Maria Popova

is an Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University and Scientific Director of the Jean Monnet Centre Montreal. Her work explores the rule of law and democracy in Eastern Europe. In 2024, she co-authored ‘Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States’ with Oxana Shevel.

Articles

Cover for: Liberation, not collapse

The fall of the Berlin Wall, and not the human chain across the Baltics, is emblematic of 1989. But what if this show of unity had become iconic of communism’s disintegration? Could acknowledging Eastern Europe’s liberation positively reframe what Russia otherwise perceives as loss since the Soviet Union’s demise?