Abstract: The 1995 launch of a sounding rocket from Andoya in Norway allegedly misinterpreted as an attack in Russia and the so-called "Cuban Missile Crisis" in 1962 have one thing in common: they have both been referred to as "the closest we came to nuclear war." The 1962 crisis has mostly been studied from an American perspective due to the availability of documentary evidence and of the Kennedy tapes, until the 1990s when Cuba and the Soviet Union were given a voice, with the rest of the world still largely absent from the understanding of the event. The 1995 close call has been controversial and is remembered in conflicting ways: an alarmist and an untroubled one.

About the Speaker: Benoît Pelopidas is a CISAC affiliate and lecturer in International Relations at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS), University of Bristol. He was a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC for the 2011-2012 academic year.

He received his Ph. D. in political science from Sciences Po (Paris) and the University of Geneva in 2010 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in 2010-2011. Since 2005, he has been teaching international relations at Sciences Po (Paris), the University of Geneva and the Monterey Institute of International Studies (Graduate School of International Policy and Management).

In 2010, he won the "outstanding student essay prize" from the Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Essay Competition and in 2011, he was awarded the "Best Graduate Paper 2010" from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association. Also in 2011, he won the SNIS Award 2010 for the Best Thesis in International Studies from the Swiss Network for International Studies. A book based on his dissertation is forthcoming in French by Sciences Po University Press.

He published When Empire Meets Nationalism: Power Politics in the US and Russia (with Didier Chaudet and Florent Parmentier; Ashgate, 2009) as well as articles in The Nonproliferation Review, the European Journal of Social Sciences, the Swiss Political Science Review, and the French Yearbook of International Relations. His research focuses on epistemic communities in international security, renunciation of nuclear weapons as a historical possibility, the uses of nuclear history and memory and French nuclear policies.

The fate of a soldier serving in the Russian army in the First World War largely depended on luck and circumstances. But even though his own means of influencing his fate were limited, there were available certain active choices – such as shirking and desertion – that could turn his life around in both positive and negative ways. For Russian civil and military authorities, of course, desertion was a nuisance that was fought against by all available means. Sometimes, such as with physical punishment, these means only succeeded in lowering the already low morale and increasing the number of deserters.

Dr. Mart Kuldkepp's presentation will focus on a small and somewhat exceptional group of deserters from the Russian army: the soldiers who served in the border guard regiments in Northern Finland and deserted alone or in small groups over the border to neutral Sweden. He will consider their motivation in doing so, and their subsequent fate, as much as it is known. At the same time, he will also look at how Sweden administratively handled this very unforeseen phenomenon and how the deserters were treated by Swedish authorities.

Mart Kuldkepp completed his PhD dissertation at University of Tartu, Estonia, in 2014 and joined University College London in 2015. Dr. Kuldkepp has been active as an academic in the field of Scandinavian Studies since 2007. Dr. Kuldkepp’s primary research focus is on 20th century Scandinavian political history, with a particular interest in contacts between the Scandinavian and the Baltic states, but also has interest in the history of secret services and espionage and Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culture. His teaching has mostly concerned the history of Scandinavian culture, society, and politics from the earliest times up to today. He has taught subjects related to Old Norse studies and overview courses in humanities.

Organized by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and co-sponsored by The Europe Center and Stanford University Libraries

Abstract: Two months after the breakup of the Soviet Union, I was in the Russian closed nuclear cities of Sarov and Snezhinsk, home of the Russian equivalent to the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. With our Russian counterparts, John Nuckolls, director of LLNL, and I developed a plan for scientific cooperation that would become a 20-plus year program, which began with fundamental science and then expanded to weapon safety and security, nuclear materials security, nonproliferation, and countering nuclear terrorism. Fundamental science collaboration resulted in professional respect, which, in turn, allowed us to develop the trust necessary to address the serious technical challenges resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I will describe some of the similarities and differences in how Russian and American laboratories tackled problems ranging from fundamental science to nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship. 

About the Speaker: Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, and the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy. Over the past 20 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on reducing the risks of nuclear terrorism worldwide and the challenges of nuclear India, North Korea, Pakistan, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Dr. Hecker is also compiling and editing a book with two of his Russian colleagues on the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

Abstract: Nuclear risks changed dramatically when the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991. Suddenly the world was threatened more by Russia’s weakness than its strength. Never before had a country with the capacity to destroy the world experienced such dramatic political, economic and cultural turmoil. The United States and much of the world was concerned about loose nukes, loose nuclear materials, loose nuclear expert knowledge, and loose nuclear exports. I will describe how scientists and engineers at the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories joined forces with counterparts in the Russian nuclear weapons complex for more than 20 years to avoid what looked like the perfect nuclear storm. I will also reflect on how today’s strained political relations between Washington and Moscow have curtailed that cooperation to the detriment of a safer and more secure world. 

About the Speaker: Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.

Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, and the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy. Over the past 20 years, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials.

Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on reducing the risks of nuclear terrorism worldwide and the challenges of nuclear India, North Korea, Pakistan, and the nuclear aspirations of Iran. Dr. Hecker is also compiling and editing a book with two of his Russian colleagues on the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.

Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.

Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.

Abstract

"Russia is never so strong as it wants to be, nor as weak as it is thought to be," Winston Churchill once observed. In the last decade, Russia has invaded two neighbors, seizing territory from both, re-established a Soviet air base in Syria and intervened in a conflict outside post-Soviet borders for the first time in 25 years. Under Vladimir Putin, has Russia been resurrected as a major power barely a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet empire?  What is a great power in the 21st century? In reviving Russia’s international political aspirations, Mr. Putin implicitly has in mind metrics of power, as do international relations theorists, and foreign policy makers trying to understand Russia’s contemporary role in international relations.  But what are they, exactly? Is Russia’s resurrection real or merely imagined? How can we tell and why does it matter? How are Russia’s global ambitions related to its domestic conditions? This presentation, based on a  book project in process, will discuss some of the domestic determinants – both resources and constraints -- of Russia’s increasingly assertive conduct abroad. 

Speaker Bio

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In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author of two single authored books:Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006), and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997). She is also co-editor (along with Michael McFaul) of After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge, 2004).

She received a BA and MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Government from Harvard University.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia is an economist who trained at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He spent several years at the World Bank before returning to India to serve as the Economic Advisor to the Finance Minister. The Government of India then appointed him to several senior positions, including Secretary of Commerce and Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Finance. In 1998, he was appointed as a Member of the Planning Commission and Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. In 2001, he became the Director of Independent Evaluation Office at the International Monetary Fund, resigning this position in 2004 to become the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.

He has written widely about India and the world economy, co-authoring Redistribution with Growth: An Approach to Policy, and editing Macroeconomics and Monetary Policy: Issues for Reforming the Global Financial Architecture with Y.V. Reddy and S.S. Tarapore.

The Payne Distinguished Lectureship is named for Frank and Arthur Payne, brothers who gained an appreciation for global problems through their international business operations. This lectureship, hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, brings speakers with an international reputation for leadership and visionary thinking to Stanford to deliver a major public lecture. 

This event is carried out in partnership with the Stanford Center for International Development (SCID).

A public reception will follow the lecture.

The Pussy Riot protest, and the subsequent heavy handed treatment of the protestors, grabbed the headlines, but this was not an isolated instance of art being noticeably critical of the regime. As this book, based on extensive original research, shows, there has been gradually emerging over recent decades a significant counter-culture in the art world which satirises and ridicules the regime and the values it represents, at the same time putting forward, through art, alternative values. The book traces the development of art and protest in recent decades, discusses how art of this kind engages in political and social protest, and provides many illustrations as examples of art as protest. The book concludes by discussing how important art has been in facilitating new social values and in prompting political protests.

Lena Jonson is Associate Research Fellow at UI. Her research currently focuses on Russian domestic politics and issues of political and societal change (modernisation) as well as the contemporary role of culture and its standing in Russia.

Lena Jonson has published several articles and works examining Russian society and politics (mainly foreign and security policy), Russia's relations with Europe and Russian relations with the former Soviet territories. She has also published widely on Central Asia, and on Tajikistan in particular. 

Lena Jonson is one of the founders of the network "Sällskapet för studier av Ryssland, Central-och Östeuropa samt Centralasien" (1997) and was its first chairperson. She has been a guest researcher at George Washington University and the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Centre, as well as a scholarship recipient at the universities of (then) Leningrad and Moscow. From 2005-2009, she served as Cultural Attaché at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow. In 2002, she worked as a Political Officer at the OSCE-office i Dushanbe, Tajikistan. In 1997-1998, she was a Senior Researcher at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

Sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and co-sponsored by The Europe Center.