Profile
Vassily KLIMENTOV

Vassily KLIMENTOV

Research Associate, Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding
SNSF Ambizione Principal Investigator and Lecturer, History Department of Centre for Eastern European Studies, University of Zurich
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Profile

 

Vassily Klimentov obtained his PhD in International History, with a minor in Political Science, from the Geneva Graduate Institute in 2020. Thanks to two grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, he has then worked for three years at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence. He has obtained two more individual grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation, including the Ambizione grant, to conduct research at the University of Zurich starting in 2024. Vassily Klimentov has taught Bachelor and Master classes in Contemporary History and International Relations at the University of Zurich, the Geneva Graduate Institute, and the University of Fribourg. 

Vassily Klimentov’s research focuses on US-Soviet/Russian relations and Soviet and Russian foreign and domestic policy since the 1970s. He is currently working on two research projects, respectively titled: ‘Islam and the Making of Modern Russia: Moscow and the Muslim World’ and ‘A War Without End? The Legacy of the Cold War in Russia’. Vassily Klimentov has published multiple articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has also written articles for Swiss media and think tanks. His book, titled A Slow Reckoning: The USSR, the Afghan Communists, and Islam, has been published by Cornell University Press/ Northern Illinois University Press in 2024.

Prior to his PhD, Vassily Klimentov has worked for international humanitarian NGOs for six years, including for two years in the Middle East on the Syrian Crisis.

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Peer reviewed articles

 

  • 'Foreign Hand(s): Vladimir Putin’s Securitizations of Separatism, Terrorism, & the West', Europe-Asia Studies (in press).
  • 'Between the Domestic and the Foreign: The KGB and Soviet Muslims in the Late USSR', Journal of Contemporary History, (2025).
  • 'Coping with Defeat: The Russian State Duma’s Views of Chechnya After the First Chechen War’. In State-building and Historical Memories in Chechnya, ed. by C. Druey, M. Shogenov, and V. Tanailova, 211-28 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2024).
  • 'Not a Threat? Russian Elites’ Disregard for the “Islamist Danger” in the North Caucasus in the 1990s’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 24:4 (2023): 817-838.
  • ‘The Tajik Civil War and Russia’s Islamist Moment’, Central Asian Survey, 42:2 (2023): 341-358.
  • ‘In Search of Islamic Legitimacy: The USSR, the Afghan communists, and the Muslim world’, Cold War History, 23:2 (2023): 283-305.
  • ‘“Communist Muslims”: The USSR and the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan’s Conversion to Islam’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 24: 1 (2022): 4-38.
  • ‘Bringing the war home: the strategic logic of ‘North Caucasian terrorism’ in Russia’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 32:2 (2021): 374-408.
  • ‘The Allure of Jihad: the de-territorialization of the war in the North Caucasus’, Caucasus Survey, 8:3 (2020): 239-257. (With Dr Grazvydas Jasutis as second author)

  • ‘Out of Reach: How Insecurity Prevents Humanitarian Aid from Accessing the Neediest’, Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 6:1 (2017): 1-25. (with Abby Stoddard*, Shoaib Jillani, John Caccavale, Peyton Cooke, David Guillemois)

     

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