Russia: Haunted by Its Communist Past

December 2011

Past Event

Russia: Haunted by Its Communist Past

Past Event

Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters

December 05, 2011

December 2011

Past Event

1015 15th Street, N.W., 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

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Speakers:

Kenneth Weinstein

Hudson Institute President & CEO

David Satter

Hudson Senior Fellow and former former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times and special correspondent on Soviet affairs for the Wall Street Journal

Robert Amsterdam

Founding Partner of Amsterdam & Peroff and lawyer for jailed Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Andrei Illarionov

Senior Fellow, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at CATO

Miriam Lanskoy

Director for Russia and Eurasia at the National Endowment for Democracy

As we approach the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union, a pivotal question is whether Russia has drawn lessons from the communist past. Hudson Senior Fellow, David Satter, in his new book, It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past (Yale), attempts to answer this question. He presents a striking new interpretation of Russia's historical tragedy, locating its source in Russia's disregard for the value of the individual compared to the goals of the state.

"David Satter points to the utter failure of contemporary Russia to confront its own bloody legacy of terror," says author Francis Fukuyama.

Further Reading

David Satter, Awaiting the Next Revolution in Russia, May 10, 2012

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