About this Event
The King’s Russia Institute is pleased to announce a series of public lectures and discussions with Mikhail Fishman, the award-winning Russian journalist and author.
Over the course of 10 sessions throughout the academic year, Fishman will chart the arc of contemporary Russian political history, from the back-room deals that ushered Russia into the 21st century, to the assassinations and wars that gave shape to Russia’s troubled present.
Semester One
- 26 October, 17.00-18.30 — Bush House North East Room 1.03 — Operation ‘Successor’: A Transfer of Power, or a Counterrevolution? How Vladimir Putin Became President
- 27 October, 17.00-18.30 — Macadam Building Room MAC304 — From Managed Democracy to Dictatorship: How Vladimir Putin Took Control of Russia’s Institutions
- 7 December, 17.00-18.30 — Bush House North East Room 1.03 — The Road to Invasion: Vladimir Putin and His Repeated Attempts to Subjugate Ukraine
- 8 December, 18.00-19.30 — Bush House North East Room 1.01 — Voting in Russia: From Free Elections, through Administrative Pressure, to Mass Fraud
Semester Two (Dates, times and venues to be confirmed)
- Vladimir Putin and the Russian Media: From Total Freedom to Total Censorship
- Repression in Modern Russia: Political Logic and Ideological Rationale
- Russia After Bolotnaya: Alexei Navalny and Effective Resistance to Despotism
- Who Is Mr. Putin? Opportunism as the Engine of Russia’s Dictatorship and State Ideologization
- Putin and the West: From Partnership to a Besieged Fortress Mentality
- The Chechen Question and Its Role in Legitimizing Violence in Russia
SPEAKER
Mikhail Fishman is one of Russia's leading political journalists. Since the late 1990s, he has chronicled Russia's political life as editor-in-chief of Russian Newsweek and The Moscow Times, and as the host of the flagship weekly news programme on TV Rain, Russia's leading independent television channel. In 2017, he co-directed The Man Who Was Too Free, an award-winning documentary on Boris Nemtsov, which inspired his bestselling book The Successor (2022). Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Fishman left Russia and now lives and works in Amsterdam. The English translation of his book, The Successor, was published by Pushkin Press in January 2026.
Event venue & nearby stays
King's College London, Strand, London, United Kingdom
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