Peter Duncan obituary

Original article by Robert Service

My friend Peter Duncan, who has died aged 72, was a senior lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, where he was an expert in contemporary Russian politics and foreign policy from the late 1980s until his retirement in 2021.

During that time he also wrote two books on his specialist subjects: Soviet Union and India (1989) and Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communism and After (2000). One of the most knowledgable of Britain’s Russianists, in 2019 he made his expertise available to the House of Commons, which asked him to draw up a report on Russian political interference and money laundering in the UK.

Born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, Pete was the son of Charles and Lucy, who were both teachers. After his parents moved to London, he attended Latymer Upper school in Hammersmith before studying economics at the University of Birmingham. He then gained an MA in Soviet and East European studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, before completing a PhD at Glasgow University.

On returning to the UK Pete became a temporary lecturer at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, then a research fellow on the Soviet foreign policy programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. Joining University College London in 1988, he rose from research fellow to lecturer to senior lecturer, and was admired by students for his committed teaching style and cheerful personality.

At UCL he did heavy stints as the chair of the social sciences department and as head of the branch of the lecturers’ union. He also helped to set up a Soviet press study group that met weekly to review and digest the contents of the Russian press. His voracious appetite for such material led him to accumulate huge ziggurats of newspapers in his homes, first in Walthamstow and then Ealing.

Outside working hours Pete campaigned for the Labour party, and especially its left wing. In recent years he went regularly to Ukraine Solidarity Campaign meetings and rallies, and also wrote for the group’s website.

Pete’s first wife, Luba (nee Mozyl), died in 2014. In 2018 he married Alexandra (Sasha) Zernova, a human rights lawyer, who shared his zest to make their home a centre of hospitality. He had always been especially popular with children, perhaps because it was a rare five minutes when he failed to smile, or make others smile.

A cancer diagnosis in 2020 considerably depleted Pete’s energy, but he still continued with his research and selflessly found time to examine the drafts of colleagues.

He is survived by Sasha.