In search of a focus. A Cold War historian reflects on international history

Stevenson, reminded us in his lecture in October 2012 that International History had rarely experienced easy times. 1 For almost a century, since it came to be taught at the LSE, this field struggled to find symbiosis with social and political sciences.The field has been repeatedly attacked for its "outmoded" profile and methods yet remains remarkably resilient, as well as relevant for governments and general readers of history.The global liberal order faces domestic crisis of legitimacy, new state-to-state military conflicts and the AI race.In this darkening times, International History may step up again for servicelike a life-battered seasoned reservist behind the front row of younger colleagues sporting newest and fashionable equipment.Looking back at the century-old lineage of excellent historians that held Stevenson Chair before me, I find my path into the field different and similar at the same time.The difference is clear: I had studied and lived in the Soviet Union until the early 1990s, then moved from Russia to Washington in the 1990s, to Philadelphia in the 2000s and to the LSE in 2013.The similarity is more complicated: the legacy of the Stevenson Chair is linked to the studies of the origins and consequences of World War I, and I am a scholar of the Cold War and Soviet history.This puts me in the same camp with David Stevenson and other holders of the Chair who took great effort to define the scope and methods of International History, particularly in relationship with rapidly changing historical studies at large.Like them, I care personally and passionately about learning from the past as a way to nourish the debate on current security challenges and international politics.Lastly, I share with them a combination of broader multi-disciplinary interests with an unflagging focus on the crucial historical nodes, when nations -gradually or suddenlygot pulled into a vortex of conflicts that incurred terrible cost on the mankind, economy, and culture.There are themes and points, I believe, on which every cohort of International History practitioners brook no disagreements.And these themes inform this essay.