Christopher J. Ward received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches Russian and world history at Clayton State University in metropolitan Atlanta, USA, and is the author of Brezhnev's Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism.

The late John M. Thompson was a graduate of Columbia University's Russian Institute and taught history at Indiana University, USA, for seventeen years. He was a distinguished visiting professor at the United States Air Force Academy and the Air War College.