The Alexander Dallin Lecture in Russian,
East European and Eurasian Affairs

The Annual Alexander Dallin Lecture was founded in 1998 to honor Professor of History and Political Science Alexander Dallin, a founder of Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford and CREEES director, 1985-89 and 1992-94. The Dallin Lecture is co-sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

2011-12

"Russia on the Verge: What After the Post-Soviet Paradigm?"
Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief, Russia in Global Affairs
Thursday, December 1, 2011 at 5:15 pm in the Oksenberg Auditorium, Encina Hall Central

Fyodor Lukyanov is editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, published in Russian and English with the participation of Foreign Affairs magazine. He has an extensive background in different Russian and international media, in which he worked from 1990 to 2002 as a commentator on international affairs.

Lukyanov now widely contributes to various media in the US, Europe and China. His monthly "Geopolitics" column appears in the Russian edition of Forbes magazine. He is a member of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, an independent organization providing foreign policy expertise and also a member of the Presidential Council on Human Rights and Civic Society Institutions

2010-11

"The Putin System: Hollowing out Public Institutions"
Marie Mendras, Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po University and Research Fellow, National Center for Scientific Research
Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 5:15 pm in the Lane/Lyons Room at the Fisher Conference Center, Arrillaga Alumni Center

Marie Mendras is Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po University and Research Fellow with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She chairs the Observatoire de la Russie at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales in Paris. Her publications include Comment fonctionne la Russie ? Le politique, le bureaucrate et l'oligarque (CERI/Autrement, 2003), "Russia and Europe. The Challenge of Proximity" (Europa Institut Zürich, 2004), La Russie de Poutine (Le Seuil, « Pouvoirs », 2005), and Russie. L'envers du pouvoir (Odile Jacob, 2008) to be published in English in 2011 (Hurst and Columbia University Press).

Marie Mendras was educated at Essex University, Sciences Po University and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris, Johns Hopkins SAIS Bologna Center and Harvard University. Since the mid-1980s she taught at Paris 1-Sorbonne, Paris 10-Nanterre, Sciences Po in Paris, MGIMO in Moscow, and the London School of Economics (2008-2010). From 1983 to 1991, along with her academic work, she worked as a consultant for the Policy Planning Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, from 1992 to 2001, for the Délégation aux Affaires Stratégiques of the Ministry of Defence. She is on the editorial board of several journals, including Esprit in Paris, Pro et contra in Moscow, and is a member of the EU-Russia Centre in Brussels.

2009-10

"Russia, Its Neighbors, and the U.S. Since 1991"
Thomas W. Simons, Jr., Visiting Scholar, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Lecturer in Government, Harvard University, and Consulting Professor in 20th-Century International History, Stanford University
Thursday, November 5th from 5:00-6:30 pm in Cranston/McDowell Room, Fisher Conference Center in the Arrillaga Alumni Center
Watch here>

Ambassador Simons will seek to honor the broad scholarship of his friend Alexander Dallin by situating a discussion of emerging states within a vision of Eurasia as a world region equally shaped and driven by its own internal dynamic(s). Simons will argue that across the region shared experience and shared features are just as weighty as differences: civil societies are weak, markets are distorted or incomplete, politics features struggle among elites over resources and tends toward semi-authoritarian rule even where democratic forms take hold. Yet there is cause for hope. Simons focuses on states, but he sees states consolidating almost everywhere, so that as resurgent Russia presses on its neighbors, they can now press back. Stable development of strong state institutions within which new civil societies can take root and grow is possible and should be the top priority, but it will come only if the nationalism that gives content to these new states is civic and inclusionary rather than ethno-religious on the East Central European model. The U.S. can help or hinder its emergence everywhere in Eurasia, but if it wishes to help it must realize that in this part of the world the path to democracy leads through state development, and that it can best act as a City on the Hill if its policy centers on today's emerging new states, since they must be the incubators of tomorrow's new civil societies.

2008-09

"The Unstable Politics of Russian Diarchy: Some Preliminary Thoughts"
Lecture Transcript
Peter Reddaway, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University

Professor Reddaway received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Cambridge University and did graduate work at Harvard and Moscow Universities and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies and taught at George Washington University before his retirement in 2004. His principal publications include Uncensored Russia: The Human Rights Movement in the USSR (1972), Psychiatric Terror: How Soviet Psychiatry is Used to Suppress Dissent (with S. Bloch, 1977), Soviet Psychiatric Abuse (with S. Bloch, 1984), Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR (ed. with T.H. Rigby and A. Brown, 1980), The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy (with D.Glinski, 2001), and The Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin's Reform of Federal-Regional Relations (with R. Orttung, vol. 1, 2003, vol. 2 due in 2004). Reddaway contributes articles and interviews to the international media, and provides consultation for government bodies concerned with foreign affairs.

2007-08

“Russia before the Parliamentary and Presidential Election: Towards a New Authoritarian Regime"
Lev Gudkov, Levada Center Moscow

2006-07

“Perspectives on Boris Yeltsin in History”
Tim Colton, Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies and Director of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies

2005-06

"Gorbachev Revisited"
Archie Brown, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Oxford University

2004-05

"Russia's Foreign Policy after the Ukrainian Revolution"
Dmitri Trenin, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Moscow Center

2003-04

"Russia after the Presidential Election "
Yuri Levada, Director Levada Center (Formerly VTsIOM-A)

2002-03

"New War, New Allies: If the US Can't Go It Alone, Whom Should It Go With?"
The Honorable Stephen Sestanovich, George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Council on Foreign Relations Former US Ambassador at Large for the New Independent States: Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Moscow Center

2001-02

"Russia and the World after America's Autumn of Tears "
Robert Legvold, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University

2000-01

"Vladimir Putin: Opportunities and Constraints"
Lilia Shevtsova, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Moscow Center

1999-2000

"Transitions in Imperial Russian and Soviet Public Culture"
Jeffrey Brooks, Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University

1998-99

"What is Central Asia and Can It Be Integrated?
S. Frederick Starr, Chair, Central Asia Institute, John Hopkins University