"THE PUTIN PARADOX: THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY of 1989 and BEYOND"
a talk & discussion with
Prof. RICHARD SAKWA (University of Kent, UK)
Respondent: Ambassador JACK MATLOCK (former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union)
"THE U.S. & RUSSIA: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS"
Introduced & moderated by Prof. Klaus Larres
WEDNESDAY, February 12, 2020, at 5.30pm Location: Pleasants Family Assembly Room, Wilson Library (main campus, UNC-Chapel Hill) Parking available after 5.00pm at Cobb deck & also at the Bell Tower Lot: (fee $1 for the entire evening -- have 4 quaters ready or use the parking app) IF THERE IS A BASKET BALL GAME - THEN PLEASE PARK AT THE BELL TOWER LOT
No RSVP necessary - please just come along - please arrive early l
Prof. RICHARD SAKWA
Richard Sakwa is professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent in the UK. He also is an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
His main research interests are Russian domestic and international politics, European international relations, and comparative democratization.
Recent books include Russia Aginst the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order,The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism, and the Medvedev Succession (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Putin and the Oligarch: The Khodorkovsky-Yukos Affair (I. B. Tauris, 2014), Putin Redux: Power and Contradiction in Contemporary Russia (Routledge, 2014), and Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (I. B. Tauris, 2015). He just published two books on Russian contemporary politics and on "The Putin Paradox"
served as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 and 1991 and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981 to 1983.
Jack Matlock entered the Foreign Service in 1956 and became an expert in Soviet affairs during some of the most tumultuous years of the Cold War. His first assignment to Moscow was in 1961, and it was from the embassy there that he experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis, helping to translate diplomatic messages between the U.S. and Soviet leaders. He was soon posted to West Africa and also served in East Africa during the post-colonial period of superpower rivalry.
At the beginning of detente, in the mid- to late 1960s, he was Director of Soviet Affairs in the State Department. Subsequently he attended all but one of the summit meetings between U.S. Presidents and the Soviet Secretary Generals held in the 20-year period between 1972 and 1991. Matlock was back in Moscow in 1974, serving in the number two position in the U.S. embassy for four years.
Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, he was assigned to Moscow as acting ambassador during the first part of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Reagan appointed him Ambassador to Czechoslovakia and subsequently asked him to return to Washington in 1983 to work at the National Security Council. Matlock was given the assignment to to develop a negotiating strategy to end the arms race. When Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, arms negotiations and summit meetings resumed. During his Ambassadorship to the Soviet Union he witnessed the years of the gradual dissolution of the USSR before retiring from the Foreign Service in 1991.
Jack Matlock has written a book about the end of the Soviet Union entitled Autopsy of Empire: the American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (1995) and also a volume on the end of the Cold War titled Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (2005). He has also written Superpower Illusions: How Myths and False Ideologies Led America Astray - and How to Return to Reality (2011).
In retirement from the Foreign Service. Ambassador Matlock soon joined the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and he went on to teach diplomacy and U.S. foreign relations at several New England colleges. At present he teaches at Duke University and continued to frequently travel to Russia and write and consult about Russian politics. (this profile has been adapted from Ambassador Matlock's Wikipedia entry which provides much greater details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_F._Matlock_Jr.)
