Blair Ruble first went to Russia in 1971 and conducted his dissertation research in Leningrad in 1974-1975. While at the Social Science Research Council in New York he was one of the initiators of a major study of Yaroslavl, a project that extended from the late 1980s into the early 1990s. He ran the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center from 1989 until 2012. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina (1971) and earned his MA (1973) and PhD (1977) at the University of Toronto.