He lived first in Philadelphia, where he was employed by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (1983–1990), while teaching at the University of Pennsylvania (1985–1990). At the time, he began contributing comments on local politics to Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, beginning with an analysis of the "dynastic socialism" in Romania, centered on the political career of Nicu Ceaușescu. His essays on the lives and careers of communist potentates, requested by Radio Free Europe's Vlad Georgescu and aired by the station as a series, were later grouped under the title "Archeology of Terror".