Peter Reddaway (born September 18, 1939) is a British-American political scientist, a Russia expert, known primarily for his study of its human rights and dissident movement. Peter Reddaway graduated from

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

and did graduate studies at Harvard,

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

, and the

London School of Economics and Political Science The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

where he later taught. Reddaway moved to the United States in the 1980s and served as Director of the

Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies The Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars was founded in 1974 to carry out studies of the Soviet Union (Sovietology), and subsequently of post-Soviet Russia and other post-Soviet states. The institute is widely ...

(1986–89). From 1989 until his retirement in 2004, he was Professor of Political Science at the

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Chartered in 1821 by the United States Congress, GWU is the largest Higher educat ...

, teaching courses on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs, and on human rights, and a multi-disciplinary introduction to Russia and Eastern Europe. He is currently Emeritus Professor at this university. Starting from the early 1970s, Reddaway was closely involved with the Soviet dissident and

human rights movement Human rights movement refers to a nongovernmental social movement engaged in activism related to the issues of human rights. The foundations of the global human rights movement involve resistance to: colonialism, imperialism, slavery, racism, segr ...

. He published some of his articles about it in the Dissent Magazine. His major works include ''Uncensored Russia: The Human Rights Movement in the USSR'' (1972), which consists primarily of his translation of the first 11 issues of the underground

Chronicle of Current Events ''A Chronicle of Current Events'' (russian: Хро́ника теку́щих собы́тий, ''Khronika tekushchikh sobytiy'') was one of the longest-running ''samizdat'' periodicals of the post-Stalin USSR. This unofficial newsletter reported v ...

; ''Psychiatric Terror: How Soviet Psychiatry is Used to Suppress Dissent'' (co-authored with Sidney Bloch, 1977); ''Soviet Psychiatric Abuse'' (co-authored with Sidney Bloch, 1984); ''Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR'' (co-edited with T.H. Rigby and Archie Brown, 1980); ''The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism Against Democracy'' (co-authored with Dmitri Glinski, 2001); ''The Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin's Reform of Federal-Regional Relations'' (in 2 volumes, co-authored with Robert Orttung, 2003–2004), and ''The Dissidents: A Memoir'' (2020). Reddaway is the author of many articles and has provided numerous testimonies on Russia to congressional hearings, including on corruption in Russia at the

U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a standing committee of the U.S. Senate charged with leading foreign-policy legislation and debate in the Senate. It is generally responsible for overseeing and funding foreign aid pr ...

. According to one of Reddaway's presentations, "by 1998,

Yeltsin Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...

's regime and the Russian state had become not just dangerously weak and corrupt, but also... financially dependent on Russia's wealthy elite"; he viewed

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...

as a product of the Yeltsin system, who, "if he does try to change the system... will find himself a prisoner of the system."

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Further reading