Michael Confino

Michael Confino was born in 1926 in Sofia

Michael Confino was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1926 to a Jewish family. At 13 he joined a Zionist youth movement and was among its heads from 1945. He immigrated to Israel through the movement in 1948.

He began his studies at the University of Sofia and continued at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. He earned his doctorate at the Sorbonne, with research on the agrarian history of 18th century Russia. He also served as an aliyah envoy to North Africa from 1951 to 1953 and to the Soviet Union in 1960.

In 1959 he joined the Hebrew University, where he founded the Russian Studies Department and headed it until 1969. He moved to Tel Aviv University in 1970 and in 1971 founded its Institute of Russian and East European Studies, which he headed until 1977. He was a visiting professor at Stanford, Harvard, Duke, Chicago and in Europe.

His research covered Russian history, the nobility, agrarian society and Russian anarchism, including the relations between Bakunin and Nechayev. He was a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and received the EMET Prize in 2003. He married Hagar, daughter of Ada and Enzo Sereni, and they had 3 children, among them the historian Alon Confino. He died in Herzliya in 2010.