Named a Best History Book of the Year by The Times (London), The Dark Side of the Earth offers a provocative rethinking of the end of the Cold War. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with key political actors — including Mikhail Gorbachev and leaders of post-Soviet states — Mikhail Zygar argues that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not a definitive victory for liberal democracy, but an incomplete and fragile transformation.

Blending political analysis with personal narratives, the book traces how moments of resistance — from figures such as Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn — shaped the late Soviet period, even as underlying structures of power endured. Zygar contends that the perceived “end” of the Cold War set the stage for the resurgence of authoritarianism, culminating in contemporary Russia’s expansionist ambitions and its confrontation with the West.

The talk reframes the post-1991 world, inviting audiences to reconsider the Cold War not as a concluded conflict, but as an unfinished historical process.

SPEAKERS:

Mikhail Zygar is a Russian journalist, author, and historian. He is the author of The Dark Side of the Earth, as well as the international bestsellers All the Kremlin’s Men and Empire Must Die. His work explores the transformation of Russian society, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the global rise of anti-liberal ideologies.

Zygar is a contributing writer for The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and Vanity Fair. He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of TV Rain (Dozhd), Russia’s independent national television channel.

He holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Portsmouth and has held fellowships and teaching positions at leading institutions, including Yale University, Princeton University, and Columbia University. His work has been recognized with multiple international awards, including the International Press Freedom Award.

His recent projects focus on how personal stories shape historical change and how the legacy of the Soviet collapse continues to influence global politics today.

Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), and a Senior Fellow at CDDRL and the Center on International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). From 2017 to 2021, she served as FSI's Deputy Director. She is Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford and teaches in the Department of Political Science, the Program on International Relations, and the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy Program. She is also a Senior Fellow (by courtesy) at the Hoover Institution.