Timeline: 50 Years of the Kennan Institute

Kennan Institute Founded

The Kennan Institute was founded as a division of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in December of 1974 through the joint initiative of Ambassador George F. Kennan, then Wilson Center Director James Billington, and historian S. Frederick Starr. Named in honor of Ambassador Kennan's relative, George Kennan "the Elder," a nineteenth century explorer of Russia and Siberia, the Kennan Institute is committed to improving American expertise and knowledge about Russia and Eurasia.

Ambassador Kennan was one of the most distinguished diplomats of the 20th Century. He relied on his intimate understanding of Russian history and culture to help shape the US national security strategy for the Cold War. The Kennan Institute has followed his example for five decades by putting knowledge into public service.  Learn more about Kennan's enduring legacy.

Left: Kennan Institute cofounders S. Frederick Starr, George F. Kennan, and James Billington.
Above: George Kennan "the Elder"
 

1975 - Nikolai Bolkhovitinov (1930-2008)
Bolkhovitinov (pictured left) was a prominent historian, pioneer of American Studies in the USSR, Honorary Foreign Member of the American Historical Association, and known as “the best Russian friend of American historians.” Read Nikolai Bolkhovitinov's biography by fellow Kennan alum Sergei Zhuk. 

1977 - Andrei Voznesensky (1933-2010)
Voznesensky (pictured right) was one of the greatest modern Russian poets, an iconic figure of the Khrushchev Thaw, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, who had been referred to by Robert Lowell as “one of the greatest living poets in any language.”

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

In December 1979, the Soviet Union began a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan to help its client Marxist-Leninist government consolidate control amid an intensifying political crisis in the country. The Soviet military campaign marked the beginning of a nine-year civil war which killed or displaced millions of Afghans and was a contributing factor to the decline and fall of the Soviet Union.

The Kennan Institute was an important hub of research and debate on the Soviet Union’s actions in the region, and their consequences for the United States and the rest of the world.

Listen to  a clip of President Jimmy Carter's remarks on the Soviet invasion from 1980.

Left: A unit of Soviet soldiers pictured prior to their withdrawal from Afghanistan, 1989.

Creation of Soviet-Eastern European Research and Training Act / The Title VIII Program

The Soviet-Eastern Europe Research and Training Act of 1983 (22 U.S.C. 4501-4508, as amended), also known as Title VIII, marked a major step forward in developing America’s knowledge of the Soviet Union. The act authorized the State Department to provide grant funding to advance research on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Title VIII funding led to the creation of fellowship programs for Eastern European studies, scholar exchange programs with the Soviet Union, language training, and other research activities.

Thanks to Title VIII, The Kennan Institute was able to greatly expand its resident scholar program to include younger scholars in the early stages of their careers. Today, in addition to approximately 900 American alumni, mainly supported by Title VIII, the Kennan Institute has over 400 alumni from Russia and over 120 from Ukraine.

Left: President Ronald Reagan delivers the State of the Union address to Congress in 1983.

Vasily Aksyonov (1932-2009)
Aksyonov (pictured far left) was a renowned novelist and one of the last dissidents to be expelled from the Soviet Union. He was a winner of the prestigious Russian Booker Prize and author of Generations of Winter, which the Washington Post called “the 20th-century equivalent of War and Peace.” 

Yuri Nagibin (1920-1994)
Nagibin (center, top) was a novelist and screenwriter, “author of understated, lyrical short stories in the tradition of Turgenev, Chekhov and Bunin” according to the New York Times, and co-author of the screenplay for Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1976.

James P. Scanlan (1927-2016)
Scanlan (center, bottom) was a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at Ohio State University from 1988-1991. A scholar of Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s philosophical ideas, Scanlan authored more than 170 publications in English and Russian and mentored several generations of Russian philosophy students.

Vladimir Soloukhin (1924-1997)
Soloukhin (right) was a prominent writer and one of the founders of the “village prose” movement in Soviet literature, famous for nostalgic depictions of Russian nature and rural life.

Mikhail Gorbachev Becomes Soviet Leader

On March 11, 1985, the Soviet Politburo appointed Mikhail Gorbachev as leader of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s tenure brought profound change to the Soviet Union with an agenda for internal reforms and a more constructive relationship with the United States. Gorbachev’s period in power ultimately concluded with the Soviet Union’s dissolution, an event for which he remains a figure of both enduring admiration around the world and resentment at home.

Gorbachev’s reform agenda enabled the Kennan Institute to expand its contacts within Russia and to host more scholars and experts from the country. This period helped forge new individual and institutional connections, including with President Gorbachev himself who served as the distinguished guest speaker at the Kennan Institute’s summit on the 15th anniversary of the Russian constitution in 2009.

Left: President Ronald Reagan meets with Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev at Hofdi House during the Reykjavik Summit in Iceland on October 11, 1986.

Above: Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev waves as he walks with Librarian of Congress and former Wilson Center Director James H. Billington on the U.S. Capitol grounds in 1992.

Chernobyl Disaster

Mistakes in safety testing within reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant just after midnight on April 26, 1986 triggered a catastrophic meltdown that precipitated the worst nuclear incident in history. The Chernobyl disaster deeply damaged the Soviet government’s reputation and contributed to the forces which ultimately tore it apart. It also left a lasting scar on the topography of modern Ukraine and the collective psyche of the Ukrainian people. The legacy of the catastrophe is still unfolding with the plant’s ruins serving as an unlikely battlefield during the initial phase of Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

The Kennan Institute has hosted several discussions about Chernobyl and its portrayal in the media, such as this look at Chernobyl's role in Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a conversation with "Chernobyl" HBO miniseries creator Craig Mazin.

Left: A photo of the destroyed Chernobyl reactor taken from a helicopter several months after the explosion in 1986.

Above: Craig Mazin speaks at the Wilson Center after a screening of the first episode of “Chernobyl.” 

Founding of Memorial Human Rights Organization

Memorial was founded in August 1987 as the Group for the Preservation of the Memory of Soviet Repression Victims, an NGO dedicated to securing justice for the millions of victims of the communist regime’s purges and abuses. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Memorial evolved into a Russian civil society organization dedicated to promoting democratization, human rights, and the rule of law.

Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, months after it was outlawed by the Putin government in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Listen to the Kennan Institute's discussion about the destruction of Memorial and what it means for the future of Russia.

1985 – Karen Dawisha (1949-2018)
Dawisha (left) was an outstanding political scientist and scholar of Russia, the founding director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University, and an author of multiple books, including the seminal Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?.

1987 – Liudmila Alexeeva (1927-2018)
Alexeeva (center) was a Soviet dissident and Russian human rights activist and a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. She received many awards for her work, including the French Order of the Legion of Honor, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize, described by Human Rights Watch as “the doyenne of Russia’s human rights movement” and “a clear, moral voice for freedom and dignity.”

1988 – Anna Frajlich-Zając
Frajlich-Zając (right) is an award-winning poet whose “literary roots lie deep in Polish, Jewish and American culture." She is the author of 18 books of poetry, five of them bilingual, Senior Lecturer Emerita of the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University, and recipient of the 2017 Wybitny Polak "Distinguished Pole in the United States" award, presented by the Polish Consulate in New York.

Blair A. Ruble Appointed as Kennan Institute Director

Blair Ruble began his tenure as the Kennan Institute's director in 1989. Not only is he the longest-serving director of the Kennan Institute (1989 to 2012), but he has also been associated with the Institute as staff member, scholar, and senior advisor for over four of the Institute’s five decades of existence. A specialist on urban studies and culture, Ruble’s tenure brought the greatest level of scholarly exchange with the entire region, the launch of the Institute’s program on Ukraine, and research that guided tens of millions of dollars of higher education support to regional university centers in Russia. His research today includes a series of articles on Ukraine’s cultural resilience through war.

Left: Kennan Institute directors at the 25th anniversary dinner in 2001. Standing (l to r): Program Secretaries and Directors Herbert J. Ellison (1983-85); Abbott “Tom” Gleason (1980-82); Peter Reddaway (1985-88); S. Frederick Starr (1975-80); Blair A. Ruble (1989-2012); John Glad (1982-83). Seated (l to r): Amb. George F. Kennan; Russian Federation Ambassador to the United States Yuri V. Ushakov.

Above: Blair Ruble speaks at the November 2023 launch for his book, The Arts of War: Ukrainian Artists Confront Russia.

Fall of the Berlin Wall 

The fortifications dividing East and West Berlin were breached by peaceful protestors on the night of November 9, 1989, bringing an end to the physical manifestation of divisions in European politics that defined the Cold War.

Browse the Wilson Center's collection of content related to the Berlin Wall, including a Wilson NOW looking back at the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years later.

Left: A large crowd of people gather on November 10, 1989, to observe the construction of the new border crossing in place of the Berlin Wall.

End of the Soviet Union

December 26, 1991, marked the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union. The USSR started to unravel several years earlier, with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Georgia declaring their independence in 1990. On December 8, 1991, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk (pictured second from left seated), Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich (third from left seated) and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (second from right seated) signed the Belovezh Accords to eliminate the USSR and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States. Mikhail Gorbachev finally resigned as leader of the Soviet Union on December 25, bringing to a close to the Soviet experiment after nearly seven decades.

Watch the Kennan Institute's event reflecting on the end of the Soviet Union 30 years later or learn more about the end of the Soviet Union from experts including former Ambassador to the Soviet Union John Matlock.

Kennan Institute Opens Office in Moscow, Russia

Kennan Institute opened its Moscow office soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. For twenty years, it helped the Institute maintain closer ties with the Russian alumni of its fellowship programs and facilitate cooperation between U.S. and Russian scholars. The Moscow office organized conferences and workshops, including the annual Starovoitova Readings that addressed human rights and legal developments in the Russian Federation. It also allocated research grants and served as a meeting place for scholars from different Russian regions and universities. From 2002-2013, the Moscow office published a biannual Russian-language periodical, Vestnik of the Kennan Institute in Russia. The Kennan Institute Russian Alumni Association, also created in 1993, helped foster a community of like-minded academics.

Left: Speakers from the Kennan Institute's Moscow office take part in a conference on Russian civil society together with the Gorbachev Foundation in 2007; Mikhail Gorbachev is seated center.

Above: A group photo with participants from the Kennan Institute's 2004 alumni conference in Moscow.

Audrey L. Altstadt
Altstadt (pictured far left) is a prominent historian, professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Chair of the Kennan Institute Advisory Council in 2016-2020, and author of dozens of articles on the politics, culture and history of Azerbaijan, as well as three books, including the 2017 Frustrated Democracy in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan.

Vladimir Voinovich (1932-2018)
Voinovich (center top) was a writer and dissident, stripped of his citizenship by Soviet authorities in 1981, author of the satirical novel The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin and dystopian satire Moscow 2042, who returned to Russia in 1990 and was an outspoken critic of the Putin regime.

Galina Starovoitova (1946-1998)
Starovoitova (center bottom) was a prominent Russian politician and human rights advocate, pioneer in urban anthropology whose academic research informed her public policy thinking, co-founder of the Democratic Russia movement, who James Billington called “a leader in both the political and intellectual life of post-Soviet Russia and not just a good but also a prophetic person”

Pilar Bonet 
Bonet (right) is a Spanish journalist who spent most of her career as a Moscow-based correspondent covering developments in the region for the newspaper El País between 1984 and 2021, recipient of multiple professional awards, author of several books, including Figures in a Red Landscape (1993) on Soviet citizens at a time of dramatic change and Náufragos del imperio (Castaways of the Empire, 2023) on the war in Ukraine.

1994-96: First Chechen War

Russian tanks rolled into Chechnya on December 11, 1994, to combat separatist forces fighting on behalf of the self-declared Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and assert Russian control over the region. Russia's violent bombardment of the Chechen capital of Grozny and the thousands of resulting civilian casualties shocked Russians at home and people watching from around the world. Russian forces failed to capture Chechnya after nearly two years of destructive urban warfare and more than 50,000 estimated civilian causalities. Russian and Chechen military leaders brought the war to its formal end by signing the Khasavyurt Accord in Dagestan on August 30, 1996.

Left: A church in Grozny, Chechnya, in 1994.

1994-1998: Shuttle–Mir Program

The Shuttle-Mir program was a collaborative U.S.-Russian program relying on the bilateral government agreements signed in 1992. Designed to foster cooperation between the two nations and their space agencies, it comprised eleven Space Shuttle missions, a joint Soyuz flight, and seven American astronauts spending almost 1,000 days together with Russian cosmonauts on board the Russian Mir orbital station. Referred to as Phase 1, the Shuttle-Mir Program paved the way for the International Space Station (ISS), the first module of which was launched in 1998 and which is scheduled to operate until the end of 2030.

To learn more about U.S.-Russian relations in space and how they have evolved over the years, watch the Kennan Institute’s event discussing the enduring legacy of Yuri Gagarin’s flight and its effects on popular culture and scientific innovation in the two countries, or listen to The Russia File podcast episode on the U.S.-Soviet space race and today’s newfound space enthusiasm.

Left: The Mir space station pictured in orbit above Earth in June 1998.

Above: Crewmembers Flight Engineer Pavel Vinogradov, Mission Specialist David Wolf, and Commander Anatoly Solovyev celebrate Christmas aboard the Mir space station in 1997.

Kennan Institute opens office in Kyiv, Ukraine

For twenty years, the Kyiv office held conferences, workshops, public lectures, book talks, and policy debates, strengthening the academic engagement, and increasing the visibility and impact of, the Kennan Institute and its alumni in Ukraine. From 2005-2017, the Kyiv office published the journal Agora on Ukrainian politics, economy, society, history, and culture. It also organized three Cultural Diplomacy Forums together with the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, five leadership programs for internally displaced students, and a variety of other important events and initiatives, including the 2015 Kennan Alumni Conference. The Kyiv office and the Ukrainian Association of Kennan Institute Alumni were instrumental in promoting a better understanding of Ukraine in the United States.

Left: Participants gather in spring 2015 for a joint event with the Kennan Institute's Kyiv Office, the Fulbright Office in Ukraine, and the Center for Russian Research.

Above: A cover image from Agora journal.

Maya Turovskaya (1924-2019)
Turovskaya (left) was a film and theater critic, historian, author and screenwriter, once called “the Susan Sontag of Soviet aesthetic thought.” She co-wrote with Mikhail Romm the 1965 documentary Triumph Over Violence about the rise and fall of fascism, and she authored books on German playwright Bertolt Brecht and Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky.

Alexander Etkind
Etkind (center) is a prominent historian and a professor at Central European University, whose research interests include political aspects of the Anthropocene, global decarbonization, memory studies, empires and decolonization, and various aspects of Russian history. He is the author of multiple books, including Russia Against Modernity (2023), Nature’s Evil: A Cultural History of Natural Resources (2021), and Warped Mourning (2013).

Ivan Kurilla
Kurilla (right) is a renowned historian and public intellectual, scholar of the United States and U.S.-Russian relations, as well as historical memory and historical politics. He is a former professor at European University at St. Petersburg, co-editor of Russian/Soviet Studies in the United States, Amerikanistika in Russia (2016), and author of multiple Russian-language books, including Americans and All the Rest: Origin and Meaning of the U.S. Foreign Policy (2024) and Battle for the Past: How Politics Changes History (2022).

Galina Starovoitova Fellowship established

The Galina Starovoitova Fellowship on Human Rights and Conflict Resolution was established following a speech given by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Moscow on January 25, 1999, in which she announced funding for a memorial fellowship in honor of Russian human rights advocate, parliament member, and Kennan Institute alumna Galina Starovoitova. Starovoitova served in the Congress of the Peoples' Deputies from 1989-1991, was a presidential advisor on ethnic relations until 1992, co-founded the Democratic Russia movement, and ran as a candidate in Russia's 1996 presidential elections. She was shot in St. Petersburg on November 20, 1998, by two unknown assassins.

Now in its 25th year, The Galina Starovoitova Fellowship continues to allow the Kennan Institute to host prominent scholars and policymakers from the Russian Federation who bridge the world of ideas and public affairs to advance human rights and conflict resolution.

Left: Galina Starovoitova speaks at a press conference on February 20, 1992.

Vladimir Putin Begins First Term as President of the Russian Federation

On May 7, 2000, Putin was officially inaugurated as the second president of the Russian Federation after his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, abruptly resigned during his annual New Years speech in 1999. Yeltsin had previously appointed Putin as the director of the FSB in 1998 (formerly known as the KGB) and had made Putin his chosen successor in 1997. However, a series of health setbacks combined with a near collapse of the Russian economy led to Yeltsin's ultimate resignation. By 2000, the geopolitical environment that Putin inherited was rampant with political pitfalls. Putin’s urgent challenges included improving the struggling Russian economy due to inflation and addressing civil unrest in the breakaway region of Chechnya, leading to large-scale conflict during Putin’s early years as president. Putin’s administration became notably more autocratic, with Putin further distancing himself from the West, increasing state censorship, and making moves to limit regional power of top officials. Regarding US foreign policy, Putin became more belligerent, leading to newly elected George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and weakening relations between the two nations.  

Read a 2001 interview with former Director Blair A. Ruble reflecting on Putin's first year in office.

Left: Vladimir Putin takes the presidential oath of office in St. Andrew Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace on May 7, 2000.

Rose Revolution in Georgia

On November 2, 2003, Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze rigged parliamentary elections, triggering nation-wide mass protests known as the Rose Revolution. The revolution consisted of primarily non-violent mass protests led by Mikhail Saakashvili, a political opponent of Shevardnadze. Saakashvili helped to galvanize the public to organize peaceful protests that instrumentally led to the establishment of free and fair elections. The Rose Revolution successfully ushered in new democratic reforms in Georgia and led to a peaceful transition of power with the democratically elected Saakashvili beginning his first term as president in 2004.  

The Kennan Institute continues to analyze democratic governance in Georgia, including recent podcast episodes on Georgia's European aspirations and its controversial "Foriegn Agents" law.

Left: Participants in the Rose Revolution wave flags outside the Georgian parliament building in Tbilisi.

Serhii Plokhii

Plokhii (top left) is a prominent historian, a leading authority on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, award-winning author of numerous books, including the New York Times bestseller The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (2015) and, most recently, The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History (2023). 

Ivan Pavlov

Pavlov (top center) is a human rights lawyer and activist, one of Russia’s top legal experts on matters related to state secrets, high treason, and espionage, who has represented wrongly accused clients in politically sensitive cases, founder of Department One community of lawyers and journalists, recipient of the 2015 Moscow Helsinki Group Award for defending human rights in court and the 2018 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism.

Stanislav Shushkevich (1934-2022)

A physicist by training, Shushkevich (top right) was a Belarusian politician, one of the three leaders who signed the 1991 Belovezh Accords dissolving the Soviet Union, the first head of state of independent Belarus who oversaw the democratic reforms in the country until 1994, and a vocal critic of his autocratic successor, President Lukashenka.

Kathleen E. Smith

Smith (bottom right) is a political scientist specializing in memory politics, as well as legal reform, civil society and participation in Russia, Associate Director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CERES) at Georgetown University, author of Moscow 1956: The Silenced Spring (2017), Mythmaking in the New Russia (2002), and Remembering Stalin’s Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR (1996).

William Taubman

Taubman (bottom left) is a renowned historian and political scientist, Bertrand Snell Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Amherst College, author of multiple books, including Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (2003), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gorbachev: His Life and Times (2017), a “masterpiece of narrative scholarship” according to Strobe Talbott.