Wiktor Babinski

Wiktor Babinski is a graduate student in History, specializing in global, as well as Russian and East European history. He is interested in the emergence of the post-Cold War international order in Europe and the themes of empire and imperialism within Europe and Eurasia. 

 

In his doctoral dissertation, Wiktor will write about the transformation of Polish grand strategy towards Eastern Europe that happened in the wake of the revolutions of 1989, but whose roots reach into the early 20th century. Tracing Polish thinkers and statesmen of the interwar and Cold War eras, he seeks the origins of Polish anti-imperialist thinking that became the foundation of foreign policy thinking in the “Solidarity” movement, which subsequently came to power in Warsaw in 1989. Thus, he hopes to explain how Poland after 1989 shifted away from centuries of imperialism and nationalism and helped create a stable international order in Central and Eastern Europe, integrated with NATO and the European Union. 

 

Wiktor graduated with First Class honors in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He used to work at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University as a Senior Researcher to Dr. Niall Ferguson, assisting in research for the second volume of the biography of former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. He was also an assistant and creative writer to the former President of Poland, leader of the “Solidarity” movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Wałęsa. 

 

Apart from his doctoral research, Wiktor is interested in global affairs and geopolitics, especially those of Europe and Eurasia; US foreign policy; Cold War history and politics. He travelled extensively in Eastern Europe, Russia, Mongolia, and China, among others. His writing on politics and global affairs appeared in POLITICO, Newsweek, The National Interest, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and American Purpose, among others.