Moderator: R. Nicholas Burns

Nicholas Burns is currently Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. He retired from the State Department in April, 2008 after a distinguished career spanning 27 years. From 2005 until his retirement, Burns was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs – the third-ranking position in the State Department – where he led U.S. negotiations with such countries as Iran, India, and Kosovo, and supervised U.S. diplomacy in all regions of the world. Burns was U.S. Ambassador to NATO and to Greece. He was the State Department Spokesman for two years and spent five years on the National Security Council staff including as Special Assistant to President Clinton focusing on the former Soviet Union. Later he was Director for Soviet Affairs on the NSC under President George H.W. Bush.

Fyodor Lukyanov

Fyodor Lukyanov is an international journalist and political analyst based in Moscow. He is editor in chief of the journal “Russia in Global Affairs,” Chairman of Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and a Member Presidium of the nonprofit organization, Russian Council on Foreign Affairs. Lukyanov’s previous positions include Senior Editor of the Department for Broadcasting to Northern Europe “Voice of Russia” – International Moscow radio; International Correspondent for Segodnya newspaper; Editor of the international desk of Vremya MN newspaper. A graduate of the philological faculty of Moscow State University, he is fluent in German, Swedish and English.

Nikolay Petrov

Nikolay Petrov is a Professor in the Faculty of Politics at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Fundamental Studies, Laboratory for Qualitative and Quantitative Methods of Analysis of Political Regimes. A political scientist and political geographer, he has authored many publications in leading Russian and foreign media, and is a columnist in the English-language newspaper in Russia, “The Moscow Times.” Petrov is the former chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Society and Regions Program. He is a graduate of the Geographical and Economics Faculty of Moscow State University and holds a Ph.D. in Geography.

Steven Pifer

Steven Pifer is director of the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. A former ambassador to Ukraine, Pifer’s career as a foreign service officer centered on Europe, the former Soviet Union and arms control. Pifer also had postings in London, Moscow, Geneva and Warsaw, as well as on the National Security Council.

Nina Tumarkin

Nina Tumarkin is Professor of History at Wellesley College and Center Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Tumarkin’s expertise includes Current Russian cultural politics; comparative national memories of war; and official apologies for historical wrongdoings. She is an author of several books, including The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (Basic Books, 1994, 1995), and Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Harvard, 1997).