[applause] michael mcfaul: hello, everyone. gloria duffy: joining us this evening is former ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul. he is a longtime scholar of russia and the other former soviet states. he studied at stanford and then at oxford as a rhodes scholar. he was deeply committed to bringing about democratic change in the soviet union as it crumbled in the early 1990s. he worked with the u.s. national democratic institute and democratic parties and groups in russia on election strategy and political reform during the time when it seemed possible that russia would become a more that russia would become a more democratic society. he was