Alexander V. Pantsov

Dr. Alexander V. Pantsov is a professor of history and holds the Edward and Mary Catharine Gerhold Chair in the Humanities at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. Born in 1955, in Moscow, Russia, he graduated from the Moscow State University Institute of Asian and African Studies and earned his Ph.D. from the Russian Academy of Sciences.  From 1978 to 1993, he worked at the Russian Academy of Sciences and taught at both Moscow State University and the Russian Foreign Ministry Institute of International Relations.  From 1993 to 1998, he taught successively at Youngstown State University and DePaul University.  From 1998 to 1999, he was Deputy Director of the Moscow State University Institute of Asian and African Studies.  Since 1999, he has taught Chinese and Russian history at Capital University.  He is a winner of Capital’s Praestantia Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Cotterman Award for Excellence in Advising, and the Faculty Scholarship Award.

He has published over 200 scholarly works including twenty books in English, Russian, Chinese, German, and Korean. These include the widely reviewed The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution 1919-1927 (University of Hawaii Press, 2000); Mao Zedong: The Real Story (Simon & Schuster, 2012); Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Victorious in Defeat: The Life and Times of Chiang Kai-shek (Yale University Press. 2023). He also published a documentary collection Karl Radek on China: Documents from the Former Secret Soviet Archives (Brill Publishing House, 2020).

Pantsov lives in Westerville, Ohio with his wife, Ekaterina who taught the Russian language at Capital University for many years.  His daughter, Daria earned her Ph.D. in Chinese history and now teaches Women’s Studies at the same university.  He has four grandchildren.