David Satter

Former Senior Fellow

At A Glance:

David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent, is a long time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Instit

Biography

David Satter is a former senior fellow at Hudson Institute. A former Moscow correspondent, Satter a long time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is also a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Satter was born in Chicago in 1947 and graduated from the University of Chicago and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and earned a B.Litt degree in political philosophy. He worked for four years as a police reporter for the Chicago Tribune and, in 1976, he was named Moscow correspondent of the London Financial Times. He worked in Moscow for six years, from 1976 to 1982, during which time he sought out Soviet citizens with the intention of preserving their accounts of the Soviet totalitarian system for posterity.

After completing his term in Moscow, Satter became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal, contributing to the paper's editorial page. In 1990, he was named a Thornton Hooper fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and then a senior fellow at the Institute. From 2003 to 2008, he was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2008, he was also a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches a course on contemporary Russian history at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Academic Programs.

Satter has written three books about Russia: Russia: It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past (Yale, 2011); Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (Knopf, 1996; paperback, Yale 2001); and Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State (Yale 2003). His books have been translated into Russian, Estonian, Latvian, Czech, Portuguese and Vietnamese. His first book, Age of Delirium, has been made into a documentary film in a U.S. - Latvian - Russian joint production.

Satter has testified frequently on Russian affairs before Congressional committees. He has written extensively for the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. His articles and op-ed pieces have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The National Interest, National Review, National Review Online, Forbes.com, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The New York Sun, The New York Review of Books, Reader's Digest and The Washington Times. He is frequently interviewed in both Russian and English by Radio Liberty, the Voice of America and the BBC Russian Service and has appeared on CNN, CNN International, BBC World, the Charlie Rose Show, Al Jazeera, France 24, Fox News, C-Span and ORT and RTR, the state run Russian television networks.

Events
20
May 2016
Past Event
The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin
Featured Speakers:
Charles Davidson
David Satter
Kevin Klose
Carl Gershman
Robert Amsterdam
20
May 2016
Past Event
The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin

David Satter, Kevin Klose, Carl Gershman, and Robert Amsterdam discuss Satter's book on Putin and the FSB's role in the 1999 apartment bombings.

Featured Speakers:
Charles Davidson
David Satter
Kevin Klose
Carl Gershman
Robert Amsterdam
27
April 2016
Past Event
"Who Is Mr. Putin?"
Featured Speakers:
David Satter
Karen Dawisha
Anastasia Kirilenko
Ilya Zaslavskiy
27
April 2016
Past Event
"Who Is Mr. Putin?"

Hudson’s Kleptocracy Initiative hosts the U.S. premiere of Who Is Mr. Putin? with David Satter, Anastasia Kirilenko, Karen Dawisha and Ilya Zaslavskiy

Featured Speakers:
David Satter
Karen Dawisha
Anastasia Kirilenko
Ilya Zaslavskiy
22
April 2013
Past Event
U.S.- Russia Relations: The Future of the Reset
Featured Speakers:
Andrei Piontkovsky
David Satter
Andrei Ilarionov
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22
April 2013
Past Event
U.S.- Russia Relations: The Future of the Reset

With publication of a list of Russian officials covered by the Magnitsky Act, which denies U.S. visas to Russian nationals implicated in human-rights

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Featured Speakers:
Andrei Piontkovsky
David Satter
Andrei Ilarionov
03
February 2011
Past Event
After the Domodedovo Attack: The State of Russian Democracy
Featured Speakers:
John P. Walters
Andrei Piontkovsky
David Satter
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03
February 2011
Past Event
After the Domodedovo Attack: The State of Russian Democracy

The January suicide attack on Moscow’s largest airport, leaving 35 dead and over 180 injured, is the latest example of the unrest troubling Russia.

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Featured Speakers:
John P. Walters
Andrei Piontkovsky
David Satter
The body of killed Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, covered by plastic, seen on Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge near St. Basil cathedral, Moscow, Russia, February 28, 2015. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Caption
The body of killed Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, covered by plastic, seen on Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge near St. Basil cathedral, Moscow, Russia, February 28, 2015. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
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Former Senior Fellow
Commentary
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