Professor Daniel Orlovsky is a specialist in the history of the Provisional Government after the February Revolution of 1917 and he continues to study the history of a much understudied hidden class of Soviet citizens, people who were neither workers nor peasants--the white collar "employees" of the Soviet Union between 1918 and 1956. He has held numerous grants for research in the former U.S.S.R. and Russia and has published on the social and cultural history of the Russian Revolution and early Soviet state building. Orlovsky's major contributions have been the notion of a revolution of the lower middle strata in the society and politics of the Russian Empire and its successor regimes and the application of theories of corporatism to the institutional, social and political history of the turbulent years, 1914-1921. He coordinated a project on the future of Soviet studies at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington D.C. The results were published as Beyond Soviet Studies. His latest work, a history of the Russian Provisional Government of 1917, entitled Russia's Democratic Revolution, is forthcoming. Orlovsky currently studies the broad history of bureaucracy in Russia from pre-revolutionary times through the Soviet era and the transition to post-Soviet administrations. He travels annually to Moscow to work in the trade union, Communist Party, and state bureaucracy archives in pursuit of the "hidden class," large numbers of Soviet citizens who were white collar workers during the entire Soviet era. He finds that these "employees" have not fit easily into the accepted and official narratives or categories of the Soviet regime. He has helped to organize and coordinate the ongoing series of international colloquia on modern Russian and Soviet History held in St. Petersburg, Russia in partnership with the European University, St. Petersburg and the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Each meeting has produced a published volume. Orlovsky currently studies the broad history of bureaucracy in Russia from pre-revolutionary times through the Soviet era and the transition to post-Soviet administrations. He travels annually to Moscow to work in the trade union, Communist Party, and state bureaucracy archives in pursuit of the "hidden class," large numbers of Soviet citizens who were white collar workers during the entire Soviet era. During upcoming meetings in Berlin and Moscow, Orlovsky and a working group dedicated to publishing an updated version of the influential Russian Officialdom, from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, will consider in depth the Soviet and Post Soviet administrations.

Mark Beissinger is Professor of Politics at Princeton, and previously served on the faculties of University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard University. His main fields of interest are nationalism, state-building, imperialism, and social movements, with special reference to the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states. In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, he is author or editor of four books, including Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State (Cambridge University Press, 2002), which won the 2003 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, presented by the American Political Science Association for the best book published in the United States in any field of government, politics, or international affairs, and the 2003 Mattei Dogan Award, presented by the Society for Comparative Research for the best book published in the field of comparative research. Beissinger received his B.A. from Duke University in 1976 and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1982. From 1992-98 he was the founding Director of Wisconsin’s Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia, and from 2001-04 was Chair of Wisconsin's Political Science Department. He currently serves as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and as Vice-President of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. His research has been supported by the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the Wissenshaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Science Foundation, the United States Institute for Peace, and the Ford, Rockefeller, and Olin Foundations. He is working on a book tentatively entitled Imperial Reputation: The Politics of Empire in a World of Nation-States.

Robert Huber
President, NCEEER and
Editor, Problems of Post-Communism 
bth@nceeer.org

Robert T. Huber is currently serving as NCEEER's President. He also serves as a Senior Consultant for Social Science Programs to the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, an Affiliated Professor at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, and Editor of the policy research journal, Problems of Post-Communism.

Dr. Huber has been responsible for the design, implementation, and funding of numerous research, training, teaching and technical assistance programs dealing with the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. He has raised over $100 million for the field of Eurasian and East European studies and for associated research and training programs for scholars and other professionals from the United States and from Eurasia and Eastern Europe. His publications include Soviet Perceptions of the U.S. Congress: Impact on Superpower Relations, and (co-edited with Donald R. Kelley) Perestroika-Era Politics: The New Soviet Legislature and Gorbachev's Political Reforms, as well as several articles and special studies on the Soviet foreign policy and national security establishment and on the post-Soviet Russian parliament. He is currently involved in a multi-year research effort to write the institutional histories of the major national research organizations in the field of Eurasian and East European studies.

Dr. Huber has led major and successful efforts to increase funding for the Title VIII program, which supports a variety of programs which promote advanced research on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Dr. Huber has also able to initiate, through grants of several million dollars, a wide array of new research and training programs for American scholars, graduate students and other professionals as well as their counterparts from the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe.

In addition to his professional duties, Dr. Huber is a Catholic Deacon in the Archdiocese of Seattle, St. Hubert's Catholic Church in Langley, Washington. He has many spiritual and charitable responsibilities including ministerial work with the Mary Mother of God Catholic Mission in Vladivostok, Russia.

Dana Ponte
Senior Program Officer
danochka@nceeer.org

NCEEER Senior Program Officer Dana Ponte grew up on her family’s ranch in Southern Oregon, and graduated summa cum laude from the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon with a degree in Russian studies. After a year as an Americorps volunteer, Dana moved to Boston to continue her education. She is a 2005 graduate of the master's program in Russian and Central Asian Studies at Harvard. Dana worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies before taking her current position with the National Council in 2006. Her personal research concerns Volga Tatar intellectual and political movements in the early Soviet period--in particular, efforts to reconcile Bolshevism with Islam.

Shoshana Billik
Program/IT Officer
shoshana@nceeer.org

Shoshana Billik joined the NCEEER staff in December 2007 after receiving her MA degree in Russian and Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in Seattle. She previously worked in the Silicon Valley high-tech industry for seven years and brings her extensive IT background to her new position. She also participated in an ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) internship program in Russia called the US-Russia Volunteer Initiative, where she taught computer classes for disabled Russian children. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, dancing, hiking, and bowling.

Alexei Kharlamov
Program Officer
alexei@nceeer.org

Leninsky Prospekt, 2
Room 526
Moscow 119049

Tel: 7-495-647-9839
Fax: 7-495-956-7806

Jeff Anderson
Treasurer 
jeff@nceeer.org

Erin Downie
Accountant 
erind@nceeer.org

Ann E. Robertson
Managing Editor
Problems of Post-
Communism
popc@nceeer.org

John Hardt
Senior Advisor 
jadmr@nceeer.org