Harley D. Balzer

Harley D. Balzer, Emeritus Professor, Georgetown University

Harley Balzer retired in June 2016 from his positions in the Department of Government, School of Foreign Service, and Department of History at Georgetown University. He was appointed Director of Georgetown’s Russian Area Studies Program in 1987. During his tenure he oversaw its transition to the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies.

He previously taught at Grinnell College and Boston University, and held post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard's Russian Research Center and the MIT Program in Science, Technology and Society. In 1982-83 he was a Congressional Fellow Congressman with Lee Hamilton. He handled House passage of what became “Title VIII” of the State Department Appropriation, providing funding for research and training about the former Soviet Bloc.

Dr. Balzer spent full years in the Soviet Union 1975-76 and 1985-86 on IREX, Fulbright-Hays, and Academy of Science grants, returned regularly during the Gorbachev era, and visited the Russian Federation over 50 times.

In 1992-93 Dr. Balzer was Executive Director and Chairman of the Board of Soros’s International Science Foundation. He was a member of the Governing Council of the Basic Research and Higher Education Program and member of the Board of Trustees of the European University at St. Petersburg.

Dr. Balzer's publications include Soviet Science on the Edge of Reform (1989); Five Years That Shook the World: Gorbachev's Unfinished Revolution,” (1991), which was named a CHOICE outstanding academic book; and Russia's Missing Middle Class: The Professions in Russian History (1996).

FAILURE. Russia Under Putin, co-edited with Steven A. Fisher was published by The Brookings Institution Press in July, 2025. It is distributed by Bloomsbury Press.