Lunchtime Lecture:
Andrei Illarionov, April 2

Andrei Illarionov, author and senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, will discuss Political and Economic Reform Under President Putin: An Insider's Perspective, during a noontime lecture on Wednesday, April 2 at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum. The public portion of the program begins at 12, with free seating on a first-come basis.
Illarionov, best known for his five years in Vladimir Putin's presidential administration as the chief economic advisor, resigned from that position in 2005, declaring that, "Russia has become a very different country. It is no longer a democratic country. It is no longer a free country."
As one of the voices high up in the Putin administration, he served for a year as the senior economic advisor to Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. In 1994, Illarionov founded the Institute of Economic Analysis and served as its director. Six years later, in April 2000, he became Putin's senior economic advisor within the Russian presidential administration. In May of that same year, he served as the personal representative of the Russian president in the G8.
Illarionov currently is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity in Washington. He also has coauthored several economic programs for Russian governments and has written three books and more than 300 articles on Russian economic and social policies, including Oil and Freedom in the New Russia (2007) and Russia's Potemkin Capitalism (2000).
His visit is co-sponsored by the Athenaeum and the Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World.