Professional Affiliation

Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Expert Bio

Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has written extensively on the Cold War, nuclear history, and on Russian and Chinese foreign and security policies. He has served as a Global Fellow and a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre and as the Zi Jiang Distinguished Professor at East China Normal University (Shanghai). Professor Radchenko’s books include To Run the World: the Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power (Cambridge UP, forthcoming in 2024), Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy (Wilson Center Press & Stanford UP, 2009), and Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in Asia (Oxford UP, 2014). Professor Radchenko is a native of Sakhalin Island, Russia, was educated in the US, Hong Kong, and the UK, where he received his PhD in 2005 (LSE). Before he joined SAIS, Professor Radchenko worked and lived in Mongolia, China, and Wales.

Wilson Center Project

The First Fiddle: a History of the Cold War and After

 

Project Summary

This project is a history of the Cold War, told primarily from the Soviet perspective. Drawing on the existing historiography and recently declassified records, and applying insights from psychology and IR, the author seeks to explain the underlying motivations behind Soviet policy making. The author in particular highlights the importance the Kremlin attached to political legitimacy, and the means for attaining it, including – mostly importantly – through external recognition and acceptance as a co-equal superpower. Re-interpreting the Cold War through the lens of legitimacy helps in the understanding of the sources of conflict in Russian-American relations during the Cold War and all the way through the present.

 

Major Publications

Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy (Wilson Centre Press / Stanford UP, 2009)

Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in Asia (Oxford UP, 2014)

(with Campbell Craig) The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (Yale UP, 2008)

Previous Terms

Global Fellow, History and Public Policy Program, October 2014 - September 2018. Project Title: "China's Foreign Policy under Mao Zedong"

Public Policy Scholar, History and Public Policy Program, September-December 2013. Project Title: "China's Foreign Policy under Mao Zedong"

Short-term Scholar, Kennan Institute, May-June 2006. Project Title: The China Puzzle: Soviet Policy Toward the PRC, 1962-1967.