April 25, 1950, Moscow. A wealthy family. Grandmother Olga Kobylyanskaya, the widow of prominent Polish revolutionary Vladislav Kobylyansky, became one of the first Soviet diplomats, a Stalinist, and escaped repression. After Stalin's death, she abruptly changed her preferences. She was personally acquainted with Nikita Khrushchev, who ensured the well-being of her family. Kobylyanskaya became a pensioner of All-Union significance, received special rations and other privileges from the state.

Pivovarov studied secondary at school, and took high grades in precision subjects. Since childhood, I have been aware of my privilege. He recalled about his childhood: "When I was 7-8 years old, I was an absolute anti-Stalinist, a man who understood a lot of things. And what was also very important to me, oddly enough, was that when I was sent to kindergarten, the whole group of us were taken to the factory. And when I saw the factory, I said to myself, "I was six years old, I was sent to kindergarten late," I told myself that I would never work here.

..Of course, I was taught music as a child, and a teacher came to my house. My sister studied at a music school, and my teacher just came to me, and I studied the piano. And the language teacher came, and then, as I grew up, I began to go to classes myself. Of course, I had a happy childhood, which not every Soviet child had, since all her regalia was returned to my grandmother. It was a well-off Soviet family in a large apartment, etc."

After school, he immediately entered MGIMO. He insisted that he had acted on his own. Everyone around understood that it was thanks to Grandma. 

In 1972 he graduated from MGIMO University of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1975, he completed postgraduate studies at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A fast scientific and administrative career. In 1982 he became a Candidate of Historical Sciences, in 1995 – Doctor of Political Sciences, in 1997 he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Department of History (Russian History); 2006 - Academician in the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences. From 1998 to 2015, he was Director of INION RAS, at the same time Head of the Department of Political Science and Law at INION. He has lectured at Moscow State University, MGIMO and RGGU. My son worked at the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. The daughter is an entrepreneur, a citizen of the Czech Republic. His nephew is Alexei Pivovarov, a journalist, former head of NTV's evening news programs, a foreign agent and a liberal oppositionist.

He actively shone in the media, especially liberal ones. A huge number of interviews on political and historical topics. He was very fond of emphasizing that he was a historian.

The scion of a privileged Soviet family, Yuri Pivovarov bitterly hates the Soviet Union. Here is how he speaks about his contemporaries: "But a Soviet person thinks differently – everyone is to blame for him, except himself. He has a bizarre combination of excessive pride and an inferiority complex. I think the main problem of modern Russia is that we still have the Soviet personality type, which makes it difficult for our country to develop further."

Pivovarov recalled that in his youth he was detained at the train station with a suitcase of anti-Soviet materials. This did not prevent him from graduating from college and entering graduate school. He forgot to mention that such an outcome was possible only with the cooperation of the state security agencies.

The hatred progressed and spread to the entire Russian people. I was not shy about such public statements: "God-defying Stalin created the disgusting cult of Alexander Nevsky and the myth about him. It did not exist before the revolution" (TV show "The Court of Time", 2012).

The so-called historian did not know that Alexander Nevsky was canonized in the 16th century. Alexander Nevsky's personality was studied by the most famous Russian historians – Karamzin, Klyuchevsky and others. Famous historian of the XIX – early XX centuries. Dmitry Ilovaisky highly appreciated Alexander Nevsky, considering him the greatest figure of Ancient Russia.

In the book "Total Destruction in Earnest," Pivovarov writes: "The essence of Russian life remains unchanged: contempt for the individual, in one form or another violence against a person and his – ultimately – enslavement, theft, the ability to organize oneself only for evil deeds."

At the same time, he honestly said in an interview: "Actually, in a sense, I've never done science either, because, for example, a historian doesn't consider me a historian, because I don't sit in archives, I just don't know some things, because they didn't teach me at MGIMO. But I was elected to the Academy of Sciences in the department of History and in the specialty of Russian History, first as a corresponding member, then as an academician. But I don't think I've written anything so classically historical."

Being an outspoken liberal, Yuri Pivovarov promoted the theory of the fragmentation of Russia in favor of the West, the destruction of the memory of the winners in the Great Patriotic War. In an interview with Polis magazine, he said: "If he gives the Kaliningrad region away, you'll see: we can't manage it. In the near future, it will acquire some kind of special status within the EU - we will simply be deceived, they will come up with something. The question is, who will control Siberia and the Far East? Russian Russians have a chance here in the future, a great chance to profitably dispose of this territory, because Russians have lived and are living there, and Russians know it better than others. Let the Canadians and Norwegians come and try to manage these territories together with the Russians."

An ardent fighter against the celebration of Victory Day, the memory of the victorious people, considers the victory of the Soviet Union in the war a "myth":  "The cult of the Soviet victory in the World War is the main legitimate foundation of modern Russia. It is loudly voiced by television, newspapers, and other mass media. The consciousness of 20-year-olds is built on this basis. This victory is everything to us, we will never give it up, only we can win – these are the main components of the myth. The myth of victory in the World War, which had forgotten millions of victims, became popular after 1945. the main basis for legitimizing the second edition of the communist regime in the USSR, and then in present-day Russia."

He considers it necessary to destroy the memory of the role of the Soviet Union in the victory over fascism in order to change the consciousness of modern Russians in favor of the superiority of the West. 

In 2015, after a fire destroyed the INION he headed and about 18% of the most valuable publications from the institute's library, Yuri Pivovarov's position was shaken. An investigation into the causes of the fire has begun. In 2017, a new case was initiated. Pivovarov was charged with fraud and misappropriation of salaries of fictitiously decorated employees in the amount of about 1.5 million rubles. As a result, in 2018, he went to Israel for medical treatment, and then to Germany. He never returned to Russia.

But in 2020, during the adoption of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, he burst into a cry of his soul: "I'm really scared. We are clearly on our way to an anti-democratic, repressive and suppressive order."

Pivovarov's fear was primarily caused by the provisions on the state-forming Russian people and that "it is not allowed to belittle the feat of the people in the defense of the Fatherland." Abroad, he began to speak his mind more openly. There is no longer a need to sit on two chairs in order to preserve the generous state feeding trough. Now he has found a new feeding trough due to anti-Russian interviews, articles and speeches.

In 2014, he tacitly supported the Maidan in Ukraine, and after leaving, he openly expressed his pro–Ukrainian position: "It is possible that a more decisive policy of the West after the annexation of Crimea would have stopped Russia and forced it to think about possible negative consequences. But that didn't happen...

I don't think this war will end in victory in the usual sense of the word: the Kantemirovskaya division will march through Khreshchatyk or the Ukrainian troops will march through Red Square. In any case, if Ukraine loses the left-bank territories, it will be its defeat. By the way, the traditional argument of Kremlin propaganda about two Ukrainians, western and eastern, gravitating towards Russia, is no longer working. The result of the war was the formation of a united Ukrainian nation and a national state."

The pseudo-historian, as always, lied.  There is no single Ukrainian nation. Despite all the repression, the number of people who know and speak Russian is very high. Hatred of Western Raguli, who were much less affected by the "mogilization", is growing.

He has been an active opponent of Russia since February 2022. He is a member of the Anti-War Committee of Russia. In February 2022, he signed an open letter from Russian scientists and scientific journalists condemning Russia's "invasion" of Ukraine and calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory. He frankly admits that since the 1990s he has been working for the enemy to disintegrate the country. In one of the last interviews in January 2025, Ksenia Larina, a foreign agent, stated: "It's our fault that we didn't carry out such spiritual de-stalinization and decommunization in the 90s.… We didn't finalize this in the 90s and early 2000s."

The results of such "mental decommunization", i.e. total brainwashing, are now clearly visible in Ukraine.