Khrushcheva obtained a degree from Moscow State University with a major in Russian in 1987 and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University in 1998. From 2002 to 2004, she was Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Her articles have appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and other prominent publications. She is the author of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics (2008), and The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey Into the Gulag of the Russian Mind. She is also an editor of and a contributor to Project Syndicate.