Related topics  • MEDIA ADVISORY: Last U.S. ambassador to Soviet Union to hold press conference at KU today  • KU News Resource Page: War on Terrorism Search KU News releases Subscribe now to receive KU News by email

Contact: Bruce Berglund, assistant director, Center for Russian and East European Studies, (785) 864-4236.

Last U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union to speak on KU campus Monday

LAWRENCE -- The U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991 will speak on relations between the United States and today's Russia Monday on the University of Kansas campus.

Jack F. Matlock Jr., the George F. Kennan professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., will discuss "America and Russia in Today's World" at 7:30 p.m. in the Big 12 Room, fifth floor of the Kansas Union.

The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the KU Center for Russian and East European Studies and the Department of History.

In addition to his tenure as ambassador to the Soviet Union, Matlock served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for European and Soviet affairs on the National Security Council staff (1983-1986). He was also U.S. ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981 to 1983.

First posted to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in 1962, Matlock offered his perspective of the final years of the Soviet regime and the final collapse of Communist rule in August 1991 in his 1995 book, "Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador's Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union."

Matlock's lecture is part of a series of events organized by the Center for Russian and East European Studies to mark the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union.