In this Long View conversation, Maria Lipman and Michael Kimmage will interview the authors of two related books, Perfect Storm by Thane Gustafson, of Georgetown University, and Zero Sum by Charles Hecker, an expert on business and geopolitics. Both books are histories of Western business in post-Soviet Russia; both are histories of Russia in the 1990s; and both books help to explain Russia’s arc of development from a country importing a new economic model to the country Russian President Vladimir Putin rules today.

In this Long View discussion, Maria Lipman and Michael Kimmage will interview Celeste Marcus, the managing editor of Liberties magazine and the author of Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art. This conversation will explore Soutine’s biography, his journey from the East to the West of Europe and the geography of modernism in the first half of the twentieth century.

In this Long View discussion, Maria Lipman and Michael Kimmage will interview Michael Thumann, Moscow bureau chief for Die Zeit and author of two books, Revanche (which is available in English) and Eisiges Schweigen flussabwaerts: eine Reise von Moskau nach Berlin. The conversation will address the challenges non-Russian journalists face covering Russia, the political transitions in Russia of the past ten years and the many borders and barriers being erected between Russia and the West, as a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In this Long View conversation, Maria Lipman and Michael Kimmage will interview Benjamin Nathans, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, a recipient of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. The conversation will explore the post-World War II history of the Soviet Union and the ways in which dissident activity arose from and conflicted with the evolution of Soviet culture and society.