The Davis Center at Harvard University

As we approach the third year of the war in Ukraine, the ripples from the conflict go deeper and further into the fabric of international relations. This seminar brings together three scholars from Japan to analyze the war’s impact and meaning outside Eastern Europe. Their expertise includes not only Russia but the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Issues to be addressed include Japan’s policies, historical contexts, borderlands, energy security, and China’s perspective on the war.

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan George Krol will discuss the development of relations between the United States and the Central Asian states from the inception of diplomatic relations in 1992 to the present time. Drawing on personal experiences and insights gained from his 36 years as a career diplomat, Krol will describe the American and Central Asian politics and personalities that have influenced relations from the collapse of the Soviet Union through the war in Afghanistan to the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine and China’s emergence as a dominant player in the region.

Dr. Kelly O'Neill recounts the convoluted events of the so-called Watermelon Rebellion, a little-known episode in Russian imperial history full of intrigue, deception, espionage, personal animosities, and… watermelons.

REECA alumna Jackie Erlon-Baurjan talks with Kelly about water: about how it was conceptualized and managed on the Kazakh steppe in the 19th century, and about how it (or the lack of it) shaped her own family's traditions near the Altai Mountains.

Graduate student Valerie Browne shares her research into the history of Crimean place names. She explains how Stalin attempted to remake the map after World War II and how Wikipedia allowed her to reconstruct the stories of lost, forgotten, and renamed villages.

Lily and Kelly dig into what it was like to live in Crimea as a subject of the Russian Empire. They explore power-relations, the survival of local practices, imperial ideology, and yes, the art of map-listening.

In our first episode, Dr. O'Neill goes to the Harvard Map Collection with high-school student Lily Grodzins to investigate a map of Crimea produced in 1855 and dedicated to Queen Victoria. What they find is a map bigger than most kitchen tables, riddled with misinformation, and full of everything from mountains to mud volcanos. Who made the map? And where do the British fit in? Join us to find out!

Lily and Kelly discuss an enterprising official of the East India Company and how he turned a dusty old Russian military map into a game-changing weapon for the British Army.

The signatories of the Belavezha agreement believe it should serve as a consensus model for the world—an example of diplomacy, civil discourse, and nonviolent means of conflict resolution. The events at Belavezha are among the most momentous in modern history. But, unlike the fall of the Berlin Wall, most people have never heard of them. In the conclusion of How to Kill a Superpower, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky consider why this is the case and what term effectively describes what happened. For a transcript of this episode and more, visit https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/how-to-kill-a-superpower

Boris Yeltsin’s trip to a supermarket in Clear Lake, Texas, planted a seed of the USSR’s destruction. The United States won the Cold War with free-market capitalism—and Jell-O pudding pops. Still, astoundingly, the collapse of the USSR was not what the U.S. government wanted. In this episode, Dr. Yelena Biberman and Zachary Troyanovsky evaluate the Cold War confrontational narrative and offer a new perspective on how the USSR dissolved. For a transcript of this episode and more, visit https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/how-to-kill-a-superpower