Russian/Eurasian Studies Program and Center for Civic Engagement Present
In the Shadow of Stalin: Trump and Power
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Olin Humanities, Room 202
6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Jonathan Brent
Executive director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; Visiting Alger Hiss Professor of History and Literature, Bard College
All authoritarian political figures and governments share many characteristics: suppression of free speech; intense loyalty to dictator, party and ideology; the concentration of power in a single individual, etc. Even so, wittingly or unwittingly, Trump’s manipulation of the media, attack on the intelligence community, his undermining of bureaucracy and normal governance process bear striking and uncanny resemblance to the strategies employed by Josef Stalin in his seizure of supreme power in Soviet Russia. In this lecture, I will discuss the mechanisms by which Stalin destroyed Soviet society and created a model of the first totalitarian state as a framework for understanding the threat Trump and his advisors pose to the future of democracy and liberal society.Executive director, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; Visiting Alger Hiss Professor of History and Literature, Bard College
For more information, call 845-758-7391, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 6:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Olin Humanities, Room 202