US-American historian
Mary Elise Sarotte is the inaugural holder of the Kravis Chair at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC, and is a member of the Center for European Studies in Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations. Sarotte earned her Ph.D. at Yale University. After graduate school, she served as a White House Fellow and subsequently joined the faculty of the University of Cambridge.
She is the author, among other works, of “Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate”, “The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall”, and “1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe”. The original American edition of "Not One Inch" was described by Jürgen Osterhammel in the Süddeutsche Zeitung as one of the best books of 2022.
Monday, 13. November 2023, 19:00 – 20:00 h
At Literaturhaus Zurich, Limmatquai 62, 8001 Zürich
Moderation: Professor Ulrich Schmid
"Not one inch." With these words, US Secretary of State James Baker proposed a hypothetical deal to Gorbachev during the negotiations for German reunification: You give up your part of Germany, we don't move Nato east. Since then, numerous legends and controversies have grown up around this conversation. What exactly was promised back then? And how did the eastward expansion of Nato, so controversial today, come about?
This is what the much-acclaimed author Mary Elise Sarotte talks about in her book "Not One Inch. America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate" (Yale University Press).