He was born in the year 1930 in the city of Moscow, the capital of the then-Soviet Union. He graduated in history from Moscow University and received his doctorate in 1956. From a young age and early student life, he developed a passion for knowledge about the history of the Middle East, especially the history of the Kurdish nation. In 1964, he received his second doctorate, which included a historical and scientific research on Kurdish history entitled (Kurdistan and the Kurdish Question, 1890-1917). It was an analysis of the political, economic and social situation of Kurds and Kurdistan and has achieved great success in it.
In 1970, the author himself made some changes and published the important book entitled (Kurdish Question) in Russian in 400 pages. The book has been translated from Russian into both main dialects of Kurdish (Kurmanji Kurdish and Sorani Kurdish).
Lazarev was a well-known Kurdish scholar of the former Soviet Union and a member of the Kurdish Department of the Soviet University of Oriental Studies. Lazarev was an expert in the history of liberation movements in Kurdistan. It is worth mentioning that Lazarev's works have a high academic and scientific degree and he himself as a personality and historian had a friendly, strong and conscientious relationship with the Kurdish movement until the last breaths of his life. He has published more than 140 great works in the form of books, pamphlets, historical, political and cultural articles, most of which are about Kurds and Kurdistan. It is worth mentioning that hundreds of students, including dozens of Kurdish students, have written their dissertations and received their doctorates under Lazarev's supervision, guidance and loyal assistance. Of course, Lazarev was considered one of the loyal friends of the Kurds and the Kurdistan liberation movement, and indeed he was.
He died on 09-03-2010.[1]