Yury Fedotov

Yury Fedotov is the current Russian ambassador to the UK.  He has graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1971 and has a background of excellent work as a representative of the Russian Federation in many countries such as Algeria, India, USA and the UK. As a member or a head of Russian delegations HE Yury Fedotov took part in many international fora such as sessions of UN General Assembly, ECOSOS, UN Commission on Human Rights, WFP, UN ECE, etc.

Vladimir Makanin

Vladimir Makanin was born in 1937 in Orsk, a city which straddles the Ural River. Makanin himself recalls how every morning he would cross from the ‘European' side where he lived, into Asia, to go to school, before returning back to Europe in the evening. Makanin's love of chess led him to enter Moscow State University to study Mathematics - and for six years after that he was a mathematician working in a laboratory of the Dzherzhinsky Military Academy. He has lived in Moscow ever since.

 After attending a film course in 1963, however, Makanin's interests took a more literary direction and he began to write. His short stories quickly made his name amongst Russian intelligentsia circles and his first novel, ‘Прямая линия' (The Straight Line), appeared in 1967. With the end of Khrushchev's ‘thaw' in the late 1960s, Makanin fell out of favour and was largely ignored by Soviet literary critics for the next twenty years. From the 1980s onwards, however, he was increasingly ‘re-discovered' by a new generation of critics and writers. In 1993 Makanin won the Russian Booker Prize for ‘Стол, покрытый сукном и с графином посередине' (‘Baize-covered Table with Decanter'), in 1998 the Pushkin Prize and, in 1999, the State Prize of the Russian Federation. His most recent work, ‘Асан' (Asan), won the Big Book Prize in 2008.

 ‘Asan' is an account of the life of a military manager who runs a warehouse in Chechnya. Its narrative, build as a stream of consciousness, reads as a psychological thriller and it is drawn by a need to understand and justify this war.

 From official opprobrium to the highest state honour, Makanin has evolved a highly original type of narration characterized by a montage of plot fragments, dialogues, philosophical speculations, dreams and legends, often arranged with gaps in space and time.

Baroness Cox

Baroness Cox is a cross-bench member of the British House of Lords, and campaigner for many humanitarian causes in post-Soviet Republics.
Baroness Cox is Chief Executive of HART (Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust); President of the Trustees of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a Patron of the Medical Aid for Poland Fund; a Trustee of MERLIN (Medical Emergency Relief International), a Trustee of the Metta Trust for Children's Education, a non- executive director of the Andrei Sakarov Foundation, an International representative for Elam Ministries, chairperson of the British Armenia All-Party Parliamentary. She is also a member of the Standing Conference on Women's Organisations, honorary vice-chairman of the International Islamic Christian Organisation for Reconciliation and Reconstruction and on the advisory council to MigrationWatch.
Baroness Cox is a Eurosceptic. The issue of contemporary slavery has also been at the forefront of Cox' activities. In 1995 she won the William Wilberforce Award, named in honour of the former MP who led the fight to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire, for her humanitarian work generally.