Dr Dmitry Zavialov
PhD in Politics, University of Otago, 2024. Author of Whataboutisms in International Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Founder of Walk & Talk Auckland and The Civic Room.
How I came to this work
I trained as a political scientist, and my doctorate and my book are about one habit in particular: answering a criticism by pointing at somebody else’s fault. It turns up in board meetings and project reviews as often as in politics, and it works just as well there.
Before New Zealand I spent several years running forums in Central Asia, bringing people together to discuss questions they could not easily raise anywhere else. Two things made them work: a room where people could speak freely, and a written record afterwards. The forums I run for organisations are built the same way.
I also design training professionally, which is why every workshop comes with a workbook and is built to change what people do the following month.
Where the material is tested
Walk & Talk Auckland
In 2024 I founded Walk & Talk Auckland, a free walking and talking community that now has more than 5,000 members.
It is also where I test the material. Every week I watch strangers talk through things they disagree about, and I learn which techniques actually help when they do.
The Civic Room
The Civic Room applies the forum method I use with organisations to public questions in Auckland: a short framing so that everybody starts with shared context, an open floor under the Chatham House Rule, and a discussion paper afterwards. Its first full session seated eighteen strangers on a contested subject.
15 November, Auckland
How I work with organisations
I ask for your material before I write anything: a board paper, a business case, a consultation response. The workshop examples are then rewritten around it, and I revise the workbook after every delivery.
I will also tell you honestly what I see, including when the problem is not the one you engaged me for. I am based in Auckland and travel nationally.
The book
Whataboutisms in International Politics
Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. A study of the rhetorical move that answers a criticism by pointing at a different one, how states use it, and why it works. The case is Russia at the United Nations Security Council between 2008 and 2024.
Whataboutism is the art of replying to a criticism with a counter-criticism. The user is not actually trying to talk about the second thing. They are trying to make you stop talking about the first.
