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“... Afghanistan emerged as an independent kingdom in the 18th century, though its frontiers would change many times and it would always be more a confederation of tribes and lesser khanates than a centralised state. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, determined to halt Russia’s Inner Asian advance and ‘secure’ its own North Indian frontier, Britain fought three wars with the Afghans ...”

“... Stephen Kotkin​ ’s Stalin is all paradox. He is pockmarked and physically unimpressive, yet charismatic; a gambler, but cautious; undeterred by the prospect of mass bloodshed, but with no interest in personal participation. Cynical about everyone else’s motives, he himself ‘lived and breathed ideals ...”

“... but is there a better way to synthesise the taste of sudden freedom than bashing down a barrier? Stephen Kotkin, the co-author of Uncivil Society, observes rather biliously that ‘the books on Communism’s demise in Eastern Europe in 1989 could probably be piled longer and higher than the old Berlin Wall.’ But then he cheers himself up. ‘What more ...”

“... and crude peasant jokes’. But what did they really think, deep down, about their regime? Like Stephen Kotkin, she argues that they supported it because they knew no other: ‘The language and priorities of Soviet Communism provided the war generation with the only mental world they knew, not least because alternatives were excluded.’ But she also ...”

“... cohort of young historians of the Soviet Union trained at Columbia in the 1990s who, influenced by Stephen Kotkin, first brought Foucault to Soviet history. Psychologists, specialists in forensic medicine and statisticians – all those in Russia who studied the phenomenon of suicide in the first decade of the 20th century – complained of the lack of ...”

“... Rossman that peasants and workers did not sit quietly and take whatever the regime dished out. Stephen Kotkin, on the other hand, was struck by how little resistance there was, and shows that Soviet citizens (like most people in most countries) simply accepted and accommodated to the prevailing system. Influenced by Foucault, he describes the Soviet ...”

“... and opting out. On the contrary, they argued, Stalinism – ‘Stalinist civilisation’, in Stephen Kotkin’s phrase – was the creation of Soviet citizens, not an alien value system forced on them by the regime: it was the worldview they grew up with, the only one they knew. In effect, this was a culturalist equivalent of the broadest possible ...”