received my B.A. summa cum laude in history in 1980, M.A. in public administration in 1982, and Ph.D. in foreign affairs in 1984 all from the University of Virginia. My first full time teaching appointment was at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where in 1987 I founded the Center for Contemporary Russian Studies.In 1989 and 1990, as an International Affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, I served as special assistant for policy in the Office of Soviet Union Affairs in the U.S. Department of State, and as temporary political attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. While in the Soviet Union I monitored local elections in central Russia, Belarus, and Latvia. In 2001-2002 I returned to Russia privately to serve as staff consultant to the municipal research and training center Dialog, and advisor to the mayor of the Russian city of Novgorod the Great.
My postdoctoral awards include a Senior Fulbright Lectureship
to Russia, a Thornton D. Hooper International Affairs Fellowship at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and research
awards from the National Council for Eurasian and East European
Research,
the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, D.C.,
and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1997 Novgorod
State University awarded me an honorary doctorate
for "great merit in the development of the University and an
outstanding contribution to the Science, Culture and Education of the
Land of Novgorod." In 2007 I participated in the Valdai Discussion Club, a gathering of Russian specialists who meet annually with that country’s top political leadership. In 2008 I spoke at the first international security conference of the Ukrainian Forum in Kiev.
I have published in American Interest, Asia Times, Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune, Wilson Quarterly, Comparative Strategy, Post-Soviet Affairs, Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy, World Development, Fletcher Forum, and Harvard International Review. My articles in Russian have appeared in the monthly of the Russian Supreme Soviet, Rodina, the social sciences quarterlies of the Russian Academy of Sciences ONS and Polis, and the journal of the Institute for International Economy and International Relations, MEiMO.
I have authored or edited eight books, including Crafting Democracy: How Novgorod has Coped with Rapid Social Change (Cornell, 2004), The Rebirth of Russian Democracy: An Interpretation of Political Culture (Harvard, 1995), and Russian Foreign Policy: From Empire to Nation-State co-authored with Alvin Z. Rubinstein (Longman, 1997).