Tony Wood, "Russia’s Oppositions in the Putin Era
Thursday, October 28, 2021 10am to 11am
About this Event
In the winter of 2011–12, demonstrators took to the streets across Russia to protest against electoral fraud and the corruption of the United Russia party. At the time, Western media outlets such as the Economist saw this as “the beginning of the end” for Putin’s rule. Yet ten years later, Putin remains firmly ensconced in power, and although protests continue, Russia’s opposition seems no closer to mounting a serious challenge to his rule. How do we explain the regime’s longevity, and what are the obstacles that Russia’s oppositions have faced?
To answer these questions, Tony Wood, author of Russia without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War (2018), will explore the shifting character of the opposition to Putin since the 2000s. He will discuss its multiple origins, its development in recent years—including the growing prominence of anti-corruption campaigner Aleksei Navalny—and the dilemmas that confront it today.
TONY WOOD (Ph.D., New York University) is a political and social historian of modern Latin America. His current work focuses on transnational radical debates on race, class, and nation in the 1920s and 1930s, tracing connections between Mexico, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. Wood initially trained as a specialist on Russia and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and is the author of Chechnya: The Case for Independence (2007), and Russia without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War (2018). He was deputy editor of New Left Review from 2007 to 2014 and is a member of its editorial board. He has written on a range of subjects for the London Review of Books, n+1, The Nation, and the Guardian (UK), among other outlets.