The first full day of the Cato.ru summer seminar in Ukraine (overlooking the Black Sea) is really going wonderfully. Students from Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, and Khazakstan are actively sharing ideas about liberty, discussing and learning from each other, and getting the seminar off to a really wonderful start. I had a one hour lecture this morning on “Property and Freedom,” followed by questions and answers, then small group discussion and formulation of questions, then coffee, then presentation of the issues in the larger group and my responses. Judge Stephen Williams of the Court of Appeals gave a great talk on property rights reforms in Russia before the Bolshevik coup d’etat (based on the research for his book Liberal Reform in an Illiberal Regime, 1906-1915: The Creation of Private Property in Russia). The students then broke into groups by country of origin to present reports on the status of property rights in their countries, which are going on right now. The report from the Georgian group just concluded and the Armenians are starting to present their report. It’s all quite exciting. Other teachers include Lev Rubinstein, Vladimir Bukovsky, Andrei Illarionov, and Ella Paneyach and, we hope (if he can make it from Tbilisi), Kakha Bendukidze. (Rubinstein’s new book of essays has just come out and I just got an email that the layout for the Russian edition of Judge Williams’s book will be ready next week. My Russian colleagues have been keeping very busy, indeed!)
Lev Rubinstein’s new book from Novoe Izdatelstvo and Cato.ru