Humanities and Social Sciences

Politics and International Relations Program

Staff Directory

Dr Robert Horvath is a specialist on Eastern Europe and international human rights. His doctoral thesis (University of Melbourne, 1999) was a study on the influence of Russian dissidents upon Russia's transition to democracy. Based on three years' research in Moscow, it argued that dissidents had shaped four key aspects of the ideology of transition. This research, enhanced by his post-doctoral study, resulted in his book, The Legacy of Soviet Dissent: Dissidents, Democratisation and Radical Nationalism in Russia (Routledge, 2005).

His current research preoccupations include the phenomenon of ‘Velvet Revolutions’ in the former Soviet Union, the relationship between revolution and human rights, and the role of the persecuted in the development of human rights. His op-ed articles on human rights, refugees and Australian diplomacy have been published in The Age, The Australian and The Diplomat.

Publications

List of publications

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 human 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