Nina L. Khrushcheva (Photo courtesy of Professor Khrushcheva)

I have a Q&A in two parts, of which the first is here. The guest is Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at New School University, in New York City. We sat down in her office. Professor Khrushcheva is a wide-ranging scholar and writer. You get a sense of this at her website, here. Her Ph.D. (Princeton) is in comparative literature. Her latest book — co-authored with Jeffrey Tayler — is In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones.


Part I of our podcast is mainly about Putin and Russia. Part II will be about books, personalities, etc. One of those personalities is WFB — William F. Buckley Jr., for the uninitiated — with whom Khrushcheva had a highly interesting encounter. Not the least of our subjects is, What’s it like to be Khrushchev’s granddaughter, especially back in Russia?

As I say in my introduction to Part I, the mood throughout our long confab is “tense, warm, whimsical, grave, and other things.” Nina K. is her own woman, for sure, and someone to meet.