Professional Affiliation

Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University

Expert Bio

Harley Balzer retired in July 2016 after 33 years in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. University. He was Founding Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies. Prior to coming to Georgetown he taught at Grinnell College and Boston University, and held post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard's Russian Research Center and the MIT Program in Science, Technology and Society. In 1982-83 he was a Congressional Fellow in the office of Congressman Lee Hamilton. In the early 1990s he was Executive Director of George Soros’ International Science Foundation, and continues to work with programs to assist Russian Education.

His publications include Soviet Science on the Edge of Reform (1989); Five Years That Shook the World: Gorbachev's Unfinished Revolution (1991), which was named a CHOICE outstanding academic book; and Russia's Missing Middle Class: The Professions in Russian History (1996).

Wilson Center Project

A Social History of Engineers and Engineering Culture in Russia and the USSR, 1880-1980

Project Summary

A combination of elements of social history and the history of science and technology in a study of engineers’ roles in Russian and Soviet society and politics; analysis of why engineers came to dominate the Soviet political leadership, why this is now changing, and what the implications of engineering ascendancy have been for Soviet science and technology and for Soviet society; development of professions in an autocratic political system; role of technocratic ideologies as mechanisms of political legitimation