Robert Johnson is a professor and chair at the University of Toronto.
His research concentrates on the social and economic aspects of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.
From 1993 through 2001 he served as principal investigator of the Stalin Era Research and Archives Project, which received major funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
He is a frequent commentator for the Canadian news media on current events in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
From 1989 to 2001 he served as director of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Toronto.