Join the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University for a seminar on the role of U.S. non-state actors in the U.S.S.R. before the collapse.

This seminar will focus on the central, complex and heretofore overlooked role of non-state actors in U.S. efforts to shape the trajectory of reform in the USSR during the volatile years surrounding its dissolution. Beginning in late 1986,  Gorbachev’s accelerating reforms intersected with and fueled broader trends toward privatization and democratic idealism in U.S. foreign policy to foster the expansion and transformation of non-governmental engagement in the USSR. These changes in the character of U.S. influence laid the groundwork for subsequent U.S. efforts to shape Russia’s post-1991 “transition.”

Speaker:

Kate Geoghegan, Postdoctoral Fellow, John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College; Center Associate, Davis Center