Speaker biographies
Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at AEI. Mr. Aron was born in Moscow and came to the United States as a refugee from the Soviet Union in June 1978. He has taught at Georgetown University and has contributed numerous articles on Russian affairs to newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. Mr. Aron also writes Russian Outlook, AEI’s quarterly essay on economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition. He is a frequent guest of television and radio talk shows and has been interviewed on 60 minutes, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and NPR’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation, among others. Mr. Aron is the author of the first full-length scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000), and Russia’s Revolution: Essays 1989–2006 (AEI Press, 2007). He is at work on a book about ideas and ideals that inspired and shaped the latest Russian revolution (1987–91), to be published by Yale University Press.
Oleg Buklemishev has worked for MK Analytica as a member of the board and chief analyst since 2005. From 2000 to 2004, he was a special assistant to the Russian prime minister, deputy head of the prime minister’s secretariat, and deputy head of the government staff. During this time, Mr. Buklemishev was responsible for the issues of foreign policy and financial markets. Previously, he headed the international capital markets division and served as special assistant to the minister at the Russian Ministry of Finance. Mr. Buklemishev’s most recent position was deputy head of Mikhail Kasyanov’s election team until January 2008, when the decision was made not to register him as a presidential candidate.
Vladimir V. Kara-Murza is a member of the federal political council of the Union of Rightist Forces, a democratic opposition party in Russia. From May to December 2007, he served as the national campaign chairman for presidential candidate Vladimir Bukovsky. Mr. Kara-Murza was a candidate for the Russian parliament (State Duma) in the 2003 elections and placed second in the Chertanovsky district in southern Moscow with 23,800 votes. Between 2000 and 2003, he was an adviser to Boris Nemtsov, leader of the democratic opposition in the State Duma. In the mid-1990s, Mr. Kara-Murza worked at several media organizations, including Novye Izvestia and Kommersant newspapers and Ekho Moskvy radio. Since 2004, he has served as the Washington bureau chief of RTVI, an international Russian-language television network. In 2005, he authored and produced They Chose Freedom, a four-part television documentary on the history of political dissent in the Soviet Union. He was a contributor to Russia’s Choices, The Duma Elections and After (Centre for Global Studies, 2003) and Russian Liberalism: Ideas and People (Novoe Izd-vo, 2004) and has commented on Russian and world affairs for the Financial Times, CNN International, BBC World Service, and the Voice of America.
Michael McFaul is the director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is also the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he codirects the Iran Democracy Project, and a nonresident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. One of the foremost experts on Russian political transition, Mr. McFaul is the author and editor of several monographs, and he comments frequently in the media on American foreign policy and international politics. He has appeared on all major radio and television networks and has published in many notable newspapers and journals, including the Chicago Tribune, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Moscow Times, The New Republic, the New York Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and The Weekly Standard.
Boris Nemtsov is a liberal politician of the Union of Right Forces (SPS) Party in Russia.
From 1991 to 1997, Mr. Nemtsov served as governor of the Nizhegorodsky region, and from 1997 to 1998, he was the first deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation. In 1999, he was elected as a deputy to the Russian State Duma and leader of the SPS party. Mr. Nemtsov was a chairman of the board of the Neftyanoy (Oil) Concern. He served as an adviser to President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine. Mr. Nemtsov has been a member of the Federal Political Council of the SPS Party and is an important actor in the political discourse and opposition of the Russian government under Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir A. Ryzhkov is a Russian independent politician. He was a deputy in the Russian State Duma and a member of the Duma Federal Affairs and Regional Policy Committee from 1993 until 2007. In 1997, he was appointed first deputy chairman of the State Duma, a position he held until 1999. In the 2003 general elections, Mr. Ryzhkov successfully ran as an independent, becoming one of the last liberal voices to remain in parliament. In 2005, he became head of the Republican Party of Russia, which, in 2007, was refused registration for the parliamentary elections. After passage of a new law requiring all candidates be elected from lists submitted by political parties, Mr. Ryzhkov was not able to run as an independent in the general elections either. He has written extensively on issues of law, political science, and international affairs.
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