(Posted March 13, 2017)

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Sergey Radchenko, professor of law and politics at Cardiff University, in Cardiff, Wales, will speak at Juniata College on “Bullies: A Psychohistory Of The Cold War -- from Truman & Stalin to Trump & Putin” at 7:30 p.m., Monday, March 20, in Neff Lecture Hall in the von Liebig Center for Science.

            The talk is free and open to the public. The lecture is part of the Delbert McQuaide Lectureship in history and is sponsored by the history department.

            Radchenko will discuss the Cold War as a struggle for recognition and respect that did not come to an end in 1989. He will argue that ideologies come and go, but the quest for recognition still underpins international politics, showing how leaders -- from Truman, Stalin, and Mao Zedong to Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping -- are driven by concerns about their, and their nations’, prestige and credibility in a global pecking order that defies simplistic dichotomies of right and wrong. 

            Radchenko has been at Cardiff University since 2016. Prior to that he was a public policy fellow from 2013 to 2014 and is currently a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, D.C.

            He also serves as the Zi Jiang Visiting Professor at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China.

            He earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations in 2001 and went on to earn a doctoral degree in international history in 2005, both from The London School of Economics and Political Science.

            Radchenko is the author of two books, “Unwanted Visionaries: Soviet Failure in Asia, 1982-1991” and “Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962-1967.”

            He is a member of the American Historical Association, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and the Association of Asian Studies. He serves on the editorial board of the journal New Perspectives on the Cold War.

The Delbert McQuaide Lectureship in History Series was established by Delbert McQuaide, a 1958 Juniata College graduate. He was a senior partner at McQuaide Blasko Law Offices in State College and served as general counsel for Penn State University and the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. He was president of the Centre County Bar Association, and a member of the Pennsylvania, and American Bar Associations and the National Association of College and University Attorneys. McQuaide was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1994 and served as chairman from 1996 until his death in 1997.

Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.