Michael McFaul

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Michael McFaul
United States Ambassador to Russia
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 10, 2012
President Barack Obama
Personal details
Born Michael Anthony McFaul
(1963-10-01) October 1, 1963
Glasgow, Montana
Nationality American
Residence United States
Alma mater Stanford University (B.A., M.A.)
Oxford University (Ph.D.)

Michael Anthony McFaul (born October 1, 1963)[1] is an American academic and diplomat.

McFaul is the current United States Ambassador to Russia. Prior to his nomination to the ambassadorial position, McFaul worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of Russian and Eurasian Affairs and was also a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.[2]

Early life and Education

Born in Glasgow, Montana, McFaul was raised in Butte and Bozeman, Montana, where his father worked as a musician and music teacher.[3] He earned a B.A. in international relations and Slavic languages and an M.A. in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986, and spent time in the Soviet Union as a student, first the summer of 1983 studying Russian at the Leningrad State University, now Saint Petersburg State University, and then a semester in 1985 at Moscow State University.[3] As a Rhodes Scholar, he earned a DPhil in international relations from Oxford University in 1991.[2] He wrote his thesis on US and Soviet intervention in revolutionary movements in southern Africa.[3]

Career

Prior to his ambassadorial appointment to Russia, McFaul's past engagement with Russian political figures included a denunciation of him in 1994 by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a controversial member of the State Duma (the Russian parliament),[4] and a subsequent shooting incident in which a shot was fired into McFaul's Stanford University office window.[4] Two years later, Alexander Korzhakov, a confidante of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, invited McFaul to the Kremlin during the 1996 Russian presidential election, because of McFaul's research on electoral politics.[4]

In his capacity as a professor of political science at Stanford University, McFaul was the director of the university's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.[2] A Hoover Institution Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, McFaul is a Democrat who was the architect of U.S. President Barack Obama's policy on Russia.[5]

In an interview to a news portal Slon.ru McFaul described himself as "specialist on democracy, anti-dictator movements, revolutions".[6]

In 2011, Obama nominated McFaul to be United States Ambassador to Russia. On December 17, 2011, the United States Senate confirmed McFaul by unanimous consent.[7] McFaul became only the second non-career diplomat in 30 years to be U.S. ambassador to Russia.[5] McFaul announced his resignation from his posting to Russia on February 4, 2014, effective after the Sochi Olympics.[8]

Russian opposition visit incident

On January 17, soon after McFaul was appointed the new United States Ambassador to Russia and arrived in Moscow to assume his post, a number of organizers and prominent participants of the 2011 Russian protests, as well as some prominent figures of the Russian opposition parties, visited the Embassy of the United States in Moscow. On the entrance to the embassy they were encountered by TV journalists who asked them why they were visiting the new Ambassador.[9] On the video later released on YouTube[10] and titled "Получение инструкций в посольстве США" (Receiving instructions in the Embassy of the United States) opposition activists appear flustered by the unexpected media attention. Later, when upon leaving the embassy and once again being encircled by journalists, the activists responded by declaring the journalists spreaders of "Surkovian propaganda" and made no other statement.[9] The visitors to Michael McFaul included: Yevgeniya Chirikova (member of Strategy-31 and Khimki forest activist leader), Boris Nemtsov (leader of the People's Freedom Party), Lev Ponomarev (human rights activist of the Moscow Helsinki Group), Sergey Mitrokhin (leader of Yabloko party), Oksana Dmitriyeva (deputy head of A Just Russia), Lilia Shibanova (head of the GOLOS Association elections monitor group).[9] Two weeks later, journalist Olga Romanova who managed the financial spending of the December protests, also visited the American Embassy. She said that they discussed Russian protests and the United States Presidential election campaign with McFaul.[11]

Reaction to the incident was mixed: President Dmitry Medvedev in his public comments at Moscow State University largely exonerated McFaul by saying that meeting with opposition figures was a routine occurrence, although he warned the new U.S. ambassador to Moscow that he is on Russian soil and should respect Russian political sensibilities.[12] The incident sparked a highly negative reaction in the Russian media and blogs.[9][12] but an article in the Daily Beast wrote that McFaul's stance won plaudits from pro-democracy activists and Web-savvy Russian youth and that, "in the tight-knit world of Moscow’s opposition, McFaul has become something of an Internet celebrity, making him a true 21st-century diplomat."[13]

Recognition

Coit D. Blacker called McFaul, "the leading scholar of his generation, maybe the leading scholar, on post-Communist Russia"[4] and a Stanford news release noted how his knowledge of Russia "was an important resource to politicians and where he recently advised President George W. Bush on his dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin".[4] An article in Russia Profile also called McFaul one of the leading U.S. experts in democracy and democratic transitions.[12] An article in the Daily Beast described McFaul as, "an earnest Stanford academic."[13]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ U.S. Public Records Index Vol 1 & 2 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), 2010.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Michael McFaul". Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Retrieved May 29, 2011. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Ioffe, Julia (May 30, 2012). "The Undiplomat". Foreign Policy Magazine. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Meredith Alexander (November 27, 2001). "Stanford political scientist Michael McFaul takes a revolutionary new look at Russian politics" (Press release). Stanford University. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Baker, Peter (May 29, 2011). "Policy Adviser to Become U.S. Ambassador to Russia". The New York Times. 
  6. ↑ Аналитическая программа "Однако" с Михаилом Леонтьевым Channel One (Russia) (Russian)
  7. ↑ http://www.senate.gov/galleries/pdcl/index.htm
  8. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/world/europe/russia.html
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Получение инструкций в посольстве США / Receiving instructions at the US Embassy vz.ru (Russian)
  10. ↑ Получение инструкций в посольстве США
  11. ↑ Романова: С Макфолом обсудили «бунты рассерженных горожан» vz.ru (Russian)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: United States Looms Large in Russian Elections russiaprofile.org
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Nemtsova, Anna (Jun 18, 2012). "Michael McFaul: America’s Man In Russia". The Daily Beast. 

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Ambassador to the Russian Empire (1780-1917)
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