Registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales. Charity No. 1105296

THE GREAT BRITAIN – RUSSIA SOCIETY

Patron: His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent G.C.V.O.
Honorary President: Dr. Anthony Bryan Hayward (Group Chief Executive of BP plc)
Honorary Vice Presidents:
The Most Reverend & Rt.Hon. The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams F.B.A.
Professor Geoffrey Alan Hosking F.B.A. F.R..Hist.S, Sir Roderic Lyne K.B.E. C.M.G.
The Rt. Hon. Sir Malcolm Rifkind KCMG QC MP, The Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen GCMG,
The Right Honourable Baroness Williams of Crosby

THE GREAT BRITAIN – RUSSIA SOCIETY
Winter-spring session (January – April 2008)

ALL 8 EVENTS WILL BE HELD IN PUSHKIN HOUSE, 5A BLOOMSBURY SQUARE, LONDON WC1A 2TA.The entrance to Pushkin House is on Bloomsbury WAY, virtually opposite the Swedenborg bookshop. Nearest tube stations are Holborn & Tottenham Court Road. Complimentary wine receptions from 6.30 p.m. until 7.00 p.m.Talks begin at 7.00 p.m. followed by questions. Meetings end usually at about 8.30 p.m.

MRS. OLGA SELIVANOVA LEADS CONVERSATIONS IN RUSSIAN BEFORE MOST TALKS

Thursday 17 January 2008, at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Way, at 6.30 p.m. for 7.00 p.m.

A REPEAT PRESENTATION – BY PUBLIC DEMAND!
“TRAVELS IN SIBERIA”
MR. JOHN MASSEY STEWART (a talk illustrated with slides)

In 90-100 professional-quality slides taken over the years, John Massey Stewart disproves the concept of Siberia as a bleak wasteland renowned only for cold and penal systems. He portrays instead an often beautiful – and immense- landscape with an extraordinary range of flora and fauna, a remarkable history and culture and many distinct indigenous peoples. His first visit was in 1961 when it was at last possible for a foreigner to cross to the Pacific coast, and his many visits since then have ranged from the frozen Ob estuary to Vladivostok in high summer. His journeys have included a geographical excursion to Yakutia and a botanical one around Lake Baikal, his exhibition of historic British-Siberian links at an official British Week in Novosibirsk, two weeks in a rubber boat through the huge Central Siberian Nature Reserve, a jeep tour of the Buryat Republic, visits to Siberia’s old capital, Tobolsk, Decembrist sites, Khanty nomadic reindeerherders (and the ritual sacrifice of eleven reindeer – photographs forbidden), a NATO advanced research workshop, sub aqua dives in& World Bank consultancy work around Lake Baikal.

John Massey Stewart is a Russian specialist: writer, photographer, researcher, environmental activist and consultant with particular interest in Siberia and the Russian Far East and the Russian environment. Among his published work is Across the Russias, The Nature of Russia (Survival Anglia TV tie-in), (editor) The Soviet Environment: Problems, Policies and Politics, CUP, (chief editor) International Environmental Collaboration. R:ussia: A Case History, prepared for the European Environmental Ministers’ Conference 1998 The John Massey Stewart Picture Library contains his 5,000 black & white and 11,000 colour photographs and images of Russia past and present.

He is co-founder of the Conservation Foundation’s London Initiative on the Russian Environment and was Specialist Adviser to a House of Commons Environment Committee into UK environmental aid programmes. He is a Fellow both of the Linnean Society and Royal Geographical Society and was for many years Hon. Librarian of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs for which he helped organise a Siberian tour.

IF YOU MISSED IT LAST TIME, DO NOT MISS IT NOW! – IF YOU CAME BEFORE,
COME AGAIN – IT IS FABULOUS!

Wednesday 30 January 2008, at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Way, 6.30 p.m. for 7.00 p.m.

“THE LATEST PHASE IN ‘THE GREAT GAME’ (1989-2007):
WHY RUSSIA IS WINNING”
PROFESSOR PHILIP LONGWORTH

Professor Longworth learned that a new phase was beginning when Zbigniew Brzezinski (U.S. National Security Adviser to President Carter) drew Philip aside at some conference in 1989, asking him if there was any basis for Cossack nationalism. The Soviet Union was beginning to collapse and his government was interested in creating as many independent states as possible out of the Soviet space, and restricting Russia to the smallest size possible. Over the next few years the policy seemed to be succeeding – with the Baltic states independent, the ‘Orange’, ‘Pink’ and ‘Tulip’ revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, etc.; and former Warsaw Pact countries joining the EU and NATO. Lately however, the ties confining Russia have begun to unravel. Ukraine is now ambivalent towards the West, Georgians are unhappy; NATO policy is opposed by some of its former Soviet Bloc members, and the EU had been uncomfortable with Poland. This talk will concentrate chiefly on Ukraine and Georgia, arguing that western policy (and we were enthusiastic partners in the enterprise) was overly optimistic and to some extent misconceived.

Philip Longworth studied Russian during National Service, and then at Balliol College, Oxford. He was researcher at the Central Asian Research Centre and historian at the War Graves Commission while establishing himself as a translator and writer. His first academic post was as Lecturer in Russian History at Birmingham University, and he subsequently served for 20 years as Professor of History at McGill University, Montreal. He has been a visiting Fellow at the Russian and Hungarian Academies of Science, the Rockefeller Centre Bellagio and Trinity College Dublin. Professor Longworth’s main publications: a history of The Cossacks, biographies of General Alexander Suvorov and of Tsar Alexis. The three Empresses, The Making of Eastern Europe and Russia’s Empires: From Prehistory to Putin.

A FASCINATING SEQUEL TO LAST YEAR’S LECTURE ON
‘THE GREAT GAME’ BY PROFESSOR KATHLEEN BURK.

Tuesday 12 February 2008, at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Way, at 6.30 p.m. for 7.00 p.m.

“RUSSIA’S RELATIONS WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION & SOME OF ITS
MEMBER STATES” (a talk in RUSSIAN)
PROFESSOR MIKHAIL VINYAMINOVICH BORSHCHEVSKY

International relations between the EU and its member states from the one side, and from Russia on the other side are important but not homogeneous. In analysing EU-Russia relations some essential facts of European security in the fields of energy, trade, economic development, demography and military balance need to be taken into account. Also important are the historically formed relations between Russia and each current member of the European Union. From this angle the member sta tes of the EU could be divided into four groups:

(1) Great Britain, France, Germany, Benelux and Scandinavian countries
(2) Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia and Croatia (as an EU candidate)
(3) East European countries, former Warsaw Pact members (Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia,Bulgaria)
(4) Former Soviet Republics, present EU member states – Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania.

Relations between the EU and some of its member states will be analysed under these four headings
Mikhail V. Borshchevsky, formerly married to the democratic campaigner the late Galina Starovoiteva (who was tragically murdered), was for 25 years a Professor of Sociology and Economics at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Moved from St. Petersburg to London in 1987. Was Visiting Professor at Westminster University. Currently editing the English edition of The Herald of Europe (Vyestnik Yevropy), the magazine founded in 1802 by Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin (1766-1828), discontinued by the Communists, but restarted a few years ago. Its editor in chief is Yegor Gaidar. Professor Borshchevsky is a leading specialist on current relations between the Russian Federation and the Republics of the former Soviet Union with the European Union and member states such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom.

This talk will be IN RUSSIAN.
REVELATORY! AND REFRESH YOUR RUSSIAN!

Monday 25 February 2008, at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Way, at 6.30 p.m. for 7.00 p.m.

“EVGENII ZAMIATIN IN ENGLAND (1916-1917)”
DR. JULIE CURTIS (Wolfson College, Oxford)

During World War 1 the writer Evgenii Zamiatin (1884-1937) spent some eighteen months in England, mostly in Newcastle, supervising the construction of icebreakers for the Russian government. The scrupulous research work of scholars such as Alan Myers has done much to uncover the details of Zamiatin’s stay in Britain. As part of her research towards a new biography of Zamiatin – there has not been a full length biography in English since Alex Shane’s pioneering work of 1968 – Julie Curtis has been reviewing the material discovered by Myers alongside the new archival documents, including personal correspondence from the period, which has become accessible in recent years in Russia. This offers a rather fuller picture of this episode in Zamiatin’s life, as he wrestled with a crisis in his marriage, and his desire to remain in the centre of Russian literary life. These documents are set against the context of life in wartime Newcastle, with its booming shipyards and genteel manners, so alien to the young radical writer from Russia - a brilliant writer of‘ornamental’ prose, who emigrated in 1931.

Julie Curtis studied Russian and History at Oxford, and taught at Leeds and Cambridge before returning to Oxford as a University Lecturer in Russian. Her published work includes two books on Mikhail Bulgakov, and her research interests include drama and satire. In recent years she has been assembling material from archives in France, Britain, the USA and Russia for her biography of Zamiatin. In the course of her research she came across the only surviving typescript of Zamiatin’s best known work, the anti-utopian novel We. In collaboration with a Russian colleague she has also prepared a first scholarly edition of this text in Russian, which is to be published
in the Literaturnye Pamiatniki series

A VALUABLE INSIGHT INTO A BRIEF BUT EXCITINGLY CREATIVE ERA IN EARLY TWENTIETH
CENTURY RUSSIAN LITERATURE BEFORE THE ‘DEAD HAND’ OF
SOCIALIST REALISM

Wednesday 12 March 2008, at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Way, at 6.30 p.m. for 7.00 p.m.

“AFTER THE ELECTIONS - A CHANGE OF COURSE?”
PROFESSOR RICHARD SAKWA

The 2007-2008 Russian electoral cycle was accompanied by ever sharper indications that Russian democracy is in crisis. The idea of crisis is used to suggest that while the situation may be severe, it is not yet terminal. The elections have to be understood in the context of this crisis, accompanied by the various contradictions of Russian democracy. One of the crisis features is the prominence of factionalism as the most immediate form of political aggregation, eclipsing political parties and other social movements. All this took place against the background of a reassertion of Russian sovereignty abroad, while emphasising the notion of ‘sovereign democracy’ at home. The actual election was as much about ensuring policy continuity as finding the appropriate successor to maintain the existing regime. However, Putin’s identification with United Russia narrowed his options, while reducing popular choice as the Duma poll turned into a referendum on his leadership. The liberal opposition parties had once again failed to unite, and thus went down to defeat. The Fifth Duma lost many of the more effective and independent politicians of previous years, while the preponderance of United Russia will exacerbate fragmentation within the party. Putin’s strategy for the presidential election remained unclear.

Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, where he is currently Head of Department. While completing his doctorate at the University of Birmingham on Moscow politics during the Civil War he spent a year on a British Council scholarship at Moscow State University (1979-1980), and then worked for two years in Moscow in the Mir Science and Technology Publishing House. He has published widely on Soviet and Russian politics and history. His books include Gorbachev and His Reforms 1985-90 (Prentice Hall 1990), Russian Politics & Society (1993) – fully revised
editions of which came out in 1996 and 2002. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union 1917-1991, Postcommunism (1999), Putin: Russia’s Choice (Routledge 2004). He has recently edited Chechnya: from Past to Future (Anthem 2005).

A PENETRATING ANALYSIS BY ONE OF THE UK’S LEADING POLITICAL SCIENTISTS.
TOPICAL AND UNMISSABLE!

Thursday 27 March 2008, at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Way, at 6.30 p.m. for 7.00 p.m.

“BRITAIN AND RUSSIA COME TO AN UNDERSTANDING:
THE ANGLO – RUSSIAN CONVENTION OF 1907”
DR. HELEN SZAMUELY (in English)

Historically there were two trends to Anglo-Russian enmity: the distrust of Russian intentions in Central Asia with Russia’s ever-closer move towards India; and the dislike of Russia’s political structure. Both were strengthened in the first decade of the twentieth century, through Russian involvement in the suppression of the Persian revolution, and the collapse into violence and tyranny of the 1905 Revolution. For both there were counter-trends in thinking as well, particularly in the Foreign Office and some sections of the newspaper world. By 1907 it seemed sensible to come to some sort of an agreement with Russia on Persia and related matters. Furthermore a growing fear of Germany and of a possible Russo-German alliance was pushing British political thinking towards an idea of firmer European alliances. The first of these was the Entente Cordiale in 1904 and the second the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Both seemed like a good idea at the time but come 1914 they would be blamed for Britain’s involvement in what became a disastrous war for all concerned.

Dr. Helen Szamuely, who is trilingual in Hungarian, Russian and English, holds a First Class Degree in History and Russian from the University of Leeds and a D.Phil from the University of Oxford. Her doctoral thesis dealt with British attitudes to Russia between 1880 and 1918. Since then she has written extensively about Russia, though mostly about the present, not the past, also appearing on radio and TV. Whenever possible she returns to historical studies. Dr. Helen Szamuely is the daughter of the late Tibor Szamuely, an outstanding academic Russian historian of his generation, and author of the influential masterpiece The Russian Tradition.

RELEVANT ALSO REGARDING IRAN’S XENOPHOBIA?
ANOTHER ‘MUST ATTEND’ LECTURE.

Wednesday 16 April at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Way at 6.30 p.m. for 7.00 p.m.

RUSSIA: TOWARDS SELF-INSULATION?
DR. ALEX PRAVDA (ST. ANTONY’S COLLEGE, OXFORD)

This talk will look at growing trends towards a double political insulation – domestic and international. Within Russia, we have seen steps taken, and with considerable success, to insulate the executive from pressures from below. The Kremlin’s managerial approach to politics has become ever more authoritarian, undermining what remains of accountability and pluralism. The State has extended its control over large swathes of the economy. At the same time Moscow has tried to insulate the political regime from external political influence, objecting to what it sees as intrusive Western interference in Russia’s ‘sovereign democracy’. It has constrained foreign stakes in the economy. What is the outlook beyond 2008? There is a strong momentum for further development towards a fortress Russia. But there is also some reason to hope that this might be tempered or even countered. The Kremlin’s awareness of the costs of authoritarian rule may combine with the pluralising effects in society of growing prosperity to reinvigorate the elements of electoral democracy that have survived the Putin years. Moscow’s desire to be a competitive Great Power, to be accepted as a major economic and political player, provides the West with opportunities to engage more imaginatively with Russia, and to encourage Russia to observe the international rules of the game.

Alex Pravda, one of Britain’s foremost experts on Russia’s Foreign Policy, is a Fellow of the Russian & Eurasian Studies Centre at St. Antony’s College, Oxford and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House. Before coming to Oxford he was Director of the then Soviet foreign policy programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He has acted as special adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons. He has taught at the University of Reading and, on a visiting basis, at Stanford University and the University of Michigan. Long interested in the interplay of Russia’s domestic and foreign policy, his recent publications include Developments in Russian Politics (co-edited, Macmillan 2001) and Leading Russia: Putin in Perspective. Essays in Honour of Archie Brown (edited, Oxford University Press, 2005).

A HIGHLIGHT OF THE SESSION, DEFINITELY NOT TO BE MISSED!

Tuesday 22 April 2008, at Pushkin House, Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2TA, from 7.00 until 9.00 p.m.

Please be seated by 6.50 p.m. Drinks will be served after the concert.

A DAZZLING, VIRTUOSO GALA CONCERT AND PARTY!
THE OLGA BALAKLEETS & JULIAN GALLANT PIANO DUO

A recital of works for piano solo and piano duet, including music by Schubert, Brahms, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Scriabin, Gavrilin and Schnittke.

Olga Balakleets was born in Russia. Studied at the Leningrad Conservatory, at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg, and as a postgraduate at the Royal College of Music London. Gave her London debut at the Purcell Room in 1994. Has appeared worldwide with the Moscow Philharmonic, the Belorussian State Symphony, the British Concert Orchestra, BBC Big Band, London Sinfonietta, St. Petersburg Camerata, and with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on tour in Spain etc.

Julian Gallant is a pianist and conductor. Read music at Oxford University, and studied as a pianist in Switzerland. After his London début recital in 1992 he has given solo recitals and played concertos with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Oxford Philomusica, Moscow Philharmonic, Kiev Chamber Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia. Julian is Chief Conductor of the Russian Orchestra of London. He has also conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra & many other orchestras.

The Balakleets-Gallant piano duo has been performing since 1997 and has toured in Britain, Europe, South America, Russia, Central Asia, Egypt & the Far East. The Duo plays most of the repertoire for two pianos and piano duet and has recorded a compact disc of French music for two pianos.

ENCHANTING – A SUPERB TREAT!

Following on from the fifty minute concert:

A SPRING PARTY – and a time to ‘mix and mingle’ with sparkling wine & Russian finger buffet delicacies prepared by the Carolyn Cripps team of Maria McGregor and Karen Littlegrainger

A FLOURISHING FINALE TO THE SESSION!

Tickets are not issued for meetings, but names will be put on the relevant attendance lists on a first paid, first served basis. Members are most definitely encouraged to book places for their guests. Cancellations for credit are accepted only if received before 5.00 p.m. on the previous afternoon (‘phone Ute Chatterjee on 0788 4464 461 or email her) so that those on the waiting list can be offered places. If you require confirmation of your reservations please enclose a stamped addressed envelope. You can contact the Chairman Daniel Salbstein c/o J. Salbstein, Brougham Road, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 2NX, ‘phone 01903 210611 or email
All tickets for talks are £5 per person per seat (except for students belonging to a corporate membership).
TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT Book early, and book often!
Remember, if all seats are wanted your reservation is assured only if you have PREPAID.

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