On September 15–16, 2026, the Center for Russian Studies (CRS) at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Social Sciences held its first international symposium, Rethinking Russia. The two-day event brought together some twenty leading scholars and experts from Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, Estonia, Kazakhstan and Cyprus. Over two days they examined the political, economic, social and cultural processes that have shaped Russia since 1991.
The symposium set out to question one of the most common ways of understanding contemporary Russia. Its recent history is often read as a straight line from the “1991 revolution” to the rise of the current regime, as if each step made the next one inevitable. The organizers invited participants to look beyond this framework and to discuss theoretical models and empirical evidence that could offer a more nuanced picture. The program was built around five themes: cultural narratives, solidarization and atomization in society, economic institutions, political elites, and foreign policy. Each session took the form of an open dialogue based on research papers circulated in advance, so the time together could be devoted to discussion rather than presentations.
For the CRS, the symposium was also an opportunity to present the results of two years of work by its research team. Researchers of the Center shared their findings across all five themes and put them to the test in conversation with colleagues from leading universities and research institutions around the world.
The discussions proved lively and engaging throughout both days. Speakers and participants challenged one another’s assumptions, compared approaches from different disciplines, and brought cultural studies, economics, sociology and political science into direct conversation. Debates often continued well beyond the scheduled sessions, over coffee breaks, lunches and the symposium dinner.
The session on cultural narratives featured Dr. Aleksandr Arkhangelskii and Nikolai Shpilkov (Tel Aviv University), Dr. Dmitry Adamsky (Reichman University; Harvard University) and Dr. Roman Leibov (University of Tartu). Social dynamics were discussed by Dr. Victor Vakhshtayn (Tel Aviv University) and Dr. Mikhail Sokolov (Nazarbayev University). The discussion on economic institutions was led by Dmitry Butrin (Tel Aviv University), Prof. Mikhail Alekseev (Indiana University) and Prof. Konstantin Sonin (University of Chicago). Political elites were addressed by Alexander Baunov (Tel Aviv University; Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center), Prof. Ora John Reuter (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee) and Prof. Regina Smyth (Indiana University). The final discussion, on foreign policy, featured Prof. Alexander Libman (Tel Aviv University; Freie Universität Berlin), Dr. Alexander Baturo (Dublin City University) and Prof. Peter Rutland (Wesleyan University). Andrey Yakovlev (Harvard University), Arkady Ostrovsky (The Economist) and Dmitry Nekrasov (CASE, Cyprus) also took part. Sessions were chaired by Ivan Baydakov (Tel Aviv University).
