ILIA STATE UNIVERSITY

Events

​Public Lecture by Dr. Stefan Meister: “Contested Leadership - How Russia fails to integrate post-Soviet countries”

Events

On 12 November, 18:00 Dr. Stefan Meister, Head of the Heinrich Boell Foundation Tbilisi Office – South Caucasus Region will host a public lecture: Contested Leadership - How Russia fails to integrate post-Soviet countries.

Consecutive Russian leaderships have attempted to project power and influence in its „near abroad“. From Moscow’s perspective, all post-Soviet countries only have limited sovereignty. However, Russia’s declining economic power and the interest of the ruling elites in the post-Soviet countries to consolidate sovereignty lead to different contestation strategies. The success of these strategies depends on the countries’ resources, their geographic proximity to external players, and on the bargaining abilities of their elites. The more Russia tries to dominate its post-Soviet neighbours, the more it will push the countries further away. 

Dr. Stefan Meister is the head of the Heinrich Boell Foundation Tbilisi Office – South Caucasus Region since July 2019.

From January 2017 until March 2019 Dr. Stefan Meister was Head of the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). Previously, he worked as the head of the program for Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia at the DGAP and as a senior policy fellow in the Wider Europe Team at the European Council on Foreign Relations. In the term 2015/16 Meister was visiting fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington D.C. writing on Russian disinformation and propaganda. He has served several times as an election observer for the OSCE in post-Soviet countries. Meister studied International Relations and East European History in Jena, Leipzig and Nizhni Novgorod. He holds a PhD from Jena University with a thesis on the transformation of the Russian higher education and research system. His areas of research include Russian domestic, foreign, security and energy policy; EU-Russia relations; German-Russian relations, Eastern Partnership and post-Soviet conflicts particularly in the South Caucasus. He published as a co-author the books "The Eastern Question” (2016), “The Eastern Voices” (2017) and “The Russia File” (2018) all at Brookings press. In 2019 he co-authored “Geo-politics and security. A new strategy for the South Caucasus” (2019).

Language: English

Time: 12 November 2019, 18:00

Venue: Book House “Ligamus (32 Chavchavadze Avenue), Ilia State University 

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