Jeffrey Gedmin is President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Inc. and in that capacity directs Broadcasting and Internet operations in 28 languages to countries stretching from Belarus to Bosnia and from the Arctic Sea to the Persian Gulf. Dr. Gedmin is author of the book "The Hidden Hand: Gorbachev and the Collapse of East Germany" (1992) and editor of a collection of essays titled "European Integration and the American Interest" (1997). He was also executive editor and producer of the award-winning PBS television program, "The Germans, Portrait of a New Nation" (1995) and co-executive producer of the documentary film titled "Spain's 9/11 and the Challenge of Radical Islam in Europe," aired on PBS in the spring of 2007. Jeffrey Gedmin has taught at Georgetown University and is an honorary professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the board of the Council for a Community of Democracies (Washington, D.C.) and the Program of Atlantic Security Studies (Prague, Czech Republic), Gedmin holds a PhD. in German Area Studies and Linguistics from Georgetown University.

Dr. Gedmin's piece "Reporting Among Gangsters" on human rights violations perpetrated against journalists in Central Asia, appeared in the July 2, 2008 edition of the Washington Post.

Professor Gardner discusses Ukraine's rise since its 'dramatic' recession in the 90s. He interprets this particularly from the perspective of the economy while examining other factors such as football and Ukraine's relationship with Russia. Professor Gardner also looks at Ukraine's integration with Europe and possible ascension into the EU.

Synopsis

Professor Gardner discusses Ukraine’s rise and possible ascension into the EU. Initially, he focuses on the dreadful state of the Ukrainian economy throughout the 1990s, with 20% lost before its independence and a steady 9% annual loss in growth. Gardner identifies the turning point as 2000 where Prime Minister Yushchenko’s reform package transitions the country onto a growth path, now steadily growing at an annual 7%. However, although Gardner says the country has caught up what it has lost, it is still below the transition country average and faces both internal and external challenges. These include skyrocketing inflation, large current account deficit, depreciation of currency, and a substantial trade deficit. In addition, Ukraine’s internal political chaos has led to unreliability in the country’s policy constancy. Externally, Ukraine is caught between a reluctant EU and an aggressive Russia as Dr. Gardner puts it.

The latter half of Professor Gardner’s talk focuses primarily on Ukraine’s integration with Europe. He notes the various ratings Ukraine receives as a transition country in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Overall, Ukraine received a three out four in the transition index. He explains increasing mobile phone use, bank reform, small scale business success, and price liberalization as Ukraine’s strengths on the scale. On the other hand, Ukraine’s weaknesses lie partly in its competition policy and the riskiness of the Ukrainian Stock Exchange. He also cites various key integration signals such as Ukraine’s co-hosting of the 2012 Euro Championship football tournament and its exports to Europe. Professor Gardner believes for Ukraine to make the EU list it will have to raise its EBRD score and rewrite its constitution.

Prof. Gardner also kindly took questions and further discussed a variety of issues. One notable point was that when asked what single move could substantially shift the nation forward and away from Russia, Professor Gardner identified further opening the trade relationship with Europe by reducing trade barriers as key. He also addressed internal political conflict, language issues, and referendums.

This event is sponsored jointly by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and the Forum on Contemporary Europe.

Tensions between President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko came to a head in September, and the Orange parliamentary coalition broke up. What does this mean for Ukraine's political future, and for its ability to meet its key foreign policy challenges?

Steven Pifer is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a (non-resident) senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. A retired Foreign Service officer, his more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as on arms control and security issues. His assignments included deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (2001-2004), ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000), and special assistant to the president and National Security Council senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia (1996-1997). He also served at the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Moscow and London, as well as with the U.S. delegation to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces negotiations in Geneva. He holds a B.A. in economics from Stanford University, where he later spent a year as a visiting scholar at Stanford's Institute for International Studies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

This event is jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Dan Diner is Professor of Modern European History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Director of the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University Leipzig. He is also a member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences, and served previously as Director of the Institute for German History at Tel Aviv University. Professor Diner is the author of numerous articles and books on the history of the 20th century, the Near East, and German history, especially the history of National Socialism and the Shoah as well as Jewish history. He is the Editor of the Yearbook of the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, and coeditor of Babylon.

This event is sponsored jointly by the Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Stanford Humanities Center.

9/18/08: ** THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED **

President Viktor Yushchenko has cancelled his trip to California and will no longer deliver a lecture in the Bechtel Conference Center on September 25, 2008. This event has been cancelled.


Thank you for your interest. We look forward to welcoming you to future programs.

Sincerely,

Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
Forum on Contemporary Europe
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

10:30 AM: Film screening - Hideg Napok [Cold Days]

12:00: Seminar

Synopsis

My purpose is to discuss three cases of violent resistance attacks followed by harsh reprisals in three different countries during World War II. Through their admittedly complicated stories, these bloody events should shed light on the legal, moral, and political dilemmas of military occupation, resistance, reprisal, and postwar retribution in Europe. I am referring here

1. to maquis attacks on the German forces during the Normandy invasion and the massacres SS soldiers perpetrated in reprisal at Oradour-sur-Glane in central-western France;
   
2. Communist partisan attack on German military policemen in Via Rasella in Rome, and the subsequent execution by the SS of 335 Italian hostages at the Ardeatine Cave; and
   
3. Serbian Chetnik attacks, early in 1942 on the Hungarian military who, in alliance with Germany, had occupied and re-annexed a part of northern Yugoslavia.
   

I will discuss as well the retaliatory massacres that Hungarian soldiers and gendarmes committed in or near the city of Novi Sad.

The events at Oradour and at Via Rasella/Ardeatine Cave are impeccably described in their Wikipedia internet entries. Further readings are Sarah Farmer, “Postwar Justice in France: Bordeaux 1953,” in István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt, eds., The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath (Princeton U. Press, 2000, pp.194-211) and, by the same author, Martyred Village: Commemorating the 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane (U. of California Press, 1999). On the events in Italy, see Alessandro Portelli, The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (Macmillan, 2003). Literature on the Ujvidék/Novi Sad events is extremely skimpy even in Serbian and Hungarian. However, just before the seminar meeting, I will be showing the 1966 Hungarian film, Hideg napok [Cold days], a semi-fictional documentary whose main characters are Hungarian officers awaiting their extradition to Yugoslavia for crimes they had committed during the war in the Novi Sad region.

Although this talk maintains an awareness of the issues surrounding the legality and morality of war, particularly in reference to these three events, its focus is primarily description of the incidents.

Prof. Deak aims to engage in the problems of legality and morality of war when answering questions. In the discussion session, Prof. Deak particularly explores the massacres in villages in northern Italy with much emphasis on how the memories of such events have played out since. Prof. Deak also explores how pro-Nazi eastern European countries dealt with the end of the war and the fall of the Nazi regime.