LIFE WITH STEVE WAS NEVER BORING. HE was supremely independent, the true radical in our family, unfailingly going to the root of the problem. And as The Chronicle of Higher Education noted in 2017, he “was the most controversial Russia expert in America.”
I first “met” Steve through his 1977 essay “Bolshevism and Stalinism.” His cogent, persuasive revisionist argument that there are always alternatives in history and politics influenced me deeply. And his seminal Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, challenging prevailing interpretations of Soviet history, was to me, and to many, a model of how biography should be written: engaged and sympathetically critical.
Steve’s work—and soon, Steve himself—challenged me to be critical-minded, to seek alternatives to the status quo, to stay true to my beliefs (even if they weren’t popular),…
