Nikita Vasilyevich Petrov (31 January 1957, Kiev) is a Russian historian. He works at Memorial, a Russian organization dedicated to studying Soviet political repression. Petrov specializes in Soviet security services. The book about Nikolai Ezhov written by Nikita Petrov and Marc Jansen is based on the archives made accessible after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Petrov’s part was tracking original archival documents, while Jansen worked with published sources.
On March 24, 2005 Nikita Petrov was awarded Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for his efforts in uncovering truth about repressions against Polish people during the war. In 2008 Petrov earned Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam (Instituut voor Cultuur en Geschiedenis, Faculty of Humanities). Articles by Petrov were published in the «Novaya Gazeta».