Boris Sokolov (Russian: Бори́с Вади́мович Соколо́в; born January 2, 1957, in Moscow), is a historian and a Russian literature researcher (he a has Candidate of Science degree in History and Habilitat Doctor of Science in Philology). In 1979 he graduated from the department of geography of the Moscow State University, specialising in economic geography. His works have been translated into Japanese, Polish, Latvian and Estonian. He has also translated literary works from various languages.^[1]

During Soviet times, he worked at the Institute of World Literature. Subsequently, he served as a professor of social anthropology at Russian State Social University.^[2] In September 2008 he had to resign under pressure of the Administration of then-President Dmitrij Medvedev.^{[dubious – discuss]} After publishing the article 'Did Saakashvili lose?', he wrote numerous monographs, e.g. on Gogol, Sergei Esenin, and Mikhail Bulgakov (Sokolov was the author of the Bulgakov Encyclopedia, published in 1996).^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]}

From the 1990s onwards, he has turned to subjects on Russian 20th century history, publishing studies on Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Leonid Brezhnev. He is one of the Russian historians alongside those who are critically reviewing the part of the Soviet Union in the Second World War.^[3]