Akhmed Zakaev is the Prime Minister in Exile of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (CRI). He was born in 1959 into a family deported, along with the rest of the Chechen population, by Stalin’s regime in 1944. Zakaev graduated from acting and choreography schools in Grozny. In 1977, he was admitted to Voronezh State Academy of Arts and subsequently worked at the Chechen National Theatre. In 1994 he became Minister of Culture of the independent Chechen government of Djohar Dudaev and Commander of the Western Group for the Defense of Ichkeria. Zakaev played a crucial role in negotiations with Moscow, which led to the Russo-Chechen peace treaty of 1997, which Russia later violated. He opposed the rise of radical Islam in Chechnya, alleging a link between Islamist extremism and Russia’s covert global pro-terrorism policy. In 2002, Russia accused Zakaev, by then in exile, of involvement in a series of crimes, including the hostage-taking at a Moscow theatre in 2002 which ended in a catastrophic loss of life. In 2003, a British court declared the accusations groundless and politically motivated. On February 25, 2022, the second day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Zakaev issued a statement at a rally in defense of Ukraine before the European Parliament in Brussels. Zakaev has spoken in the European Parliament and the legislatures of Italy, Lithuania, Romania, and other countries. He is the author of Subjugate or Exterminate! (Academica Press, 2018) and Russia, Chechnya, and the West (Academica Press, 2022).

Translator: Arch Tait learned Russian in London and at Moscow State University. He holds a Ph.D. in Russian Literature from the University of Cambridge and from 1993 was UK editor of the Glas New Russian Writing translation series. He has translated more than forty books by leading Russian authors of fiction and non-fiction, including Alexei Navalny’s Patriot, which was voted Book of the Year at the 2025 British Book Awards and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography in the United States. He has translated books by Nobel Prize winners Mikhail Gorbachev and Svetlana Alexiyevich, as well as the first two volumes of the memoirs of Akhmed Zakaev.

Gavriel Shapiro is Professor Emeritus of Comparative and Russian Literature at Cornell University. He is the author of Nikolai Gogol and the Baroque Cultural Heritage (1993), Delicate Markers: Subtexts in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Invitation to a Beheading” (1998), The Sublime Artist’s Studio: Nabokov and Painting (2009), The Tender Friendship and the Charm of Perfect Accord: Nabokov and His Father (2014), and Thanksgiving All Year Round: A Memoir (2016), and the editor of Nabokov at Cornell (2003). He has also contributed numerous articles and chapters to various scholarly periodicals and critical collections, most of which are devoted to Nabokov and his literary legacy.

Kakhaber Kalichava received his Ph.D. from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University in 2019, with a focus on recent conflicts in Georgia and their broader international implications. Dr. Kalichava completed an MA thesis examining the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, “The Russo-Georgian War of 2008 in Georgian and English-Language Scholarship: A Survey of Historical, Ethnical, Political, and Legal Aspects of the Conflict,” which was published in 2016. Since 2013, Dr. Kalichava has been a contributing member of the editorial team of the popular Georgian historical magazine Istoriani. He also lectures at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, where he teaches graduate courses, and teaches history and global politics at New School International School of Georgia. A past research scholar of the Erasmus Mundus program in Poland, he has also developed an English-language course designed for the program’s exchange students. Dr. Kalichava also serves as an international examiner for history, global politics, and the extended essay components of the international baccalaureate curriculum.

Gaël-Georges Moullec is a specialist in Russian History and the history of the international communist movement. Having served as a staff officer at NATO Headquarters, he is currently lecturer at the University of Paris XIII and the Polytechnic University of Valenciennes, and Associate Researcher and Chair of Geopolitics at Rennes School of Business. He is the author of eight books including Moscou – 1917: Les rapports d’Albert Remes, consul du Royaume de Belgique and Trois instants de printemps, le renseignement diplomatique soviétique dans la France gaulliste.

The Synodal School of Liturgical Music was founded in 1992 to train choir conductors, singers, and church readers in the liturgical music tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church, focusing primarily on the parishes of the Russian diaspora. The school offers courses in music theory, sight-singing, Church Slavonic, church music history, liturgics, liturgical performance practice, voice, and choral methods. It is based at the Holy Dormition Convent in Nanuet, New York.

Father Andrei Papkov is a Russian Orthodox Archpriest and Founder and President of the Synodal School of Liturgical Music of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). He holds a master’s degree in vocal performance from New England Conservatory and is the chairman of the Synodal Liturgical Music Commission (ROCOR).

Father Andrei Papkov is a Russian Orthodox Archpriest and Founder and President of the Synodal School of Liturgical Music of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). He holds a master’s degree in vocal performance from New England Conservatory and is the chairman of the Synodal Liturgical Music Commission (ROCOR).

Irina S. Zhushchikhovskaya is Senior Researcher at the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnology of Peoples of the Far East, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok. She is a specialist in ancient pottery and has published over 150 works on prehistoric ceramics.

Natalia K. Danilova is Senior Researcher in the Department of Archaeology and Ethnography, Institute of Humanitarian Research and Problems of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science, Yakutsk. Her fields of scientific interest include mythology, ritual culture, and sacred geography of the native peoples of Siberia. She is the author of more than 100 publications.

Translator: Richard L. Bland, a retired Arctic archaeologist and translator, has translated over 250 articles and books, primarily from Russian and German, into English, including The Peoples of Ancient Siberia: An Archeological History by A. P. Okladnikov and Warfare in the Russian Arctic by A. K. Nefedkin, and the three-volume Russian Colonization of Alaska by A. V. Grinev.

Editor: Elena A. Okladnikova is an archaeologist with specialties in cultural history, sociology of spiritual life, rock art, social technologies, social anthropology, and ethnosociology. She has led archaeological expeditions in Siberia and Altai and is the author of over 400 scientific, educational, and methodological works. She is presently Professor in the Departmentof Sociology at the Institute of History and Social Sciences of the Herzen State Pedagogical University, in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Translator: Richard L. Bland, a retired Arctic archaeologist and translator, has translated over 250 articles and books, primarily from Russian and German, into English, including The Peoples of Ancient Siberia: An Archeological History by A. P. Okladnikov and Warfare in the Russian Arctic by A. K. Nefedkin, and the three-volume Russian Colonization of Alaska by A. V. Grinev.

Peter Martins was the Ballet Master in Chief of New York City Ballet for 35 years, the only person to preside over the company as long as its founder, George Balanchine. Born in Denmark, Martins began his association with NYCB in 1967, when he was invited to dance the title role in George Balanchine’s Apollo during the company’s appearance at the Edinburgh Festival. He then performed as a guest artist for three years before joining the company as a principal dancer in 1970. Prior to his retirement from dancing in 1983, Martins performed a wide variety of roles and was lauded for his outstanding partnering skills and noble stage presence. In 1981, Martins was named Ballet Master, a title he shared with Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and John Taras. From 1983 to 1989, he served as Co-Ballet Master in Chief with Robbins, running day-to-day operations. He assumed sole directorship of the company in 1990 and was also Chairman of the Faculty of the School of American Ballet, NYCB’s official school. In 2000, founded the New York Choreographic Institute.
Martins began his career as a choreographer in 1977. He has created nearly 90 ballets set to music by composers as diverse as Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Wynton Marsalis, and John Adams. His full-length productions for New York City Ballet include The Sleeping Beauty (1991), Swan Lake (1999), Romeo + Juliet (2007), and La Sylphide (2015). Martins’ autobiography, Far From Denmark, was published in 1982. Among other awards, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark made him a Knight of Dannebrog, a Knight of the First Order, and, in 2013, a Commander of the Knights of Dannebrog, Denmark’s highest civilian honor. In 2008, the French government made him a Commander in the Order of Arts and Letter. That same year, Martins was inducted into the National Museum of Dance’s Hall of Fame, in Saratoga Springs, New York.