The Russian Area Studies Program annual panel on the former Soviet Union.

 

Russia today is awash in crises and contradictions. It ranks fourth in global coronavirus cases, having recently surged to over a million cases; at the same time its reported death toll is suspiciously low. The recent poisoning of the Kremlin’s only significant political opponent, Aleksei Navalny, has once again brought on the wrath of European leaders. Massive summertime protests in the country’s far east shocked the Kremlin, and now the recent and current vast and sustained protests in Belarus—Russia’s close neighbor—against its (likely fraudulently) reelected thuggish longtime president, Alexander Lukashenko, have made Russian authorities watchful, while President Putin has vowed public support for Belarusian dictator and promised to ship him Russia’s newly minted coronavirus vaccine. Primal fears of widespread popular unrest spreading to Russia are paramount despite recent attempts to inspire solidarity in the massive summertime Victory Parade to mark the 75th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany. And Siberia and Russia’s arctic have fallen victim to dramatic and unprecedented levels of heat and destruction due to global warming.

Wellesley College’s Russia experts will shed light on the country that many consider our foremost geopolitical adversary.