Speaker Biographies
October 14, 2005
Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at AEI. He is the author of the first full-scale scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Since 1998, he has written Russian Outlook, a quarterly essay on economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition, published by AEI. He has contributed numerous essays and articles to newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Times (London), Newsday, The National Interest, Post-Soviet Affairs, and the Times Literary Supplement. A frequent guest of television and radio talk shows, he has commented on Russian affairs for, among others, 60 Minutes, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, CNN International, C-Span, and NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation.
Clifford Gaddy is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He is the coauthor, with Fiona Hill, of The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia out in the Cold (Brookings Press, 2003), a study of how territorial misallocation of industry and people burdens today’s Russian economy. His earlier books include Russia’s Virtual Economy (with Barry W. Ickes), which analyzes the nature and evolution of the post-communist economic system in Russia; The Price of the Past: Russia’s Struggle with the Legacy of a Militarized Economy; and Open for Business: Russia’s Return to the Global Economy (with Ed A. Hewett). His current research projects are “The ‘Higher Police’: Continuity, Power, and Program of the Russian Intelligence Elite”; “Poverty as Policy: Economics and Governance in Post-Soviet Central Asia”; and “The Economic Consequences of the GULAG.”
Thomas Graham currently serves as special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian Affairs. Previously, he served as director for Russian Affairs, beginning in June 2002. From August 2001 until May 2002, he served as the associate director of the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State. From 1998 until 2001, he was a senior associate in the Russia/Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Graham served as a Foreign Service officer from 1984 until 1998. His assignments included two tours of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he served as head of the political/internal unit and acting political counselor. Between tours in Moscow, he worked on Russian and Soviet affairs on the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
Nikolas Gvosdev is editor of The National Interest and a senior fellow in Strategic Studies at The Nixon Center. Mr. Gvosdev is a frequent commentator on U.S. foreign policy and international relations, Russian and Eurasian affairs, and developments in the Middle East. He received his doctorate from Oxford University, where he studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. He is the author of six books, most recently the co-author of The Receding Shadow of the Prophet: The Rise and Fall of Political Islam. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
Irina Khakamada is chairman of the Russian Democratic Party “Our Choice” and co-chairman of the "2008: Free Choice" committee. Since 1994, she has been a member of the State Duma (Parliament) Committee on Economic Policy as well as a member of the delegation of the State Duma of the Russian Federation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council. Since 1996, she has been a member of the State Duma committee on budgeting, taxation, banking and finance. In 1997, by the decree of the government of the Russian Federation, Ms. Khakamada was appointed as chairman of the State Committee of the Russian Federation for small business support and development. In December 1999, she was re-elected as deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation in Eastern district of St-Petersburg and has served as the deputy chairman of the Duma as well as a member of the political advisory council for the president of the Russian Federation. In 2004, Ms. Khakamada ran for the post of the president of the Russian Federation. She has published a number of articles in leading newspapers and journals and has been listed by “Time” magazine as 100 most-recognized women in the world.
Andrei Kortunov is the president of the New Eurasia Foundation. Until recently, he also served as deputy director and head of the Foreign Policy Department at the Institute of USA and Canada. Mr. Kortunov works extensively with the global academic community. He is the coordinator of multiple international security related projects involving counterparts in the United States, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Republic of Korea, Japan, Poland, Hungary, and Luxembourg. His teaching experience includes the design and conduct of specialized courses tailored to different academic levels and audiences at several American and Russian universities, including the University of California, Berkeley (1993) and the Moscow State University of International Relations (1996).
Desmond Lachman is a resident scholar at AEI whose research focuses on global currencies, major emerging market economies, and the role of the multilateral lending institutions. He writes extensively on topics such as economic policy, fund arrangements, monetary reform, import restrictions, and exchange rates. Before joining AEI, Mr. Lachman was a managing director and chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. Previously, Mr. Lachman was deputy director in the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund.
Yuri Levada is the founder and president of the Levada Center and one of the leading sociologists in Russia. He was the first professor to teach sociology at Moscow State University. During the political thaw initiated by Nikita Khrushchev, he was allowed to carry out limited surveys of public opinion. In 1972, Mr. Levada’s institute was closed down during a Brezhnev-era purge of some 200 sociologists from research institutes and universities. He was reinstated by reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as glasnost was under way. Mr. Levada went on to establish the All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) in 1987, the first institution to conduct mass surveys of adult population in the Soviet Union, which was renamed All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. In 2003, after the Russian government ordered the transfer of VTsIOM to the control of the state, he established the Analytical Center of Yuri Levada (The Levada Center).
Lilia Shevtsova is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She co-chairs the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Project, dividing her time between the Carnegie offices in Washington, D.C. and Moscow. Before joining the Endowment, she was deputy director of the Moscow Institute of International Economic and Political Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and director of the Center of Political Studies in Moscow. She has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and at Cornell University, and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Ms. Shevtsova is a member of the Council of the Russian Political Science Association; serves on the editorial boards of Megapolis, Polis and Demokratizatsiya; and received the Len Karpinsky Award of the Russian Union of Journalists for political commentary. She is currently a political observer for Russian television, Moscow News, and Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Ms. Shevtsova’s publications include Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality (Carnegie Endowment, 1999); Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin: Political Leadership in Russia's Transition with Archie Brown (Carnegie Endowment 2001) .
Angela Stent was appointed national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council in January 2004. She is on leave from Georgetown University, where she is professor of government and foreign service and served as director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies. From 1999 to 2001, she served on the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on Soviet and Russian foreign policy, U.S.-Russian relations, and East-West economic ties. She is the author of From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West-German Soviet Relations, 1955–1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981) and Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, The Soviet Collapse and the New Europe (Princeton University Press, 1999). Both books also were published in German. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies and Internationale Politik. She also has served on the boards of the U.S.-Russia Business Forum and Women in International Security. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Poul Thomsen is senior advisor in the International Monetary Fund's European Department. Among other responsibilities, he is the Fund's mission chief for Russia. Mr. Thomsen has specialized in Central and Eastern European countries since 1987, heading country teams since 1992. He became the chief of the Fund's Russia Division in September 1998 and was a Senior Resident Representative in Moscow from 2001-2004.
Daniel Yergin is Chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a Pulitzer Prize winner — and a highly respected authority on energy policy and international politics and economics. He is also a recipient of the United States Energy Award for “lifelong achievements in energy and the promotion of international understanding.” Mr. Yergin received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for his work The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. The book became a national bestseller and was made into an eight-hour PBS/BBC series seen by 20 million people in the United States. It has been translated into 12 languages. His new book, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy has received wide attention for its analysis and narrative of how the “world is changing its mind about markets.” It has been translated into 13 languages — and made into a six-hour documentary. It is PBS’ major television series on globalization. Mr. Yergin is also the global energy analyst for NBC and CNBC. He is a member of the board of the United States Energy Association and of the U.S.-Russian Business Council., Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, the National Petroleum Council, as well as of the Committee of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a trustee of the Brookings Institution.
Nikolai Zlobin, a former professor at Moscow State University, joined the Center for Defense Information in 2001 as a senior fellow and director of Russian and Asian programs. He writes a regular column for the Russian daily Izvestia and has been a contributor to many international publications. He serves on the editorial boards of several academic periodicals and is the executive editor of Demokratizatsiya. He is the founder of Washington ProFile, an international news and analysis agency. He is a former political adviser to the Kremlin. The author of 11 books and more than 200 academic articles published in more than 15 languages, his latest book, International Communications, was published in 2004 by M.E. Sharpe. His editorial opinions have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, and Chicago Tribune, among others. He coauthored the first non-communist high school history textbook used in Russia and other post-Soviet counties. He also is the recipient of several prestigious teaching and research grants, including two MacArthur Foundation awards, two from the Truman Institute, and another from the Soros Foundation.
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