Boris Maksimov

Québec & St John’s 1985

Born in Moscow, Boris Maksimov left the Soviet Union when he was 18, settling with his family in Canada. He studied at Concordia University before going to Oxford to read for a degree in Middle Eastern studies. After Oxford, Maksimov joined the BBC and he worked for many years in both the Russian Service and African Service there. This narrative is excerpted from an interview with the Rhodes Trust on 1 October 2025.

Boris sadly passed away on 31 October 2025 at the age of 64. He is survived by his two sons and a granddaughter, and will be remembered as a wonderful friend within the Rhodes community. This interview is published with the kind permission of Boris Maksimov’s family.

‘Soviet school didn’t teach me anything’

Although I was born in Moscow, my family left for the high Arctic when I was six months old. Under the Soviet system, if you agreed to go there – and nobody in their right mind wanted to – you could keep your registration on the housing waiting list back in Moscow, where the queue at that time was five years’ long.

I hated Soviet school. It was a profound hatred. All that ideology, all that Leninism, I knew I was wasting my time and it was total bullshit. And then, Soviet schools were built on the Prussian system where everybody had to the do the same. I’d been reading and writing for two years before I got to school, and so, I spent most of my time there doing literally nothing.

Soviet school didn’t teach me anything, but I cared about learning, and I was lucky. My mother had friends, some of whom were dissidents, and they would assemble in one of the two rooms we had in our communal apartment. I would show up, aged 11, and start discussing along with them, and disagreeing. They were like proper yeshiva teachers and they took you seriously. They would listen, and then would destroy your argument. Not you, but your argument. So, the next time, you learned to think better. It was the perfect preparation for the Oxford tutorial system.

I left the Soviet Union at a very dangerous point for me. I had already been called up for the army but I got an extension for a year. We had a complicated paper trail of documents we had to submit and I knew I had to get out quickly before anyone changed their mind. My mother and my sisters and I moved to Canada. We flew from the Soviet Union to Europe and then on to Montreal. Out of the four of us, two of us spoke French, so, that’s why we chose Montreal. But when the immigration staff spoke, I couldn’t understand a word they said, because the Canadian French accent was so different to me. None of us spoke much English, but we picked it up.

On applying for the Rhodes Scholarship

I wanted to study, but we needed to have money coming in, so I got a job until my mother and sisters were able to catch up and also get work. Then I applied to the four universities in Montreal, but I had no papers to prove that I had been to any school, so it wasn’t easy. Being at Concordia was so freeing: you could sit and listen to the lecturer and if you had a question, you could stand up and say, ‘Excuse me, what was that?’ I thought, ‘This is beautiful. We’re going to have fun here.’ I studied political science and I also took languages for extra credits.

I wanted to study the Middle East, but there were no places in Montreal where I could do that. I went to the library to see which universities offered degrees in that area and thought, ‘Oxford looks good to me.’ Then I found out about the Rhodes Scholarship and I didn’t know what the hell it was, but I saw that it would pay for everything, so I applied. The interview reminded me of those discussions I’d had in the kitchen with my mother’s friends, with people going, ‘No, no, you’re wrong, because you haven’t thought about this or that.’ I think the interviewers were duly impressed that I wasn’t intimidated by that and that I could think on my feet. But then, when I learned I’d won the Scholarship, I was in a panic and so was my family. We were scrambling round the house trying to find two clean socks that actually matched so that I could pack!

‘It was a total breath of fresh air’

I liked the tutorial system in Oxford, because it’s teaching, but not in a traditional way. You discuss things and, whether or not you come to a conclusion, it’s about exploring the question. In Oxford, no one tells you what to do or what to think. They’re, like, ‘Here’s the subject. Enjoy, I’ll see you next week.’ In that way, it was a total breath of fresh air.

I also liked the college system, where you find yourself living next door to someone doing physics or something, and you all end up in the college bar, just talking. That said, I had no idea about how to choose a college. I avoided the ones with very religious-sounding names, like Jesus College. Eventually, I chose St John’s because there are at least two Canadian cities called St John’s, and luckily, they took me. Alongside my studies, I was involved in everything. I didn’t join that many societies but I did organise one, where we collected enough people and enough money to hire a bus to London so that we could hear Yehudi Menuhin play in the Royal Festival Hall. It was wonderful.

I had the Scholarship for two years in the first instance. In exceptional circumstances, it could be extended for another year. Well, I had just discovered a girlfriend, and I was desperate to stay on. I made history in my department as the first student to submit blank pages on one of the written exams. They thought I had broken, that my nerves had gone, and I said, ‘Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I’ll get some help, but can I resit?’ They agreed, and I had one big party for eight months and then studied like nobody’s business.

‘The microphone becomes like a shield’

I’d thought about joining the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but I was still with my girlfriend of that time and I wanted to stay in the UK. I knew that whoever offered me a job would have to prove to the Home Office that they couldn’t find anyone else better. I applied to the BBC, and my first job was in the Russian service, because that was just by far the easiest. This was the 1980s, and there were very few Russian speakers anywhere. The problem was that my Russian was totally rusty. I understood everything, but speaking wasn’t so good. The women who typed up the reports were very kind to me. Their Russian was perfect, and they would say, ‘Perhaps you should say it like this instead.’

As a journalist, you see some horrible things at times. I remember when the Soviet Union collapsed and I went to Lithuania, I found this whole community of people living round a hole in the ground that was being used as a rubbish dump. It was winter, and it was awful. That’s when the microphone becomes like a shield. Your job is to watch the sound levels and think about the next question. You only start processing what you actually saw a few hours later. Some journalists will go in with preconceived ideas about what they want to hear, but I think you have to listen to what people are telling you and then you have to change the story in your own head. People appreciate that you’re listening and that, even though you may not agree, you’re taking them seriously.

I went on to work in the African service as well. I went for three months and ended up being there for over a year and a half. I knew nothing about African music, but they wanted a music programme, and my approach to a job on the radio was that if somebody offers you something, go and do it, even if you know nothing about it. One of my favourite interviews was with Angélique Kidjo, who was originally from Benin but is based in Paris. We talked about how she mixed musical styles and we asked, ‘So, what do you say to people who say you’re betraying African music?’ She said, ‘I have only one thing to say: fuck off.’ We put it on air, and a few hours later, we got a fax from a pastor in Sierra Leone asking for a copy of the interview. He said he wanted to play it to the children he taught, because he wanted them to know about indomitable spirit. To me that proves that you never know what’s going to happen in journalism.

‘Don’t take those Oxford quirks personally’

To those beginning their journeys as Rhodes Scholars today, I would say, don’t take those Oxford quirks personally. Just go about your life and do what you want to do and you’ll be fine. Don’t be intimidated by high table, by all the portraits around you. Some of your fellow students will feel intimidated, and they may even start to struggle, so keep an eye out for those who are studying alongside you and make sure that they’re okay. Remember, high tables look high and mighty, but they’re filled with people who are just like you.

Share this article

Back