Ronald Suny

Ronald Suny is the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan. He is author most recently of Red Flag Wounded: Stalinism and the Fate of the Soviet Experiment (London and New York: Verso Books, 2020); and Stalin: Passage to Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).

European Union

Ukraine war has exposed the Folly – and unintended Consequences – of ‘Armed Missionaries’

Ronald Suny

By Ronald Suny, University of Michigan | – ( The Conversation) – The evening before Russia invaded Ukraine, it seemed to many observers – me included – nearly unimaginable that Putin would carry through with weeks of a threatened military attack. As I wrote at the time, Putin is not as erratic or rash as […]

Russia

Mikhail Gorbachev: The contradictory Legacy of Soviet Leader who attempted ‘Revolution from Above

Ronald Suny

Mikhail Gorbachev was a contradictory figure; his legacy, complex. Hailed in the West as a democrat and liberator of his people – which he genuinely was – he increasingly became despised by many within Russia for destroying the Soviet Union and dismantling a great power. Either way, he was consequential. Indeed, his death at 91, […]

History

Russia in Ukraine: Basing Land Claims on Ethnicity/History rather than Int’l Law always leads to Bloody Conflict

Ronald Suny

From: The Conversation: The first casualty of war, says historian Ronald Suny, is not just the truth. Often, he says, “it is what is left out.” Russian President Vladimir Putin began a full-scale attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and many in the world are now getting a crash course in the complex and […]