Why Do People Choose Autocrats?

Yevgenia Albats is a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, author, and radio host. Albats is currently living in the United States after she had to leave Russia, facing persecution from the Russian authorities, who had brought charges against her in July 2022 for her reporting on the war in Ukraine. In August 2022, Russian authorities pronounced her a "foreign agent working on behalf of Ukraine." Albats was profiled in The New Yorker. Albats graduated from Moscow State University in 1980 and received her PhD in political science from Harvard University in 2004. Albats taught political science at Yale in 2003-2004, the Moscow-based National Research University Higher School of Economics in 2004-2011, the University of Michigan in 2019-2020, and New York University in 2022-2023. She lectured at many other universities and think tanks in Australia, Europe, and the United States. Albats was awarded the Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellowship at John Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University from 2023-2024. Albats is the author of four independently researched books, including The State Within a State: KGB and Its Hold on Russia–Past, Present, and Future, published worldwide.