Public lecture

24 February 2013

 

Professor Richard Sakwa from the University of Kent (UK) will give a public lecture entitled

 PUTIN REDUX: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE
(view entire lecture on UTTV)

on March 5, 10.15-11.45 at the Faculty of the Social Sciences and Education (Lossi 36), room 215.

Putin is back as president of Russia, but is it the same Putin? Is it the same country? The world at large has also changed. This lecture will examine all three elements. As part of the presidential campaign in 2012, Putin issued a number of important documents, which together begin to outline a more coherent ideology of ‘Putinism’. Even if he wished, Putin cannot rule as he did in his first two terms between 2000 and 2012. The widespread popular mobilisation in protest against the flawed parliamentary and presidential elections signals that society has matured, and is no longer willing to accept a subordinate place in the system. Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister keeps alive the hopes of the reformers. Putin does have a reactionary agenda, but this is combined with an attempt to devise a new pattern of modernisation for the country. At the same time, the external challenges have become more focused: the rise of China on Russia’s borders, new plans for regional integration in post-Soviet Eurasia, disarray in the European Union, the need for a more coherent response to crises such as that in Syria, and the constant geopolitical struggle with the United States. Putin is back, but the country and the world have moved on. Can Putin keep up?

Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, UK. Before moving to Kent, he lectured at the University of Essex and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prof. Sakwa is an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a member of the Advisory Boards of the Institute of Law and Public Policy in Moscow, chair of the Advisory Board of the Eurasian Political Studies Network and, since September 2002, a member of Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences.

The lecture is organized by the Centre for EU-Russia Studies (CEURUS), University of Tartu.

For more information about CEURUS, please explore our websites!