On Thursday 26 June 2008, Professor Timothy J. Colton, Director of the Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, will launch his new book entitled “Historical Perspectives on Yeltsin” from 12:30-2pm.
Professor Timothy J. Colton is the Director of the internationally acclaimed Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and a leading expert on both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. His most recent book entitled ‘Yeltsin: A Life’ is the first complete biography of Yeltsin which traces his life from a peasant boy in the Urals through his career as a Soviet apparatchik to his unmaking of the Soviet Union and beyond. According to the New Statesmen Colton’s book ‘sets the standard by which future biographies of Russia’s first elected president will be judged’. ‘Yeltsin: A Life’ examines why Yeltsin broke with the Soviet system and launched his historical campaign to establish democracy in Russia and offers a detailed and unique insight into the life of one of the defining figures of the twentieth century and into the past, present and future of contemporary Russia.
Professor Colton is currently working on a collaborative research project on political parties and electoral development in Russia sponsored by the US State Department, the Carnegie Corporation and the National Council for Eurasian and East European research. He is also part of a unique project researching foreign policy responses to an increasingly resurgent Russia.
Professor Colton has been a Senior Associate Member at St Anthony’s College Oxford, a Fellow at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies and a Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies at the Department of Government at Harvard University. His book ‘Governing the Socialist Metropolis’ published in 1995 won the award for best book in government and political science from the Association of American Publishers. Professor Colton has also published extensively on such diverse topics as civil military relations in the Soviet Union, post-Soviet leadership patterns and managed democracy under Putin.
This meeting will be chaired by Oksana Antonenko, Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia, and will take place on the Fourth Floor at Arundel House, 13-15 Arundel Street, Temple Place, London WC2R 3DX.
If you would like to attend, please RSVP Kathleen James on james@iiss.org or tel.020 7395 9109
