Gyula Szvak is professor of Russian history and director of the Russian Studies Center at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest. He is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from the Russian Academy of Sciences and serves on the editorial board of two academic journals published in Russia: Rossiyskaya Istoriya and Istoriya i istoriki. He is the author of fifteen books on Muscovy and the age of Peter the Great. His previous English-language monograph, False Tsars, was published in 2000.