1938–
The British political scientist who argued Gorbachev's individual leadership was the decisive factor in transforming the Soviet system
Only rarely does an individual leader make a fundamental difference. Gorbachev was such a leader.
Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford and a leading scholar of Soviet and Russian politics. In The Gorbachev Factor (1996), he established the 'individual leader' thesis against structural determinism, arguing that Gorbachev's personal convictions and political choices were the decisive force behind the transformation of the Soviet system and the end of the Cold War. The thesis became one pole of the subsequent historical debate and remains among the most influential interpretations of perestroika.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1964–1971Lecturer, University of Glasgow
- 1967–1968British Council exchange scholar, Moscow State University
- 1971–1989Lecturer in Soviet Institutions, St Antony's College, Oxford
- 1989–2005Professor of Politics, Oxford University
- 1996Publishes The Gorbachev Factor
- 2005–Emeritus Professor of Politics, Oxford University
Related historical events
Post-retirement Works and International Recognition
Brown continued his comparative work on political leadership after stepping down from teaching, and his books brought him wider international recognition. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991 and chaired its Political Studies Section from 1999 to 2002, became an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003, and was appointed CMG in 2005 for services to UK-Russian relations and to political science and international affairs.
His 2009 book, The Rise and Fall of Communism, was awarded the W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize of the Political Studies Association for best politics book of the year, the second time he received that prize. In The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War (2020) he analysed the role of political leadership together with American and British foreign policy processes towards the Soviet Union and the transformation of Soviet foreign policy; the book won the Pushkin House Book Prize in 2021. In this way he extended the individual-leader thesis of The Gorbachev Factor beyond a single case into a typology of leaders and a comparative account of how the Cold War ended.