Grigory Ioffe is Professor of Geography in the Geospatial Department, Radford University, USA. His research interests include Post-Soviet political developments and dictatorship, subjects on which he has published widely on. His previous books include Russia and the Near Abroad, Understanding Belarus and How Western Foreign Policy Misses the Mark (2008) and The End of Peasantry? The Disintegration of Rural Russia ( with T. Nefedova and I. Zaslavsky, 2006).