Yakov Yakovlevich Etinger (Belarusian: Якаў Якаўлевіч Этынгер; Russian: Яков Яковлевич Этингер; August 12, 1929 – August 5, 2014) was a Russian political scientist, essayist, historian and political activist.
He was adopted by the physician Yakov Gilyarievich Etinger and took his family name and patronymic.
During the Doctors' Plot affair, his foster parents were arrested and his father died in prison.
Yakov was also arrested in 1950 and sentenced to 10 years in a gulag labor camp as the result of a false accusation of anti-Sovietism.
[3] From 1956 to 1989 he worked in the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, starting as librarian and ending as principal research fellow, becoming one of the leading Soviet scholars of African studies.