USM Professor to Give Lecture Sept. 29 on Gorbachev Legacy and Putin’s War in Ukraine

Wed, 09/28/2022 - 01:05pm | By: David Tisdale

Though many consider the late Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev and current Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin two very different types of leaders, they shared similar philosophies about Ukraine in their opposition to its existence as a separate state outside of the Russian sphere of influence.

On Thursday, Sept. 29, University of Southern Mississippi (USM) Associate Professor of History Brian LaPierre will give the lecture "The Death of Gorbachev and the Origins of Putin's War in Ukraine” at 5:30 p.m. in room 101 of the Liberal Arts Building on the Hattiesburg campus. It may also be accessed online via Webex at https://usm.webex.com/usm/j.php?MTID=mdde524942b3f293a8894f3e72b295ab4.

When it was announced at the end of last month, the death of Mikhail Gorbachev seized global headlines. Gorbachev’s death served not only as a chance to take stock of his legacy and accomplishments, but also became an opportunity to lament at the current situation in Russia and to push back against Putin’s illiberal autocracy.

Gorbachev (L) and Putin (R) in discussion.

“In countless media tributes, journalists have presented Gorbachev and Putin as mirror opposites,” Dr. LaPierre said. “Gorbachev gave new freedoms to the peoples of the USSR and democratized a totalitarian system; Putin stripped those freedoms away and resurrected a dictatorial regime. Gorbachev ended the Cold War peacefully and sought better relations with the West; Putin started the largest land war in Europe since WWII and plunged relations with the West to a new nadir.

“Despite the very real differences between these leaders, however, there is one area in which both men have some counterintuitive common ground: they both opposed Ukrainian independence and worked—each in their own way—to undermine it. In this lecture, I’ll explore these similarities to uncover the origins of the current war in Ukraine.”

Dr. LaPierre is the author of "Hooligans in Khrushchev's Russia: Defining, Policing, and Producing Deviance during the Thaw." He has conducted significant archival research in Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe. 

The USM History program is housed in the College of Arts and Science’s School of Humanities. Learn more about the program at https://www.usm.edu/humanities/index.php.