Poel Karp is a Russian sociologist, political analyst, ballet critic and poet. He was born on 31st August 1925 and educated at the History Faculty of Moscow University. Since 1987 (Gorbachev’s perestroika) he has published a book on Russian history (The Russian Experience - Otechestvenny Opyt, SMIO Press, St Petersburg, 2001) and over 400 articles on social issues in the Soviet Union and Russia, the relationship between democracy and economic development, problems of Soviet empire, ethnic tensions, anti-Semitism and the Chechen wars in numerous magazines and newspapers in Russia and abroad. Some of them are collected in his book Freedom is the Basis of Order. Among his unpublished works is The New Feudalism, a book on social developments in Soviet Russia. Other publications include the books About ballet - [O balete], Ballet and drama [Balet i drama], The Younger Muse [Mladshaya muza], Collected Notebooks [Obshchaya tetrad'] (a book of poems), and translations of Heine, Eichendorf, Goethe, Ibsen, Shakespeare and others.