F81E Ukraine & Russia I & II: Past, Present, and Future (Zoom; OLLI @ ASU)
Zoom | Available (Membership Required)
Russia shocked the world when Putin invaded Ukraine on Thursday, February 24, 2022. Few believed that Ukraine’s military would last a week. Backed by President Joe Biden’s strong alliance of the U.S. and Europe, the Ukrainian military has fought the Russian military to a virtual standstill. Since Donald Trump has assumed office in January 2025, he has jettisoned the U.S. alliances with NATO, Europe, and Ukraine. Europe is undergoing its most profound transformation since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The NATO military alliance was strengthened when Sweden and Finland joined, but since U.S. withdrawal, Germany is rearming, and Europe now seeks a nuclear umbrella with France and the U.K. Europe is ending 50 years of cheap oil, gas, and coal imports from Russia. Six million Ukrainians have been welcomed by Europe in its worst refugee crisis. These two talks are a briefing on the history of Ukraine and Russia’s relations, the war and sanctions thus far, peace talks and possible outcomes.
[PRESENTER] Hilde Hoogenboom, PhD, associate professor of Russian in the School of International Letters and Cultures (SILC) at ASU, with research on relationships between nineteenth-century Russian literature, culture, and history. She has a PhD from Columbia University and a Harriman Institute Certificate in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies. Hoogenboom is an expert on Catherine the Great and her memoirs, which she translated from French for Modern Library at Penguin Random House (2005). She studied and traveled extensively in the Soviet Union and in Russia, beginning in 1982, thanks to numerous federal research grants. Her articles and books have been supported by the National Humanities Center and Social Sciences Research Council. Her current project is on corruption and civil society in Russia from the eighteenth century to the present. Dr. Hoogenboom was on the board of the Association of Women in Slavic Studies and past president of the Eighteenth-Century Russian Studies Association.
*This registration item is ZOOM ONLY; there is not an in-person section of this course. It is offered and run by The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Arizona State University.*