Ten years after reading Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience, I finally met its author, Alexander Etkind, in person. He gave a brilliant lecture at King’s College London on petro-aggression—when an oil and gas producer attacks a neighbor, often to tighten control over energy transit.
Introducing him, the seminar host listed several of his books but unforgivably skipped the outstanding Roads not Taken. An Intellectual Biography of William C. Bullitt. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.
This year has been packed with fascinating lectures. A couple of weeks ago at UCL, I attended Vladimir Pastukhov’s talk on the Soviet empire’s disintegration. His key point: Gorbachev’s revolution was followed by Yeltsin’s counter-revolution, and we’re still living within it.
In early February, I joined a discussion at King’s College on women’s experiences of policing and justice, moderated by former Australian PM Julia Gillard. Among the speakers was Edwina Grosvenor. She’s working on prison reform and eventually concluded that building her own prison was easier than changing the system. Her latest project, Hope Street, offers a residential alternative for women serving sentences or house arrest—particularly those without a home or for whom returning home is unsafe.
The real star of the discussion, though, was Baroness Casey, who, freed from civil service decorum (“I’m no longer a public servant, so I can swear as much as I like”), laid out in brutal detail how police officers harass and assault women with impunity. Her official report exposed institutional racism, sexism, and homophobia in the Met. Even the police don’t seem to argue with it much. Now for the hard part—changing a culture two centuries in the making.
Baroness Hale’s lecture at the University of London was a more uplifting affair. The former Supreme Court president revisited one of her most famous rulings: In September 2019, Boris Johnson suspended Parliament to push through his Brexit plans. The Supreme Court ruled it unlawful, proving that, in a democracy, the judiciary still holds the executive to account.
Elia Kabanov is a science writer covering the past, present and future of technology (@metkere).
Illustration by Elia Kabanov feat. Midjourney.
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