A focus on the economic and social problems in Ukraine, particularly during the war years, and the collectivization of agriculture in Western Ukraine in the late 1940s. It compares this with the imposition of the Stalinist system in Eastern Ukraine in the 1930s using a wide variety of Soviet archival information and historical works from the 1940s onwards.;The author has also written: "Chernobyl and Nuclear Power in the USSR", "The Soviet Impact of the Chernobyl Disaster", "Ukraine under Perestroika: Ecology, Economics and the Workers' Revolt". He is also the author of articles in Soviet Studies, Current History, Nationalities Papers, Canadian Slavonic Papers and Soviet Economy.

Belarus: From Soviet Rule to Nuclear Catastrophe examines the principal effects of Soviet rule on Belarus as the prelude to a detailed analysis of the medical and social consequences of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. It places these problems into the contemporary political context and assesses the ability of the newly-independent state to deal with a disaster of such dimensions.

Stalinism in Ukraine in the 1940s focuses on the economic and social problems in Ukraine, particularly during the war years, and the collectivization of agriculture in Western Ukraine in the late 1940s. It compares the imposition of the Stalinist system in Eastern Ukraine in the 1930s to that in Western Ukraine in the following decade, using recently released Soviet archival information and historical works.