Pyotr Lvovich Vail (Russian: Пётр Львович Вайль; born 29 September 1949, Riga, Latvian SSR – 7 December 2009, Prague, Czech Republic) was a Russian author, journalist, essayist and deputy director of Radio Liberty's Russia service.

Born in Riga 1949, he studied at the Moscow Polygraphic Institute.

[1] He moved to the United States in 1977, joining the station in the mid-1980s.

[3] Vail's best-known books include Genii mesta (The Genius of Place) and Stikhi pro menya (Poems About Me).

He produced several books with Alexander Genis, including Russkaya kukhnya v izgnanii (Russian Cuisine in Exile) and 60-e. Mir sovetskogo cheloveka (The '60s.