Gail Lapidus
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emerita
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Bio
Gail Lapidus is a Senior Fellow Emerita at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Lapidus is also Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Chair of the Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies from 1985 to 1994. A specialist on Soviet society, politics and foreign policy, she has authored and edited a number of books on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs, including The New Russia: Troubled Transformation (Westview Press, 1995), From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics, with Victor Zaslavsky and Philip Goldman (Cambridge University Press, 1992), The Soviet System in Crisis, with Alexander Dallin (Westview, 1992), and Women in Soviet Society (University of California Press, 1979). A graduate of Radcliffe College, she received her MA and PhD from Harvard University.
Lapidus is also the author of numerous articles and chapters, including "The War in Chechnya as a Paradigm of Russian State-Building Under Putin," Post-Soviet Affairs, March 2004; "Putin's War on Terrorism: Lessons From Chechnya," Post-Soviet Affairs, January-March 2002; "Accommodating Ethnic Differences in Post-Soviet Eurasia," in Crawford Young and Mark Beissinger, eds., Beyond State Crisis? Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective; "Transforming the 'National Question': New Approaches to Nationalism, Federalism and Sovereignty," in Archie Brown, ed., The Demise of Marxism-Leninism in Russia (Palgrave, 2004); "Transforming Russia: American Policy in the 1990s," in Robert Lieber, ed., America Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the 21st Century (Prentice Hall, 2001); and "Reagan and the Russians: American Policy Toward the Soviet Union," with Alexander Dallin, in Kenneth Oye et al., eds., Eagle Resurgent? The Reagan Era in American Foreign Policy (Little, Brown, 1987).
Lapidus is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, as well as of several scholarly associations. She has held a variety of scholarly and administrative appointments, including president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, chair of the Social Science Research Council's Joint Committee on Soviet Studies, the Advisory Council of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, the Committee on International Political Science of the American Political Science Association, and the board of Trustees of the World Affairs Council of Northern California. She has held research fellowships at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. A frequent visitor to the USSR and now to a number of successor states, Professor Lapidus is currently working on a book on the impact of the Soviet legacy on patterns of conflict in the post-Soviet states.
Academic Appointments
-
Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council, Center for International Security and Cooperation
-
Senior Fellow Emeritus, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
ethnic conflict in the former Soviet Union; the Russian-Chechen war; Soviet society, politics and foreign policy
All Publications
- Totalitarianism, Nationalism, and Challenges for Democratic Transition Totalitarian Societies and Democratic Transition edited by Piffer, T. CEU Press. 2017: 353–384
- Russia's Second Chechen War: Ten Assumptions in Search of a Policy Chechnya: The International Community and Strategies for Peace and Stability The Swedish Institute of International Affairs. 2009
-
Between assertiveness and insecurity: Russian elite attitudes and the russia-georgia crisis
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS
2007; 23 (2): 138-155
View details for Web of Science ID 000250594300003
- War in Chechnya as a Paradigm of Russian State-Building Under Putin, The Post-Soviet Affairs 2004; 20 (1)
- Transforming the "National Question": New Approaches to Nationalism, Federalism and Sovereignty The Demise of Marxism-Leninism in Russia Palgrave Macmillan . 2004
- Assymetrical Federalism and Russian State-Building Post-Soviet Affairs 2002; 15
- Accommodating Ethnic Differences in Post-Soviet Eurasia Beyond State Crisis? Post-Colonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective Woodrow Wilson Center and Johns Hopkins University Press . 2002
- Russia's Transformation and American Policy Eagle Rules? Foreign Policy and American Primacy in the Twenty-First Century Prentice Hall. 2002
-
Putin's war on terrorism: Lessons from Chechnya
Annual Meeting of the American-Association-for-the-Advancement-of-Slavic-Studies
BELLWETHER PUBL LTD. 2002: 41–48
View details for Web of Science ID 000175242000003
- State-Building and State Breakdown in Russia Contemporary Russian Politics: A Reader Oxford University Press . 2001
- The War in Chechnya: Opportunities Missed, Lessons to be Learned Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized: Preventive Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War World Rowman and Littlefield. 1999
- Rethinking Sovereignty: Chechnya and Kosovo Kosmopolis 1999
- Dynamics of Secession in the Russian Federation: Why Chechnya?, in Stephen Hanson and Mikhail Alexseev, A Federation Imperiled: Center-Periphery Conflict in Post-Soviet Russia, The Center-Periphery Conflict in Post-Soviet Russia Palgrave-MacMillan. 1999
-
Contested sovereignty - The tragedy of Chechnya
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
1998; 23 (1): 5-49
View details for Web of Science ID 000075005600001
-
Six years after the collapse of the USSR
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS
1998; 14 (1): 1-22
View details for Web of Science ID 000073233800001
- Gender i perestroika: vliianie perestroiki i ee posledstvii na zhenshchin, Sem'ia, gender, kultura Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences. 1997
-
Russia and the Russian diasporas - Comment
POST-SOVIET AFFAIRS
1996; 12 (3): 285-287
View details for Web of Science ID A1996VH37100005
- Nationalism, Regionalism and Federalism: Dilemmas of State-Building in Post-Communist Russia The New Russia: Troubled Transformation Westview Press . 1994 : 79-114
- New Russia: Troubled Transformation, The edited by Lapidus , G. W. Westview Press . 1994
- Gender and Restructuring: Perestroika and Soviet Women Democratic Reform and the Position of Women in Transitional Economies Clarendon Press . 1993
- Ethnonationalism and Political Stability: The Soviet Case The Soviet Nationality Reader: The Disintegration in Context 1992
- From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics edited by Lapidus , G. W., Zaslavksy , V., Goldman, P. Cambridge University Press . 1992
- The Soviet System: From Crisis to Collapse edited by Lapidus , G. W. Westview Press . 1991
- The Glasnost Papers: Voices on Reform from Moscow edited by Lapidus , G. W., Melville , A. Westview Press . 1990
-
GORBACHEV NATIONALITIES PROBLEM
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
1989; 68 (4): 92-108
View details for Web of Science ID A1989AN31000006
-
GORBACHEV AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION - RESTRUCTURING THE SOVIET FEDERATION
SOVIET ECONOMY
1989; 5 (3): 201-250
View details for Web of Science ID A1989DF28200001
-
UNITED-STATES-SOVIET RELATIONS - THE PACIFICATION OF REAGAN,RONALD
BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS
1989; 45 (1): 14-17
View details for Web of Science ID A1989R505000006
-
GORBACHEV AND THE REFORM OF THE SOVIET SYSTEM
DAEDALUS
1987; 116 (2): 1-30
View details for Web of Science ID A1987H555600002
-
POLITICAL MOBILIZATION, PARTICIPATION, AND LEADERSHIP - WOMEN IN SOVIET POLITICS
COMPARATIVE POLITICS
1975; 8 (1): 90-118
View details for Web of Science ID A1975AS75800004