Alexey Vasiliev is the Honorary President of the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). He is also RAS Academician, Honored science worker of the Russian Federation (1999), Laureate of the Tarle Prize of the RAS (2003) and Recipient of state awards: the Orders of Honour and Friendship, various medals.

His professional knowledge has been highly appreciated by the Presidential Administration and the Government of the Russian Federation, in both houses of the Federal Assembly and the Russian Foreign Ministry. For a period of time A. Vasiliev worked part-time at the Foreign Policy Planning Department of the Foreign Ministry.

A. Vasiliev has established extensive international scientific contacts and business ties with foreign academic and political circles, where he enjoys the reputation of a respected historian, political scientist and experienced diplomat.

Over the five decades of academic, literary and journalistic work, A. Vasiliev has published 40 books, including revised editions and translations, and more than 900 articles in Russian and foreign academic journals, not counting several hundred interviews given to Russian and foreign TV and radio channels. He has been the chief editor of about 50 monographs, including the two-volume Encyclopedia of Africa. His works have been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Arabic, Farsi, Bulgarian, Danish, Hungarian, Latvian, Estonian, and Armenian. He is also an editor-in-chief of Asia and Africa Today journal.

A. Vasiliev has done research on a number of fundamental problems of social and political history of Arab countries in the modern and contemporary periods, as well as on problems of international life, the role of religion in politics, social changes in Middle Eastern countries, and the role of ethno-psychological factors in the social life of Arab countries.
A. Vasiliev has also developed the theory of Islamic reformation in the period of the crisis of Arab-Ottoman feudalism, specific features of pre-capitalist Middle Eastern society, and the specific development of capitalism and market relations and evolution of the socio-political structure of Arab countries.

In collaboration with Vladimir Kukushkin and Alexander Tkachenko, he prepared a comparative analysis of the privatization process in Russia, Central Asia states and Arab countries.

A. Vasiliev has pioneered the analysis of a number of socio-economic problems of Africa, in particular the assessment of the nature of the African society as multidimensional, patron-client, and combining patriarchal and traditional elements with modern ones. (The monographs Africa: The Stepchild of Globalization and Africa and the Challenges of the XXI Century).

A. Vasiliev has made an important contribution to the study of the policy of the USSR/Russia in the Middle East, as well as of international relations in that region with due consideration of the oil factor. A special place among the works of A. Vasiliev is occupied by the monograph Russian policy in the Middle East: From Messianism to Pragmatism, which has been translated into Arabic and English, as well as the books Egypt and the Egyptians, The Bridge Across the Bosporus, The Persian Gulf in the Epicenter of the Storm, The Difficult Pass, The Roots of Tamarisk, in which scientific analysis is combined with journalistic presentation. Among his first publicistic works is the book Rockets over the Lotus Flower. Vietnam during the War – an outcome of a two-year stay in Vietnam as a correspondent of the Pravda newspaper.

In recent years, many of his works have been dedicated to the revolutionary events in the Arab world, as well as the analysis of religious extremism and the historical roots of terrorism. Along with N. Petrov, he is the compiler and co-author of the book Recipes of the Arab Spring.