Russian Studies Workshop

Dr. Claire Kaiser: "Expulsion and the Postwar Experience in the Caucasus"

At the dawn of the Cold War, a series of operations took place in the Caucasus that expelled minority groups to Siberia and Central Asia. This talk will discuss these postwar expulsions from Georgia in a comparative framework in order to understand how a Soviet tool of imperial population management could just as much be an instrument of nation-building and national homogenization at the local level.

As Director of Strategic Initiatives at McLarty Associates, Dr.  Clair Kaiser supports the firm’s leadership in matters of strategic planning and outreach, and is also a member of its Europe & Eurasia practice. An adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies, she taught the history and politics of  the Caucasus and Central Asia at the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. Dr. Kaiser has conducted research in Tbilisi, Georgia as a State Department Title VIII Research Fellow and served as an election observer for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in missions to Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.

Sponsored by REEI and RSW.