Navigation menu

The Putin succession and beyond

Professor Richard Sakwa, a leading authority on Russian and European politics and the only British academic to participate in the recent Valdai Discussion Club meeting with Vladimir Putin, will discuss Russia's political future during a public lecture at the University of Kent on Wednesday 19 March.

Titled The Crisis of Russian Democracy? The Putin Succession and Beyond, Professor Sakwa's lecture will take place at 6pm in Darwin Lecture Theatre 3, Darwin College, on the University's Canterbury campus. It is free and open to all. There is disabled access to Darwin College.

For his lecture Professor Sakwa will consider the nature of the present Russian political order and system and the degree to which the succession crisis revealed the deeper problems in the operation of the system. He will look at the results of the parliamentary election on 2 December 2007 and the recent presidential election held on 2 March 2008. The prospects for the Dmitry Medvedev's presidency will also be examined, including whether we can anticipate a 'thaw' in domestic and foreign policy.

Professor Sakwa is a member of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a member of the Advisory Boards of the Institute of Law and Public Policy in Moscow, president of the Eurasian Political Studies Network and a member of the Academy of the Social Sciences.

He is the author of Putin: Russia's Choice (2008, London: Routledge, 2nd edition), the only scholarly biography of the Russian President, and The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 (1999, London: Routledge).

His forthcoming publications include the fourth edition of Russian Politics and Society (2008, London: Routledge), a book that is widely regarded as being the most comprehensive study of Russia's post-communist political development; The Quality of Freedom: Putin, Khodorkovsky and the Yukos Affair,, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2008; and The Crisis of Russian Democracy: Factionalism, Sovereignty and the Putin Succession, to be published in 2009.

His lecture has been organised by the University's Department of Politics and International Relations and will be co-hosted by its Current Affairs Society.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 10:19am 12 March 2008