Gordon had successfully passed difficult entrance exams and was admitted to the Department of History at Saint Petersburg State University.

He spent next three years at an obligatory position as a school history teacher in Kaliningrad (in Moscow region) Upon finishing his work term as a school teacher, Gordon obtained a junior researcher position the Fundamental Library for Social Sciences (in Russian, Фундаментальная Библиотека по Общественным Наукам, ФБОН or FBON) a special research body of the Academy of the Sciences of the USSR.

Very limited number of scholars were able to obtain permission to work at the Fundamental Library for Social Sciences, and even of those, many had poor command of foreign languages.

These Samizdat "review collections" enjoyed great popularity in scholar circles, and hugely affected development of Soviet humanities, against the will of ideological hardliners.

Writing analytical reviews is a scholarly art in itself; it required even more effort in Soviet times, when authors could not directly praise Western theorists or ideas.

It was often up to the reviewers to select books from recent acquisitions; therefore, their choices were indirectly forming general conceptual landscape of the humanities in the USSR in the 60s-80s of the last century.

The division of INION, where Gordon worked, and whose head he eventually became, was responsible for publishing one of these journals, devoted to research on Asian and African countries.

The situation changed after the crash of the USSR and ensuing economical chaos, when inflow of Western literature almost stopped due to lack of funds.

He wrote his dissertation on the subject of "Establishing of the Montagnard rule", under guidance of Albert Manfred and Victor Dalin, and defended it in 1968 at the Institute.

At this time, Gordon was encouraged by his manager at the Asian ad African Countries Division at the INION to continue his research of critical moments in mass-movements in the third-world area.

In the Soviet ideological landscape, he was pioneering the idea of peasantry as a "subject of history", which brought a lot of critiques both from left and right camps.

2007-2008 - lectures at Russian State University for the Humanities: "French Historical Tradition" Alexander Gordon recently published a few scholarly memoirs, initially, "ФБОН-ИНИОН.

Doktor Nauk dissertation (second doctorate), "Eastern Peasantry: Historical Subject, Cultural Tradition, Social Unity": Гордон, Александр (1991).