The following conversation was part of the KGB and Western Plots Against the Soviet Union event, hosted by the Hoover Applied History Working Group on on Friday, May 9, 2025.
ABOUT THE TALK
Stanford associate professor of history Amir Weiner joins Milbank Senior Fellow Niall Ferguson as part of a discussion of the Hoover Institution Applied History Working Group seminar series, previewing his forthcoming book, At Home with the KGB: A New History of the Soviet Security Service. Weiner examines how the Soviet security service-maintained control after Stalin—not through overt violence, but using methods such as psychological pressure, surveillance, and deeply embedded conspiratorial thinking.
The conversation explores how the KGB adapted, shaped leadership transitions, and ultimately failed to prevent the Soviet collapse—offering fresh insights into the Cold War era and the mindset of its most notorious alumnus, Vladimir Putin.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Amir Weiner is the Director of the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and a Professor of History at Stanford University. He is the author of Making Sense of War, Landscaping the Human Garden, and numerous articles and edited volumes on the impact of World War Il on the Soviet polity, the social history of WWII and Soviet frontier politics. His forthcoming book, At Home with the KGB: A New History of the Soviet Security Service, will be published by Yale University Press in 2026.
Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior fellow of the Center for European Studies, Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is also a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation Distinguished Scholar at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of several books including the forthcoming second volume of his biography on the late secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
