Wednesday, November 16, 2016
5 p.m. – 7 p.m.
McKinney Conference Room
In 2012, Vladimir Putin was re-elected president of Russia for the third time. After his return, though, his policy did not merely replicate the "stability" of the 2000s. On the contrary, Putin’s third term has been marked by a decisive shift toward aggressive conservative rhetoric, growing control over civil society and cultural institutions, and geopolitical adventures. Today, after drastic changes in the highest spheres of the Russian government and the results of the last parliamentary election, we can see the results of Putin's new political course. What was the specificity of the policy of Putin's "third term," and what can this tell us about the future of Russian politics, especially following the next presidential election of 2018?
Ilya Budraitskis is an art curator and a political analyst and activist based in Moscow. He has published extensively in major Russian and international publications, and he co-founded the political platforms LeftEast and OpenLeft. He is on the editorial board of Moscow Art Magazine, one of the leading Russian publications on contemporary art. In the past, he has worked as the Scientific Assistant and Curator at the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia. From 2013 to 2015, he was Chief of the Multimedia Library at the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) in Moscow. With Ekaterina Degot and Marta Dziewanska, Budraitskis co-edited and authored the book Post-Post-Soviet?: Art, Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade (University of Chicago Press, 2013). He also was the co-editor and author with Arseniy Zhilyaev of the book Pedagogical Poem (Marsilio, 2014).
Sponsored by the Department of Slavic Studies.