Professional Affiliation

Correspondent, Moscow Bureau, Time Magazine

Expert Bio

In the fall of 1995, I was awarded an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship to spend a year reporting on regional conflict in the former Soviet Union. Thanks to this fellowship, I was able to return to the former Soviet Union, this time traveling widely throughout the Caucacus and Central Asia. In November 1996, I joined the Moscow bureau of Time Magazine, where I continue to work as a staff correspondent, covering everything from politics to culture to what passes for business in the former Soviet lands. My writing on foreign affairs has also appeared in Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Wired, among many other U.S. and international publications. In 1999, I reported on Russia's financial crisis for a PBS/FRONTLINE documentary, "The Crash." I graduated from Wesleyan University in 1985, with Honors from the College of Letters, an interdisciplinary program in History, Philosophy and Literature. In 1989, I received a second B.A. from Oxford University, where I studied Russian Language and Literature. I first visited the USSR in 1983 as an undergraduate then living in Germany. I came for one week on a student tour. I fell in love with the place and the people, and vowed to return only when I had learned the language. Five years later, I did. In 1988, as a graduate student at Oxford, I came back to Moscow to study. And for the better part of the ensuing decade, from 1989 to the present, I have lived in Russia and traveled throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Baltics. 

Expertise

Journalist, specializing in Russian and post-Soviet affairs

Wilson Center Project

Russia at Five Corners.

Project Summary

A political autopsy of the Soviet collapse that seeks to ground its analysis on greater Russia (beyond Moscow). Uses literary, historical and comtemporary sources to provide Norilsk, Sakhalin, Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg perspectives of the Russian story.

Major Publications

• Time Magazine, 1996-present, Published in U.S., international and on-line editions; The New Republic, Contributor, 1995-present
  
   
• "Russia in the Red: Undone by Capitalism, Moscow Drifts Toward Chaos." Harper's Magazine. June 1999 ('Letter from Moscow' in the Summer after Russia's Economic Collapse of August 1998)
  
   
• The Alicia Patterson Foundation Reporter: Four-Part Series on Ethnic and Regional Conflict in the former Soviet Union: Reports from Tajikistan, Abkhazia, Moldova, and Nagorno-Karabakh: "Report From Tajikistan": Vol. 18, No. 1; "The Spoils of War: Report From Nagorno-Karabakh": Vol. 18, No. 2; "Independence Free Fall: The Collapse of Moldova's Industrial Engine," Vol. 18, No. 3; "Report from Abkhazia," Vol. 18, No. 4