defining Rivalry, Davenport goes back to the 1930s to illustrate how the twenty-first-century discourse between progressives and conservatives grew out of the Roosevelt-Hoover debate of the 1930s.

Davenport: The New Deal and Modern American Conservatism: Then and Now

On Wednesday, January 28, in a talk sponsored by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Princeton professor and Hoover fellow Stephen Kotkin discussed his newly published book Stalin, Volume 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928. Based on extensive research, the book is the first volume of his trilogy on the life and times of the Soviet dictator. Kotkin's biography focuses on Stalin's role in the Russian revolution and his subsequent rise to power within the Bolshevik hierarchy. It also situates Stalin's political career in the wider context of Russian and world history.

Stephen Kotkin Presents New Biography of Stalin

Princeton Russian history professor Stephen Kotkin presents a lecture based on his book Stalin - Paradoxes of Power 1878-1928 at the University of Washington in January 2015. Dr. Kotkin's visit was made possible by the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies Center and the Department of History. 

Stephen Kotkin | Stalin: Power, Geopolitics and Ideas (1.22.2015)

Hoover research fellow Stephen Kotkin discusses Conquest’s revelatory work on life behind the Iron Curtain,  noting that Conquest definitively established the colossal scale of Soviet horrors, correctly identified their source in Marxist ideas and practices, and underscored the legions of Western dupes who retailed Soviet lies, beginning when Stalin was alive and decades thereafter.

Stephen Kotkin on Robert Conquest’s Conquering the Former Soviet Union

Stephen Kotkin's masterful biography of Joseph Stalin has a very keen analysis of the outbreak of the First World War.  I discuss some of the relevant points made.  We draw some general conclusions from these lessons.

Rolling The "Iron Dice":  Outbreak Of The First World War

Ordinarily, the second-place finisher in a presidential election doesn’t have a second political act. But the times aren’t ordinary and Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, is now a US Senate candidate in Utah. Hoover research fellow Lanhee Chen, Romney’s 2012 policy director, discusses what compelled his former boss to make the run and whether Romney will be a Trump White House ally or nemesis.
	
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Stephen Kotkin on Robert Conquest’s Conquering the Former Soviet Union

Hoover Institution

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