
Professor Stephen Kotkin has won the 17th annual Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Arthur Ross Book Award for Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941, the second volume of a definitive biography of Joseph Stalin.
The second book in the series covers major events in the Soviet Union from collectivization and the Great Terror to the conflict with Germany under Adolf Hitler. Kotkin, the John P. Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, will receive $15,000.

“Deeply researched, richly textured and eminently readable, Kotkin has written a brilliant book that explores some of the most consequential events of the twentieth century,” said Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs and chair of the award jury, which includes CFR members, but reaches its decision independently of the institution. Kotkin's first volume, Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928, was awarded the Silver Medal in 2015.