Columbia's Harriman Institute and the Associated Press will co-host the eighth annual conference on Russia on Fri., May 4, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. This year's theme is "Ten Years of an Independent Russia: Problems and Prospects." Speakers will include Padma Desai, Richard Ericson, Steven Solnick and Kimberly Zisk of the Harriman Institute; Stephen Handelman, author of Comrade Criminal: Russia's New Mafiya; Jack Matlock, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union; Deborah Seward, Associated Press Moscow bureau chief, and Serge Schmemann, New York Times deputy foreign editor. Emil Pain, director of Moscow's Center of Ethnopolitical and Regional Studies, INDEM Foundation will deliver a noon keynote address. Panel topics include "Assessing Russia's Democratic Transition," "Evaluating a Decade of Economic Reform" and "Freedom of the Press in Post-Soviet Russia."

The forum precedes the May 18 visit by Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who will be making his first official trip to Washington since President George W. Bush took office.

The conference will be held at the Kellogg Conference Center on the 15th floor of the International Affairs Building (420 W. 118th St.)

For more information, contact Gordon N. Bardos at the Harriman Institute: 212-854-8487 or gnb12@columbia.edu

The Harriman Institute is the oldest academic center in the United States devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the Russian Empire, the Soviet bloc and the post -communist states. Founded in 1946 as the Russian Institute, it established a separate sister institute to study East Central Europe in 1954. In 1992, following the collapse of the USSR, the Institute officially expanded its focus to encompass all the states of the former Soviet Union.