Join us for a discussion of the book Out of the USSR: Rupert Cornwell’s Reports from the Soviet Union with Cornell’s widow, Susan Cornwell, and colleague Jeffrey Trimble, both journalists who were based in Moscow during the last years of the Soviet empire.
Out of the USSR is a compelling first-hand account of Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts to reform the Soviet Union, and the chaos and collapse that followed, told by one of the best writers in English on the scene at the time.
Rupert Cornwell was The Independent's award-winning correspondent in Moscow during the Gorbachev years. He entertainingly chronicled the day-to-day realities of Soviet life, and the struggles of various nationalities within the Soviet Union, while observing that Gorbachev was trying to jettison Communism without being seen to admit it. Sooner or later, he predicted, Gorbachev's contradictions would bring him down.
Cornwell died in 2017. This collection of some of his best articles published in The Independent between 1987 and 1991 provides a spellbinding amount of the last years of the Soviet empire as they were happening, and at times seems to foreshadow more recent events.
Susan Cornwell was born in 1955 and raised in a small Illinois town. She graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in public affairs reporting. She worked as a journalist for over 40 years in the United States and abroad, including Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. In Washington, D.C., she reported on the presidency, Congress and U.S. foreign policy. In 1996 she won the Merriman Smith award for presidential reporting on a deadline. She married British journalist Rupert Cornwell in 1988 and continued living in Washington after his death there in 2017. Their sons, Stas and Sean, live in London.
Jeffrey Trimble has been an international journalist, editor and media manager for more than 40 years. His assignments during 15 years with U.S. News & World Report magazine included Moscow Bureau Chief (1986-1991), Mediterranean Bureau Chief, Foreign Editor, and Assistant Managing Editor. From 1997-2007 Trimble worked at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, including as Acting President, Director of Broadcasting, and Director of Policy and Strategic Planning. From 2007-2018 Trimble held various positions, including Deputy Director, at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the U.S. government agency that oversees all U.S.-funded non-military international broadcasting. He chairs the board of directors at Eurasianet, an independent media outlet based at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute that covers news from and about the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Trimble holds a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University, did graduate study in the Soviet Union, and speaks Russian.