Talking to ... Sergei Medvedev

While the harbingers were already visible long before, the
Russian invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that the days of
the comparatively peaceful post-war order are numbered.
Nevertheless, the calculations leading to all of this remain
largely mysterious. How could a society such as the Russian one
embark on such an adventure in which it reveals itself to the
world as a terrorist state? The historian Sergei Medvedev, who
saw the approaching catastrophe coming with his The Return of the
Russian Leviathan, goes back deep into Russia's history to
explain Putin's motivation - to figures such as Ivan the
Terrible, the Golden Horde and the Chekists, who personify the
legal State of Emergency. Medvedev's diagnosis, which sees Russia
as the unconscious of a spiritually eroding postmodern age, is
extremely dark. According to him, the invasion of Ukraine marked
the beginning of World War III, which began with the invasion of
Ukraine. 


Sergei Medvedev is an Affiliate Professor at Charles University
in Prague. Born in Moscow, he studied at Moscow University and
Columbia University in New York City. He specializes in political
history, international affairs, and Russian studies. After over
15 years as a Professor and Associate Dean at the Higher School
of Economics in Moscow, he left Russia in March 2022. For many
years, Sergei Medvedev was a contributing columnist to
Russian Forbes, Vedomosti, and The Republic and
filmed programs on history and culture for the
Russian Kultura TV and TV Rain. Since 2015, he has
been working for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where he hosts
the intellectual talk show Arkheologiya.


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