Timeline: 50 Years of the Kennan Institute

Kennan Institute Founded

The Kennan Institute was founded as a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in December of 1974 through the joint initiative of Ambassador George F. Kennan, then Wilson Center Director James Billington, and historian S. Frederick Starr. Named in honor of Ambassador Kennan's relative, George Kennan "the Elder," a nineteenth century explorer of Russia and Siberia, the Kennan Institute is committed to improving American expertise and knowledge about Russia and Eurasia.

Ambassador Kennan was one of the most distinguished diplomats of the 20th Century. He relied on his intimate understanding of Russian history and culture to help shape the US national security strategy for the Cold War. The Kennan Institute has followed his example for five decades by putting knowledge into public service.  Learn more about Kennan's enduring legacy.

Left: Kennan Institute cofounders S. Frederick Starr, George F. Kennan, and James Billington.
Above: George Kennan "the Elder"
 

1975 - Nikolai Bolkhovitinov (1930-2008)
Bolkhovitinov (pictured left) was a prominent historian, pioneer of American Studies in the USSR, Honorary Foreign Member of the American Historical Association, and known as “the best Russian friend of American historians.” Read Nikolai Bolkhovitinov's biography by fellow Kennan alum Sergei Zhuk. 

1977 - Andrei Voznesensky (1933-2010)
Voznesensky (pictured right) was one of the greatest modern Russian poets, an iconic figure of the Khrushchev Thaw, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as “one of the greatest living poets in any language.”

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

In December 1979, the Soviet Union began a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan to help its client Marxist-Leninist government consolidate control amid an intensifying political crisis in the country. The Soviet military campaign marked the beginning of a nine-year civil war which killed or displaced millions of Afghans and was a contributing factor to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.

The Kennan Institute was an important hub of research and debate on the Soviet Union’s actions in the region, and their consequences for the United States and the rest of the world.

Listen to  a clip of President Jimmy Carter's remarks on the Soviet invasion from 1980.

Left: A unit of Soviet soldiers pictured prior to their withdrawal from Afghanistan, 1989.

Creation of Soviet-Eastern European Research and Training Act / The Title VIII Program

The Soviet-Eastern Europe Research and Training Act of 1983 (22 U.S.C. 4501-4508, as amended), also known as Title VIII, marked a major step forward in developing America’s knowledge of the Soviet Union. The act authorized the State Department to provide grant funding to advance research on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Title VIII funding led to the creation of fellowship programs for Eastern European studies, scholar exchange programs with the Soviet Union, language training, and other research activities.

Thanks to Title VIII, The Kennan Institute was able to greatly expand its resident scholar program to include younger scholars in the early stages of their careers. Today, in addition to approximately 900 American alumni, mainly supported by Title VIII, the Kennan Institute has over 400 alumni from Russia and over 120 from Ukraine.

Left: President Ronald Reagan delivers the State of the Union address to Congress in 1983.

Vasily Aksyonov (1932-2009)
Aksyonov (pictured far left) was a renowned novelist and one of the last dissidents to be expelled from the Soviet Union. He was a winner of the prestigious Russian Booker Prize and author of Generations of Winter, which the Washington Post called “the 20th-century equivalent of War and Peace.” 

Yuri Nagibin (1920-1994)
Nagibin (center, top) was a novelist and screenwriter, “author of understated, lyrical short stories in the tradition of Turgenev, Chekhov and Bunin” according to the New York Times, and co-author of the screenplay for Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1976.

James P. Scanlan (1927-2016)
Scanlan (center, bottom) was a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at Ohio State University from 1988-1991. A scholar of Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s philosophical ideas, Scanlan authored more than 170 publications in English and Russian and mentored several generations of Russian philosophy students.

Vladimir Soloukhin (1924-1997)
Soloukhin (right) was a prominent writer and one of the founders of the “village prose” movement in Soviet literature, famous for nostalgic depictions of Russian nature and rural life.

Mikhail Gorbachev Becomes Soviet Leader

On March 11, 1985, the Soviet Politburo appointed Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s tenure brought profound change to the Soviet Union with an agenda for internal reforms and a more constructive relationship with the United States. Gorbachev’s period in power ultimately concluded with the Soviet Union’s dissolution, an event for which he remains a figure of both enduring admiration around the world and resentment at home.

Gorbachev’s reform agenda enabled the Kennan Institute to expand its contacts within Russia and to host more scholars and experts from the country. This period helped forge new individual and institutional connections, including with President Gorbachev himself who served as the distinguished guest speaker at the Kennan Institute’s summit on the 15th anniversary of the Russian constitution in 2009.

Left: President Ronald Reagan meets with Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev at Hofdi House during the Reykjavik Summit in Iceland on October 11, 1986.

Above: Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev waves as he walks with Librarian of Congress and former Wilson Center Director James H. Billington on the U.S. Capitol grounds in 1992.

Chernobyl Disaster

Mistakes in safety testing within reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant just after midnight on April 26, 1986 triggered a catastrophic meltdown that precipitated the worst nuclear incident in history. The Chernobyl disaster deeply damaged the Soviet government’s reputation and contributed to the forces which ultimately tore it apart. It also left a lasting scar on the topography of modern Ukraine and the collective psyche of the Ukrainian people. The legacy of the catastrophe is still unfolding with the plant’s ruins serving as an unlikely battlefield during the initial phase of Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

The Kennan Institute has hosted several discussions about Chernobyl and its portrayal in the media, such as this look at Chernobyl's role in Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a conversation with "Chernobyl" HBO miniseries creator Craig Mazin.

Left: A photo of the destroyed Chernobyl reactor taken from a helicopter several months after the explosion in 1986.

Above: Craig Mazin speaks at the Wilson Center after a screening of the first episode of “Chernobyl.” 

Founding of Memorial Human Rights Organization

Memorial was founded in August 1987 as the Group for the Preservation of the Memory of Soviet Repression Victims, an NGO dedicated to securing justice for the millions of victims of the communist regime’s purges and abuses. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Memorial evolved into a Russian civil society organization dedicated to promoting democratization, human rights, and the rule of law.

Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, months after it was outlawed by the Putin government in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Listen to the Kennan Institute's discussion about the destruction of Memorial and what it means for the future of Russia.

1985 – Karen Dawisha (1949-2018)
Dawisha (left) was an outstanding political scientist and scholar of Russia, the founding director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University, and an author of multiple books, including the seminal Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?.

1987 – Liudmila Alexeeva (1927-2018)
Alexeeva (center) was a Soviet dissident and Russian human rights activist and a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. She received many awards for her work, including the French Order of the Legion of Honor, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize, described by Human Rights Watch as “the doyenne of Russia’s human rights movement” and “a clear, moral voice for freedom and dignity.”

1988 – Anna Frajlich-Zając
Frajlich-Zając (right) is an award-winning poet whose “literary roots lie deep in Polish, Jewish and American culture." She is the author of 18 books of poetry, five of them bilingual, Senior Lecturer Emerita of the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2017 Wybitny Polak "Distinguished Pole in the United States" award, presented by the Polish Consulate in New York.

Blair A. Ruble Appointed as Kennan Institute Director

Blair Ruble began his tenure as the Kennan Institute's director in 1989. Not only is he the longest-serving director of the Kennan Institute (1989 to 2012), but he has also been associated with the Institute as staff member, scholar, and senior advisor for over four of the Institute’s five decades of existence. A specialist on urban studies and culture, Ruble’s tenure brought the greatest level of scholarly exchange with the entire region, the launch of the Institute’s program on Ukraine, and research that guided tens of millions of dollars of higher education support to regional university centers in Russia. His research today includes a series of articles on Ukraine’s cultural resilience through war.

Left: Kennan Institute directors at the 25th anniversary dinner in 2001. Standing (l to r): Program Secretaries and Directors Herbert J. Ellison (1983-85); Abbott “Tom” Gleason (1980-82); Peter Reddaway (1985-88); S. Frederick Starr (1975-80); Blair A. Ruble (1989-2012); John Glad (1982-83). Seated (l to r): Amb. George F. Kennan; Russian Federation Ambassador to the United States Yuri V. Ushakov.

Above: Blair Ruble speaks at the November 2023 launch for his book, The Arts of War: Ukrainian Artists Confront Russia.

Fall of the Berlin Wall 

The fortifications dividing East and West Berlin were breached by peaceful protestors on the night of November 9, 1989, bringing an end to the physical manifestation of divisions in European politics that defined the Cold War.

Browse the Wilson Center's collection of content related to the Berlin Wall, including a Wilson NOW looking back at the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years later.

Left: A large crowd of people gather on November 10, 1989, to observe the construction of the new border crossing in place of the Berlin Wall.

End of the Soviet Union

December 26, 1991, marked the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union. The USSR started to unravel several years earlier, with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Georgia declaring their independence in 1990. On December 8, 1991, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk (pictured second from left seated), Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich (third from left seated) and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (second from right seated) signed the Belovezh Accords to eliminate the USSR and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States. Mikhail Gorbachev finally resigned as leader of the Soviet Union on December 25, bringing to a close to the Soviet experiment after nearly seven decades.

Watch the Kennan Institute's event reflecting on the end of the Soviet Union 30 years later or learn more about the end of the Soviet Union from experts including former Ambassador to the Soviet Union John Matlock.

Kennan Institute Opens Office in Moscow, Russia

Kennan Institute opened its Moscow office soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. For twenty years, it helped the Institute maintain closer ties with the Russian alumni of its fellowship programs and facilitate cooperation between U.S. and Russian scholars. The Moscow office organized conferences and workshops, including the annual Starovoitova Readings that addressed human rights and legal developments in the Russian Federation. It also allocated research grants and served as a meeting place for scholars from different Russian regions and universities. From 2002-2013, the Moscow office published a biannual Russian-language periodical, Vestnik of the Kennan Institute in Russia. The Kennan Institute Russian Alumni Association, also created in 1993, helped foster a community of like-minded academics.

Left: Speakers from the Kennan Institute's Moscow office take part in a conference on Russian civil society together with the Gorbachev Foundation in 2007; Mikhail Gorbachev is seated center.

Above: A group photo with participants from the Kennan Institute's 2004 alumni conference in Moscow.

Audrey L. Altstadt
Altstadt (pictured far left) is a prominent historian, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Chair of the Kennan Institute Advisory Council in 2016-2020, and author of dozens of articles on the politics, culture and history of Azerbaijan, as well as three books, including the 2017 Frustrated Democracy in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan.

Vladimir Voinovich (1932-2018)
Voinovich (center top) was a writer and dissident, stripped of his citizenship by Soviet authorities in 1981, author of the satirical novel The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin and dystopian satire Moscow 2042, who returned to Russia in 1990 and was an outspoken critic of the Putin regime.

Galina Starovoitova (1946-1998)
Starovoitova (center bottom) was a prominent Russian politician and human rights advocate, pioneer in urban anthropology whose academic research informed her public policy thinking, co-founder of the Democratic Russia movement, who James Billington called “a leader in both the political and intellectual life of post-Soviet Russia and not just a good but also a prophetic person”

Pilar Bonet 
Bonet (right) is a Spanish journalist who spent most of her career as a Moscow-based correspondent covering developments in the region for the newspaper El País between 1984 and 2021, recipient of multiple professional awards, author of several books, including Figures in a Red Landscape (1993) on Soviet citizens at a time of dramatic change and Náufragos del imperio (Castaways of the Empire, 2023) on the war in Ukraine.

1994-96: First Chechen War

Russian tanks rolled into Chechnya on December 11, 1994, to combat separatist forces fighting on behalf of the self-declared Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and assert Russian control over the region. Russia's violent bombardment of the Chechen capital of Grozny and the thousands of resulting civilian casualties shocked Russians at home and people watching from around the world. Russian forces failed to capture Chechnya after nearly two years of destructive urban warfare and more than 50,000 estimated civilian causalities. Russian and Chechen military leaders brought the war to its formal end by signing the Khasavyurt Accord in Dagestan on August 30, 1996.

Left: A church in Grozny, Chechnya, in 1994.

1994-1998: Shuttle–Mir Program

The Shuttle-Mir program was a collaborative U.S.-Russian program relying on the bilateral government agreements signed in 1992. Designed to foster cooperation between the two nations and their space agencies, it comprised eleven Space Shuttle missions, a joint Soyuz flight, and seven American astronauts spending almost 1,000 days together with Russian cosmonauts on board the Russian Mir orbital station. Referred to as Phase 1, the Shuttle-Mir Program paved the way for the International Space Station (ISS), the first module of which was launched in 1998 and which is scheduled to operate until the end of 2030.

To learn more about U.S.-Russian relations in space and how they have evolved over the years, watch the Kennan Institute’s event discussing the enduring legacy of Yuri Gagarin’s flight and its effects on popular culture and scientific innovation in the two countries, or listen to The Russia File podcast episode on the U.S.-Soviet space race and today’s newfound space enthusiasm.

Left: The Mir space station pictured in orbit above Earth in June 1998.

Above: Crewmembers Flight Engineer Pavel Vinogradov, Mission Specialist David Wolf, and Commander Anatoly Solovyev celebrate Christmas aboard the Mir space station in 1997.

Kennan Institute opens office in Kyiv, Ukraine

For twenty years, the Kyiv office held conferences, workshops, public lectures, book talks, and policy debates, strengthening the academic engagement, and increasing the visibility and impact of, the Kennan Institute and its alumni in Ukraine. From 2005-2017, the Kyiv office published the journal Agora on Ukrainian politics, economy, society, history, and culture. It also organized three Cultural Diplomacy Forums together with the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, five leadership programs for internally displaced students, and a variety of other important events and initiatives, including the 2015 Kennan Alumni Conference. The Kyiv office and the Ukrainian Association of Kennan Institute Alumni were instrumental in promoting a better understanding of Ukraine in the United States.

Left: Participants gather in spring 2015 for a joint event with the Kennan Institute's Kyiv Office, the Fulbright Office in Ukraine, and the Center for Russian Research.

Above: A cover image from Agora journal.

Maya Turovskaya (1924-2019)
Turovskaya (left) was a film and theater critic, historian, author and screenwriter, once called “the Susan Sontag of Soviet aesthetic thought.” She co-wrote with Mikhail Romm the 1965 documentary Triumph Over Violence about the rise and fall of fascism, and she authored books on German playwright Bertolt Brecht and Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky.

Alexander Etkind
Etkind (center) is a prominent historian and a professor at Central European University, whose research interests include political aspects of the Anthropocene, global decarbonization, memory studies, empires and decolonization, and various aspects of Russian history. He is the author of multiple books, including Russia Against Modernity (2023), Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (2021), and Warped Mourning (2013).

Ivan Kurilla
Kurilla (right) is a renowned historian and public intellectual, scholar of the United States and U.S.-Russian relations, as well as historical memory and historical politics. He is a former professor at European University at St. Petersburg, co-editor of Russian/Soviet Studies in the United States, Amerikanistika in Russia (2016), and author of multiple Russian-language books, including Americans and All the Rest: Origin and Meaning of the U.S. Foreign Policy (2024) and Battle for the Past: How Politics Changes History (2022).

Galina Starovoitova Fellowship established

The Galina Starovoitova Fellowship on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution was established following a speech given by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Moscow on January 25, 1999, in which she announced funding for a memorial fellowship in honor of Russian human rights advocate, parliament member, and Kennan Institute alumna Galina Starovoitova. Starovoitova served in the Congress of the Peoples' Deputies from 1989-1991, was a presidential advisor on ethnic relations until 1992, co-founded the Democratic Russia movement, and ran as a candidate in Russia's 1996 presidential elections. She was shot in St. Petersburg on November 20, 1998, by two unknown assassins.

Now in its 25th year, The Galina Starovoitova Fellowship continues to allow the Kennan Institute to host prominent scholars and policymakers from the Russian Federation who bridge the world of ideas and public affairs to advance human rights and conflict resolution.

Left: Galina Starovoitova speaks at a press conference on February 20, 1992.

Vladimir Putin Begins First Term as President of the Russian Federation

On May 7, 2000, Putin was officially inaugurated as the second president of the Russian Federation after his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, abruptly resigned during his annual New Years speech in 1999. Yeltsin had previously appointed Putin as the director of the FSB in 1998 (formerly known as the KGB) and had made Putin his chosen successor in 1997. However, a series of health setbacks combined with a near collapse of the Russian economy led to Yeltsin's ultimate resignation. By 2000, the geopolitical environment that Putin inherited was rampant with political pitfalls. Putin’s urgent challenges included improving the struggling Russian economy due to inflation and addressing civil unrest in the breakaway region of Chechnya, leading to large-scale conflict during Putin’s early years as president. Putin’s administration became notably more autocratic, with Putin further distancing himself from the West, increasing state censorship, and making moves to limit regional power of top officials. Regarding US foreign policy, Putin became more belligerent, leading to newly elected George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and weakening relations between the two nations.  

Read a 2001 interview with former Director Blair A. Ruble reflecting on Putin's first year in office.

Left: Vladimir Putin takes the presidential oath of office in St. Andrew Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace on May 7, 2000.

Rose Revolution in Georgia

On November 2, 2003, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze rigged parliamentary elections, triggering nation-wide mass protests known as the Rose Revolution. The revolution consisted of primarily non-violent mass protests led by Mikhail Saakashvili, a political opponent of Shevardnadze. Saakashvili helped to galvanize the public to organize peaceful protests that instrumentally led to the establishment of free and fair elections. The Rose Revolution successfully ushered in new democratic reforms in Georgia and led to a peaceful transition of power with the democratically elected Saakashvili beginning his first term as president in 2004.  

The Kennan Institute continues to analyze democratic governance in Georgia, including recent podcast episodes on Georgia's European aspirations and its controversial "Foriegn Agents" law.

Left: Participants in the Rose Revolution wave flags outside the Georgian parliament building in Tbilisi.

Serhii Plokhii

Plokhii (top left) is a prominent historian, a leading authority on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, award-winning author of numerous books, including the New York Times bestseller The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (2015) and, most recently, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History (2023). 

Ivan Pavlov

Pavlov (top center) is a human rights lawyer and activist, one of Russia’s top legal experts on matters related to state secrets, high treason, and espionage, who has represented wrongly accused clients in politically sensitive cases, founder of Department One community of lawyers and journalists, recipient of the 2015 Moscow Helsinki Group Award for defending human rights in court and the 2018 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism.

Stanislav Shushkevich (1934-2022)

A physicist by training, Shushkevich (top right) was a Belarusian politician, one of the three leaders who signed the 1991 Belovezh Accords dissolving the Soviet Union, the first head of state of independent Belarus who oversaw the democratic reforms in the country until 1994, and a vocal critic of his autocratic successor, President Lukashenka.

Kathleen E. Smith

Smith (bottom right) is a political scientist specializing in memory politics, as well as legal reform, civil society and participation in Russia, Associate Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CERES) at Georgetown University, author of Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring (2017), Mythmaking in the New Russia (2002), and Remembering Stalin’s Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR (1996).

William Taubman

Taubman (bottom left) is a renowned historian and political scientist, Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Amherst College, author of multiple books, including Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (2003), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gorbachev: His Life and Times (2017), a “masterpiece of narrative scholarship” according to Strobe Talbott.

Orange Revolution in Ukraine

On November 21, 2004, Viktor Yanukovych was declared the Ukrainian prime minister during a run-off election between him and his opposition, Viktor Yushchenko. Yanukovych, endorsed by his successor Leonid Kuchma and Russian president Vladimir Putin, participated in election rigging to claim his victory. After the election fraud became evident, a series of peaceful mass protests ensued in 2004 and 2005 to facilitate election transparency and restore democratic values to the Ukrainian electoral system. The protestors donned orange clothing and rallied using orange flags, ribbons, banners, and tents to showcase their solidarity for Yushchenko’s campaign, which utilized orange as its primary campaign color. These large-scale peaceful protests rallying for free and fair elections became known as the Orange Revolution and helped to bring about democratic reforms in Ukraine. An estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 protestors frequented Kyiv’s Independence Square, referred to as Maidan, with more mass protests taking place in other cities around Ukraine. These protests were notably peaceful with little intervention from state-sanctioned riot police. In the end, the Orange Revolution was fundamental in persuading the supreme court to nullify the election and administer a rerun, leading to the democratic election of Viktor Yushchenko in a rerun election held on December 26th. Yushchenko was inaugurated on January 23, 2005, with plans to address corruption, economic improvement, and create opportunities to strengthen Ukraine’s ties with its western neighbors. 

Read more in Orange Revolution and Aftermath: Mobilization, Apathy, and the State in Ukraine (2010), ed. Paul D'Anieri (pictured above).

Left: A protestor attaches flowers to riot police officers' shields during the Orange Revolution in Kyiv on December 1, 2004.

Russo-Georgian War 

In response from shelling from Russian-sponsored forces in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered troops into South Ossetian on August 8, 2008. A five-day war ensued between the Georgian military, the Russian Federation, and the Russian-backed separatist forces in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. These two breakaway regions compose 20% of Georgian territory and have had strained relations with Georgian rule since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the Bucharest Summit in April 2008, NATO members discussed the possibility of expanding their membership to Georgia and Ukraine, which Russia interpreted as an act of hostility that threatened its national security. In this context, Russia’s muscular response to Georgia’s military operation in South Ossetia showcased the country's ability to veto further NATO expansion eastward. The Russo-Georgian war lasted 16 days, with Russia’s invasion helping Georgia's separatist regions to push back Saakashvili’s forces close to Tbilisi. A cease-fire was declared on August 12, ending the Russo-Georgia War after nearly 850 casualties.

Left: Residents of Gori, Georgia, stand in front of an apartment building damaged by a Russian air raid during the 2008 war.

Davlat Khudonazarov

Khudonazarov (top left) is a Tajik filmmaker and public figure. He is also the former chairman of the Union of Soviet Filmmakers and was included in the list of Asia’s top 100 directors of all time at the Busan International Film Festival in 2015. Khudonazarov ran for the presidency of Tajikistan in 1991 and engaged in peace-making during the country's civil war. After he was forced to flee Tajikistan, Khudonazarov has continued his work as a human rights activist and advocated for the rights of migrants in Russia.

Marlene Laruelle

Laruelle (top right) is a prominent scholar of populist and illiberal movements in post-Soviet Eurasia, Europe, and the United States. She is a Research Professor and Director of Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University, Co-Director of PONARS Eurasia academic network, and author of numerous books, including Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (2012) and Russian Nationalism: Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields (2019).

Oleksandr Merezhko

Merezhko (bottom right) is a legal scholar and politician, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) since 2019, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Policy and Interparliamentary Cooperation, where he works to maintain and solidify relations between Ukraine and its allies. He has also served as Ukraine’s deputy in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 2020 to 2024 and Vice-President of the Assembly from 2020 to 2022. Watch Merezhko's recent interview with the Kennan Institute about his career as a scholar and a politician.

Iryna Bekeshkina (1952-2020)

Bekeshkina (bottom center) was a renowned sociologist, scholar of Ukrainian politics and society, head of the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Sociology at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She was regularly included in the list of 100 most successful and influential women in Ukraine, and her legacy was commemorated in the name of a street in Kyiv in 2022.

Igor Kon (1928-2011)

Kon (bottom left) was an outstanding academic and public intellectual and one of the founding fathers of Soviet sociology and a pioneering scholar of sexuality in the Soviet Union and Russia. He studied homosexuality and gender roles, openly discussed taboo topics in the media, fought against prejudice and discrimination in the Russian society, and authored over 40 books and 300 articles, including Sex and Russian Society (1993) and Sexual Revolution in Russia (1995).

First BRIC(S) summit

On June 16, 2009, the first BRIC summit took place in Yekaterinburg, Russia. BRIC is an intergovernmental organization composed of Brazil, Russia, India, and China that aims to promote economic coordination and political dialogue regarding international economic challenges. Russian president Vladimir Putin was the first to call for a summit due to his desire to form a coalition that pushes against existing western financial and global governance institutions that are perceived as unfavorable to emerging market economies like the BRIC members. Some of the BRIC’s main objectives are to advocate for better representation in intergovernmental and global organizations, coordinate economic policies that reform current financial institutions, and develop an alternative finance system to decrease reliance on the US dollar. BRIC, now BRICS since South Africa joined in 2010, convenes annually with each country rotating to host the summit.  

Left: Heads of state from BRIC member countries pose for a photo at the first summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 2009: (from left) President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia, President Hu Jintao of China, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India.

President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev sign New START Treaty to cut the number of long-range nuclear weapons held by each side

On April 8, 2010, President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New START treaty in Prague, Czech Republic. This Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty capped the number of strategic nuclear warheads each nation can deploy. The treaty has a verification clause that permits the monitoring of weapons development through the use of on-site inspections to ensure both parties meet the treaty’s requirements. The ratification of the New START treaty marked an important milestone for nuclear security and non-proliferation for Russia and the US. This treaty supersedes the prior START treaty that expired in December of 2009. The Senate and Russian parliament approved the extension of this treaty which has a 10-year duration and helped to significantly reduce nuclear weapon arsenals by roughly half. This treaty signaled a step toward global nonproliferation and helped the US and Russia to pursue responsible global leadership and strengthen bilateral relations.

Left: President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia sign the New START Treaty during a ceremony at Prague Castle in Prague, Czech Republic, April 8, 2010.

Vladimir Putin returns to Presidency & Bolotnaya protests

On May 6, 2012, a day before Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for his third term as president, mass protests in Moscow’s Bolotnaya square erupted. The protests were a culmination of domestic issues addressing the need for fair and free elections, condemning election fraud, and denouncing wide-spread political corruption. By May 6, 2012, reports from journalists and political activists citing evidence of election fraud in Putin’s re-election signaled the highest point of protest tension. The once-peaceful protests transformed into violent clashes between riot police and protestors, leading to heightened incidences of political repression, arrests, interrogations, and jail sentences for hundreds of protestors. Among those arrested during the Bolotnaya protest were political activists Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, and Sergei Udaltsov. The Bolotnaya Protest pushed against Putin’s status quo by demanding an annulment of the election results, advocating for the opening of an official investigation into voter fraud, and promoting free and fair elections.

Left: Russians gather on Sakharov Avenue in Moscow on December 24, 2011, to protest after Vladmir Putin announced his intention to run for a third term as president.

Matthew Rojansky Appointed as Kennan Institute Director

Matthew Rojansky became the Kennan Institute’s director in 2013. Upon his arrival, he worked to better connect the scholars and research from the Institute with broader public and policy communities. Scholars in residence were provided with media training and given opportunities to brief administration officials and congressional staff. Other priorities included hosting Track II diplomacy meetings, launching the Kennan Conversation series that connects our scholars with local audiences across the country, and introducing new publication platforms, such as the Institute’s blogs and Kennan Cable series. Rojansky also led the Institute through the pandemic and the transition from in-person to online events—a transition that greatly expanded the Kennan Institute’s reach and impact that continues today.

Natalia Rostova

Rostova (left) is a media scholar and journalist. She is a former senior correspondent for Slon.ru who has also written for Novaya Gazeta, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Gazeta.ru, and other publications. Rostova is the creator and author of two important online projects on mass media and journalism in the time of fundamental change in Russia: The Birth of the Russian Media: Gorbachev’s Era (1985-1991) and The Heyday of the Russian Media: Yeltsin Era’s (1992-1999).

Natalie Rouland

Rouland (center top) is a scholar of Russian literature, culture, and performing arts who has taught courses at Stanford, Miami University, and Wellesley College. She is a Global Fellow at the Kennan Institute, a former Senior Advisor for the Billington Cultural Initiative, and Scholar in Residence with The Washington Ballet, where she has advised on the 2019 production of The Sleeping Beauty and the 2020 premiere of Swan Lake.

Zamira Sydykova

Ambassador Sydykova (center bottom) is a Kyrgyz journalist who was persecuted and imprisoned for exposing corruption in her country. She is also the founder and chief editor of Kyrgyzstan’s first independent newspaper Res Publica, Ambassador of the Kyrgyz Republic to the United States and Canada from 2005-2010, and former associate of the al-Farabi Carnegie Program on Central Asia. Ambassador Sydykova is the recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International awards.

Murray Feshbach (1929-2019)

Feshbach (left) was a distinguished demography scholar who worked with the US Census Bureau from 1957-1981. As a Professor at Georgetown University, Feshbach published landmark research on ecological problems and health in Russia and the USSR. He was the author of the Kennan Institute’s first Occasional Paper, as well as multiple books, including Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege and Environmental and Health Atlas of Russia, which were published both in English and in Russian.

Euromaidan 

On November 21, 2013, a mass protest movement referred to as Euromaidan began after Pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych's sudden refusal to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. This agreement would have pushed for closer economic relations with the EU and reduced economic dependency on Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. The movement first gained traction in Kyiv’s Independence Square, also known as Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Pro-EU protestors called for Yanukovych's resignation and sought to eliminate the implementation of authoritarian anti-protest laws. Euromaidan protestors also rallied to address the widespread corruption and human rights abuses committed by the government against protestors. The protest numbers ranged from 50,000 to 200,000 in a given day, and the government responded to them with violence, leading to the deaths of over 100 civilians. However, on February 21, 2014, the protests were successful in restoring the 2004 constitution, removing Yanukovych from office, and installing an interim government, leading to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.  

Russia's Annexation of Crimea 

Given the aftermath of the Euromaidan protest movement that pivoted Ukraine towards a pro-European trajectory, pro-Russian groups became more assertive in Crimea. On February 27, 2014, armed men with unidentifiable uniforms infiltrated a Crimean parliament building and installed a new pro-Russian leader, Sergey Aksyonov, as Crimea’s prime minister. The newly installed government destroyed communication channels between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine and voted for Crimea to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. Putin officially ratified the treaty ensuring the annexation of Crimea on March 21, 2014. 

Start of Russia's War in Eastern Ukraine  

The war in eastern Ukraine began in April 2014 between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists primarily in the eastern regions of Donbas and Luhansk. Cities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol faced invasion from separatist fighters, who attacked opera houses and government buildings. July 2014 saw combat intensify, with Russia arming separatists with better military technology such as high-tech missiles, tanks, and artillery.

Left: A demonstrator carries the Ukrainian flag at Maidan Square during the Revolution of Dignity on January 23, 2014, in Kyiv.

Russian Military Intervention in Syria 

On September 30, 2015, Russia officially entered the Syrian Civil War in support of the Assad regime. The Kremlin increased shipments of Russian airpower and troops to Syria to bolster Assad's military forces and shift power away from Syrian rebel forces. The resurgence of cold-war regional influence in the region helped to elevate Russia’s status in the Middle East and gave the Kremlin the opportunity to counter US dominance in the region. While the Syrian Civil War is ongoing, Russia has decreased its military presence and aid significantly since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  

Left: A couple walks along the street of the destroyed city of Idlib, Syria, in 2015.

Top: Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu visits Khmeimim Air Base in Syria in June 2016.

Russia File Blog Launch

The Kennan Institute created the Russia File blog in 2015 to offer regular insight and analysis into Russian affairs, politics, and society. It also documents Russia's relationship with the surrounding region and the United States.

Read the Russia File blog and subscribe for email updates.

Focus Ukraine Blog Launch

The Kennan Institute launched its Focus Ukraine blog in 2017 to offer insights into Ukraine’s politics, history, culture and society, and foreign affairs. 

Read the Focus Ukraine blog and subscribe for email updates.

Volodymyr Zelensky Elected as President of Ukraine

On April 21, 2019, a run-off in Ukraine's presidential election led to a landslide victory for Volodymyr Zelensky, who won the second round with 73.22% of the total vote. Zelensky was a well-known TV personality and comedian who gained nation-wide support for his platform to fight anti-corruption and address the occupation of Eastern Ukraine. Petro Poroshenko, who served as president from 2014-2019 following Ukraine's Euromaidan protests and the removal of pro-Russian president Yanukovych, garnered only 24% of the votes. 

Left: Volodymyr Zelensky during his inauguration in the Ukrainian parliament in Kyiv on May 20, 2019

Jill Dougherty

Dougherty (top left) is a renowned expert on Russia and Eurasia, Global Fellow at the Wilson Center, host of the KennanX podcast, and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies. She held many posts during her three-decade career with CNN, including the White House Correspondent and the Moscow Bureau Chief, and continues to provide reporting and analysis on Russia and related issues as a CNN on-air Contributor.

Andrei Kozyrev

Kozyrev (top center) is the former Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, an expert on Russian politics and international affairs, and the author of The Firebird: The Elusive Fate of Russian Democracy. As post-Soviet Russia’s first Foreign Minister, he participated in negotiations to peacefully dissolve the Soviet Union and advocated for improved relations with the West. After leaving the ministry and serving in the Russian State Duma for two terms, he resigned from politics and pursued a career in business.

Chris Miller

Miller (top right) is a Professor of International History at the Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, co-director of Fletcher's Russia and Eurasia Program, and a Senior Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program. He has conducted research on technology, geopolitics, economics, and international affairs, and is the author of four books, including the New York Times bestseller Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology, which won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award and the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award.

Kirill Rogov

Rogov (bottom right) is a prominent political analyst and columnist and a Visiting Researcher at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. He is also the founder and director of Re: Russia Project, an expert and discussion platform publishing insights on Russian politics, economy, and society. He is the co-founder and former chief editor of Polit.ru and former leading researcher at the Gaidar Institute in Moscow, who is frequently quoted by the Economist, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Maria Stepanova

Stepanova (bottom center) is a poet, essayist, and journalist. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Colta.ru, an independent online publication covering Russian culture and society. Her poems and prose have been translated into many languages, and she has received multiple Russian and international literary awards, including the 2023 Leipzig Book Prize for European Understanding for her poetry collection Girls without Clothes. Her book, In Memory of Memory, “a multifaceted essay on the nature of remembering,” was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.

Elizabeth A. Wood

Wood (bottom left) is the Ford International Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founding director of the MIT Ukraine Program, co-director of the MIT-Eurasia Program, and Coordinator of Russian Studies. She serves as the Vice-Chair of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER) and has written three books and numerous scholarly articles, including Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine and The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia.

International online conference on the Status of Women in Russian Society

Held in July 2020, Kennan Institute’s first fully online conference “The Status of Women in Russian Society” explored the new opportunities offered by videoconferencing technology. It brought together over seventy participants from multiple time zones to discuss a range of themes from Russian women’s human rights activism to gender-based violence to representation in politics and public administration. In each roundtable, a U.S. or European academic and three Russian scholars and practitioners exchanged their thoughts on the topic—an arrangement which allowed highlighting first-hand knowledge and practical experience in the field. Structured to facilitate academic networking and encourage further interactions between Russian and Western participants, the conference also laid the foundation for the Kennan Institute’s expanded programming on the status of women in Russia and Eurasia. The conference report (pictured above) became the fifth most read publication on the entire Wilson Center website—a sign of the topic’s enduring relevance during the pandemic and beyond.

Protests in Belarus

The 2020 presidential election in Belarus between incumbent Alexander Lukashenko and pro-democracy candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was rife with fraud. Lukashenko's declaration of victory on September 25 ignited mass protests throughout Belarus. The protests spanned 10 months, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to demand free and fair elections. The Lukashenko regime responded to the pro-democratic protests with violent repressions and a heavy-handed crackdown on civil society and the media. This brutal repression included the detainment of over 6,000 people, with several casualties and several hundred cases of torture. 

Left: Protestors gather in Minsk, Belarus on August 16, 2020.

Alexei Navalny Returns to Russia

On January 17, 2021, political activist Alexei Navalny was detained in a Moscow airport immediately after arriving from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from an assassination attempt that he and his supporters have blamed on the Kremlin. Navalny was the head of Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and had become increasingly active in anti-corruption street protests. An adamant and longtime critic of Putin, he has often been targeted by the Kremlin to discourage his anti-government and pro-democratic activism. His return to Russia led to mass popular support from the Russian people to release him from detainment and demand justice.  

Left: A replica of the punishment cell in which Alexei Navalny was detained in Russia is featured as protest art in Berlin, Germany, in 2023.

Above: A photocopy of Alexei Navalny's 2021 registration card of from his Moscow pre-trial detention center.

Unrest in Kazakhstan

On January 2, 2022, people gathered to protest the doubling of fuel prices in the oil producing town of Zhanaozen. What began as protests stemming from rising fuel prices transformed into anti-government protests spreading to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city with a population of 2 million. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev declared a state of emergency and brutally repressed protestors by giving shoot-to-kill orders, enacting a curfew, and banning large gatherings. This week-long protest, also known as Bloody January, resulted in hundreds of protestors being killed and thousands being wounded and arrested. Russia deployed peacekeeping forces in Almaty to restore order at the request of Kazakh authorities due to the CSTO alliance.

Left: Residents of Almaty clean up damage from protests on January 8, 2022.

Russia's Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine 

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a decade after its illegal annexation of Crimea.  Putin declared the invasion a “special military operation," ordering Russian missile and artillery attacks on major Ukrainian cities including Kyiv.  As of November 2024, Russia occupies 18% of Ukrainian territory.

Left: The remains of an apartment building destroyed by Russian shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 25, 2022.

Anton Dolin

Dolin (left) is a well-known journalist and film critic, the host of the Radio Dolin channel on YouTube, and a voting member of the Golden Globe Awards. He worked as a host for Echo of Moscow, Radio Mayak, and Silver Rain Radio, hosted the film review section of a popular Russian late-night television show, and was the editor-in-chief of the oldest film magazine in Europe, Iskusstvo Kino (Film Art), from 2017 to 2022. He has written for various publications, most recently for Meduza, and is the author of multiple books, including Fairy Tales: Fantasy and Fiction in World Cinema (2023) and The Bad Russians (2024).

Alla Leukavets

Leukavets (center) is a political scientist specializing in the domestic and foreign policy of Belarus and other Eastern Partnership countries, as well as elections and electoral protests in non-democratic regimes. She has published in New Perspectives, Caucasus Survey, Belarus Digest, Russian Analytical Digest, and other media outlets, and has written for the Kennan Institute’s Focus Ukraine and The Russia File blogs. Read an interview with Leukavets and watch her Smart Take on Western sanctions against Belarus.

Nataliya Shok

Shok (right) is an independent analyst working on global health, vaccine diplomacy, public health and science policies in the context of the pandemic preparedness, response and beyond. She has led and contributed to multiple research projects, including HIV Prevention and Care Among Population at Risk in Russia (2010-2011) and the Task Force on Animal Research Ethics, Science Policy, and Integrity (2021-2022). She is a member of the American Association for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) and co-editor of the special issue of the Monash Bioethics Review on East European Post-Communist Legacy in Medicine, Health Care, and Bioethics (2022).

Ukraine's Military Incursion into Russia

In a surprise military operation that began on August 6, 2024, Ukrainian military forces successfully entered Kursk Oblast in southern Russia. By August 18, President Zelensky announced that the campaign had captured 92 settlements and more than 1,250 square kilometers of Russian territory.

Left: Vladimir Putin speaks with the governor of Kursk via video call on August 8, 2024 on the situation regarding the ongoing Ukrainian military incursion.

Alexei Navalny Dies in Russian Custody

On February 16, 2024, Russian media reported the death of the leading opposition politician Alexei Navalny in a penal colony in the Arctic circle. Navalny had been imprisoned since returning to Russia in January 2021 and was serving a 19-year prison sentence at the time of his death. He was 47 years old.

The Wilson Center collected the most relevant analysis and events on Navalny to share more about his legacy for the Russian opposition and in domestic politics.

Left: Mourners of Alexei Navalny left flowers and pictures at a memorial outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin, Germany, pictured on February 18, 2024.

Detainees Released in Russian Prisoner Exchange

On August 1, 2024, the United States together with European partners negotiated a successful prisoner swap with Russia to release sixteen detainees, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former US Marine Paul Whelan, pro-democracy activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, and RFE/RL journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. It was the largest prisoner exchange between the US and Russia since the end of the Cold War.

Left: Journalist Alsu Kurmasheva reunites with her family on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on August 1, 2024, following her release and return to the United States in a prisoner swap with Russia.

Ivan Kolpakov

Kolpakov (left) is a journalist and editor-in-chief of Meduza, a Russian independent media outlet operating in exile from Riga, Latvia. Previously, he was the head of the investigative reporting department at Lenta.ru, a popular online publication, but he left following the firing of its editor-in-chief Galina Timchenko and went on to co-found Meduza together with her. He was one of the four Russian journalists who interviewed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in March 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Lyubov Sobol

Sobol (right) is a Russian political and public figure and anti-corruption activist, who consistently advocates for the democratization of Russia. A key member of late Alexei Navalny’s team, she served as a lawyer for the Anti-Corruption Foundation and produced the “Navalny Live” YouTube channel. She was a member of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council and ran for the Moscow City Duma in 2019 and the State Duma in 2021 but was barred from the ballot because of her political affiliation. BBC included her in its 2019 list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world.