The Gorbachev Readings tenth issue published, titled “The Time of Change: Ideas and People” (Moscow, 2015)

The tenth, special collection of the Gorbachev Readings comprises the proceedings of four round table discussions. The first event in this series, themed “1968–1988–2008: Pathways of Ideas” was jointly held on 26 November 2008 by the Gorbachev Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, when the 40th anniversary of the 1968 revolution was marked around the world. The round table themed “Men and Women of the Sixties in the Country’s Life” was held on 15 March 2011 to mark Mikhail Gorbachev’s 80th birthday. The round table discussion “Russia: Has a New Course Been Chartered?” was held on 10 December 2013. The event was dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the publication of “There Is No Other Way”, a landmark book of the Perestroika era – a collection of essays published in 1988. The 10th issue of the Gorbachev Readings concludes with Russia-Germany dialogue on “25 Years without the Berlin Wall. Memory and Impulses for the Future”, co-organised by the Gorbachev Foundation and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on 21 October 2014. In this way, each of the four sections comprising the issue highlights a particular “date in history”.

At the same time, the tenth issue of the Gorbachev Readings chronicles a consistent on-going discussion, a debate, to be more precise, spanning seven years – from 2008 to 2014. In this debate, intelligentsia, which is both an actor and a champion of change, poses as a witness, a chronicler, sometimes as a judge and a defendant at the same time – but more often as an interpreter and analyst with different perspectives on the meaning of the events and the motives of key players. But most importantly, the debate is focused around the role of intelligentsia – both at the unforgettable moments of freedom”, when you “suddenly” get a glimpse of the future and at the times when the future seems to be fading away.