Researching Igor Petrov

Born in 1933, Petrov lived through the Second World War and the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. Working at first as a shepherd, and training at a teaching college, he was eventually called up for military service, and studied at the A. A. Zhdanov Naval Political School. He then entered the navy's Northern Fleet, where he would spend most of his career. Petrov at first served aboard destroyers in the surface fleet as officer for the Komsomol organization, and after further studies joined the submarine branch as a deputy commander for political affairs on several of the Northern Fleet's submarines. By the late 1960s he had risen to serve as political officer in staff positions and by the late 1970s he was deputy head of the navy's Political Directorate.

From the early 1980s Petrov was active in academic affairs, heading the Social Research department at the Ministry of Defence's Institute of Military Theory and History, and serving as deputy head of the Department of Social, Political and Psychological Research. He then became head of the naval faculty at the, having received the degree of candidate of historical sciences. From 1988 until his retirement in 1991 he was head of the naval faculty at the . Retiring with the rank of rear-admiral, Petrov spent ten years as dean of the faculty of the Institute of Economics and Law, and authored over 100 scientific and journalistic articles. Over his career he had received various honours and awards, including the Order of the Red Star, the Order "For Service to the Homeland in the Armed Forces of the USSR" 3rd class, and various medals. He died in 2020.