The Cold War historian who read the Soviet collapse as 'a perfect storm and a hapless captain': a man-made disaster
He summarised the Soviet collapse in one image: 'a perfect storm and a hapless captain.' The USSR did not have to fall; Gorbachev's missteps turned a crisis into a catastrophe.
A Moscow-born Cold War historian, Zubok studied at Moscow State University's history faculty and earned his PhD at the Soviet Academy of Sciences' Institute for the US and Canada in 1985. He moved to the United States in 1994, worked as a fellow at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, became a tenured professor at Temple University, and since 2013 has been professor of international history at the London School of Economics. His 2021 book Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union argues that the USSR's dissolution was not inevitable: Gorbachev's mishandled reforms turned a crisis into a catastrophe, a thesis crystallised in the phrase 'a perfect storm and a hapless captain.' The book was a finalist for the 2022 Cundill History Prize.
Career Timeline
- 1980–1985PhD candidate, Institute for the US and Canada, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1985–1993Research fellow, Institute for the US and Canada, USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1994–2001Fellow, National Security Archive, George Washington University
- 2004–2013Professor of History, Temple University
- 2013–현재Professor of International History, LSE; Head, Cold War Studies Programme