Great Decisions 2010 .... The Glocal Edition

Anna Muraveva's recommended Russian films

2010-03-11T07:39:00.000-08:00

The return / Vozvrashchenie (2003), at the public library

Having a fatherless childhood, young brothers Andrei and Ivan have grown closer than most siblings. But when they least expect it, the father the boys have never known returns. Under the cool midnight sun of a coastal Russian summer, the boys eagerly hop into a car for a fishing trip with a complete stranger they absolutely need to believe is their father. As they travel deep into the wilderness, their journey devolves from vacation to boot camp to father-son love triangle and ultimately to a test of wills that pushed to the brink of violence.

Paper Soldier / Bumazhniy Soldat (2008)

- Celebrity bloopers here

Kazakhstan, early 1961. Daniel Pokrovsky, a medical officer, currently works for the first Soviet cosmonauts' troop. There Daniel, already married, finds himself in an incredibly complicated and yet tender relationship with a young girl, called Vera. Later Daniel goes back to Moscow where is in charge of the health of the future cosmonauts. He tries not to be just a doctor for the cadets, but also their friend. He can't agree with the fact that these young men could have to sacrifice their lives for the country. His wife Nina feels the same: she doesn't accept him participating in a project that could put human lives at risk, therefore she keeps asking Daniel to leave his job. Daniel decides to leave his wife. Then one of the cadets dies and the medical officer ends up breaking down. This doesn't stop him from leaving for Kazakhstan in order to prepare the launch of the first man into space. Nina follows him to Kazakhstan, where she learns about his involvement with Vera; however she decides not to leave Daniel alone, understanding how ill he is. Giving up attempts to handle the stress, Daniel escapes the day before the launch, but dies on his getaway. Nina takes Vera with her to Moscow, accommodating the girl in her apartment. Time goes by and both women keep living together: none of them will ever get married again, being both still in love with Daniel.

Wild Field / Dikoe Pole (2008)

The doctor, a handsome young man trying to give a hand to the people living around in this deserted place, seems to be calm and more communicative. We do not know at first the reason why he is there , nor how he happens to work in this harsh place, but we understand that he works there comfortably as he receives each day patients from around his home. Yet, what strikes most is when the doctor cures a peasant from dying, because this latter has been drinking vodka for forty days, I said what strikes most is that choice of an intelligent montage nicely cut by Michel when the doctor goes to check if he gets something from his letter box around his ranch.

The Island / Ostrov, NTSC version with English subtitles (2006)

Winner of 5 Nika Awards (Russian Oscars) including Best Film. Somewhere in Northern Russia in a small Russian Orthodox monastery lives a very unusual man. His fellow-monks are confused by his bizarre conduct. Those who visit the island believe that the man has the power to heal, exorcise demons and foretell the future. However, he considers himself unworthy because of a sin he committed in his youth. The film is a parable, combining the realities of Russian everyday life with monastic ritual and routine.

72 Meters / 72 Metra - with ENGLISH subtitles (2004)

The navy lieutenant captain Peter Orlov and Ivan Myraviev have been serving in the Slav submarine for quite a time. Young and mischievous against time, they used to be best friends. In 1986 they both were assigned to Sevastopol for future service. There they met a pretty girl and fell in love with her at first sight. Nelly chose Ivan and their great friendship cracked. Later on, in the early 90s, after the Soviet Fleet division, the Slav crew refused allegiance to the Ukraine and was assigned to Severogorsk. The crew is preparing for a regular military exercise. The commander, Captain 1st Rank Gennady Yanychar announces the assigned mission. The submarine is to torpedo the maneuver enemy, then leave the area and make itself undetectable with any device at all for a certain time. Nobody in the Exercise Center knows where the submarine might go. And nobody knows it s facing a catastrophe.

Night Watch / Nochnoi Dozor (2005)

This first installment of the trilogy based on the best-selling science fiction novels by Russian writer Sergei Lukyanenko plays upon the tension between light and dark, pitting the superhuman Night Watch patrollers (known as the "Others") against the shadowed forces of the night. But the biggest fear of all stems from the lines of an ancient prophecy, which warns of a renegade Other whose betrayal could bring chaos to the land.

Day Watch / Dnevnoi Dozor (2005)

To protect his son, who has come under the dark side's control, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky) seeks an ancient artifact that threatens to upset an uneasy peace with the light side -- putting Moscow at risk for a devastating cataclysm. Anton finds himself in the middle of a mythic conflict between the forces of light and dark in this sequel to Night Watch, the surprise supernatural hit thriller from Russia.

Anna Muraveva's recommendations of contemporary Russian literature

2010-03-11T06:44:00.000-08:00

1. Casual by Oksana Robski (Available through the public library)
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When her wealthy husband is shot to death by a hired killer, a wealthy widow embarks on a luxurious but precarious life of haute couture shopping, drunken orgies, gossip, red-carpet events, cocaine addiction, and torrid affairs in an exclusive Moscow suburb, in a debut novel based on the author's own life.

Some people treat life as consumption. Some, as an exploit. Some see it as a cup to be drained. To the bottom. I look at life as a partner in a game. . . . There are no rules, which make it a bit scary, but I've gotten used to that. There are no winners, either.

Moscow's exclusive Rublyovka neighborhood is the decadent playground of the Russian nouveau riche. Here, dachas come complete with steam baths, heated floors, and live-in masseurs; poodles are dyed pink to match designer dresses; days of haute couture shopping slip into nights of cocaine-fueled partying; and the city's most glamorous celebrities -- including Oscar-winning directors, world-renowned politicians, and gorgeous movie stars -- rub shoulders with its most notorious tycoons.

Oksana Robski knows firsthand the gripping reality of life in Rublyovka. Based on the author's own experiences, Casual tells the story of a wealthy young woman whose husband is mysteriously gunned down outside their Moscow apartment. Determined to avenge his murder while maintaining her lavish lifestyle, she must navigate through a treacherous labyrinth of high society and low company.

From running her own business to negotiating with hit men, the resilient widow becomes intimately involved in the corrupt and dangerous underbelly of the Russian business world. At once an entrepreneur and socialite, she and her equally rich and beautiful friends attend Moscow's wildest parties, spend thousands on plastic surgery, and stop at nothing to snag rich husbands.

A sensational bestseller in its native Russia, Casual exposes the secret lives of the country's new elite. In a world of double-crossing gangsters, torrid affairs, and truly desperate housewives, startling excess is often accompanied by violence, heartbreak, and betrayal.

2. Lives in transit : a collection of recent Russian women's writing (Available at the public library)

One of the most remarkable changes taking place in Russia after the break-up of the Soviet empire is the radical transformation of Russian women's culture. Despite a historically male-dominated culture, gender awareness has flourished in the 1990s, and is reflected in a new body of women's literature and a new concern for female experience. The prose and poetry included in this anthology examine essential issues in women's lives: women's sexuality, romantic love, motherhood, the economic and political life of women, their struggle to integrate domestic and professional roles, new family structures, physical health, abortion, rape, and so forth.

The issues covered here are common to women everywhere, but the different historical experience of Russian women in the twentieth century has created distinct understandings and values. It was a time of terrible suffering and drudgery for Russian women, who endured decades of war, political and cultural repression, and poverty. Women were given more equality in the workplace, but, as these works show, they were still expected to maintain their roles as conventional wives and mothers.

Contents:

"Gulia" by Liudmila Ulitskaia
"First try" by Viktoria Tokareva
"Venetian mirrors" by Larisa Vaneeva
"Going after goat-antelopes" by Svetlana Vasilenko
"Wicked girls" by Nina Sadur
"Sergusha" by Alla Kalinina
"The chosen people" by Liudmila Ulitskaia
"The phone call" by Tatiana Nabatnikova
"Rendezvous" by Marian Palei
"Slowly the old woman ..." by Nina Katerli
"The way home" by Regina Raevskaia
"The blackthorn" by Dina Rubina
"Uncle Khlor and Koriakin" by Galina Shcherbakova
"A bus driver named Astap" by Tatiana Nabatnikova
"Rush job" by Elena Makarova
"Life insurance" by Marina Tsvetaeva
"The losers' division" by Marina Palei
"Worm-eaten Sonny" by Nina Sadur
"Vera Perova" by Nadezhda Kozhevnikova
"Albinos" by Bella Ulanovskaia
"The trap" by Anna Mass
"Where did the streetcar go" by Irina Polianskaia
"A woman in a one-room apartment" by Liubov Iunina.

3. The yellow arrow by Viktor Pelevin (at the public library)

Set during the advent of perestroika, a surreal, satirical novella by a critically acclaimed young Russian writer traces the fate of the passengers on The Yellow Arrow, a long-distance Russian train headed for a ruined bridge.

4. Voices of Russian literature : interviews with ten contemporary writers by Sally Laird (at the public library)

Contents:

Fazil Iskander
Lyudmila Petrushevskaya
Vladimir Makanin
Andrei Bitov
Tatyana Tolstaya
Yevgeny Popov
Vladimir Sorokin
Zufar Gareyev
Viktor Pelevin
Igor Pomerantsev.

5. The Kukotsky Incident by Ludmila Ulitskaya

[This from John Clark: I don't thik The Kukotsky Incident is translated into English ... too bad, the novel won the prestigious Russian Booker Award in 2002.]

6. White Walls: Collected Stories by Tatyana Tolstaya

Some reviews of Tolstaya's book:

Angels, imaginary friends, near-saints, shades and über-ogres fall to Earth among ordinary Russians and routinely succeed in whetting the imagination in this sparkling collection from Tolstoy's great-grandniece, a longtime New Yorker fiction contributor. It includes her two previous story collections, On the Golden Porch and Sleepwalker in a Fog, along with more recent work. The opening story, "Loves Me, Loves Me Not," presents the classic hateful nanny/spoiled kids dyad, setting it in a Leningrad full of wonders: some menacing, others joyous. In "Okkerivil River," the hapless Simeonov sets off to rescue (or so he imagines) chanteuse Vera Vasilevna, who has serenaded him from his Victrola for half a lifetime. When he does find her, she turns out to be exactly like the title river: vivid, repugnant and polluted beyond human redress. In "The Circle," Vassily Mikailovich (Tolstaya wryly leaves him without a surname) turns 60 and finds little behind or ahead of him, despite meeting the ghost of former lover Isolde. In "Yorick," a baleen whale, provider of bone for button-making and enabler of childhood fantasies, is elegized as Hamlet's nursemaid and human cairn to the narrator. Beautiful, imaginative and disconcerting, Tolstaya's Russia is a labyrinth of treasures and horrors.

"Tolstaya demonstrates an impressive range in these 23 stories...[that encompass] political satire, flights of surrealism and realistic urban and domestic dramas, nearly all set in the Soviet era...Children, old folks and the struggling in-betweens–Tolstaya sees into all their hearts. Remarkable"

“Tolstaya offsets layers of exquisitely constructed language with the colloquial and the idiomatic and in a similar way layers the commonplace with the supernatural. The creation of a brilliant jumble of motley metaphors is her gift – not plot, trajectory, or the arc of a story, but the plunge into the middle of dazzling verbiage, her bright universe.”

7. Pushkin's Children: Writing on Russia and Russians by Tatyana Tolstaya.

Written between 1990 and 2000, the 20 essays in this collection offer a progressive, dynamic meditation on Russia's recent political and cultural climate. Many of the pieces are book reviews culled from such publications as the New York Review of Books and the New Republic, but Tolstaya, an internationally acclaimed journalist and fiction writer (The Golden Porch; Sleepwalker in a Fog), goes far beyond the task of reviewing. Her careful and succinct critiques offer original, highly informed takes on the books' subjects, ranging from political biography to cultural history. Tolstaya has little patience for writers who shore shoddy research with patronizing egotism, illustrated by such lines from this stinger of a review of Gail Sheehy's 1990 biography of Gorbachev: "You have to be quite fearless, an adventurer, extraordinarily self-assured, to offer American readers a book about a country that you yourself do not understand." In 1991, Tolstaya defends Yeltsin against criticisms that his decrees to wrest power from Communist Party leaders were undemocratic: "A man who watches a wolf devouring his child does not begin a discussion of animal rights." Tolstaya reserves particular contempt for Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In reviews of two of his works, she finds that the isolated writer and political activist idol was rendered obsolete long before his 1995 return to Russia. In the end, Tolstaya's essays in this compact, historically significant volume offer a fascinating, highly intelligent analysis of Russian society and politics.

8. Life Stories: Original Works by Russian Writers by Andrei Gelasimov, Yevgeny Grishkovets, Alexander Kabakov, Sergei Lukyanenko, Vladimir Makanin, Marina Moskvina, Viktor Pelevin (Author), Ludmila Petrushevskaya, Dina Rubina and others.

These are just some of the stories in this wonderful collection of original works by 19 leading Russian writers. They are life-affirming stories of love, family, hope, rebirth, mystery and imagination. Masterfully translated by some of the best Russian-English translators working today, these tales reassert the power of Russian literature to affect readers of all cultures in profound and lasting ways. Best of all, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book will go to benefit Russian hospice -- not-for-profit care for fellow human beings who are nearing the end of their own life stories.

A smart Russian analyst criticizes the Great Decisions Russian article

2010-03-10T15:40:00.000-08:00

It is easy for Americans to be unaware of the cultural biases that permeate articles about other countries. Provocatrix Anna Muraveva provides the valuable service of showing how a mass audience article about Russia reads to a Russian.

Remarks on William Sweet’s “Europe’s “Far East”: the Uncertain Frontier.”

1. First of all, it is unprofessional for the political observer to use “Big Brother” (“superior to inferior”) approach to political analysis of the foreign policy of another country. To point out that Russia’s foreign policy “depends on the whims of a narrow and cloistered leadership” is to acknowledge the incapability of seeing the causes behind the political actions of Russia’s leaders. Maybe, it is worth to put yourself in the position of the government of the analyzed country to get better insight into its foreign policymaking, so it would not seem as a whim? Also, it should be understand that if some political decision of Russia’s government is widely criticized by the global community, it does not necessary mean that this decision is wrong and unwise.

2. In his article the author touches a couple of controversial moments and unproven facts while discussing Russia’s foreign policy. Who was the first to start Russian-Georgian conflict in 2008, the conflict over the transition of Russia’s gas to EU through Ukraine, and the evaluation of “the great famine” in Ukraine at the time of Stalin’s program of collectivization are among those “doublethink” issues. Such kind of facts should be given fairer overview or, at least, the author could have mentioned their uncertain or debatable character instead of showing his readers the side of the question favorable for him, and at the same time withholding the one he does not like.

3. If the author pretends to present an unbiased political analysis of some political situation, he should have avoided such clichés as “nuclear holocaust,” and comparison Russia to the beast or bear. Moreover, mentioning such dubious experts as Vladimir Zhirinovsky or Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and the usage of the insulting language (“…there are ample opportunities for Russian leaders to fish,” “it wanted to teach country a lesson,” etc.) would be more suitable to cite in a tabloid than the issue of “Great Decisions” intended for student reading.

4. Personally, I do not share author’s opinion about “political and moral values universally shared on both sides of the Atlantic.” I see European values and American ones as two different things, while the American authors always try to pull Europe on their side while talking about democracy and how it should be implemented. I have never encountered such kind of opinion in the articles written by Europeans.

5. In overall, the purpose of the article is rather unclear for me. In my opinion, the article lacks coherent and logical structure because of its undefined purpose. Moreover, the facts, by which the author supports his ideas, have rather fragmentary character, in its turn, this selectivity conceals important information and allows the author to manipulate and to thrust his own opinion on the readers.

Anna Muraveva in front of the Kremlin

Another special envoy!

2010-02-13T16:43:00.000-08:00

U.S. Envoy Is to Be Link to Muslims - NYTimes.com

February 14, 2010

U.S. Envoy Is to Be Link to Muslims

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — President Obama has appointed Rashad Hussain, a deputy White House counsel, to be his representative to the Muslim world, White House officials said Saturday.
Mr. Hussain will become the special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, an intergovernmental group with 57 member states that calls itself the collective voice of Muslims.

“Appointing a special envoy to the O.I.C. is an important part of the president’s commitment to engaging Muslims around the world based on mutual respect and mutual interest,” the White House said in a statement.

Mr. Hussein will replace Sada Cumber, who had been appointed to the post by President George W. Bush.

Mr. Hussain, who is Muslim, will work to strengthen cooperation between the United States and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the White House said. In addition, he will seek to counter any disparaging images of the United States in the Muslim world, and in particular will look to correct distortions of Americans disseminated by Al Qaeda. His appointment was first reported on Saturday by ABC News.

As deputy associate counsel to Mr. Obama, Mr. Hussain has focused on national security, new media and science issues. He worked with other White House staff members on Mr. Obama’s speech to the Muslim world from Cairo last June. Previously, he worked as a trial lawyer at the Justice Department and served as a legislative assistant on the House Judiciary Committee.

He is the second person to fill this position. In June 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would establish an envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Sada Cumber, a Pakistani-American businessman from Austin, Tex., became the first American envoy to that organization in March 2008.

The White House also has another representative to reach out to the Muslim world, Farah Pandith, who became the State Department’s special representative to Muslim communities last September.

The first American special envoy

2010-02-06T08:47:00.000-08:00

From Henry M. Wriston, "The Special Envoy," Foreign Affairs 38:2 (January 1960): p. 220.

The resolution of this apparent contradiction rests upon precedent, accumulated practice and legal distinctions. Like many executive interpretations of the Constitution, the initial precedent was set by George Washington. When he became President we had no representative at the Court of St. James's; John Adams, our minister, had come home after being treated with studied incivility. There was no British minister here. It was essential to establish working relations without further impairing our prestige. In these circumstances, Washington sent Gouverneur Morris as a "private agent." He bore no commission, only a letter on "the authority and credit" of which he was to converse with the British officials with a view to establishing normal diplomatic relations. This appointment, made in October 1789, was not reported to the Congress until a presidential message on February 14,1791. There was no vocal protest, though the sour journal of William Maclay indicated storms that were to follow. Referring to Morris, Maclay noted: "He has acted in a strange kind of capacity, half pimp, half envoy, or perhaps more properly a kind of political eavesdropper about the British Court for sometime past."

Michael Fullilove on "All the Presidents' Men"

2010-02-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

"All the President's Men." By: Michael Fullilove, Foreign Affairs Mar/Apr2005, Vol. 84, Issue 2

The Role of Special Envoys in U.S. Foreign Policy

In the first month of his presidency, George W. Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 1, setting out how the country's national security machinery would operate under his leadership. Notably, the document signaled that the new administration would eschew the use of special diplomatic envoys. It abolished half of the existing emissary positions, including those covering peace in the Middle East and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In the four years since, the Bush administration has mostly stuck to its bureaucratic guns. Aside from a few high-profile missions--such as the appointment of former Treasury Secretary James Baker to deal with Iraq's war debt and former Senator (and later UN ambassador) John Danforth to help make peace in Sudan--the White House has generally steered clear of diplomatic troubleshooters and special representatives.

This approach was consistent with both the means and the ends of Bush's early foreign policy. His team viewed the deployment of outsiders as an inappropriate method of implementing foreign policy; it was no way for grownups to govern. Bush, the CEO president, preferred clear reporting lines and administrative tidiness. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was a presidential emissary to Haiti in 1994, complained in his confirmation hearings before the Senate about the "very large number of envoys running around" and vowed to "empower the existing bureaus to do their jobs."

If the proliferation of special envoys under President Bill Clinton struck the incoming administration as evidence of organizational ad hockery, it also spoke to them of weakness and an overreliance on diplomacy. For most of his first term, Bush showed little sustained interest in deep diplomatic engagement with the world. The hard-line wing of the Republican Party was dominant, and it neglected the tradition of working with other nations to project U.S. influence abroad and share the burden of policing the world.

The administration withdrew from multilateral agreements that the United States had helped advance and undermined institutions that the United States had helped build. It retired from the post of Middle East peace broker. It marketed Libya's renunciation of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction as the fruit of the neoconservative vine, rather than as the result of dogged diplomacy. Its temper was unilateralist; it barely questioned the utility of force.

The Bush strategy was tested in the Iraq war, of course, and found to be wanting. In retrospect, it seems that Washington badly underestimated the value of international support for its undertakings. But although diplomacy's stocks have risen in the past year, some in the administration remain unconvinced by Winston Churchill's dictum that it is better "to jaw-jaw than to war-war."

So far, then, the administration has been down on diplomacy and, in particular, on special envoys. It has ignored a powerful diplomatic instrument that has served the United States well in times of crisis. With the State Department under new management and the benefit of four years of experience, it is time for Washington to reconsider its use of special emissaries.

A FEW GOOD MEN

From the first years of the republic, most presidents have been partial to the use of special representatives--individuals assigned to execute diplomatic missions outside of conventional channels. In 1790, George Washington sent the politician Gouverneur Morris to gauge British intentions toward the United States; in 1803, Thomas Jefferson dispatched James Monroe to Paris to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. The use of such agents accelerated in the twentieth century, in tandem with developments in communications and transport technology and the United States' emergence as a world power. Woodrow Wilson made the Texan politico Colonel Edward House his representative-at-large; Harry Truman sent General George Marshall to China to help resolve. its civil war; John Kennedy used his brother Robert to flash the family smile around the world and communicate privately with Moscow; and both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon called on personal representatives to help manage the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. In 1983, Ronald Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld on a trip to the Middle East that culminated in his infamous handshake with Saddam Hussein. George H.W. Bush tapped Richard Armitage to renegotiate a military-bases agreement with the Philippines and used Robert Gates, his deputy national security adviser, to ease tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

Of all U.S. presidents, however, the most enthusiastic practitioner of envoy diplomacy was Franklin Roosevelt, whose stable of emissaries included friends, allies, political cronies, and, occasionally, opponents. Roosevelt was so taken with the approach that he tried to extend it from the diplomatic to the divine, appointing a personal envoy to the Vatican and pushing for the accreditation of U.S. representatives to the Orthodox Church and to Islam. Many factors predisposed Roosevelt to using personal diplomatic emissaries, including his unruly governing style, an addiction to information, and the polio that had struck him in 1921, paralyzing him from the waist down and forcing him to rely, for the rest of his life, on representatives to take his message where his legs could not. His views on the State Department (views that would not seem foreign in the current White House) also fed his predilection: Roosevelt regarded many foreign service officers as "boys in striped pants" who were out of step with his policies. He is said to have joked, not long after Pearl Harbor was bombed, that the State Department was neutral in the war and that he hoped it would remain that way.

In the critical period leading up to that sneak attack, while much of the world was at war and the United States edged toward it, Roosevelt initiated a series of special diplomatic missions to Europe. He used these envoys to develop diplomatic relationships, extend his personal influence, gather intelligence, and strengthen public support for his policies. When, in 1940-41, he was considering (against the advice of defeatist U.S. ambassadors) extending substantial U.S. aid to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, Roosevelt received firsthand reports from two envoys, the combative Republican lawyer William Donovan and Harry Hopkins, a former social worker. Both provided eyewitness testimony corroborating his view that these nations were worth backing. Hopkins, whom Roosevelt called "the perfect ambassador for my purposes," may have been the most significant of all presidential representatives. "He doesn't even know the meaning of the word 'protocol,'" Roosevelt said of Hopkins. "When he sees a piece of red tape he just pulls out those old garden shears of his and snips it." As Roosevelt's closest confidant and a resident of the White House, Hopkins was in a unique position to channel the president's voice and act as his eyes and ears. Through his many wartime missions to the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, Hopkins helped set the template for Anglo-American collaboration and establish the triangular relationship between the Big Three.

Personal representatives can offer certain, advantages over resident diplomats when it comes to communicating and negotiating with foreign parties and assessing local conditions and personalities. Personal envoys may be able to speak more candidly than career diplomats and negotiate with full presidential authority. Information may also be more forthcoming to them. By relying on such agents, a president can overcome bureaucratic constraints, avoid entrenched beliefs and standard operating procedures, and generally strengthen his control over policy.

Some assignments, such as the mediation of regional conflicts, can be too sensitive politically to be delegated to regular diplomats but too complex and taxing to be conducted by the president or the secretary of state in person. In this regard, Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell were two of Clinton's most effective surrogates. To their work on Bosnia and Northern Ireland, respectively, they brought a direct presidential mandate and particular expertise that might not otherwise have been at Washington's disposal. Holbrooke's flair and pushiness equipped him well for the Balkans, and Mitchell was an ideal chairman for the peace talks at Stormont Castle, thanks to the political skills and the prestige he had acquired as Senate majority leader. To be sure, neither man's efforts were completely successful. But few emissaries could have muscled up so effectively to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic or persuaded the stubborn parties of Northern Ireland to sign the Good Friday Agreement.

Special envoys also have strengths in the area of public diplomacy. In most cases, an envoy's status as the personal representative of the president lends him or her special gravitas and visibility. A remarkable example of such symbolic diplomacy occurred a few months after the 1940 presidential election, when Roosevelt asked his recent opponent, the Republican Wendell Willkie, to deliver to Winston Churchill a personal message intended to boost British morale. The letter quoted Longfellow's bracing verse:

"Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate."

Churchill cited the letter in several subsequent speeches, but it also caused ripples in the United States. By dramatizing a distant war to the American people, Roosevelt's diplomatic flourish encouraged bipartisan support for helping Hitler's enemies.

Conversely, when the U.S. government wants to negotiate without sending any public message, it can deploy special envoys in secret. The Senate's advice and consent is not required for the appointment of most personal envoys; their meetings can be less structured than ordinary diplomatic discussions and therefore more frank and useful. A special mission can be publicized, played down, or denied, depending on the administration's objectives.

THE FAULTS OF THEIR QUALITIES

Resort to personal envoys tends to trespass, however, on the sacred turf of the State Department. Experts and career diplomats are often critical of the practice, arguing that international relations is a complex business that should not be left to amateurs. This disapproval stems partly from a professional prejudice against outsiders. The British writer Harold Nicolson thought the amateur diplomat unreliable because "he is inclined to be far too zealous and to have bright ideas; he has not acquired the humane and tolerant disbelief which is the product of a long diplomatic career and is often assailed by convictions, sympathies, even impulses."

Opposition to special representatives is not entirely the product of diplomatic freemasonry, though. The institution has the faults of its qualities. Missions are often rushed; envoys can lack specialist knowledge and important contacts; the publicity attending their visits can arouse excessive or premature expectations; personalizing a particular policy sometimes robs it of wide bureaucratic support; and operating through personal agents can demoralize regulars in the diplomatic service. The confidence and effectiveness of departmental bureaus may be corroded, and ambassadors may lose their stature in the eyes of the officials to whom they are accredited. Roosevelt's reliance on Democratic businessman Averell Harriman as his wartime Lend-Lease expediter in London, for example, diminished the role of Ambassador John Winant. And George Kennan once complained that U.S. diplomatic missions were "packed with outsiders … to a point where members of the Foreign Service find themselves, like once the unhappy wife and son of Homer's Ulysses, barely tolerated guests in their own home." Certainly, personal envoys sprouted like mushrooms in the Clinton administration, making it hard for the plants in the Foggy Bottom garden to catch the light of day.

SEND THE ENVOY

Although special envoys are no substitute for a professional diplomatic corps, they can be a useful complement, particularly in times of crisis. The trick is to minimize the disadvantage of using them without blunting their edge. Were Bush to revive the sleeping envoy, he should keep four guidelines in mind.

First, special representatives should be used sparingly. A surplus of diplomatic rock stars touring the world embarrasses the secretary of state and makes it look as if the administration does not know what it is doing. Second, envoys should be sent only on substantive missions. Appointing personal emissaries to appease sectional constituencies cheapens the currency. Third, only people with appropriate experience and qualifications--in diplomacy, politics, or a related field--should receive assignments. Critically, there must be a neat fit between the envoy and the mission. Hopkins was an ideal person to send to London and Moscow: his intimacy with Roosevelt appealed to Churchill's romanticism, and his directness suited Stalin's brutal realism. Sending Richard Perle to Brussels would be less advisable. Finally, the aims of the mission should be well defined, the envoy's powers clearly established, and, to the extent possible, the rest of the foreign policy establishment kept in the loop. This requirement ought not to be beyond the wit of those concerned. For a start, they could emulate the roving presidential envoy Vernon Waiters, who, throughout his long career, sought to make early calls on the U.S. ambassadors in the countries he visited.

The foreign policy adventurism of the past four years has eroded some of the international goodwill accumulated by the United States over the twentieth century. An optimist would argue that Washington has learned from its Iraq experience that military power has its limits and that diplomacy has its uses. One hopes that if diplomacy does indeed make a comeback this term, it will include the judicious use of that old-fashioned American institution: the special envoy.

Two possibilities immediately recommend themselves. Although U.S. peacemaking in the Middle East has been out of vogue recently, the death of Yasir Arafat and the election of Mahmoud Abbas may create an opening for renewed U.S. involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Despite the time and resources such an effort would require, the United States has an important part to play in helping resolve the hard issues that divide the parties. If Washington chooses to participate, it should appoint a new special coordinator to take up where Dennis Ross left off. Ross' labors, on behalf of two administrations over a period of 12 years, ultimately went unrewarded. One lesson to be drawn from them, however, is the value of consolidating the U.S. effort in the hands of a single person who can not only negotiate with the parties but also coordinate the actions of embassies and U.S. agencies, communicate with Congress, and speak to the media. A second measure would be to resurrect Roosevelt's idea for a special envoy to the Muslim world: a dedicated and credible interlocutor for organizations, individuals, and governments, who would articulate U.S. policies and refute anti-American falsehoods. Properly staffed, the office would be an important instrument of public diplomacy and an additional resource in the struggle against extremism.

As it happens, there already has been an example of a special mission since Bush's re-election: the president's deft drafting of his brother Jeb to visit the Asian countries hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami. Governor Bush came equipped with substantial experience in organizing disaster-relief efforts in his home state of Florida, but his primary qualification was his surname. Through this appointment, the president was able to deflect criticism of the U.S. response to the emergency and telegraph his personal commitment to aiding recovery in the region.

Having taken this first step, Bush should now continue on the path of administrative innovation. At the end of his mission to an embattled United Kingdom in 1940, William Donovan told a friend that Anglo-American relations would benefit from a "sensible Colonel House" who could explain the positions of each side to the other. As the United States now moves to re-engage with the world, it should call upon a squad of sensible Colonel Houses.

~~~~~~~~

By Michael Fullilove

MICHAEL FULLILOVE is Program Director for Global Issues at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, Australia. A former adviser to the Australian prime minister, he is writing a book on Franklin Roosevelt's envoy diplomacy.

Central Indiana Great Decisions Series in Spring (by topic & organization)

2010-01-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

The Indiana Council on World Affairs meets at 7:30-8:45 PM at Butler University, Pharmacy room 150
The Church of the Saviour meets at 7:00-8:30 PM at 6205 Rucker Road Indianapolis 46220
The Mid-North Shepherd's Center meets at 11:00 AM - noon at the North United Methodist Church, 3808 N. Meridian Street, Indianapolis, IN 46208

The special envoy in American foreign policy
Special envoys can help bring attention and diplomatic muscle to resolve conflicts and global challenges but they also bring with them their own "special" problems. Will the Obama administration's reliance on special envoys increase the ability of the U.S. to deal with major international issues or complicate our diplomatic options?

ICWA: Feb. 2 John Clark
Church of the Saviour: Feb. 3 Susan Erickson
Mid-North Shepherd's Center: April 14, Ray Haberski

Halting atrocities in Kenya
Post-election rioting in Kenya in December 2007 brought pressure on Nairobi, from international and regional diplomats, to end tensions and avert bloodshed on a massive scale. What lessons can be learned from the intervention in Kenya? What does it mean for the UN's emerging responsibility to protect doctrine?

ICWA: Feb. 9, Pierre Atlas
Church of the Saviour: Feb. 10, Dick Fredland
Mid-North Shepherd's Center: April 7, Dick Fredland

Transnational crime: globalization's shadowy stepchild
From the booming sex trade in Eastern Europe, to online fraud syndicates in Africa and the drug cartels of Asia and Central America, crime is becoming increasingly organized and globalized. How can countries better protect citizens seeking the benefits of a globalized world from being exploited? What international actors can effectively fight global organized crime?

ICWA: Feb. 16, Andrew Norton
Church of the Saviour: Feb. 17, Thomas Christenberry
Mid-North Shepherd's Center: April 21, Rafia Zakaria

China looks at the world; the world looks at China
China's influence is growing, along with its military expenditures. How will this growth affect China's relations with its neighbors and with the U.S.? Will China's expanding military and economic power affect traditional U.S. roles and U.S. alliances in East Asia? How will countries like Japan, South Korea and India respond?

ICWA: Feb. 23, Xan Xiaorong
Church of the Saviour: Feb. 24, Joseph Yu
Mid-North Shepherd's Center: April 28, Susan Erickson

The global financial crisis and its effects

The global financial crisis that began in late 2007 revealed major deficiencies in the regulation of markets and institutions, all of which came perilously close to collapse. Emergency measures to prevent a full collapse of the global financial system have led to mixed results. How will governments and the world community respond to this challenge?

ICWA: March 2, Bill Rieber
Church of the Saviour: March 3, Steve Akard
Mid-North Shepherd's Center: May 5, Steve Akard

Europe's "far east": the uncertain frontier
Russia's policy of maintaining a "sphere of influence" in former Soviet satellites has been challenged in recent years by movements against pro-Russia regimes. Russia has pushed back by cutting Ukraine's natural gas supply and intervening in Georgia's campaign in South Ossetia. Will Russia regain its traditional leadership role in the region?

ICWA: March 23, Martin Spechler
Church of the Saviour: March 10, John Clark
Mid-North Shepherd's Center: May 12, Ed DeLaney

The US and the Persian Gulf
Now more than ever, the Persian Gulf region offers many difficult challenges to U.S. policymakers. How will Obama's direct appeal to Arabs and Muslims impact U.S. foreign policy in the region? What will the fallout of withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq be? Can the U.S. and its allies prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons?

ICWA: March 16, Milind Thakar
Church of the Saviour: March 17, Pierre Atlas
Mid-North Shepherd's Center: May 19, Milind Thakar

Enhancing security through peacebuilding
U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that military force alone cannot ensure peace in all conflicts. How can the U.S. successfully integrate the tools of peace building into its statecraft? At what point do poverty, disease and climate change threaten national security? What role can non-governmental actors play in supporting government led efforts?

ICWA: March 30, Rafia Zakaria, Tim Nation, Charlie Wiles, Shehzad Qazi
Church of the Saviour: March 24, Sheila Kennedy
Mid-North Shepherd's Center: May 26, Marshall Gibson

US Responses to the Haiti Earthquake Crisis: Relations with Countries, NGOs and Other Aid Organizations

Despite being preoccupied by two wars, an economy in recession, and partisan paralysis, the US government responded quickly to the catastrophe in Haiti. So did American people. Half of all households in the US donated money to Haitian relief. But the true test of American leadership will come over the long haul, as we work with international organizations and with Haitian people to build a Haiti that is better than it was before the earthquake. How is the government in Washington doing, and what can we in Central Indiana do to help?

Mid-North Shepherd's Center: June 2, John Clark

"Overview of Russia’s Foreign Policy Towards Its CIS Neighbors"

2010-01-01T08:42:00.000-08:00

Team Provocate member Anna Muraveva's excellent overview of what Russia sees when it looks around its neighborhood. Stay tuned for further refinements of these arguments.

Anna Muraveva

"Overview of Russia’s Foreign Policy Towards Its CIS Neighbors"

Introduction

In recent years Russia has been viewed as a “resurgent state” because of its economic growth and increased involvement in global affairs. At the same time Russia’s political elite has started to put special emphasis on relations with the former Soviet republics, considering them the main part of Russia’s “sphere of influence.” These now-independent countries that made up the USSR are to varying degrees members of the Commonwealth of Independent States or CIS.

The subject of Russia’s foreign policy making has been widely discussed in the mass media as well as in the literature that specializes in political science and international relations. At the same time, the existence of abundant information and analyses on the subject of Russia’s foreign policy toward its “near abroad” does not make it easier to understand the current situation, since most existing papers offer either a pro-Western or pro-Russian position on the issue. Therefore, the purpose of this review is an attempt to give a balanced overview of Russian foreign policy in the CIS region.

In the analysis of Russia’s foreign policy, Western authors and politicians exclusively blame Russia’s imperial ambitions as they interpret an appearance of Russia’s so-called “sphere of influence” and for this reason deny Russia the “privilege” of promoting its interests in the CIS. However, this approach appears to be rather one-sided, since it neglects economic interconnections, common transport routes and cultural ties, inherited by the CIS countries from the Soviet Union. All these factors facilitate joint business projects and allow Russia more effective policy-making.

The other important reason for Russia’s government to give its foreign interests a priority in the CIS region is the possibility of Western institutional enlargement that could pose a threat to Russia’s national security. No state, according to Medvedev, could be “pleased about having the representatives of a military bloc (NATO) to which it doesn’t belong coming close to its borders” Therefore, Russia’s top priority is “keeping pro-Western blocks out of Russia’s border” and, simultaneously, to promote its own political and economic influence in the CIS (6).

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

The CIS was founded on December 8, 1991, right after the breakup of the Soviet Union in order to guarantee a smoother transition of the former republics of the USSR into independent states. The political agreement was achieved relatively swiftly, yet at that point it was premature to discuss the complete separation of the newly independent states. “The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about political disintegration, but did little to interrupt established Soviet-era patterns of interaction, from industrial trade to rail travel and ground transportation” (1). However, the political disintegration led to a number of ethnic conflicts and territorial disputes in the CIS states, some of which remain unresolved to this day.

At first, the importance of the CIS agreement was greatly diminished by the leaders of the newly-emerged independent states, who were focused more on the development of their governments and on building new political institutes than establishing economic cooperation with each other. Soon, the majority of them realized that, despite its poor effectiveness, the CIS could still be considered a valuable tool for the economic and cultural interaction among the post-Soviet states.

The main ideas underpinning the foreign policy of the Russian Federation

In the 1990s Russia’s foreign policy had two opposing vectors that defined Russia’s attitude toward the CIS states. The first one allowed for the geopolitical and economical pluralism of the newly independent states in the CIS. This approach to Russia’s foreign policy towards CIS was discarded, even though it was the most consistent with Russia’s vulnerable world position and scarce economical resources in the 1990s. The second tendency was characterized by geopolitical integration of the CIS under the guideline of Russia and became dominant at the time, reflecting the imperial ambitions of the former superpower.

The surge in energy prices under Putin’s presidency led to the enforcement of the latter approach within Russia’s foreign policy approach in the 2000s. The foreign policy concept of the Russian Federation, which is currently in force, was approved and signed by President Medvedev in 2008. The concept is based on the Foreign policy doctrine adopted in 2000 during Putin’s presidency, and is considered its continuation. The main objective of Russian Foreign Policy concept is “to ensure reliable security of the country, to preserve and strengthen its sovereignty and territorial integrity, to achieve firm and prestigious positions in the world community, most fully consistent with the interests of the Russian Federation as a great power, as one of the most influential centers of the modern world” (5).

In order to achieve this objective the Russian government seeks “to form a good-neighbor belt along the perimeter of Russia's borders, to promote the elimination of the existing and prevent the emergence of potential hotbeds of tension and conflicts in regions adjacent to the Russian Federation” (5). Furthermore, Russia states clearly that it has privileged interests in developing cooperation and good-neighborly relations with the members of the CIS.

Russian policy towards its CIS neighbors

Central Asia Region

In recent decades Russia’s policies towards Central Asian states have pursued one main goal. Russia sought to strengthen economic ties with those countries through participation in joined energy projects and direct investments in their infrastructure, and, consequently, was able to keep the Central Asian region “in pro-Russian integration structures and to push all alternative organizations out of the region” (3). Also, in order to promote stable and secure economic relations, Russia sought to guarantee security in Central Asia by fighting terrorism, Islamic extremism and limiting the drug trade (3).

Using its economic and political dominance, Russia was able to successfully inhibit the development of alternative routes for Central Asian oil and gas. For instance, since 1990s European countries have been planning to diversify their gas transit routes and considered a “Nabucco” pipeline from Turkmenistan through Turkey into the EU; however, Russia was first to complete its “Blue Stream” pipeline under the Black Sea, which made Turkey consider the European project unnecessary (4). At about the same time, Russia blocked the construction of the trans-Caspian oil pipeline from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan, which was intended to bypass Russia. However, this status quo might change when new actors, such as China, will show “more and more appetite for Central Asia energy resources.”

According to the experts, Russia achieved the majority of its foreign policy goals in the Asian region; however, most of these achievements are fragile, since the Russian government has not elaborated any long-term strategy with the Asian members of the CIS, and it does not have enough economic resources to support its political influence. In addition, the element of destabilization in the region is introduced by the lack of coordination between different pro-Russian projects of integration as well as between its alternatives (3).

South Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia)

The most complicated relations in the region are with Georgia. After the election of the pro-Western president Mikhail Saakashvili in 2003, who, from his first days in office, took the direction of seeking NATO membership, the relations between Russia and Georgia started to deteriorate. President Saakashvili was eager to swiftly resolve all of the ongoing territorial conflicts by bringing the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia under Georgian control to qualify for the NATO membership that Russia vigorously opposed. However, the negotiations over the status of the separatist regions, which were accompanied by provocative military incidents from both sides, came into deadlock in the late 2000s.

These tensions culminated in August 2008 when Georgian forces started a large-scale military operation in South Ossetia. Russia responded by sending troops to Georgia to back Russian peacekeepers that came under fire in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, and “to protect the rights and interests of Russian citizens and compatriots abroad on the basis of international law and operative bilateral agreements” (5), since many South Ossetian people had Russian citizenship. Later, the European commission investigated the war between Russia and Georgia and found the actions of the Russian Federation legitimate but eventually disproportionate, noting the fact that Russian troops moved outside of the separatist regions into the Georgian territory and seized Georgian towns Gori and Poti. Finally, the European Union intervened, brokering a cease-fire agreement with President Medvedev. In protest, Georgia withdrew from the CIS, while the Russian parliament recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Nowadays, there has been no diplomatic relations between Russia and Georgia and no sign of improvement, since both countries have mutually exclusive goals.

The other two Caucasian states – Azerbaijan and Armenia - have been Russia’s close economic partners in the last decade. Nevertheless, they both implicitly backed Georgia’s territorial integrity, due to their close economic ties with Georgia in the energy sphere, and were not interested in any prolonged armed conflict in Georgia, since “it would disrupt all its supply routes” (8). This clearly indicated that they put their economic interests first, and that they possess an opportunistic approach in their foreign policy strategy.

Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova

Russia traditionally believed in its close historical and ethnic ties with Ukraine and Belarus, and for this reason used this approach as a basis for building its foreign policy towards these countries and aspiring for a good neighboring relationship. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the interactions between Russia and Ukraine remained relatively stable and warm up to 2004, when, in the course of the Orange revolution, President Yuschenko took the path towards Europe and turned his back on Russia. The newly-elected Ukrainian president’s aspirations for joining the NATO-alliance, together with the dispute over payments for gas supplies, made President Putin remove subsidies and gradually bring gas prices for Ukraine to the free-market level. That resulted in late payments by Ukraine and finally culminated in disruption of gas supplies to European countries in January 2009. In the course of the disputes with Ukraine over gas prices Russia was widely accused by the EU and the US in using energy to put political pressure on President Yuschenko’s regime. However, eventually the EU analysts acknowledged that “Russia has legitimate commercial reasons for raising the prices it charges its customers for oil and gas” (7).

Ukraine is the key transit route of Russian gas to the EU, accounting for 80% of the total volume of gas. Since Russia has become “fearful of being branded an unreliable supplier of energy by customers in Germany, France and other countries in Western Europe” (4), Russia has started seeking alternative transit routes to Europe, bypassing Ukraine. In the late 2000s the Russian government greatly succeeded in this goal by undermining the US and European-backed projects and accelerating the construction of the South and North stream projects.

In its turn, Russia’s special ties with Belarus were undermined by ongoing negotiations over the Russian-Belarus Union Treaty. According to the foreign policy concept of the Russian Federation, since 2000 it was a priority task for Russia “to strengthen the Union of Belarus and Russia as the highest, at this stage, form of integration of two sovereign states.” (citation?) However, this year discord over Russian financial aid to Belarus resulted in the President’s Lukashenka request for credit from Western countries instead. Moreover, Russia’s summer ban on milk imports from Belarus made the situation even tenser, and the relations between the two former allies has cooled down.

Russian foreign policy towards Moldova is the most evident example of how Russia achieves its aims by using economic pressure. Moldova and Russia have “their own frozen conflict from Soviet days: the Russian-supported and heavily armed enslave of Trans-Dniester” (8). Moldovan president Voronin tried to pursue Russia’s government to remove Russian peacekeepers and to gain control over the region; however, the treaty of increasing gas prices and the embargo on Moldovan wine imports to Russia severely restrained the Moldovan government’s ability to stand their ground.

Conclusion

A brief analysis of Russian policy towards CIS states shows that Russia has emerged as a global player that is capable of pursuing its economic and political interests. Most of the aims identified in Russia’s foreign policy concept were accomplished. However, many political observers (7) \agree on the fact that in order to maintain this global role, Russia should appeal to its “domestic societal issues,” and to address numerous internal problems such as outdated infrastructure, a weak military and a \substandard public health system, along with the need to deal with a corrupt bureaucracy.

“Russian foreign policy remains contradictory, reflecting the lack of clear definition of what the country’s more concrete interests might be beyond this broad consensus” (6). The instability of Russia’s role as a leading power in the CIS has become apparent. Russia’s policy has turned into a set of accidental decisions reacting to certain short-term challenges or opportunities. (Andrey Kazantsev (2008, Europe-Asia Studies)

Opportunistic approach is not acceptable for Russia to achieve a success in its foreign policy

Other important players that have their interests in CIS (The US, EU, China, India, Iran)

Continuity of Foreign policy in the CIS region under the president Medvedev. Political experts from Emerging Europe Monitor have a view that “Moscow will continue to make efforts to Perspectives for the Future enhance its position within the Commonwealth of independent States while also taking a more proactive position on global issues” (10)

List of References

(1). Christopher Marsh, Nikolas K. Gvosdev “The Persistence of Eurasia,” Policy Innovations November 5, 2009 http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/000152

(2). History of Russia: XX-the beginning of XXI,” Moscow, Eksmo, 2006 (“Istoriya Rossii: XX-nachala XXI veka” pod redakciej L.V.Milova, Moskva, Eksmo, 2006)

(3). Andrey Kazantsev “Russian Policy in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea Region,” Europe-Asia Studies Vol. 60, No. 6, August 2008.

(4). Lindsay Wright “Pipeline Politics: Russia’s Natural Gas Diplomacy,” Pipeline and Gas Journal /August 2009/ www.pgjonline.com

(5). The Foreign Policy conception of Russian Federation. 2000.

(6). Andrew Monaghan “An enemy at the gates” or “from victory to victory?” Russian Foreign Policy. International Affairs, 84: 4(2008)

(7). Angela E. Stent “Restoration and Revolution in Putin’s Foreign Policy,” Europe-Asia Studies Vol. 60, No. 6, August 2008.

(8) Bridget Kendall “Russia’s neighbors go their own way,” BBC news, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7575813.stm from 10/24/2009

(9). Janusz Bugajski “Expanding Eurasia: Russia’s European ambitions,” CSIS

(10). “Foreign Policy: Nationalism and Pragmatism.” Russia and CIS. Emerging Europe Monitor Vol.12, Issue 9, September 2008

(11) Mark Kramer “Russian Policy toward the Commonwealth of Independent State: Recent Trends and Future Prospects” Problems of Post-Communism, vol.55, no. 6, November/December 2008, pp. 3-19.

(12) Andrey Makarychev “Russia, NATO, and the “Color Revolutions” (Discursive Traps), Russian Politics and Law, vol. 47, no. 5, September-October 2009, pp. 40-51.

Anna Muraveva is researcher for Provocate and a native of Saratov, on the Volga River in southern Russia. Her Master’s thesis in Sociology at Saratov State University used opinion surveys to illuminate the politics of ethnic self-identification in Russia as it underwent rapid transformation. Courses Anna took from Stanford — “International Conflict Management” and “Security, Civil Liberties and Terrorism” — drew her to a serious study of Russian foreign policy.