Should the West Engage Putin's Russia?

ABOUT THE DEBATERS

VLADIMIR POZNER is a veteran journalist and bestselling author. He is the host of the top-rated weekly current affairs program on Channel One — Russia’s largest TV network. Named the “Voice of Moscow” by CNN, he is a regular commentator on Russia and the Cold War in Western media. He is also the author of a number of bestselling books, including Parting with Illusions and Eyewitness: A Personal Account of the Unraveling of the Soviet Union. Pozner has won multiple awards, including three Emmy certificates and nine TEFY awards. He was also a correspondent for NBC during the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, and has been a frequent guest on Western media analyzing the conflict in Ukraine and the partition of Crimea.

STEPHEN F. COHEN is professor emeritus of politics and Russian studies at Princeton University and professor emeritus of Russian studies and history at New York University. He is the author of a number of widely acclaimed books on Russia, including Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience; and, most recently, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War. His new book Why the Cold War Again? will be published in 2015. Cohen is also a contributing editor to The Nation magazine and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other American and international publications.

ANNE APPLEBAUM is a journalist and leading expert on Russia. She was a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post between 2002 and 2006 and her writing has appeared in the New Yorker and the New Republic, among others. She is the author of several books about central and eastern Europe, including Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, and Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956, which won the 2013 Cundill Prize in Historical Literature. Both books were nominated for the National Book Award. Her foreign affairs column appears biweekly in the Washington Post and Slate, and is syndicated around the world. Applebaum is currently the director of the Transitions Forum at the Legatum Institute.

GARRY KASPAROV came to international fame in 1985 as the youngest chess champion ever, at the age of twenty-two. He broke Bobby Fischer’s rating record in 1990 and his own peak rating record remained unbroken until 2013. He retired from competitive chess in 2005 to join the vanguard of the Russian pro-democracy movement. He founded the United Civil Front and organized the Marches of Dissent to protest the repressive policies of Vladimir Putin. In 2012, Kasparov was elected to the Coordinating Council of the united opposition movement and named chairman of the New York–based Human Rights Foundation, succeeding Vaclav Havel. Kasparov has been a contributing editor to the Wall Street Journal since 1991 and is a frequent commentator on politics and human rights. His book on decision-making, How Life Imitates Chess, is available in over twenty languages.