In this public lecture, Bill Browder, Founder and Chief
Executive Officer of Hermitage Capital Management, gives a
firsthand critical analysis of the Russian economy–—particularly
the absence of the rule of law–—with insights derived from
his...
Russian spies held a morbid fascination in the minds of
Americans dating back to the Red Scare in 1919, following the
Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of the Communist
International, of which the Communist Party of the USA became a
constituent...
Mikhail Gorbachev defied every expectation at home and abroad by
permitting the Berlin Wall to be breached in November 1989. He had
finally allowed the imbalance of military power in Europe, which
had stood provocatively and overwhelmingly to Soviet...
We should not assume that making sense of post-Soviet Russia was
ever going to be easy. Great Powers that lose empires bear grudges
and the speed with which an empire is lost can exacerbate the
problem. No one can expect that a powerful country run...
Several years ago, I was increasingly disturbed by the direction
taken by American foreign and domestic policy. It seemed to me that
many key actions were inspired by mistaken notions about the way
the Cold War ended and the causes and implications...
On November 20, 1958, J. Robert Oppenheimer (right), Director
(1947–66) of the Institute for Advanced Study, and George F. Kennan
(center), then Professor in the School of Historical Studies and
former Ambassador to Russia, conferred with nine...
Pierre first started visiting Moscow in the 1970s, deep in the
USSR era; at the time, such visits from a foreign mathematician,
while not expressly forbidden, were quite non-trivial to arrange,
and all the more valuable for that. He has continued to...
In this presentation, Glen W.
Bowersock, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical
Studies, discusses the emergence and interrelated fates of Rome,
Constantinople, and Moscow. Rome became the capital of a great
Mediterranean empire, which tried...