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Mary Sarotte

Mary Sarotte

Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies

Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs

About

An expert in the history of international relations, Mary Elise Sarotte is the inaugural holder of the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Distinguished Professorship of Historical Studies. She is also a research associate at Harvard University's Center for European Studies. Sarotte earned her AB in History and Science at Harvard and her PhD in History at Yale University. She is the author or editor of six books, including The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall and 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe, both of which were selected as Financial Times Books of the Year, among other distinctions and awards. Following graduate school, Sarotte served as a White House Fellow, then joined the faculty of the University of Cambridge, where she received tenure before accepting an offer to return to the United States to teach at USC. Sarotte is a former Humboldt Scholar, a former member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her most recent book is Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, on what the fight over NATO expansion did to Western relations with Russia.

Sarotte, M. E. (2015). Collapse: The accidental opening of the Berlin Wall. New York: Basic Books.

Sarotte, M. E. (2014). 1989: The struggle to create post-cold war Europe. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.

Sarotte, M. E. (2001). Dealing with the devil: East Germany, détente, and Ostpolitik, 1969-1973. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Sarotte, M.E. (2021). Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate. Yale University Press.

Expertise

Topics

  • History

In the News

A New Cold War without Rules: U.S. Braces For a Long-Term Confrontation with Russia

Dan De Luce interviewed Eliot A. Cohen & Mary Sarotte on NBC News, 03/06

The betrayal myth behind Putin’s brinkmanship.

Mary Sarotte wrote in Wall Street Journal, 01/07

The books to read in 2022.

Mary Sarotte’s book cited in Financial Times, 12/29

Was the Soviet Union betrayed by the West?

Mary Sarotte cited in Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12/23

Tensions between Russia and the West.

Mary Sarotte interviewed on BBC, 12/22 (fast forward to 18:50)

Not one inch.

Mary Sarotte interviewed on Brussels Sprouts podcast, 12/10

The best of books 2021.

Mary Sarotte’s book cited in Foreign Affairs, 12/09

How U.S.-Russian relations fractured in the 1990s.

Mary Sarotte interviewed on History Extra Podcast, 12/08

USA demands more pressure on Putin.

Mary Sarotte interviewed on ZDF, 12/06

Not one inch: America, Russia, and the making of post-Cold War stalemate.

Mary Sarotte interviewed on The Lawfare Podcast, 11/22

The Berlin Wall and the Soviet fall.

Mary Sarotte interviewed on The Past, the Promise, the Presidency podcast, 11/17

Not one inch.

Mary Sarotte participated in Hoover Institution webinar, 11/12