18 September 2020
I attended the virtual presentation “The Current State of Democracy in Russia.” The speaker was Gerald Easter, a professor of comparative politics at Boston College.
Professor Easter opened up the event by providing a timeline of his career path in the context of Russian history. He was in graduate school during the Gorbachev years and was living in Russia during the financial collapse in the early 1990s. Before he went to graduate school in the early 1980s, a former professor of his told him that the Soviet Union would be our enemy for the next hundred years and so the world always needs Soviet specialists and applauded him for going into this line of work. One of the key takeaways for me from this statement was that the world is always changing as the Soviet Union would fall ten years later.
Furthermore, the professor talked about Putin’s role in the regime. The professor believes the crisis of the 1990s explains Putin’s personality. He also labels Putin as a “CEO political leader” as he has a degree in Economics. I think it is interesting how the character of a leader can make such a difference in international politics, as Professor Easter believes that if it was not for Putin, Russia would have ended up as a democracy. I am interested in diplomacy so it was fascinating to hear more about how the personality of a leader shaped a country’s actions.
This event connects to I.A. because it examines the evolution of Russia through the influence of international actors, such as analysts from other countries like Professor Easter, but also NATO. I was also able to learn more about the history of Russia as well as the political culture of democracy versus authoritarianism in the state.