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ICFRC: From Victimhood to Aggression: Russia's Path to War Against Ukraine

Listen to an audio podcast of this program.

In this presentation, Professor Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (KCL) presents the key ideas and arguments from her book The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity (2020) about the political transformation that Russia has undergone over the past ten-fifteen years. Specifically, the focus is on the socio-psychological analysis of the central pillars of Putin's leadership including the propagation of ressentiment in the society by constructing the trauma of the 1990s and appealing to the main pillars of Soviet collective identity.

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Professor of Russian Politics and Director of Russia Institute at King's College London. She has recently published The Red Mirror: Putin's Leadership and Russia's Insecure Identity (Oxford University Press, 2020) that explores issues of authoritarian legitimation in Russia relying on social identity theory. She has a forthcoming new book: The Aftermath of the Soviet Man: Rethinking Homo Sovieticus (Bloomsbury Press). Gulnaz holds a PhD from the George Washington University, and speaks fluent Russian, Tatar and English. Gulnaz was born in Tatarstan, Russia.

For more information about the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, visit icfrc.org.

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