international communications program. During this time he completed research for a book that would become the first non-American assessment of U.S. President Harry S. Truman, whom Zlobin largely credited with shaping the Cold-War world. In 2000, Zlobin published the first archival study on the preparation of Winston Churchill's 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, which effectively announced the start of the Cold War. Zlobin also produced the first works on Russian political humor during the Gorbachev era. His articles on the topic, such as “Humor as Political Protest” (1996), first appeared in the journal Demokratizatsiya, where Zlobin was co-editor. Nonprofit work From 2001–2012, Zlobin was Director of Russian and Asian programs at the Center for Defense Information (later renamed the World Security Institute) in Washington, D.C. During part of this time he produced Washington ProFile, a Russian-language news digest of American news and analysis that was widely read in Russia (see “Media” below). In the fall of 2012, he founded and became President of the Center on Global Interests, a nonprofit research organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. While acknowledging the difficulties of opening a new think tank in an already saturated environment, Zlobin said his goal was to create an organization that would “go beyond Cold War thinking” to provide a strategic, long-term vision for U.S.-Russian relations. Awards and honors Zlobin was a permanent member of the Valdai Discussion Club from its inception in 2004 until his withdrawal after 2016. From 2008, he has been a permanent member of the Yaroslavl Global Policy Forum. He has also received two MacArthur Foundation awards, two awards from the Truman Institute, and another from the Soros Foundation. Media 1990 - 2000 After his arrival in the United States during the 1990s, Zlobin was a regular contributor to Literaturnaya Gazeta, at the time Russia's largest-circulation newspaper, and to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a leader in the newly independent Russian press. Zlobin was one of the first in the West to report on the growing influence of organized crime in Russia, which was initially thought to jeopardize his return to the country. After his article, "The Mafiacracy Takes Over," was published in The New York Times in 1994, Zlobin’s father reportedly called and told his son, "I love you, but don't come back." From 1993–2013, he served as an original executive co-editor of Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, an international scholarly journal focused on the