IFFS PLAY

Full title: Russia, Ukraine, and our world of competing visions. Can civil society counter oligarchic capitalism? Research seminar with Janine R. Wedel, University Professor, Schar School of Policy and Government,George Mason University. Also: Visiting Scholar, Institute for Futures Studies, Stockholm and Fellow at Hertie School of Governance, Berlin Abstract Russia's invasion of Ukraine has spotlighted two different civilizational paths. What do these rival views of civilization portend, not only for Ukrainian and Russian society, but for all of us? Janine R. Wedel, a social anthropologist who has studied Ukraine and Russia since the early 1990s (after spending much of the 1980s in communist Poland), traces the rise of oligarchic capitalism in Russia and Ukraine over the past 30+ years—and discusses its spread to Western democracies and beyond. Her talk explores Ukrainian civil society and how it has developed over the same period, serving as a counterweight to corruption and oligarchic influence.