[1] After graduating from Harvard College in 1981, Wachtel pursued a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley which he completed in 1987.

He remained at Northwestern for 19 years, serving at various times as Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Director of the Program in Comparative Literature, Director of the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies and Dean of the Graduate School.

In 2006, Wachtel released a large-scale study in literary sociology entitled Remaining Relevant After Communism: The Role of the Writer in Eastern Europe.

[4]  Based on survey data and literary analysis from across Eastern Europe and the former USSR, the book traces literature’s loss of prestige in the post-communist world and the strategies of writers to retain their importance to society.

Wachtel has a parallel interest in Russian theatre and drama and has written a number of books and articles in this area including Petrushka: Sources and Contexts (Northwestern UP, 1998)[6] and Plays of Expectations: Intertextual Relations in Russian 20th-Century Drama (U. of Washington Press, 2006).

Together with Ilya Kutik he created the first major web anthology of Russian poetry From the Ends to the Beginning.

[10] In 2022, the Russian government banned Wachtel from entering the country for 30 years due to his cooperation with the British organization "Open Democracy" and Bard College sponsored by the George Soros Foundation and recognized as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation in accordance with the Dima Yakovlev Law.