Stephen F. Jones is Professor of Russian Studies at Mount Holyoke College, USA and the founding director of the Davis Center's Program on Georgian Studies, Harvard University, USA. He is an expert on post-communist societies in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Jones has briefed the U.S. Department of State on a regular basis, as well as a number of U.S. ambassadors to Georgia. He has authored and edited a number of books including Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917 (2005), Georgia: A Political History Since Independence (2012), and The Birth of Modern Georgia: The First Georgian Republic and Its Successors, 1918-2010 (2013).