Mikhail Alexseev

Twenty-five years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Kremlin’s view of the world changed dramatically. Suddenly, the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union’s successor state internationally, was surrounded by 14 newly independent nation-states, each with its own interests and relationships with Moscow and the world. All 15 republics dropped the mantra of Communism, but its residue has remained. Since then, history has not ended. Moscow continues to view the world through its unique prism and we need to understand better what shapes the views and aspirations of its leadership in the making of Russia’s foreign policy today.

Ambassador Kenneth Yalowitz is Director of the Conflict Resolution MA Program at Georgetown University and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for 36 years and was US Ambassador to Belarus from 1994-1997 and Georgia from 1998-2001. He also served two tours in Moscow as well as tours in The Hague and at the US Mission to NATO in Brussels. He was chosen for the Ambassador Robert Frasure award for peacemaking and conflict prevention in 2000 for his work in preventing spillover of the Chechen war into Georgia.

Mikhail Alexseev, Professor of Political Science, San Diego State University, is a specialist on migration, ethnopolitical conflict and post-Soviet Russia. He is the author of “Immigration Phobia and the Security Dilemma: Russia, Europe and the United States” (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and the principal investigator of a multi-year international research project on migration and ethno-religious violence in the Russian Federation. He has published articles in various academic journals and opinion pieces on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs in the New York Times, Newsweek, the Toronto Globe and Mail, USA Today and the Seattle Times.

This program is co-sponsored by the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute in Washington, DC. This event is part of the “Kennan Conversations” program.

Mr. Yalowitz and Mr. Alexseev will also be addressing this topic at the Albuquerque Committee on Foreign Relations (ACFR) dinner October 13. Santa Fe World Affair Forum (SFWAF) members may attend at ACFR member prices. For more information please contact ACFR program chair Bob McGuire (rsmcg@comcast.net or 505-281-1108).

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