Vladislav Martinovich Zubok is professor of international history at the London School of Economics and a Head of the Сold War Studies Programme in the Department of International History. Zubok is a specialist in the history of the Cold War and 20th century Russia, who wrote such books as A Failed Empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007) and Zhivago’s Children: the Last Russian Intelligentsia (2009).