Becoming Teodor

Teodor Shanin OBE, born in Poland in 1930 and exiled to Siberia as a boy of 11, became an acclaimed sociologist who lived and worked mainly in Palestine, Russia and England, where he moved in 1963, and pioneered the study of Russian peasantry in the West. Fluent in English, Russian and Hebrew, during his years in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union he founded the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences. For many years he was Professor Emeritus in Sociology of the University of Manchester, where he specialised in peasant studies and gained a
large and devoted student following. Professor Shanin completed this autobiography shortly before his death in 2020, and it has been prepared for publication by Shulamit Ramon, Professor of Social Inclusion and Wellbeing at the University of Hertfordshire and Professor Shanin’s partner for 50 years.