Melissa Feinberg is Professor of History at Rutgers University, USA. She is the author of Elusive Equality: Gender, Citizenship, and the Limits of Democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950 (2006), Curtain of Lies: The Battle over Truth in Stalinist Eastern Europe (2017), and Communism in Eastern Europe (2022).

Lisa A. Kirschenbaum is Professor Emerita of History at West Chester University, USA. Her research explores how ordinary people navigated the traumas of the twentieth century. Her most recent book is Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip (2024).