Victor Vakhshtayn

Victor Vakhshtayn graduated from the Department of Psychology at Penza University and earned his MA in Social Sciences at the Russian-British University in Moscow. He received his PhD in social theory from the Higher School of Economics (Shaninka) in Moscow, where he subsequently served as Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He is the author of nine books and 150 scholarly articles and has twice been included in the list of the 100 most-cited Russian-speaking sociologists. In September 2021, following the arrest of colleagues and a raid by the Russian Federal Security Service, Vakhshtayn left Russia. Declared a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities, he joined the Board of the Teodor Shanin International Foundation and became one of the founders of the first Russian “university in exile”—the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (FLAS, based in Montenegro), created by former Russian-British University faculty. He is currently a professor and head of the Department of Sociology at FLAS. Since January 2022, Victor Vakhshtayn has been living in Israel, where he serves as a senior research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies ,Tel Aviv University.