Lev Gudkov

Sociologist and opinion poller

Lev Gudkov was born in Moscow in 1947. He studied journalism, sociology and philology at Moscow Lomonosov University. Later he worked at VTsIOM, one of Russia's post communist leading opinion pollers. When the institute was taken over by the state in 2003 he left and started at sociologist Yuri Levada's Analytical centre, later named Levada Centre. 

Since 2006 he is director of the Levada Center. He is the editor-in-chief of the magazine The Russian Public Opinion Herald, regularly published by the Levada Center.

As a professor he lectured at the Jewish University of Moscow and the Russian State University for the Humanities. He also taught at the department of Political Science at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.