This event is now full and we are unable to take any further reservations. However, if you would like to be added to the waitlist, please email us at sj1874@stanford.edu.

 

This panel will examine the role of Ukraine and Russia in the Trump impeachment inquiry. Why has Ukraine emerged as central focus of the charges? What are Russia’s goals here, and how has it tried to achieve them? How different is an impeachment process driven by foreign policy concerns, rather than by domestic charges? Bringing together three experts on Ukraine, Russia, and US presidential politics, we will examine this extraordinary moment in American and international politics.

PANELISTS:

Michael McFaul, '86, MA '86, is the Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science; and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He was also the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University from June to August of 2015. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. Michael McFaul is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post.

He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.

He also served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored several books, including most recently the New York Times bestseller, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. He is currently writing a book on great powers relations in the 21st century.

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Terry M. Moe is the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has written extensively on the presidency, public bureaucracy, and the theory of political institutions more generally. His most recent book on American national politics is Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming.  Coauthored with William G. Howell.)

Steven Pifer is a William Perry research fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.  He writes on nuclear arms control, Ukraine and Russia.  A retired Foreign Service officer, his assignments included U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and special assistant to the President and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council.

MODERATOR:

Anna Grzymala-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the director of The Europe Center. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

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Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

 

Abstract: The West’s sanctions regime on Russia is unprecedented. Russia is the largest economy ever to be subject to major sanctions. And for the first time, the West is now the major constraint on Russia’s participation in the global economy. This experience is driving adaptation and innovation in both Russian public policy and Western sanctions practice.

What do Russian sanctions reveal about both Russia and sanctions? What count as good and bad tests of sanctions’ efficacy? What implications do sanctions hold for Russia’s domestic evolution and its relationship with the West?

 

Speaker's Biography:

Nigel Gould-Davies is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He teaches at Mahidol University International College in Thailand.

Nigel taught at Oxford University before joining the British Foreign Office, where his roles included Ambassador to Belarus. From 2010-14 he was Vice President, Policy and Corporate Affairs for BG Group in Asia.

He is the author of Tectonic Politics: Global Political Risk in an Age of Transformation (Brookings Institution, 2019). He received his B.A. and M.Phil. from Oxford and his Ph.D. from Harvard.

 

Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

 

Abstract: This study brings together social identity theory and the literature on ontological security in international relations to highlight the role of leadership processes for group formation and authoritarian legitimation. Together, these theories allow for exploring the conditions that increase the potency of identity-based politics and the specific ways political entrepreneurs can mobilize this political tool. Ontological insecurity, as I argue and show, is a condition that political entrepreneurs use and manipulate to gain political support and legitimate their rule. I illustrate this argument by looking into ‘late Putinism’ as an example of collective identity-driven politics. This study relies on an original nationwide survey experiment conducted in November 2017 in Russia to demonstrate the extent of the Russian society’s vulnerability and receptivity to insecure identity narratives. The data also allows us to start a discussion on the potential factors responsible for societal differentiation on this issue.

 

Speaker's Biography:

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, a Reader in Russian Politics at King’s College London, is the author of Political Consequences of Crony Capitalism Inside Russia (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011) and the forthcoming monograph Through The Looking Glass: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020). Gulnaz has written numerous articles on Russian regional political economy, state-business relations, and corruption in Russia. She has published an edited volume, Soviet Society in the Era of Late Socialism, 1964-1985 (2012) and has been working on bringing social psychological approaches to understanding collective identity issues and the nature of Putinism in Russia.

 

Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

 

Abstract: Despite a lull after the fall of the Soviet Union, grassroots activism in Russia is on the rise. The protests for free elections that swept across Russia in the summer of 2019 may have captured international headlines, but many other Russian grassroots groups have been actively organizing over the last decade. What types of civic movements exist in today’s Russia? What are the risks that civic activists face? How do they interact with the state or state-protected interest groups? Finally, what role could grassroots groups play in democratizing Russia? Russian activist Evgeniya Chirikova will shed light on these questions through her personal experience as an environmental activist and as a coordinator of Activatica.org, an online news platform covering grassroots activism across Russia.

Speaker's Biography:

Evgeniya Chirikova is a Russian environmental activist, primarily known for opposing the building of a motorway through the Khimki forest near Moscow. She also played a prominent role in the 2011-2012 Russian protests following disputed parliamentary elections in Russia. In March 2011, she received the Woman of Courage Award, handed over by US Vice President Joe Biden. In 2012, she was a winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize. In November 2012, Foren Policy named Chirikova one of its 2012 Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2015 Chirikova organized the portal activatica.org, and she is currently organizing media support for grassroots groups.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/nTFLMMdK9Zc

 

Abstract: What is Putin up to? In this lecture, Taylor argues that Russian foreign policy is best understood as a product of both Russian power and purpose. Purpose is understood as the worldview and mentality of Team Putin, which Taylor has defined as “The Code of Putinism” (as elaborated in his 2018 book of that name). Power and purpose combined produce a foreign policy strategy driven by Russia’s consistent attempts to “punch above its weight.” The disjuncture between this Russian mentality and foreign policy strategy and traditional US approaches to world politics explain the current low point in US-Russian relations.

 

Speaker's Biography:

Brian Taylor is Professor and Chair of Political Science in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Taylor is the author of three books on Russian politics: The Code of Putinism (Oxford University Press, 2018); State Building in Putin’s Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism (Cambridge University Press, 2011); and Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689-2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He received his B.A. from the University of Iowa, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.   

 

This event is now full and we are unable to take any further reservations. However, if you would like to be added to the waitlist, please email us at sj1874@stanford.edu.

Human capital is fleeing Russia. Since President Vladimir Putin’s ascent to the presidency, between 1.6 and 2 million Russians – out of a total population of 145 million – have left for Western democracies. This emigration sped up with Putin’s return as president in 2012, followed by a weakening economy and growing repressions. It soon began to look like a politically driven brain drain, causing increasing concern among Russian and international observers. In this pioneering study, the Council’s Eurasia Center offers a comprehensive analysis of the Putin Exodus and its implications for Russia and the West. Based on the findings from focus groups and surveys in four key locations in the United States and Europe, it also examines the cultural and political values and attitudes of the new Russian émigrés.

 

Sergei Erofeev is currently a lecturer at Rutgers University and the Principal Investigator of the project Tectonic Value Shifts in Post-Soviet Societies (Narxoz University, Almaty). He has been involved in the internationalization of universities in Russia since the early 1990s. Previously, Dr. Erofeev served as a vice president for international affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, the dean of international programs at the European University at Saint Petersburg, and the director of the Center for Sociology of Culture at Kazan Federal University in Russia. He has also been a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow at the University of Washington. Prior to his career in academia, Dr. Erofeev was a concert pianist, and has worked in the area of the sociology of the arts.

 

 

 

Co-sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the:

Seminar recording: https://youtu.be/fYUK-ALGqAE

 

Abstract:  Russian influence operations during the 2016 US elections, and the investigations that followed, revealed the broad scope of Russian political warfare against Western democracies. Since then, Russian operations have targeted the UK, France, Germany, Ukraine, and others. Other state and non-state actors, motivated by politics or profit, have also learned and adapted the Kremlin’s tool-kit. With the 2020 elections a year away, what have we learned about foreign information operations? How has the transatlantic community responded and what are the threats we are likely to face?  Drawing on extensive research on transatlantic relations, disinformation, and Russian foreign policy, Dr. Polyakova will discuss the state of policy options to address disinformation, analyze Russian intentions, and highlight emerging threats.

 

Speaker’s Biography:

Alina Polyakova is the founding director of the Project on Global Democracy and Emerging Technology and a fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, where she leads the Foreign Policy program’s Democracy Working Group. She is also adjunct professor of European studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Her work examines Russian political warfare, European populism, digital authoritarianism, and the implications of emerging technologies to democracies. Polyakova's book, "The Dark Side of European Integration" (Ibidem-Verlag and Columbia University Press, 2015) analyzed the rise of far-right political parties in Europe.  She holds a master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor's in economics and sociology with highest honors from Emory University.