Dr. Yanni Kotsonis was educated in Athens, Montreal, Copenhagen, London, Moscow, and New York. He taught in England before coming to NYU in 1994. He pursues his interest in modern Russia through political economy, which he expressed in his first books on agrarian change and his recent book of taxation in Russia, the USSR, and Europe. In his teaching too he is concerned with the ways we can make intelligent comparisons between one time period and another (Imperial and Soviet Russia), and one country and another (Russia and other parts of Europe). His studies of taxation and his introduction to the book Russian Modernity reflect these interests. So does the range of courses he teaches and the variety of topics researched by his PhD students: Siberia, Harbin, Soviet Roma, Mozambique, and political Utopianism. He works with only a few students at a time; as someone once said, “Better fewer, but better.” He is founding director of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia.
