Andrew Nagorski first served as Newsweek’s Moscow bureau chief in the early 1980s, at a time of mounting Cold War tensions between the Reagan administration and Leonid Brezhnev’s regime. In 1982, he was expelled by the Kremlin authorities who were angered by his enterprising reporting. But as Moscow began to chart a new course under Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin, he was allowed to return to Russia, visiting numerous times starting in 1989 and then serving a second tour in Moscow in the mid-1990s. He subsequently also helped ... view more »
Andrew Nagorski first served as Newsweek’s Moscow bureau chief in the early 1980s, at a time of mounting Cold War tensions between the Reagan administration and Leonid Brezhnev’s regime. In 1982, he was expelled by the Kremlin authorities who were angered by his enterprising reporting. But as Moscow began to chart a new course under Mikhail Gorbachev and then Boris Yeltsin, he was allowed to return to Russia, visiting numerous times starting in 1989 and then serving a second tour in Moscow in the mid-1990s. He subsequently also helped launch a Russian-language edition of Newsweek and wrote his book The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow that Changed the Course of World War II. Based on his personal experiences, Nagorski will discuss Russia’s history, current actions and future prospects.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed “the end of history.” The Cold War that had provided the central narrative to the post-World War II world appeared to be over, and democracy was seen as triumphant. Russia’s new leaders claimed to be deeply committed to a new democratic order. But a quarter of a century later, Russia is once again in the news almost daily—and almost always for all the wrong reasons. Tensions with the U.S., in particular, have been on the rise to the point where a new generation of political observers routinely talks about a new Cold War.
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