Glennys Young | Putin’s Russia: A Historian’s View (8.9.2017)

The Ellison Center at the University of Washington

Glennys Young is a Professor in the History Department and the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. In this lecture, Dr. Young considers the question of why the promise of Russia’s democratic transition at the end of Soviet Communism resulted in another form of authoritarian power centered in the person of Vladimir Putin. She looks at several prominent theories, including one she has been working on for an upcoming book, to bring into view the complexity of this question. After putting Putin himself into historical context, Dr. Young critiques how adherents of each theory define the political situation in Russia through how they approach and deal with the Russian and Soviet past. Dr. Young's lecture was part of the Summer 2017 Master Teacher Workshop on “Coming to Terms with the Authoritarian Past in Europe and Russia”at the University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies. This workshop was organized by UW's Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies, the Center for West European Studies, and the Center for Global Studies in partnership with the Word Affairs Council.