Pyotr Lvovich Vail was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n author, journalist, essayist and deputy director of Radio Liberty's Russia service.

Born in Riga

Riga

Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...

 1949, he studied at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute. He moved to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1977, joining the station in the mid-1980s. He moved to the Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 headquarters in 1995.
Vail's best-known books include Genii mesta (The Genius of Place) and Stikhi pro menya (Poems About Me). He produced several books with Alexander Genis

Alexander Genis

Alexander Genis is a Russian-Americanwriter, broadcaster, and cultural critic. He has written more than dozen books that are non-fiction bestsellers in Russia.Genis, an American citizen, now resides in the New York City area....

, including Russkaya kukhnya v izgnanii (Russian Cuisine in Exile) and 60-e. Mir sovetskogo cheloveka (The '60s. The World of Soviet People). He co-edited Iosif Brodsky: trudy i dni (Joseph Brodsky: Works and Days), about Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

-winning poet Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...

, with Lev Losev

Lev Losev

-Early life and education:The son of poet Vladimir Lifshitz, Loseff was born in Leningrad. He attended Leningrad's famous Saint Peter's School and graduated from the journalism department of the Leningrad State University.-Literary career:...

. He died in a Prague hospital.