Staff profile

Dr Robert Horvath

Research Fellow

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Social Sciences

Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Area of study

International Relations
Politics

Brief profile

Dr. Robert Horvath is a specialist on Russian politics, civil society and international human rights. He currently holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. His latest book, Putin's 'Preventive Counter-Revolution' (Routledge, 2012) is a study of the programme of reforms and repression that transformed the face of Russian politics during Vladimir Putin's second term as president. His current research preoccupations include the relationship between nationalism and the state in Russia, the Putin regime's human rights diplomacy, and the anti-corruption movement in Russia. His commentary has been published in The Age, The Australian, The Diplomat, Inside Story, and The Canberra Times.

Recent publications

Books

  • Robert Horvath, Putin's 'Preventive Counter-Revolution': Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution, (Routledge: October 2012).
  • Horvath, R. (2005) The Legacy of Soviet Dissent: Dissidents, Democratisation and Radical Nationalism in Russia, London: Routledge.

Articles

  • Breaking the Totalitarian Ice: The Initiative Group for the Defence of Human Rights in the USSR,’ Human Rights Quarterly, Vol.36, no.1, (February 2014) Forthcoming
  • ‘Putin's 'Preventive Counter-Revolution': Post-Soviet Authoritarianism and the Spectre of Velvet Revolution,’ Europe-Asia Studies, 63: 1, (January 2011) pp.1-25.
  • ‘Apologist of Putinism? Solzhenitsyn, the Oligarchs, and the Specter of Orange Revolution.’ The Russian Review 70 (April 2011), pp.300–318.
  • Horvath, R. (2008) ‘The Putin Regime and the Heritage of Dissidence’, Telos 145 (Winter), pp.7-30.
  • Horvath, R. (2007) ‘The Solzhenitsyn Effect: East European Dissidents and the Demise of the Revolutionary Privilege’, Human Rights Quarterly 29, November, pp.879–907.
  • Horvath, R. (2006) ‘The Poet of Terror: Demyan Bednyi and Stalinist Culture’, Russian Review, Vol.65, No.1, January, pp.53-71.
  • Horvath, R. (2002) ‘The Trial of the Century or Theatre of the Absurd? The Constitutional Court Case against the CPSU as the Final Act of Perestroika’, Australian Slavonic Studies, Vol.16, Nos.1-2, pp.125-153.
  • Horvath, R. (1998) ‘The Spectre of Russophobia’ (on Igor Shafarevich, the Russian human rights activist who became a leading radical nationalist), The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 25, No.2, pp.199-222.

Book Chapters

  • Horvath, R. (2002) ‘The Dissident Roots of Glasnost’, in S.G. Wheatcroft (ed.) Challenging Traditional Views of Russian History, Houndmills: Palgrave, pp.173-202.
  • Horvath, R. (1994) ‘The Origins of the Gracchan Revolution,’ in Carl Deroux (ed.) Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History, VII,Brussels: Revue d’études Latines, pp.87-116.

Research projects

Graduate Supervision

Dr Horvath has supervised or co-supervised postgraduate theses on these topics:

  • The disintegration of Yugoslavia and international human rights
  • The Third World and the development of international human rights
  • Sergei Kovalyov, the leading Russian dissident and uman rights activist
  • Aleksandr Prokhanov, the contemporary Russian novelist and imperialist ideologue
  • The Russian media in the Yeltsin era

Dr Horvath has supervised or co-supervised honours theses on these topics:

  • Hate radio and the Rwandan genocide
  • The ethics of Soviet dissent
  • Chechnya and Western diplomacy
  • The Jedwabne Debate in post-communist Poland
  • The radicalisation of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina
  • ‘Rescuing Sakharov’: on the Reagan administration’s campaign to achieve the emigration of the leader of Russia’s democratic movement
  • The impact of the idea of ‘ancient hatreds’ on Western diplomacy in the former Yugoslavia
  • The ‘Witches of Rio’ Affair (the campaign against a group of Croatian feminist writers)
  • Harold Williams, the New Zealand journalist who supported the Russian liberal movement during the revolutionary era.