[1] After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Shanin moved to Russia where, with funding from The Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation and others, he founded the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences in 1995.

[2] Shanin was President of the Moscow School, Professor Emeritus of the University of Manchester, and an Honorary Fellow of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

His other works and teaching addressed historical sociology, social economics, epistemology, interdisciplinary studies, political sciences and rural history.

Shanin's methods stressed particularly interdisciplinary issues, and pointed at meeting of sociology with history, economics, philosophy, and political sciences.

The high point of those efforts became creation in 1995 of a Russian-English post-graduate university: the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences, whose first Rector he became.

His works reflected impacts of scholars whom Shanin considered his teachers: Mark Bloch, Alexander Chayanov, C. Wright Mills, and Paul A. Baran.