Seva Gunitsky is an American and Canadian political scientist. Born in Leningrad, Soviet Union (Vsevolod Gunitskiy[1]) he migrated to the United States at the age of 10, right around the time of the 1991 August Putsch. Today he is an US citizen and Canadian permanent resident.[2][3]
After his B.A. in 2002 at the University of Michigan, in Political Science and Economics he got his M.A. in Political Science at the Columbia University in 2006, New York, NY and Ph.D. in Political Science in 2011.
Since 2011 he is at the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto – as Assistant Professor (2011-2017), Associate Professor (since 2017), Faculty Affiliate at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society (since 2025) and George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies (since 2025).
He was also Fung Global Fellow at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (2014–15).
At the University of Toronto, he focuses his research on the ways global forces and international politics affect democracy and domestic politics.
He is the author of Aftershocks: Great Powers and Domestic Reforms in the Twentieth Century, which examines how shocks in the international system affect regime types.[4][5] The book was selected by Foreign Affairs magazine as one of the best books of 2017.[6][7]
Gunitsky is a frequent commentator on Russian politics and foreign policy.[8][9][10][11][12] He publishes commentary and analysis in The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic[13][14][15] and other – The New York Times, USA Today, Vox.com, Bloomberg, Maclean's, CBC News, Toronto Globe and Mail, Vice, Toronto Star, The National Post. Television: CBC News, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, CTV News, Sun News.
On CBC he spoke about having to relearn Russian after immigration, a common problem for Russophone immigrant children.