An academic from the Department of East European Studies at CU FA will introduce his publication, A War Made in Russia (Polity Press, Cambridge), in room P131 (Great Auditorium), on 16 November 2023 at 5 pm. A public discussion follows the presentation.
Sergei Medvedev argues that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not start Russia’s war on Ukraine out of a personal whim or obsession, and the war was instead the culmination of two decades of authoritarian degradation, post-imperial ressentiment, and Russia’s entire imperial history. These conditions are the reasons why Russia has accepted and normalized this war, turned it into a daily routine, and is seemingly ready to fight it for years.
The discussion will focus on three main questions:
- How stable is the current pro-war consensus among Russia’s elites and society, and how long can Russia’s economy sustain this war?
- What are the possible end-states of this war, and what do they mean for the future of Russia and Ukraine?
- Can this war lead to World War Three – or are we already there?
Sergei Medvedev, Ph.D., is an affiliated professor at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. From 2004 to 2020, he worked as a professor at HSE University in Moscow. As a graduate of Moscow State University and Columbia University in New York City, Medvedev has held multiple research and academic positions in Russia, Germany, Italy, and Finland and authored several books, including Return of the Russian Leviathan (trans. into Czech as Návrat ruského Leviathana) that received the Pushkin House Book Prize in 2020.
