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After Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia in the last hours of 1999, American journalist Trudy Rubin famously asked “Who is Mr. Putin?” during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In this lecture, I will provide a more substantive answer to that question than the Russian officials were able to give Ms. Rubin. What is his background? How did this man, largely unknown to the public in Russia and abroad, come to power and cement his hold on power? How did he survive many internal and international crises: the 2008 global financial crisis, the covid pandemic, and the opposition protests since 2011?
Asya Pereltsvaig received a degree in English and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in Linguistics from McGill University. She taught at Yale, Cornell, and Stanford universities, and has been teaching in lifelong education programs since 2010. Her expertise is in language, culture, and history, and the relationship between them. Asya has published seven scholarly books with Cambridge University Press. Asya is a popular instructor for several Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes around the country and was the faculty host for the OLLI trip to the Baltic countries and St. Petersburg in July 2017.
