The Causes and Consequences of Russia’s War in Ukraine

Regina Smyth is Professor of Political Science at Indiana University.  Her primary

research interest is in the dynamics of state-society relations in former empire

states of the Soviet Union. She has written extensively on political development in

the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, including her recent book

Elections, Protest, and Authoritarian Regime Stability: Russia 2008–2020

(Cambridge University Press, 2020) which demonstrates the evolution of the

Kremlin’s efforts to manage elections and limit social protest. Smyth’s book

Varieties of Russian Activism: State-Society Contestation in Everyday Life (IU

Press, 2023), with Jeremy Morris and Andrei Semenov, and her recent work

on the Moscow Housing Renovation Program (forthcoming in the American

Political Science Review) show how Russian society has evolved despite growing

state repression between 2010 and 2020. She currently directs an international

project, Building an Anti-War Commons in the Russian Diaspora, that explores

political and social activism among wartime migrants.

Smyth’s analysis of contemporary politics appears frequently in The Conversation, The Washington Post Monkey Cage, and the PONARS Policy Program in Washington DC. She is a frequent media commentator for US and international press outlets. In 2011-2012, Dr. Smyth was a Fulbright Scholar in Russia and was affiliated with the Department of Political Science at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. In 2020-2021, she held a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and the Kennan Institute.

Smyth’s research, largely based on original data collection and analysis, has been

funded by the National Science Foundation, International Research and Exchanges

Board, US - Russia Foundation, National Council for Eurasian and East European

Research, the National Security Education Program, the Smith Richardson

Foundation, and the Russian and East European Center, Ostrom Workshop,

Department of Political Science, and College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana

University.  At IU she teaches graduate and undergraduate classes on comparative

politics, protest movements, and Russian politics.  She received her PhD from

Duke University in 1997. Smyth tweets @ReginaSmyth. You can find her

publications and commentary at https://reginasmyth.com.