It is frequently assumed that liberalism had a short-lived springtime in nineteenth-century Russia as an integral aspect of the thought of a remarkable generation of the country’s intelligentsia. So the argument goes, since that time its fate has been as an ineffectual voice on the margins of mainstream politics.

The talk challenges this view, arguing that the pan-European cluster of concepts that help to define liberalism have remained a feature of Russian research and debate across the last two hundred years, including under the governance of President Vladimir Putin.

This Seminar is presented by the Humanities Research Centre, ANU.

About the Speaker:

Dr Dorothy Horsfield is a Foundation Fellow at the Australian National University’s Australian Studies Institute and a member of the Steering Committee of the university’s Emeritus Faculty. She is also a contributing expert to the Russian International Affairs Council’s online journal. She has a Master of Strategic Affairs (Hons) from ANU, a Master of Science (Hons) from London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD in Post-Soviet Russia from ANU.

She has worked as a journalist in Moscow, the UK, Berlin, Abu Dhabi, Afghanistan, the Thai Burma border and Australia. She has published five books of both fiction and non fiction, as well as poetry and articles in academic journals and the wider print media.

Book Launch:

The paperback of Dr Horsfield's most recent book, Russia in the Wake of the Cold War Perceptions and Prejudices (Lexington, US), to be published in March 2020, will be launched over drinks following the seminar.