Alexander Soloviev (historian)

Alexander Vasilievich Soloviev (Serbian: Александар Соловјев, Russian: Алекса́ндр Васи́льевич Соловьёв) (1890–1971) was a historian of Serbia and Serbian law. He published research on the Bogumils, Serbian heraldry, philately and archeology, and translations from Russian and French. He was a professor at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law (1920-1936), first Dean of the Sarajevo Law School (1947-1949) and professor of Slavic studies at the University of Geneva (1951-1961).

Alexandr Vasilievich Soloviev was born in Poland in 1890 at Kalisz (then part of the Russian empire). His father, Vasili Feodorovich Soloviev, was a judge at the Appellate Court in Warsaw, and it was in Warsaw University that Alexandr studied and graduated, in law (1912) and literature (1914).

In 1917 he became a lecturer in Slavic law in the university of Rostov on Don.

Soloviev moved to Serbia from Russia in the 1920s, with tens of thousands of other White Russian immigrants. From 1920 to 1936 he was a professor at Belgrade university, where he received his doctorate in 1928 for his thesis on the 14th-century king and legislator Stefan Uros IV Dusan of Serbia.

After the second World War he was dean of the law faculty at Sarajevo university from 1948 to 1949; but after the communist takeover in Yugoslavia he and his wife were arrested and exiled from the country in 1949.

Soloviev then became professor of Slavic studies at the University of Geneva (1951–1961). Subsequently, he continued his career in Washington, D.C.

He died on 15 January 1971 in Geneva.

For a short time, he also lectured at the University of Lvov, where he published his research on Dušan's Code in Polish.

His son Alexander worked at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

• Selected Monuments of Serbian Law from the 12th to 15th centuries (1926)
• Legislation of Stefan Dušan, emperor of Serbs and Greeks (1928)
• Dušan's Code in - 1349 and 1354 (1929)
• Greek Charters of Serbian Rulers (1936)
• Lectures from the History of Serbian Law (1939)
• History of Serbian Coat of Arms (1958)