Born in Russia when Leningrad was still St. Petersburg, educated in Germany and  Italy, a first-hand witness of Communism, Fascism and National Socialism in action,  a camp inmate during World War II, then a displaced person, and, finally,  a college professor and an American intelligence officer with many foreign assignments, I have come back to academic life here in Evergreen to do what I like to do most: teach, learn, experiment, promote international understanding, and battle intellectual provincialism, prejudice, and orthodoxies old
and new.

My credentials: a respectable doctorate in comparative literature and modern languages Russian, German, Italian, French, Swedish, Lithuanian)  - some very rewarding years of teaching at Kenyon College and Indiana University  - an ever lasting love affair with the peoples,cultures, and languages that I know - and - so I like to flatter myself - a sceptical but tolerant view of all those who believe to have the final answers to all complexities of the human condition.

Dedicated to the proposition that the world is still round (not square, as many young ones seem to believe!),  and that man's past is his present, and his present his future,  I am always eager to explore with the curious students our common humanity through other languages and literatures.

I like people who value a civilized and informed discourse, books which deal with subjects I know nothing about, music of the Baroque and opera, theatre, films, Renaissance art, and all spectator's sports that can be viewed from a comfortable position.