At Harvard, celebrating 25th anniversary of Soviet collapse

Veterans of the 1991 Soviet collapse met at Harvard University to mark the 25th anniversary of their disparate efforts to take down the USSR. Gennady Burbulis (right) was Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s right-hand man who was instrumental in arranging for Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia to secede from the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991, thus … Read more

Portrait of Putin’s past

by J Michael Waller, Perspective (Boston University), Vol. X, No. 3, February 25, 2000. Why is so little known about the KGB career of Russia’s acting President Vladimir Putin? Most reporting on both sides of the Atlantic is thinly sourced, if sourced at all, and often conflicting. Was Putin a professional foreign intelligence cadre officer whose … Read more

Yeltsin keeps it all in the family (on the rise of Putin)

by J Michael Waller, Insight, September 6, 1999 Download PDF: IM Rise of Putin 1999.09.06 Boris Yeltsin has named the head of the secret police, Vladimir Putin, as his latest prime minister, raising fundamental concerns about the direction Russia is taking. As a KGB officer he oversaw the Stasi secret police in Communist East Germany. He led … Read more

Primakov’s imperial line

By J Michael Waller, Perspective (Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology and Policy), January-February 1997. Russian foreign policy has become more consistent and predictable since Yevgeni Primakov succeeded Andrei Kozyrev as foreign minister in January 1996. Moscow’s diplomacy today shows a tendency toward greater integration between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the … Read more