I 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 went back to Russia 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 from
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 was invited to participate in the Valdia Discussion Club, an international gathering of Russian specialists who meet annually with that country’s top political leadership.
I have published in The Wilson Quarterly, Comparative Strategy, Post-Soviet Affairs, World Development, The Fletcher Forum, and the 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 also authored or edited eight books, including Crafting Democracy: How Novgorod has Coped with Rapid Social Change (Cornell University Press, 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).