Gail Lapidus - Gail Lapidus is Senior Fellow Emerita at the Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University. Lapidus is also Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Chair of the Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies from 1985 to 1994. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University.
A specialist on Soviet society, politics and foreign policy, she has authored and edited a number of books on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs.
Michael McFaul - Michael A. McFaul is Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and associate professor of political science at Stanford University.
Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1995, he worked for two years as a senior associate in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center. McFaul is also research associate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, both at Stanford, and senior advisor to the National Democratic Institute.
He serves on the board of directors of the Eurasia Foundation, Firebird Fund, International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, Institute of Social and Political Studies, Center for Civil Society International, and Institute for Corporate Governance and Law; the steering committee for the Europe and Eurasia division of Human Rights Watch, and the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, and Perspectives on European Politics and Society.
He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies.
Michael Urban - Michael Urban is a Professor of Politics at UC Santa Cruz. Michael Urban's research has dealt principally with Russia (USSR), focusing on questions of political language and ideology, the circulation of elites, the dynamics of the mass movement that overthrew the communist regime, and the problems of state and society in the post-communist period.
He has also explored the appearance and development of blues music and culture in Russia, focusing on social identity and community formation under conditions of stress and uncertainty.
Edward Walker - Edward Walker is Executive Director of the Berkeley Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies and Associate Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Walker's research has focused on the relationship between beliefs and institutions in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and more broadly on the influence of normative ideas and mythologies on institutional change.
For related Britannica content, please search on Britannica's Web site, at www.britannica.com.