Director:
Senior Fellow, Nina Khrushcheva
E-mail: khruschn@newschool.edu 

Phase II: The New Post-Transitional Russian Identity: How Western is Russian Westernization?
From September 2003 through January 2006, Senior Fellow Nina Khrushcheva continues her study group project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York following Phase I of the project, "Lessons of Transition" (see below.) In phase II, the project (now shared between three institutions, New School's WPI and the Graduate Program in International Affairs, and The Harriman Institute at Columbia University) examines the contours of the current national identity of Russians, considering how "western" post-socialist Russia really is or could ever be. How lasting are its westward aspirations? How effectively will the new Russian state bridge the gap between the domestic and the international, the individual and the collective, the past and the future? The Identity project focuses on the dynamic relationship between current events and Russia's historical legacy and its impact on this emerging identity.

Project participants--some 30 experts and political advisors in the field of Russian studies as well as in politics, economics and culture--offer their knowledge and opinions to assess the Russian transition. They include Deana Arsenian (Carnegie Corporation of New York); Rose Brady (Business Week); Robert Cottrell (The Economist); Michael Cohen (New School University); Mark von Hagen (Harriman Institute at Columbia University); Fiona Hill (Brookings Institution); Stephen Holmes (N. Y. U. School of Law); Stephen Kotkin (Princeton University); Leon Sigal (Social Science Research Council); Frederick Starr (SAIS, Johns Hopkins University); Celeste Wallander (Center for Strategic and International Studies); and others.

Link to Final Project from Phase II:
The New Post-Transitional Russian Identity: How Western is Russian Westernization?
WPI Project Report prepared by Nina L. Kruschcheva and Edward J. Hancox (January 2006) (PDF)

Links to Phase II sessions:

Putin's Russia: The Human Rights Record
    (March 2005)
- Discussion Summary
- Full Transcript

Russia: How Perceptions Shape Reality
    (December 2004)
- Discussion Summary
- Full Transcript

Reagan and Gorbachev: Presidential Politics, the Cold War and Lessons for Today
    (November 2004)
- Discussion Summary

Russia's Present Condition: Why Putin Couldn't Lose
    (April 2004)
- Discussion Summary
- Full Transcript

NATO and the European Union: Where are the Limits to Europe?     (February 2004)

The United States, Russia and Central Asia: New Cooperation or the Old Divide? (November 2003)

Phase I: Lessons of Transition: The Cultural Contradictions and the Future of Russian Liberalization
In 2001-2, Senior Fellow Nina Khrushcheva conducted a study group project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The aim of this project was to study the way cultural factors have, over the 10 years of post-Communist reforms, "misshaped" the Russian response--both official and popular--to most economic, political and social neoliberal policy initiatives and to suggest new methods by which to evaluate the impact of these factors on policy implementation. A series of seminars examined how Russia's domestic conditions had distorted expectations for the successes of liberalism, as the reality of the reform process differed dramatically from Western perceptions.

Link to Final Project from Phase I:

"Lessons of Transition: The Cultural Contradictions and the Future of Russian Liberalization", WPI Project Report prepared by Nina L. Kruschcheva and Audrey R. Benvenuti (July 2002).