The Wilson Center Mourns the Passing of Peter Reddaway

The Wilson Center community mourns the passing of former Kennan Institute Director Peter Reddaway, who led the Kennan Institute from 1986-89. Peter came to the Kennan Institute from the London School of Economics and went on to teach at George Washington University. During his time with the Kennan Institute, he oversaw a major expansion in the number of scholars and events hosted by the Institute. He was a renowned scholar of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union, particularly on the issue of the Soviet government practice of using psychiatric hospitals to imprison and repress dissidents. He published The Dissidents: A Memoir of Working with the Resistance in Russia, 1960-1990 in 2020.

Peter’s long study of the region shaped his thinking of the Kennan Institute’s present and future (featured in the Spring 2024 Wilson Quarterly):

The gradual, if inconsistent, easing of Soviet, then Russian domestic and foreign policy from 1986 to 1999, suggests that Russia's growing autocracy under Vladimir Putin may not extend beyond the end of the 2020's, when more liberal tendencies could easily resurface. The West, and the Kennan Institute, must look for such signs and discreetly encourage them. If inviting liberals from Russia to visit proves impractical, then the West should return to the patience of prior eras. It can always work with Russians already in the West, who want to return, but only to a more liberal Russia. The West should also strengthen contacts with intellectuals in Ukraine, the Baltic republics, Moldova, and the less autocratic countries of Central Asia.---Peter Reddaway

The Wilson Center community will miss Peter’s judgment and wisdom.

The Kennan Institute is the premier US center for advanced research on Eurasia and the oldest and largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Institute was co-founded in 1974 as a joint initiative of Ambassador George F. Kennan, then Wilson Center Director James Billington, and historian S. Frederick Starr. The Institute was named in honor of Ambassador Kennan's relative, George Kennan "the Elder" (1845-1924), a nineteenth-century explorer of Russia and Siberia.