A historian who reads the Soviet collapse through elite power struggle
He described the Soviet dissolution not as an “anti-nomenklatura revolution” but as the result of the nomenklatura’s inconsistency and loss of coherence.
Aleksandr Shubin is a Russian historian and left-wing public intellectual whose research spans socialist thought, revolutionary movements, Soviet society, and international history. His books examine perestroika, informal political movements, and struggles within the Soviet system, asking whether its transformation was historically predetermined. Shubin interprets the Soviet collapse less as a systemic inevitability than as the result of power struggles and political choices among an increasingly inconsistent ruling elite, making his work relevant to debates over late-Soviet reform and the Nineteenth Party Conference.
Career Timeline
- 1982–1989Student, Moscow State Lenin Pedagogical Institute
- 1985–1991Participated in socialist movements and informal political clubs
- 1989–1992Postgraduate researcher, Institute of World History, Soviet Academy of Sciences
- 1992–2001Researcher, Institute of World History
- 2001–2015Head, Center for the History of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Institute of World History
- 2003–Professor, State Academic University for the Humanities
- 2007–2015Senior researcher, Institute of World History
- 2015–Chief research fellow, Institute of World History