Social Science Research Council

The second GSC Fellows’ Conference convened in Moscow, Russia, from September 29 to October 4, 2002. The conference brought together the 2002 cohort of fifteen GSC Dissertation and Professional Fellows, nine GSC Committee members, six GSC staff and SSRC President Craig Calhoun. This truly international group included participants from the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and even Australia. Lukas Haynes represented the MacArthur Foundation that funds this fellowship program. This annual event was a unique opportunity for everyone to meet face-to-face and to establish new professional relationships.

The primary purpose of the Fellows’ Conference was to allow vigorous discussions between the Committee and the Fellows about their individual research projects. This activity took up the first two days of the conference and proved to be most beneficial for everyone involved. In two parallel sessions, the Fellows individually presented their research projects and received valuable feedback from their peers and from the Committee, an extraordinary group of recognized senior scholars and practitioners from around the world.

This year's conference was intentionally held in Moscow in order to survey the many global issues in which the new Russia is a central player and to build useful and lasting relationships with the scholarly and practitioner community there. The program was intended to reflect the complexity of transformation that Russian society is undergoing today. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s have radically changed the geopolitics in Europe and ushered in a number of new factors impacting security not only regionally, but also globally. The diverse agenda included visits not only to the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Institute for US and Canadian Studies (ISKRAN), but also the human rights NGO Memorial, the Gorbachev Foundation.

The participants heard lectures and presentations on a number of different current topics that are relevant not only in the Russian context, but also globally. The extramural activities began at the Russian Academy of Sciences as the problem of interaction between academic and practitioner communities has underlined most activities within the GSC Program. A panel of representatives from several Russian NGOs debated cross-institutional learning between NGOs and the Academy, and testified to an emerging civil society in Russia. Sergei Arutiunov (RAS) discussed ethnic conflict in Russia with a focus on Chechnya, a theme that flooded media throughout the world just three weeks later with the Moscow theatre siege by Chechen militants. Nikita Petrov (Memorial) presented a captivating account of the history of Soviet political terror, of challenges to archival research work, and of the contemporary efforts of this human rights center to deal with the difficult past. Boris Demidov (Transparency International - Russia) addressed current national and regional efforts to combat corruption, and identified access to information by the general public as the most powerful tool. Four researchers from the Gorbachev Foundation, among them Gorbachev’s long-time interpreter Pavel Palazchenko, offered their views of the economic and social impact of globalization on Russia as an international actor and as a society facing a serious internal crisis. Several Committee members participated in a lively panel discussion on the “war on terrorism” that also involved Sergey Rogov and Valery Mazing of ISKRAN. The GSC program has previously engaged many of these themes, but the Russian perspective was new to most of us.

Housed at the grand Metropol Hotel and located just steps away from the Red Square, the participants were also able to explore Moscow’s famous sights and a good number ventured to a performance of Puccini’s Turandot at the Bolshoy Theatre. The highlight of the whole week was a private dinner with the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his long-time advisor Pavel Palazchenko on the closing night of the conference.


For more from the Conference, click on the following links:


Minutes from the “War on Terrorism” Discussion Panel at ISKRAN

“NGO and Academia - A Liaison between Amateurs and Professionals” (Text of Presentation by Tanya Lokshina, Moscow Helsinki Group)

Click here to View a Listing of GSC Fellows