Gerald Easter is a Professor of Political Science at Boston College, with research and teaching expertise in Russian and East European politics and history. He is the author of Reconstructing the State: Social Networks and Elite Identity in Soviet Russia (2000); Capital, Coercion and Post-Communist States (2012) - winner of Davis Book Prize in Political and Social Science and Ed A Hewett Book Prize for Political Economy; Tsarina's Lost Treasure: Catherine the Great, a Golden Age Masterpiece, and a Legendary Shipwreck (2020); Last Stand of the Raven Clan: When Russia Went to War in America (2024); and Eastern Europe: Politics, Society, Culture (forthcoming).