Provocateur, Genius, Scoundrel: A Frank Discussion with the Inimitable Gleb Pavlovsky

Gleb Pavlovsky, once a Soviet student-dissident charged with publishing an underground journal, is often credited with helping orchestrate the elections that brought Boris Yeltsin to power in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. An artful spin doctor, Pavlovsky grew to become a prime manipulator of Russian public opinion for both the Yeltsin and Putin regimes before being cast out of the Kremlin in April 2011. Pavlovsky has since worked as an independent political adviser and has become a vociferous critic of the Putin regime in its handling of the Ukraine crisis and its management of state television and propaganda.

Stephen Holmes, Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law at NYU, acted as interlocutor in this conversation with Gleb Pavlovsky.