Thursday, September 24, 2020

#RIP Stephen F. Cohen (1938-2020): 'One Of The Last True Independent Russia Experts'

 

Max Blumenthal pays tribute to Stephen F Cohen, "one of the last true independent Russia experts," who died September 18, at the age of 81. Max says that nobody will fill his shoes and laments that Cohen was "demonized" by people "who pass as progressive media," because he saw through Russiagate. Max recalls the last time he saw Stephen in person was in January at a talk at the Metropolitan club at a talk Cohen gave in DC: "He was at the top of his game. He faced a lot of opposition during his q and a. It was impressive to watch him calmly and elegantly bat down somewhat hysterical criticism, leaning on his scholarship and his experience. He was a one of a kind figure in the U.S. One of the last true independent Russia experts: he spoke Russian, had experience in the Soviet Union as a scholar. He was considered a liberal within the reformist mainstream of Russian scholarship as a younger man but as he watched the Soviet Union be dismantled and 3-5 million people killed through this neoliberal project imposed in the 1990s by the Harvard boys, he became an opponent of US policy towards Russia." Please support The Katie Halper Show on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thekatiehalpe... Follow Katie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kthalps