Professional Affiliation

Professor of Teaching, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Expert Bio

Kathleen (Kelly) E. Smith is Professor of Teaching at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  She received her PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley and is the author of two books on memory and Russian politics--Remembering Stalin's Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR (1996) and Mythmaking in the New Russia: Politics and Memory in the Yeltsin Era (2002). Most recently, she published Moscow 1956: A Silenced Spring, a social and political history of a turning point year in Russia. Currently, Dr. Smith is engaged in a new research project on Peredelkino, the "Writers' Village" created by Stalin. She was a Title VIII Research Scholars with the Kennan Institute in 1999.

Wilson Center Project

Mythmaking in the New Russia: Constructing a Usable Past After Communism