Her father Poel Karp (Карп, Поэль Меерович) is a poet, literary translator, ballet critic and political writer.

She started as a translator of English and German poetry and prose into Russian and has published translations of many writers, including Virginia Woolf, Alice Munro, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Tom Stoppard, Elizabeth Jennings, Andreas Gryphius and Nikolaus Lenau.

[2] In 1991, she moved to London to work first as a producer (1991-1997) and then as the Russian Features editor (1997-2009) for the BBC World Service, making and commissioning programmes on cultural, political and social issues.

This was the main subject of her articles published in the national press (Standpoint, The Independent, The Spectator, Open Democracy, etc.)

[26] The book attracted the attention of veteran diplomat Rodric Braithwaite, who served for a short time as British Ambassador in Moscow during the fall of the USSR, he found the author's analysis unconvincing.