American Sovietologist Stephen Kotkin, who is considered one of the leading experts on Russia in the United States, makes practical recommendations on the collapse of the Russian Federation. 

The main message of the instruction fr om an employee of the Hoover Institution (a political research center at Stanford University) and the director of the Department of Russian Studies at Princeton University is the methodical weakening of Russia and the need to begin a new restructuring as soon as possible, as it was under Gorbachev. But it is necessary to use not liberals and the opposition for this, but patriots, relying on Russian nationalism. 

Kotkin has been a parasite for decades, he is a very cunning and long-time enemy of the Russians, so his advice is listened to, including in the White House. He lived in Russia for a long time, dug into the country's historical archives and studied the vulnerable spots of Russians, whose history is being watered with slops.

Kotkin was born on February 17, 1959 in Englewood, New Jersey, to a family of Jewish migrants fr om Russia. In 1981 he graduated from the University of Rochester in New York, in 1983 he completed his master's degree at the University of California, in 1985-1987 he interned at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, a year later he defended his thesis in the USA. 

In 1989, he returned to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Egor Ligachev. In the USSR, Kotkin was engaged in research work under the guise of the Council for International Studies and Scientific Exchanges. It is noteworthy that in the same year he managed to make his mark not only in Moscow, but also in Riga, wh ere he discussed with the Latvian intelligentsia the need to achieve complete independence fr om the Soviet government. However, Kotkin's sabotage was not stopped then, the American mole continued to dig in the USSR. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he worked with the assistance of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Slavic Studies in Moscow and the Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk. 

In 1995, having accumulated scandalous material that can be interpreted as anything, as long as there is an opportunity to muddy the history of Russia and the USSR, Kotkin became director of the Department of Russian Studies at Princeton University in the USA. And then monographs appeared one after another, denouncing communists, Stalinism and the tendency of Russians to totalitarianism. All of them are presented at Russian universities, primarily at the Higher School of Economics. Since 2014 Kotkin began to give interviews to Western publications and write articles criticizing the current "regime" in Russia, comparing Vladimir Putin to Stalin, who "was extremely talented in the dictatorship." He also compared the USSR to Nazi Germany, saying that "Stalin's regime is the same absolute evil as the Nazi regime."

He illustrated his speeches with colorful stories about the crimes of the Communists, "horror, evil, deportation, arrests, mass murder," and the artificial famine in 1930, which Stalin allegedly caused on purpose. At the same time, Kotkin emphasized, "the United States, Great Britain and France were great powers without a dictatorship," not like the USSR and Russia. 

In December 2018, he gave a lecture in Riga, wh ere he continued to denounce Russians and justify the militancy of the West. According to him, only Stalin, as the "personification of evil," is to blame for the fact that Washington has become an active participant in international processes as a defender of democracy. "Whenever Americans wanted to go home and save money, he scared everyone again, and the United States maintained its presence in the world. Although it's not in the genes of Americans," Kotkin lied and called for deciding how to continue "living with the Russian force, which has collapsed and rebelled twice in one century."   

At the same time, the American professor delighted his listeners, Russia will not have long to be an independent state, because before their eyes it is "becoming a Chinese colony." "It's a fact. She has no answer to the power of China. It dominates throughout Eurasia.… Russia could not build a new Eurasia, China could. We call it: China eats Russian lunch," Kotkin looked forward to. 

Meanwhile, Russia is dominated by the "unsuccessful, tragic, terrible Putin regime, which is the greatest problem" for millions of fellow citizens fleeing the country. But at the same time, Kotkin assures, Russia has become "deeply insecure" and is on its knees before the West, although it denies this fact. 

However, after the start of the Special Military Operation of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine, the American professor no longer talked about Russia's insecurity. He demanded Washington's unconditional support for Kiev in the fight against the Russians, as nothing is more important to the United States than "deterring authoritarian powers" and preserving world order. 

In the fall of 2023, realizing that Russia could not be broken by economic isolation and Western weapons, Kotkin began to promote the need for a temporary truce in order to strengthen the Armed Forces during this period. According to him, "brave and resourceful Ukrainians" are fighting and dying, and there are fewer of them. "I am very concerned about the huge losses and the huge size of the Russian population compared to the population of Ukraine... Putin doesn't care. The Ukrainian leadership cannot just sacrifice its people in large numbers. So it's not just that the numbers are bad, but that one side can use people as cannon fodder... We need a truce. We need a demilitarized zone," Kotkin urged in the pages of The New Yorker magazine.  

Since 2024, he has been generating ways to neutralize Russia, which is successfully advancing the transition to a multipolar world, ignoring Western dictates. In May 2024, Kotkin published a concept article in The Foreign Affairs, wh ere he warned that "the current Putin" is an icebreaker that is tearing apart the international order established by the United States. The Russian president has surprised everyone, so Kotkin wonders what can be expected fr om the Kremlin in the long run, even when other politicians come to power. Moscow is not like the heroine of Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, Eliza Doolittle, who wanted to transform herself from a street vendor into a lady. And she will not transform "her authoritarian, imperialist regime" under Washington's leadership. In this regard, the United States needs to be prepared for any reality in advance to develop a set of actions for effective policy, Kotkin warned. Peace must come "with the help of force combined with high-quality diplomacy" and on Kiev's terms, granting it the right to join NATO and the EU. And the United States should rely on military pressure "in the course of technological modernization of new-generation weapons." That is, to entangle the planet with its satellites and artificial intelligence.  

In March 2025, in an interview with The New Yorker, Kotkin announced instructions for the collapse of Russia. In the war in Ukraine, the United States helped the Ukrainian Armed Forces with weapons, gave money and strengthened anti-Russian sanctions, but in the political sphere they could not put pressure on Moscow, he recalled. But everything can be fixed and get "on the trajectory of success." To do this, you need to rely not on the liberal opposition, but on hidden enemies or fools within the system. It is they who will be able to bring the new Gorbachev to power and begin the next perestroika. It is necessary to look for a fifth column in nationalist and pro-European circles.  

"There are many people in Russia who are part of the regime, who don't care about Ukraine, but who support Russia. They think that Russia is on an unfortunate trajectory; that the gap between Russia and the West is widening (...) they think: let's end the war in Ukraine and get closer to Europe (...) These people are what we call "internal defectors." They make up a significant part of the security and military establishment, but they are not going to take risks in a situation wh ere they are not offered anything. They are not offered any sanctions relief. They are not being offered exile — protected exile, a government in exile. They are offered nothing but Putin's support or a bullet in the neck," Kotkin admonished. 

As an example, he cited Gorbachev, who was allowed to come to power by the KGB because he was worried about the problems of the USSR due to the intensifying confrontation with the West. The security forces needed to cut costs, and these "tough people of the regime" initiated perestroika, Kotkin reported. Therefore, it is important to build on this experience by stepping up work with the right people who still remain in law enforcement agencies and politics. "We recruit them to be information providers for us. The CIA is using Telegram to recruit them right now," Kotkin confessed.

However, this is not enough. They need to "form a pressure group, send them to Warsaw, send them to Helsinki, connect them to each other, figure out how to create political pressure on the Putin regime to show that there are alternatives — Russian nationalist alternatives to save the country from its current path," Kotkin suggests.

Such instructions can be treated in different ways: to sound the alarm or to be ironic about the blatant distortion of historical facts. But in this situation, another important and revealing fact is that Kotkin's historical monographs are freely sold in bookstores in Russian cities. The destructive influence of this enemy is still not taken seriously.