Well, since I have told part of the story, I am going to go ahead and tell a bit more, just as a Thanksgiving treat for the folks on this list, although my wife, Marina, would not approve of my doing so. But she is currently in Moscow with our nine-year old daughter visiting her family. She gave a lecture on the place of Russia in the world economy at Moscow State University on Monday.
Anyway, the quick version is that in 1984 we officially registered to get married in Moscow, where she was working for IMEMO, the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. I had to return three months later for us to get married. However, I was not granted a visa to do so and she was fired from her job. It took three years to overcome this situation with a lot of unpleasant garbage happening in between. For part of the time we were not supported by either government and in November 1986 I held a press conference in front of the State Department in Washington to denounce both the US and Soviet governments for what they were doing. Eventually it became a diplomatic issue ("blocked marriages" constituted a violation of the Helsinki Accords) and Marina was let out on April 4, 1987 and we got married a month later.
For those who want to check this out, her arrival on that date was a major media event and you can probably dig it up in AP or UPI files as well as other places. It was the lead story on CNN that evening, just ahead of the arrest of the hapless Marine Sergeant Clayton Lonetree who was showing his KGB mistress around the US embassy in Moscow.
Several people said we should have written a book about the whole business and one film maker friend of mine even suggested making a Hollywood movie about it all (I am leaving out a lot of gory and juicy soap operatic stuff), but we passed on that, preferring to do professional economics work instead. My wife now has a tenured position in my department here at James Madison University and we have a textbook out, _Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy_ that is used around the world. We have also published a lot of joint papers on transition issues, one fairly recent example being in the Fall 1997 issue of the _Journal of Post Keynesian Economics_, "Complex Dynamics and Systemic Change: How Things Can Go Very Wrong."
For professional economists or New Yorkers on the list who want to catch our latest road show, we have organized a session at the January ASSA meetings in New York under the joint auspices of URPE and ACES, entitled "Critical Perspectives on the Transition Process." It will be at 8:00 AM on January 5 and besides ourselves there will be papers presented by David Kotz, Robert McIntyre, Dorothy Rosenberg, and Mark Knell, mostly dealing with problems in Russia, with Marina, John Bonin, and Lynn Turgeon serving as discussants.
Anyway, that should provide more than enough to satisfy the curiosity of listmembers regarding this matter and how my wife became the object of unwanted attention from some of our glorious organs here in the US. Barkley Rosser
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu