The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad

Name: The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad
Start: 2019-10-24T12:00:00-0400
End: 2019-10-24T13:30:00-0400

RSVP Required Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

The Intelligence Project will host a lunch seminar with Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan from 12:00-1:30pm in the Allison Dining Room. Dr. Calder Walton will moderate.

Lunch will be provided on a first come, first served basis. Please RSVP below.

Date: Thu, Oct 24, 2019 Time: 12:00pm - 01:30pm Location: Taubman Building - Allison Dining Room, 5th Floor

Please join the Intelligence Project for a talk by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, on their latest book The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019).

In the book, Soldatov and Borogan examine the shifting role of Russian expatriates throughout history, and their complicated, unbreakable relationship with the mother country--be it antagonistic or far too chummy.

Since the late 19th century, Russians have been leaving the country in large numbers, creating the 2nd largest diaspora in the world – and a rare opportunity for the Kremlin and Moscow’s spymasters to foster a mass network of spies.

From a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017, the history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, and Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem.

Today, some émigrés have turned into assets of the resurgent Russian nationalist state, while others have taken up the dissident challenge once more--at their personal peril. From Trotsky to Litvinenko, this is the gripping history of Russian score-settling around the world.

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are Russian investigative journalists, the co-founders of Agentura.ru, and the authors of The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015) and The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2011).