Growing up during the Cold War made the young Martin Blackwell wonder what the world was hiding.

"I wanted to know what life was like behind the Iron Curtain," he said. "I traveled a lot as a kid and what struck me as unfair was that these kids (in the Soviet Union) couldn't travel."

Several years later, Blackwell's appreciation for Russian culture resulted in one of the first academic journals about the country's post-World War II society.

The journal, "Contemporary History of Russia," is intended to create a spirit of collaboration between foreign and Russian scholars and to understand the big picture of society in post-WWII Russia....