On Saturday, May 9, Dr. Elise Wirtschafter presented “When Russia Led Europe: Security and Diplomacy after Napoleon” as a part of the Russian History Museum’s Second Saturday online lecture series.

How did Emperor Alexander I and his diplomats rethink European security in a time of major political change? The lecture explores Russian diplomacy after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

About the Speaker

Dr. Elise Wirtschafter is Emeritus Professor of History at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. She received her PhD from Columbia University and is the author of From Serf to Russian Soldier (1990); Structures of Society: Imperial Russia’s “People of Various Ranks” (1994); Social Identity in Imperial Russia (1997); The Play of Ideas in Russian Enlightenment Theater (2003); Russia’s Age of Serfdom, 1649-1861 (2008); Religion and Enlightenment in Catherinian Russia: The Teachings of Metropolitan Platon (2013); From Victory to Peace: Russian Diplomacy After Napoleon (2021); and Russia’s Lived Enlightenment in the Long Eighteenth Century (forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic).

Professor Wirtschafter has been Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, exchange participant in the Soviet Union and Russian Federation under the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and Fulbright-Hays Research Abroad Programs, DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholar, and visiting professor at institutions of higher learning in Moscow, Paris, and Tübingen.