Speakers: The End(s) of Communism

Dorottya Baczoni is a doctoral candidate at Eötvös Loránd University. She received her B.A. degrees in History and French from Eötvös Loránd University in 2012 and in International Studies from Corvinus University of Budapest in 2013. She earned her M.A. in History with a Modern Hungarian History specialization from Eötvös Loránd University in 2014. She first began working at the House of Terror Museum in 2009 before going on to serve as a staff historian from 2014 to 2016. Between 2018 and 2019 she was Head of the Department for Strategic Planning and Analysis at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary. In 2019 she returned to the House of Terror Museum and since March 2021 she has been the director of the Institute of the Twentieth Century, which cooperates closely with the House of Terror Museum and is under the management of the same foundation.

Milda Matačiūnaitė-Boyce is Director of Fellowship Programs at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), where she leads VOC’s fellowship programs, engaging and supporting research scholars and emerging experts in the fields dedicated to work related to the history of communism, post-communist transition, and the legacy and impact of communism in current affairs. Previously Ms. Boyce served as Director of Transatlantic Leadership at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), where she led CEPA’s transatlantic fellowship programs, strengthening the Institute’s commitment to developing the next generation of emerging leaders based on transatlantic values and principles. Her expertise includes public diplomacy, strategic communication, transatlantic relations, and Baltic security strategy and foreign policy. Ms. Boyce holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Minor in Russian language from the University of Tennessee with a focus on International Relations. She studied communications and information science at Vilnius University, Lithuania. Previously, she worked at the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Washington, DC. She speaks fluent Lithuanian, Russian, and is proficient in French.

Ambassador Andrew Bremberg is the President and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Previously Ambassador Bremberg served as the Representative of the United States to the Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva. Ambassador Bremberg has a long history of public service. Prior to his work at the UN, he served as Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council for the Executive Office of the President. He previously served as Policy Advisor and Counsel on Nominations for the Office of Senate Majority Leader. He also worked for the non-profit MITRE Corporation as a senior health policy-analyst and department manager, and for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Ambassador Bremberg earned a B.A. from Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio and a J.D. from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He and his wife Maria have four children and live in Virginia.

Janusz Bugajski is a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington DC and host of the television show “New Bugajski Hour” broadcast in the Balkans. Bugajski has authored 20 books on Europe, Russia, and trans-Atlantic relations. His recent books include Eurasian Disunion: Russia’s Vulnerable Flanks (with Margarita Assenova) (2016); Conflict Zones: North Caucasus and Western Balkans Compared (2014); Return of the Balkans: Challenges to European Integration and U.S. Disengagement (2013); and Georgian Lessons: Conflicting Russian and Western Interests in the Wider Europe (2010). His current book project is entitled Failed State: Planning for Russia’s Rupture (2022). Bugajski has been a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and a course chair for South Central Europe Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State. He has testified before several Congressional Committees, including: Helsinki Commission, Senate Foreign Relations, Senate Armed Services, House Foreign Affairs, and House Defense Appropriations. He is also a columnist or contributor to media outlets in the United States, the United Kingdom, Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Kosova, and Ukraine.

In the course of his forty-year Foreign Service career, Ambassador Fried played a key role in designing and implementing American policy in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. As Special Assistant and NSC Senior Director for Presidents Clinton and Bush, Ambassador to Poland, and Assistant Secretary of State for Europe (2005-09), Ambassador Fried helped craft the policy of NATO enlargement to Central European nations and, in parallel, NATO-Russia relations, thus advancing the goal of Europe whole, free, and at peace. During those years, the West’s community of democracy and security grew in Europe. Ambassador Fried helped lead the West’s response to Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine starting in 2014: as State Department Coordinator for Sanctions Policy, he crafted U.S. sanctions against Russia, the largest U.S. sanctions program to date, and negotiated the imposition of similar sanctions by Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia. Ambassador Fried became one of the U.S. government’s foremost experts on Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. While a student, he lived in Moscow, majored in Soviet Studies and History at Cornell University (BA magna cum laude 1975) and received an MA from Columbia’s Russian Institute and School of International Affairs in 1977. He joined the U.S. Foreign Service later that year, serving overseas in Leningrad (Human Rights, Baltic affairs, and Consular Officer), and Belgrade (Political Officer); and in the Office of Soviet Affairs in the State Department. As Polish Desk Officer in the late 1980s, Fried was one of the first in Washington to recognize the impending collapse of Communism in Poland, and helped develop the immediate response of the George H.W. Bush Administration to these developments. As Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw (1990-93), Fried witnessed Poland’s difficult but ultimately successful free market, democratic transformation, working with successive Polish governments. Ambassador Fried also served as the State Department’s first Special Envoy for the Closure of the Guantanamo (GTMO) Detainee Facility. He established procedures for the transfer of individual detainees and negotiated the transfers of 70 detainees to 20 countries, with improved security outcomes. Ambassador Fried is currently a Weiser Family Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is also on the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy and a Visiting Professor at Warsaw University. Dan Fried has been married to Olga Karpiw since 1979; they have two children (Hannah and Sophie), and are the besotted grandparents of Ava Helen and Zora Fried Hanley.

Dr. Hope M. Harrison is Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University. She is an expert on the history of the Berlin Wall, Cold War, and the Soviet Union. Dr. Harrison is the author of two books: Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-61; and After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present as well as a 9-part Audible lecture series, The Berlin Wall: A World Divided. She has been featured widely on CNN, C-SPAN, BBC, the History Channel and Deutschlandradio and is on the board of three German museums or memorials connected with Cold War history.

Hubertus Jahn is Reader in the History of Russia and the Caucasus in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Jahn holds an MA from the University of Munich, a PhD from Georgetown University and a second doctorate (Habilitation) from the University of Erlangen. He has taught at universities in the USA, Germany, and the UK. His research covers much of Russian history, with a focus on social and cultural aspects, as well as the history of the Caucasus. His current project explores the imperial scenarios and aesthetic representations of the Russian Empire in the South Caucasus. Among his many publications are Patriotic Culture in Russia during World War I, a study of patriotic manifestations in elite and mass culture in Russia during the First World War, Armes Russland: Bettler und Notleidende in der russischen Geschichte vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart, an interdisciplinary study of begging and poverty in Russia from the Middle Ages to the present and, most recently, an edited volume Identities and Representations in Georgia from the 19th Century to the Present.

Igor Janke is a journalist, political analyst, and the founder and president of the Freedom Institute (Instytut Wolności), an independent think tank in Warsaw. He is also the founder of the Institute’s Leadership School, a professional development program for emerging Polish leaders and changemakers with more than 600 alumni. The author of three books, he previously served as chief editor of the Polish News Agency, political editor of Rzeczpospolita, and the director of Salon24.pl. He recently created a podcast called “Open System.”

Géza Jeszenszky is a Hungarian historian and politician, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and a former ambassador to the United States, Norway and Iceland. He holds degrees in history and English, library sciences, and a Ph.D., all from Eötvös Loránd University. In 1984-86 he was Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Wilson Center guest scholar in 1985. He was previously a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Warsaw and the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvar. Amb. Jeszenszky was a founding member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), the first organization after 1956 to challenge the one-party communist system. After MDF won in the competitive parliamentary elections of 1990, Prime Minister Antall appointed him Minister of Foreign Affairs. He subsequently served as President of the Hungarian Atlantic Council from 1995 to 1998. He is the author of many works, including Lost Prestige. The Changing Image of Hungary in Britain, 1894-1918; Post-Communist Europe and Its National/Ethnic Problems; July 1944. Deportation of the Jews of Budapest Foiled. His book on Hungary’s relations with its neighbours in the years since the collapse of communism (Kísérlet a trianoni trauma orvoslására. Magyarország szomszédsági politikája a rendszerváltozás éveiben) came out in 2016.

Mark Kramer is Director of the Cold War Studies program at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He is an expert on the history of the Cold War, the Soviet Union, and political and economic change in post-communist Eastern Europe. He is the author and/or editor of several books and has written nearly 200 articles on a variety of topics. He has worked extensively in newly opened archives in all the former Warsaw Pact countries and several Western countries. He edits both the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series and the peer-reviewed Journal of Cold War Studies.

Arnaud Kurze is Associate Professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University. His scholarly work on transitional justice in the post-Arab Spring world focuses particularly on youth activism, art and collective memory. He is currently a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, studying youth resilience in North Africa and the Middle East (MENA). He has worked in and on the Balkan and MENA regions and has published widely in academic journals. He has also contributed to edited volumes, and is author of several reports on foreign affairs for government and international organizations. He is the co-editor of the book, New Critical Spaces in Transitional Justice: Gender, Art & Memory. He is currently co-writing a book on Mapping Global Justice: Perspectives, Cases and Practice forthcoming with Routledge and regularly contributes analyses and op-ed articles online for think tanks and other institutions. He has been the recipient of many awards and fellowships.

Irena Lasota is an author, editor, political activist, and president/co-director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe (IDEE), an organization that actively supported anti-communist opposition movements in Poland and most of the countries of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Lasota left Poland in 1970 and came to the US as a political refugee. She is a frequent commentator on Polish and American political affairs and has a weekly column in Polish paper Rzeczpospolita. She has an MPhil in political science from Columbia University.

Dr. Chelsea (“Chels”) Michta is a Research Fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. She recently earned her doctorate from the University of Cambridge where she wrote her dissertation on political realignments in Poland during and after the post-communist transition. In 2019 she was a Title VIII Central/East European Area Studies Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and has held internships at Freedom House, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Michta received her BA from Amherst College and her MPhil from Cambridge..

Andrew Nagorski is an award-winning journalist and author who spent more than three decades as a foreign correspondent and editor for Newsweek. From 2008 to April 2014, he was vice president and director of public policy for the EastWest Institute, an international affairs think tank. Nagorski is now based in St. Augustine, Florida but continues to travel extensively, writing for numerous publications. His most recent books -- Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power, The Nazi Hunters, and 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War -- have all received rave reviews. From 1990 to 1994, he served as Newsweek's Warsaw bureau chief, and he has served two tours of duty as Newsweek's Moscow bureau chief, first in the early 1980s and then from 1995 to 1996. In 1982, he gained international notoriety when the Soviet government, angry about his enterprising reporting, expelled him from the country. After spending the next two and a half years as Rome bureau chief, he became Bonn bureau chief. He is chairman of the board of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation, a member of the board of the Jacksonville World Affairs Council, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Overseas Press Club. In 2009, Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski presented Nagorski with the newly created Bene Merito award for his reporting from Poland about the Solidarity movement in the 1980s. In 2011, Poland's President Bronislaw Komorowski awarded him the Cavalry Cross for the same reason. In 2014, Poland’s former President and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa presented the “Lech Walesa Media Award” to Nagorski “for dedication to the cause of freedom and writing about Poland’s history and culture.”

Kristina Olney is the Director of Government Relations for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) and leads VOC’s engagement with U.S. federal and state policymakers, embassies, and advocacy initiatives with human rights allies and captive nations constituencies. Kristina regularly advises executive branch officials, Members of Congress and their staff, state lawmakers, and global human rights bodies and liaises with diplomatic officials and advocacy allies. From 2014 to 2017, Kristina served as the Director of Government Relations of In Defense of Christians, an organization she helped establish dedicated to the protection and preservation of religious minorities in the Middle East. Kristina led the grassroots advocacy initiatives with diaspora constituencies from dozens of U.S. states and policy initiatives with allies which directly led to the recognition of the ISIS genocide against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious minorities by the U.S. government. Prior to directing human rights advocacy for nonprofit organizations, Kristina worked on foreign affairs and religious freedom issues on Capitol Hill for two years. She helped direct the government relations efforts for the federal U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and prior to that served in Congress as a House Foreign Affairs Committee Fellow for Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ). Kristina holds an M.A. in international economic relations from American University’s School of International Service and completed her B.A. in international relations at the Australian National University. She has additionally participated in numerous fellowships and academic seminars including the George C. Marshall Fellows program of The Heritage Foundation, the Leonine Forum Fellowship of the Catholic Information Center, the Schülerkreis of the Hildebrand Project, and the Penn Kemble Forum on Democracy Fellowship of the National Endowment for Democracy. Kristina has provided commentary and interviews for publications including First Things, the National Review, The Hill, and Washington Examiner.

Janusz Onyszkiewicz became active in Poland’s democratic opposition in the mid-1960s. He participated in the 1968 strikes and demonstrations for freedom of speech and research and subsequently worked as an organizer for the Solidarity trade union movement in the Warsaw region in 1980. Imprisoned for over a year following the introduction of martial law on December 13, 1981, Dr. Onyszkiewicz went on to serve as Solidarity’s National Spokesman until 1989, including during the historic Round Table negotiations, and later as a member of the National Executive (Presidium). Dr. Onyszkiewicz has served as a Member of the Polish Parliament (1989-2001), a member of the Executive Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (1989-1991), chairman of the Polish delegation to the WEU and NATO Parliamentary Assemblies, Deputy Defense Minister (1990-1991) and Defense Minister (1991-1993 and 1997-2000). He was elected to the European Parliament, where he served from 2004 to 2009. During this time he was elected Vice-President and Vice-Chairman of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. A mathematician by training, Dr. Onyszkiewicz is Senior Lecturer at the Mathematics Institute of Warsaw University, with a Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Leeds. He holds an MSc and PhD in pure mathematics, and has authored several books and papers on mathematical logic and set theory.

Ambassador Martin Palouš is a Senior Fellow at Florida International University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and Director of SIPA’s Václav Havel Center for Human Rights and Diplomacy initiative. One of the first signatories of the 1986 Charter 77, Martin served as spokesman for this dissident human rights group. A founding member of the Civic Forum (November 1989), he was elected to the Czechoslovakian Federal Assembly in 1990 and became a member of its Foreign Affairs Committee. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia as adviser to Minister Dienstbier and was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from October 1990 to October 1992. From October 1998 through September 2001, he served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the newly formed Czech Republic, and was then asked by President Václav Havel to travel to Washington, D.C. as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Czech Republic to the United States from September 2002 to November 2005. Dr. Palous was then designated as Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United Nations, where he served in New York from 2006 through 2010. Dr. Palous is the author of numerous publications, including a chapter on the Czech Republic in the European Commission publication Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe, “Totalitarianism and Authoritarianism,” in the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict, “Between Idealism and Realism: Reflections on the Political Landscape of Postcommunism,” in Between Past and Future: The Revolutions of 1989 and their Aftermath, and most recently “What Kind of God Does Human Rights Require?” in Does Human Rights Need God?, “Common Sense and the Rule of Law,” in Philosophy, Literature and Politics.

Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies European political and economic trends, specifically Central and Eastern Europe, the European Union (EU) and the eurozone, US-EU relations, and the post-Communist transitions and backsliding of countries in the former Soviet bloc. He is concurrently a research associate at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels and a fellow at Anglo-American University in Prague. Dr. Rohac is the author of “In Defense of Globalism.” His previous book, “Towards an Imperfect Union: A Conservative Case for the EU," was included on Foreign Affairs magazine’s list of best books of 2016. Dr. Rohac has testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and has briefed the US Helsinki Commission. His commentary has been published widely in the popular media, including in the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. His scholarly articles have been featured in policy journals, including Constitutional Political Economy, Journal of Institutional Economics, Kyklos, and Public Choice. He has a PhD in political economy from King’s College London; an MPhil in economics from St Antony’s College, University of Oxford; an MA in economics from George Mason University; and a BA in economics from Charles University in Prague.

David Satter is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a long-time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. Mr. Satter graduated from the University of Chicago and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and earned a B.Litt. degree in political philosophy. He worked for four years as a police reporter for the Chicago Tribune and, in 1976, he was named Moscow correspondent of the London Financial Times. He worked in Moscow for six years, during which time he sought out Soviet citizens with the intention of preserving their accounts of the Soviet totalitarian system for posterity. Mr. Satter has written three books about Russia: It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past; Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union; and Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State.

Eugeniusz Smolar is a senior fellow and member of the board of the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, Poland. During the communist era he was active in student protests, and later imprisoned for his dissident activities. In 1975, he joined the Polish Section of the BBC World Service in London as a journalist and became its Deputy Director and Director (1982-97). He remained involved with democracy movements, including the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR), and later the Solidarity trade union in Poland. Alongside Professors Leszek Kołakowski and Włodzimierz Brus he established an international Appeal for Polish Workers that provided funds to KOR as well as other human rights groups and underground publications. He also co-published the émigré intellectual journal Aneks, and was co-editor of the Uncensored Poland News Bulletin (1977-1989). With Czechoslovak and Hungarian émigrés, he co-edited the English-language quarterly The East European Reporter. Following his return to Poland, he became Deputy Chairman of Polish public radio – Polskie Radio S.A. (1998-2004). For years he has been active as a foreign policy analyst, serving as president of the Center for International Relations from 2005-09. His work has focused on European Security, the future of NATO, the Eastern policy of Poland, Russia’s internal and foreign policy, and human rights issues and democracy promotion.

Lavinia Stan is Professor of Political Science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada, and former President of the US-based Society for Romanian Studies. A Comparative Politics specialist, her research has focused on transitional justice, and religion and politics, mostly but not exclusively in post-communist countries. She is the (co)author or (co)editor of fifteen books, including Encyclopedia of Transitional Justice (second edition in press), Transitional Justice and the Former Soviet Union (2018), Post-Communist Transitional Justice: Lessons from 25 Years of Experience (2015) and Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Romania (2013), all published with Cambridge University Press.

Aleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University of Sussex. He is currently Director of Doctoral Studies for Law, Politics and Sociology and was Co-Director of the Sussex European Institute (SEI) from 2006-14. Aleks graduated from the University of Sheffield and, following a few years spent working as a political researcher and consultant, returned to take a Masters degree at Birkbeck College, University of London and PhD at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. Aleks is the co-convenor (with Prof Paul Taggart) of the ‘European Parties Elections and Referendums Network’ (EPERN) and Associate Editor of the ‘Party Politics’ journal. He is also on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the ‘Journal of Common Market Studies’ and ‘European Politics and Society’ journals. Aleks is a member of the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO) Observatory on Political Parties and Representation. Previously, Aleks was Associate Director of the ESRC 'One Europe Or Several' Programme (2001-2003), convenor of the Political Studies Association (PSA) Specialist Group on Communist and Post-Communist Politics (1999-2002), and Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of Institutional Affairs (RIIA) European Programme (2002-2007). Aleks was also the 2004 Main Prize Winner of the Political Studies Association Sir Bernard Crick Prize for Outstanding Teaching in Political Science. Aleks has been interviewed by, and appeared on, various TV and radio programmes and publications including: BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, BBC News 24, China Radio International, Reuters, Bloomberg, Daily Telegraph, Economist, Guardian, Financial Times, Deutsche Welle, Wall Street Journal, TOK FM radio, Gazeta Wyborcza, Gazeta.pl, Independent, El Pais, Le Figaro, Polish Press Agency, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Polska The Times, Business Post, La Razon, Knack, Deutsche Welle, France 24, SBS News, Croatian Radio, Croatian TV, RTL, Radio France International, Euronews and Polish Radio.

Paweł Ukielski is a political scientist and historian. He is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences and Deputy Director of the Warsaw Rising Museum. From 2014-2016 he was Vice-President of the Institute of National Remembrance, and from 2011-2017 Member of the Executive Board of the Platform of European Remembrance and Conscience (PEMC). He has served as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of PEMC since 2019 and from 2002-14 he was a lecturer in Collegium Civitas university. He is currently a lecturer at the Graduate School for Social Research. His scholarly interests include Central/East European transitions, regional cooperation in the former Eastern bloc, the break up of Czechoslovakia, Czech-Slovak relations, and the politics of remembrance. He is the author of Aksamitny rozwód. Rola elit politycznych w procesie podziału Czechosłowacji (The Velvet Divorce. The Role of Political Elites in the Division of Czechoslovakia) (2007) and Pamięć Polski, pamięć sąsiadów. Pamięć Europy (The Memory of Poland, The Memory of Neighbours, The Memory of Europe) (2020). He is the co-author of 1989 – Jesień Narodów (1989 – The Autumn of Nations) and Inicjatywa Trójmorza z perspektywy jej uczestników (The Three Seas Initiative from the Perspective of its Participants) (2020).

Confirmed Speakers