Biography
I was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. I graduated from Moscow State University where I majored in Economic Geography. In terms of my training and perspective, which includes viewing reality through the prism of spatial trends, e.g., center-periphery gradients, and their statistical explanation, I owe much to Yuri Medvedkov, my Ph D advisor, and to several other Russian-trained colleagues, particularly to Mikhail Krylov, Dmitry Lukhmanov, Andrei Treivish, and Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya.
I am well traveled in the former Soviet Union. I visited 13 out of 15 of its former republics and many regions of Russia from Kaliningrad in the west to Chukotka in the east and from Chechnya and N. Ossetia in the south to Murmansk in the north. I spent many weeks in field trips in the so-called glubinka, the outlying rural areas of Central Russia, where the sense of remoteness induced by poor roads and general neglect belies these areas' proximity (100-150 km) to major urban clusters. I am also well traveled in Europe where I visited 22 countries and lived in some of them for weeks and months at a time.
In 1989, I immigrated to the United States. Radford University has been my only place of work in America. In 1995, I became US citizen. I am indebted to many fellow Americans, particularly to George Demko of Dartmouth College, my most lasting American friend and mentor, and to several colleagues and friends from Radford -- Glenn Embrey, Nat Kranowski, Bernd Kuennecke, Lori LeMay, Don Samson, and Susan Woodward.
My major completed research project is A Troubled Realm: Russian Agriculture's Spatial Constraints, Variance, and Prospects for Revival, funded by the National Science Foundation. The project I am working on is devoted to Belarusian identity. Belarus is my mother's ancestral land. Ethnicity in general and Belarusian ethnicity in particular have long been of interest to me. I have visited Belarus no less than 25 times, and my last visit took place in June 2005. My paper Culture wars, soul-searching, and Belarusian identity, presented at the symposium "The Arts, National Identity and Politics in Belarus" (Harvard University, October 14-15, 2005), reflects some of my major findings.