What were the original hopes and expectations of Russia’s 1991 revolution? A group of leading experts will discuss these and other questions in the context of Russia’s domestic politics, economic policies, role in the global economy and, above all, its relations with the United States.

On December 27, 2010, businessmen and entrepreneurs Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev received the maximum sentence, fourteen years, on patently fabricated charges. What is the impact of the sentencing on the Russian economy and foreign investments? How will the democratic opposition proceed in this political climate? And how should US policymakers deal with this new reality?

While economies all over the globe are facing tough times, Russia's symptoms appear to be particularly acute. The current financial crisis closed the Russian stock exchange on multiple occasions, and Russia's stock market plummeted to one-third of its value in June. The price of oil, Russia's prime export commodity and...

Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first democratically elected leader in the federation’s thousand-year history, died on April 23, 2007. During his presidency, Yeltsin institutionalized the vital liberties that Mikhail Gorbachev had granted only provisionally and often by default: freedom from government censorship of speech and of the press; free elections; freedom of...

Former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar and Russia observers discuss the future of Russian capitalism.

On October 25, Mikhail Khodorkovsky--CEO of YUKOS, the largest private company in Russia--was arrested at gunpoint by masked agents of the Russian government on what are widely viewed as politically-motivated charges of tax evasion, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement. President Putin has publicly voiced his support for the assault on Khodorkovsky,...

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On December 3, 2004, following massive protests, the Supreme...

With the upcoming Duma elections this December and the presidential contest in March 2008, the Kremlin appears to be both confident and worried. President Vladimir Putin continues to enjoy high approval ratings and faces no genuine political rivals, yet authoritarian tendencies have risen sharply. Political groups failing to adhere to...