Five members of the club presented their books to round up the first day of the 11th Annual Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi.
The authors were Angela Stent, Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service; Piotr Dutkiewicz, Director of the Center for Governance and Public Policy at Carleton University; Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent at Canterbury; Nikolai Zlobin, President and Founder of the Center on Global Interests in Washington, D.C.; and Mikhail Delyagin, Director of the Moscow-based Institute of Globalization Studies.
In his introduction, moderator Piotr Dutkiewicz stressed the importance of such research for the club, which is on its way to becoming an international think-tank. It should be specifically noted that one of the presented books, edited by Dutkiewicz and Sakwa, can be considered the first ever book published entirely under the aegis of the Valdai Club, which holds copyright to the book.
Eurasian Integration - The View from Within presents a multicultural view of the Eurasian integration. The authors truly represent the Eurasian community and include five Russians, three Chinese, three Kazakhstanis, four Ukrainians, one Belarusian and one author from the EU.
The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First Century written by Angela Stent won the prestigious Douglas Dillon prize for Books of Distinction on the Practice of American Diplomacy. The author describes the numerous challenges of the Russian-US relations and contemplates on two eternal Russian questions: who is to blame and what is to be done?
Richard Sakwa, author of Putin Redux , makes another attempt at uncovering the phenomenon of Putin. He believes it is incorrect to see the Russian President only in black and white. It is more important to understand the deep motives of his behavior and the paradoxes of his rule.
Mikhail Delyagin in his book “Vremya Pobezhdat” (Time to Win) analyzes the reasons for the West’s negative attitude towards Russia. Although the book was published before the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis, the author stresses the currency of the issue because confrontation between Russia and the West began long before the events in Ukraine. Also in his work, Delyagin looks at the nature of the Russian liberal movement.
Like Sakwa, Nikolai Zlobin and his co-author Vladimir Solovyov try to understand the nature of the power in Russia. Their “Russky Virazh – Kuda Idet Rossiya” (The Russian Curve: Where is Russia Going?) gives a global and historical perspective of the current situation in Russia. According to the authors, the Putin phenomenon is very common in the Russian history.
The book presentation was followed by debates. Many members of the audience had questions and shared their opinions on the authors’ concepts.
