Russian Politics and Culture

Book talk with Fiona Hill, co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” Fiona Hill is director of the Center on the United States and Europe, and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. She is a frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, who has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. She is also the co-author of the forthcoming book, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin(Brookings Press, 2013). Discussant: Stephen Sestanovich, Columbia University This talk was part of this year's “Corruption and Patronage” core project. The project examines these issues both within Eurasian societies and comparatively, and asks a provocative question: do corruption and patron/client favoritism always impede progress, or instead are they a way to get things done in societies that lack well institutionalized legal systems? For information on Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin(Brookings Press, 2013), follow the link below.

Two decades after the end of the Soviet Union, the legacy of Soviet-era oil assets is beginning to run down. The next generation of Russian oil will be more demanding and higher-cost. This has serious implications for the Russian state, which depends on oil revenues as never before. Is there a crisis ahead, or will higher global prices, arctic offshore, and/or US-style ‘tight oil’ come to the rescue? Thane Gustafson is Professor of Government at Georgetown University and IHS Senior Director for Eurasian Energy. Co-sponsored with the Center on Global Energy Policy, School of International & Public Affairs. WHEEL OF FORTUNE: THE BATTLE FOR OIL AND POWER IN RUSSIA (Harvard University Press, October 2012). Electronic books are available for Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, Google, and in PDF. Watch the video trailer at the link below. Link to website

A a lecture by David Holloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History at Stanford University. Discussant: Robert Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor and Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. The first thermonuclear weapons tests (1952-1955) had a profound impact on the political leaders of the three nuclear powers of the time including the Soviet Union, leading them to view a general nuclear war as unacceptable in some profound if ill-defined sense. In this talk Dr. Holloway will make use of some newly available materials to examine the development of military strategy in the Soviet Union from 1953 up to the SALT agreements of 1972. What is the appropriate strategy for an unacceptable war? How did Soviet thinking about war change over this time? What shaped the development of Soviet military strategy? This paper draws on a larger project on the international history of nuclear weapons. Dr. Holloway will therefore discuss Soviet military strategy in the context of the US-Soviet arms race and explore the impact of American policy and American ideas on Soviet thinking.

A discussion with five ground-breaking Russian journalists on the future of investigative journalism in Russia and the challenges of working in a country with rapidly expanding government censorship. Panelists: Nataliya Rostova, Senior Correspondent, Slon.ru Elizaveta Osetinskaya, Editor-in-chief, Forbes Magazine, Russian Edition Ivan Ninenko, Deputy Director, Transparency International - Russia; Co-anchor TV program "Corruption on the Rain" Svetlana Reiter, Freelance Journalist and 2013 Paul Klebnikov Fund Fellow Elena Milashina Investigative Journalist, Novaya Gazeta Moderator: Kimberly Marten (Acting Director, Harriman Institute and Professor of Political Science, Barnard College) Co-sponsored by the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University and the Kennan Institute.

China and Russia are giant countries whose recent economic and energy experience could hardly be more different: in the one, unprecedentedly rapid industrialisation has sent its share of world primary energy consumption soaring from 7 to 20 percent since 1985 (overtaking the USA); in the other the collapse of centrally planned industry has reduced its share from 11 to 6 percent during the same period. China has tried to exploit its modest energy endowments sparingly, while forging a world-wide supply structure that prevents it from being deprived of the imports its economy needs. Russia meanwhile has become a major oil and gas exporter, possessing more than 20 percent of the world’s gas reserves, part of which it is eager to sell to China. Inevitably, therefore, energy is at the centre of relations between these two countries. Keun-Wook Paik is a specialist on Northeast Asia’s oil and gas issues, in particular Sino-Russian oil and gas cooperation, China’s natural gas industry, and DPRK’s offshore oil exploration. Dr Paik is a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and is also an associate fellow, Energy, Environment and Development Programme, Chatham House. He is the author of Gas and Oil in Northeast Asia: Policies, Projects and Prospects (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995), and co-author/supervisor of China Natural Gas Report (China OGP, Xinhua News Agency & RIIA, 1998). The study on China’s gas expansion was done in 2004 and the edited version was published by Chatham House in 2005. Dr Paik has contributed well over 35 papers to Energy Policy, Journal of Energy and Development, Geopolitics of Energy, The Pacific Review, Energy Exploration & Exploitation, Oil & Gas Journal, Petroleum Economist, Pipeline and Gas Technology, FT Asia Gas Report, China Daily Business Weekly, China Brief, The World Today, RIIA Briefing papers, and Asia-Pacific Review. He served as advisor to Sin-Russian Oil and Gas Cooepration Committee, CNPC during March 1998-Decmber 1999 and advisor to Chairman of the Government, Sakha Republic during November 2000-November 2002. He also served as consultant for the establishment of UNDP GTI’s Energy Board and the Energy Expert Council during the first half of 2006.

Thomas F. Remington, Goodrich C. White Professor of Political Science, Emory University. Traditional theories of separation of powers systems have tended to emphasize the likelihood of conflict between president and assembly when a president can use decrees and other unilateral executive powers to bypass the legislature in making policy. More recent treatments have argued that decree-making can represent a tacit delegation of power to a president by parochial legislators confronting collective dilemmas. Both patterns are evident in the Russian case, where, under the constitution, the president possesses exceptionally broad decree power. Analysis of the aggregate record of law-making and decree-making activity since 1993, together with a close examination of cases where both laws and decrees were used to deal with the same issues, suggests that presidents prefer to take the legislative path except when policy conflict with the legislature is severe or when exigency prompts immediate action. Even when the president calculates that he can get an acceptable law, he may use a decree to set a new policy reversion point and prod the assembly to act. Alternatively, a presidential decree may be used to thwart successful legislation.