As part of Pushkin House Book Prize 2021, we are delighted to welcome Archie Brown to speak about his shortlisted book The Human Factor. Archie will be in conversation with Samuel Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London and a Pushkin House trustee. The discussion will be in front of a live audience at Pushkin House as well as to those who wish to join online.
The Human Factor offers an analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War’s ending, which shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. The Cold War got colder in the early 1980s and the relationship between the two military superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, each of whom had the capacity to annihilate the other, was tense. By the end of the decade, East-West relations had been utterly transformed, with most of the dividing lines – including the division of Europe – removed. Engagement between Gorbachev and Reagan was a crucial part of that process of change. More surprising was Thatcher’s role.
Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy, and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of numerous books on the former Soviet Union and its demise, including The Gorbachev Factor (1996) and The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009), both of which won both the Alec Nove Prize and the Political Studies Association’s W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize for best politics book of the year.
Read our Q&A with Archie Brown
Samuel Greene is professor in Russian politics and Director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London. Prior to moving to London in 2012 to join King’s, he lived and worked in Moscow for 13 years, most recently as director of the Centre for the Study of New Media & Society at the New Economic School, and as deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. His most recent book, co-authored with Graeme Robertson, is Putin v the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia, published in 2019 by Yale University Press. He regularly contributes opinion and analysis pieces to general interest publications, such as The Washington Post, The Moscow Times, Foreign Policy, The New Statesman and others, and is a frequent commentator in British, American, Russian and European broadcast and print media. Alongside his work at King’s, Sam is an Associate Fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a Trustee of Pushkin House, and Editor-in-Chief of Russian Politics & Law.
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