Dr. Kullberg is Professor of Political Science at EMU and Faculty Associate of the University of Michigan’s Center for Russian and East European Studies. She conducted the first focus group study of Soviet elite ideology in 1991 and participated as an investigator in Harvard University’s study of Russia’s first competitive national elections in 1993. In 2007, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Samara, Russia.

The presentation will seek to explain the long-term trajectory of Russian politics. It will address four major questions: Why did communism collapse? Why did democracy not take root in Russia? How has Vladimir Putin managed to roll back the democratic reforms of the late 1980s and 1990s and return the country to dictatorship? Is
Russia somehow a prisoner of its own authoritarian past, or is a return to democracy possible?

This is the fifth in a six-lecture series. The subject is Russia – Unriddled. The next lecture will be October 27, entitled THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY IN THREE ACTS