Washington History Seminar
Historical Perspectives on International and National Affairs

An Unwanted Visionary: Gorbachev’s Unrealized Ambitions and the Soviets’ Retreat from Asia
Sergey Radchenko
ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY

Radchenko will offer a fresh interpretation of Mikhail Gorbachev’s foreign policy by showing how the Soviet leader tried to reshape the international order through engagement with China and India, and why his vision for a Soviet-led Asia ultimately failed. Relying on newly declassified records from Russian, Chinese and other archives, he will discuss lost opportunities and recount painful legacies of Soviet retrenchment from Asia. 

Sergey Radchenko is Reader in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, UK. A native of Sakhalin, Russia, he worked in the US, UK, China and Mongolia. His research interests include Soviet foreign policy and international relations of Asia Pacific and Central Asia. Radchenko’s publications include Two Suns in the Heavens: the Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967 (Woodrow Wilson Center Press & Stanford UP, 2009) and Unwanted Visionaries: the Soviet Failure in Asia (Oxford UP, 2014). He previously served as Public Policy Scholar with the History and Public Policy Program at the Wilson Center. 

Monday March 31, 2014
4:00 p.m. 
Woodrow Wilson Center, 6th Floor Moynihan Board Room
Ronald Reagan Building, Federal Triangle Metro Stop

April 7: Sophia Rosenfeld, University of Virginia, ‘Take Your Choice!’: Historical Reflections on the Act of Voting

Reservations accepted 1 week prior to event:
WHS@wilsoncenter.org

The seminar is sponsored jointly by the National History Center of the American Historical Association and the Wilson Center. It meets weekly during the academic year. See www.nationalhistorycenter.org for the schedule, speakers, topics, and dates as well as webcasts and podcasts. The seminar thanks the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for its support.