Igor Fedyukin focused on his current research for a book which, among other points, refutes the received wisdom that Peter I single-handedly designed schools and other institutions and forced them on an unwilling Russian public. A greater role was played by the administrative entrepreneurs (or "projecteurs," as they were called) who pursued their own career goals and pet ideas, and competed for status and resources. Fedyukin examined the relative roles of individual initiative and the state, in the context of the Westernizing autocracy. Speaker Biography: Igor Fedyukin is associatepProfessor of history at the National Research University, Higher School of Economics (Moscow) and a visiting fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. For transcript and more information, visit www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7413

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