User:W George Krasnow

W. George Krasnow (born on February 24, 1937, Perm, Russia) is a Russian-American scholar, publicist, and peace activist also known as George Krasnow, Vladislav Krasnov, and Краснов, Владислав Георгиевич. Writing in both English and Russian, he is a columnist for the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation and Veterans Today. In the USA, he runs the Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) he created in 1992 with the aim of improving US-Russia relation via greater mutual understanding of cultural differences. In Russia, he helps obliterate “black holes” of Russian history, especially, about Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia in whose favor his elder brother Czar Nicholas II abdicated. Krasnow rejects the common view that Michael abdicated from the throne, just as Czar Nickolas II did. He maintains that Michael deferred the decision to the Constituent Assembly to be elected in the first democratic election in Russia. In January 1918, Lenin’s Bolshevik government dispersed the Assembly by force thus precipitating the civil war that ended with the establishment of totalitarian Soviet system. According to Krasnow, Michael, assassinated by the Bolsheviks on June 12, 1918, was a martyr who laid the groundwork for the current constitutional system in Russia.

Career
1937, born in Perm, the USSR 1960, graduates from Moscow State University 1960 – 1962, editor of Radio Moscow’s broadcast in foreign languages 1962, October 26, defects in Stockholm, Sweden 1963, student at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden 1963 – 1965, Lecturer, University of Lund, Sweden 1966 - Fellow, University of Chicago, the USA 1968 - Receives masters in Slavic languages, University of Washington 1971 - Instructor, University of Texas, Austin 1974 - Assistant professor, Southern Methodist University 1974 - Receives Ph.D. in Russian literature, University of Washington 1975-1978, Assistant Professor at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) 1978-1991, a career from assistant professor to full professor and director of Russian Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies 1980 – 1981, Visiting Researcher at Slavic Studies Center at Sapporo University, Japan 1983, Summer Research Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford 1986 – 1991, Professor and director of Russian studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies 1989, Director, Centre for Contemporary Russian Studies 1990, Member, National Board of the Congress of Russian Americans

On the Eve of the Fall
In April 1991, Soviet authorities cancelled a country-wide search warrant for Krasnow as a defecting “traitor” declaring there was no corpus delicti for prosecution. His works published in the West were found no more “anti-Soviet” than those written by Soviet citizens. At the end of April, Krasnow was back in the USSR after twenty nine years of forced exile: he was invited to a conference on “Russia’s Spiritual Rebirth” sponsored in Akademgorodok by Novosibirsk State University. He also took part in the First Congress of Russian Compatriots (August 19 – September 5, 1991) on the invitation of the Boris Yeltsin government of the Russian Federation, still under the USSR. This was the first gathering of Russian émigrés from all over the world since the end of the civil war in 1922 in the country of their origin, regardless of their ideology, politics, or religion. The Congress proceedings were overshadowed by the GKChP putsch and Yeltsin’s counter-putsch that dealt a mortal blow to the USSR. As the victorious Yeltsyn gave a triumphant speech before the Congress, he assured the Russian émigrés that, under the pre-revolutionary tri-color which now replaced the Communist flag, Russia will re-emerge as a great country.

Chief Ideas
As educator and scholar, Krasnow went against the grain of American sovietology. While the majority of Sovietologists believed in the essential “progressiveness” of Soviet system, Krasnow saw its artificial and violent edifice that was bound to eventually collapse. He saw the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of its “scientific” Marxist-Leninist economic and political theory as well as of its practical application. Whereas some scholars viewed the USSR as a manifestation of Russian national traits, Krasnow emphasized the central role that Marxist ideology, transplanted to Russia from the West, played in Soviet politics. As a literary scholar, Krasnow maintained that the polyphony of Russian literature, detected by Mikhail Bakhtin, will eventually prevail over the monologue of Marxist ideology. To that effect, he wrote his first book, “Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky: The Polyphonic Novel.” In his second book, “Soviet Defectors: The KGB Wanted List,” he described the phenomenon of defection as inherent in and indicative of the fatal defects of Soviet totalitarian system. He deplored the tendency of US government to treat the defectors primarily as traitors and a source of military information, failing to see them as the harbingers of the coming Soviet collapse. He began writing his third book, “Russia beyond Communism: The Chronicle of National Rebirth,” soon after Mikhail Gorbachev ascended the power. In the book he maintained that the emergence of Russian national thinking will play an important role in undoing Communist ideology. He approved of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s plan of transforming the USSR into a tri-unity national state of Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians. Deploring polarization of the country into two intransigent camps of “patriots” and “democrats,” Krasnow maintained that the supporters of the “patriot” Solzhenitsyn and the “democrat” Andrei Sakharov should work together against the forces leading the country toward precipice. The book was published before the collapse of the USSR in 1991.