He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include a cultural history of Russia and family history in Russia. He has written and been published on corruption in the USSR and written a book Inventing a Socialist Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia 1917-1929. At Hoover he plans to use the archives of the Soviet Ministry of Justice, Procuracy, and Supreme Court for his ongoing study of bribery and campaigns against corruption in the 1940s and 1950s.