Vassily Klimentov is an SNF Ambizione Principal Investigator and Lecturer at the University of Zurich. He was previously a postdoctoral researcher at the European University Institute in Florence (2020-24). His research deals with Russia’s domestic and foreign policy, U.S.-Russian relations, and the memory of the Cold War in Russia and the United States. Cornell University Press has published his book A Slow Reckoning: The USSR, the Afghan Communists, and Islam in 2024.

 

Vassily Klimentov has received his PhD in International History, with a minor in International Relations/ Political Science, from the Geneva Graduate Institute. He also holds a MA in General History from the University of Geneva, a MA in Asian Studies from the Geneva Graduate Institute and the University of Geneva, and a BA in General History and Russian Studies from the University of Geneva.

 

In-between his MA and his PhD, Vassily Klimentov has worked for six years with humanitarian non-governmental organisations in Switzerland and abroad as an analyst and a needs and security assessment coordinator. He has notably been posted for two years in the Middle East on the Syrian Crisis.

 

Peer-Reviewed Publications

 

– A Slow Reckoning: The USSR, the Afghan Communists, and Islam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press/ Northern Illinois University Press, 2024).

– “Between the Domestic and the Foreign: The KGB and Soviet Muslims in the Late USSR”, Journal of Contemporary History (in print).

– “Foreign Hand(s): Vladimir Putin’s Securitizations of Separatism, Terrorism, & the West”, Europe-Asia Studies(in print).

– “Coping with Defeat: The Russian State Duma’s Views of Chechnya After the First Chechen War”. In State-building and Historical Memories in Chechnya, edited par C. Druey, M. Shogenov, and V. Tanailova (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) : 817-38.

– “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, 1978- 1988”, 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 Grazvydas Jasutis as second author)

– Stoddard, Abby, Shoaib Jillani, John Caccavale, Peyton Cooke, David Guillemois, et Vassily A. Klimentov, “Out of Reach: How Insecurity Prevents Humanitarian Aid from Accessing the Neediest”, Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 6:1 (2017): 1-25.