Andrey Zubov

Andrey Borisovich Zubov (Андре́й Бори́сович Зу́бов, born 16 January 1952, Moscow) is a Russian historian, religion scholar and political scientist, Doctor of History, prominent public person, church figure, political activist and commentator.

He was also the Vice-president of the former People's Freedom Party.

Zubov is a former Professor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).

He temporarily lost his job after making a comparison of the deployment of Russian troops in Crimea with Hitler's annexation of Austria in the Russian Newspaper Vedomosti.

One month later he was reinstated to his position until his contract at the MGIMO officially expired.

Andrey Zubov was born on January 16, 1952, in Moscow.

The project was originally developed under the leadership of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who read and edited most of the manuscript (approximately until 1956), but in autumn 2007.

He Graduated from Moscow School No. 56 in 1968.

In the same year, he entered the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (Department of International Relations).

Upon his graduation in 1973, he started working at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 1978, he defended his candidate’s thesis on ‘Experience of parliamentary democracy research in Thailand’.

Between 1988 and 1994, he taught history of religions at the Moscow Theological Academy, where he was appointed associate professor in 1990.

He taught the history of religious ideas at Moscow Theological Academy (1988–1994), Russian Orthodox University (1994–2011), MGIMO (2001–2014), Russian State University for the Humanities (1994–1998), etc.

In 1989, he defended his doctoral thesis in history on ‘Parliamentary democracy and political tradition of the East’.

Since 1993, he has been lecturing and writing books on the history of religious ideas.

From 1994 to 2012, he was Head of the Department of Religion Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy and Theology of the Russian Orthodox University.

He is one of the authors of the ‘Basic Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church’ (2000).

In 2001, he resigned from the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and moved to MGIMO where he became professor at the Department of Philosophy and also headed the University Center on ‘Church and International Relations’.

In 2006, he became the editor-in-chief of a multivolume book on Russian history, ’History of Russia.

XX century.’ The writing team united more than 45 contributors from Russia, Russian diaspora, European and American specialists in Russian studies (Vittorio Strada, Richard Pipes).

In 2009–2014, he was a member of the Synodal Biblical-Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church and a member of its Inter-Council Presence.

Solzhenitsyn chose to take distance from it (the reasons are revealed in his letter to Zubov, a copy of which is available in the blog russia_xx ) The book was published in two volumes in 2009 (volume 1: Introductory chapter and 1894–1939 period, volume 2: 1939-2007 period).

In March 2014, Andrey Zubov was fired following his criticism of the actions of the Russian government in Ukraine and Crimea (for ‘committing an act of indecency’, as the official order read).

However, the Presidential Commission to Protect Labour Rights declared the dismissal illegal and he was reinstated to his position on 11 April 2014 and continued to work until the formal expiration of his contract on June 30, 2014.

In 2014–2018, he was a columnist at Novaya Gazeta.

Starting from 2014, he has been giving public lectures at various venues and on the Internet on history of philosophy, history of religious ideas, and on the Russian history.

He has edited three volumes of "Russian History: 20th Century."

He is one of leading members of People's Freedom Party.

In 2014, A.B.Zubov was awarded the title of Honorary Doctor of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine), in 2019 he became an Honorary Doctor of Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic).

Andrey Zubov is a practicing Orthodox Christian.

He is a member of the editorial board of the Kontinent journal.

He ran for Duma in 2016 and came in the third place in the Moscow Center constituency.

In 2022, he moved to Czech Republic, working in Masaryk University.

In February 2023, Zubov was listed by Russian government as a "foreign agent".

Professor Zubov speaks English, Thai and French.

Initially, Andrey Zubov focused himself on the political history of Thailand and Asian parliamentary systems.

Under the influence of the famous Russian indianist, Vsevolod Sementsov and his wife, Olga Zubova (Egyptologist) he became interested in comparative religious studies.

In 2016-17 a new three-volume edition came out (volume 1: Introductory Chapter and 1894–1922 period; Volume 2: 1923-1953 period; Volume 3: 1953-2008 period).

The book was translated in Czech and published in two volumes in Prague.

Since his expulsion from the MGIMO, Professor Zubov has made frequent appearances in opposition media, expressing himself among other issues on historical matters.