Political scientist, researcher at University of Bremen & University of Helsinki
About CV Research Commentary
Political scientist, researcher at University of Bremen & University of Helsinki
About CV Research Commentary
Research interests: Russian and international political economy
A few recent publications:
A Disjointed World: China, Russia and the Coming Era of Inter-imperialist Rivalry, Spectre Journal 6 (12), 2025
Paradise lost: Russian multinationals under deglobalization, 2014–2021 (with Anna Mishura), Post-Communist Economies 37 (6), 2025
From the Chicago Boys to Hjalmar Schacht: The Trajectory of the (Neo)liberal Economic Expertise in Russia, Problems of Post-Communism 71 (6), 2024
Member of the Public Sociology Laboratory
Foreign agent #839 according to the Russian government (to hell with them and the war)
Our book with Ilya Budraitskis is out with Stanford University Press in September 2026!
"Russia's devastating invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a manifestation of a wider phenomenon: Russia's new, post-Soviet imperialism. This book provides a theoretically informed, critical account of Russian imperialism that is attentive to the interplay between economy and ideology, coercion and hegemony, structure and agency. While economic developments go a long way toward explaining the reemergence of Russia's imperialist impulses in the twenty-first century, a purely economic logic cannot account for the dramatic shift in Russian imperialism beginning with the annexation of Crimea and the instigation of a separatist insurgency in the Donbas. Nor can objective geopolitical developments, such as US and NATO military deployments, provide an adequate explanation for this shift. Instead, this book shows how the Kremlin's reaction to the Maidan revolution was rooted in the ideological consolidation of the previous years: the emergence of a total ideology that designates the West as Russia's eternal enemy and Ukraine as the West's geopolitical pawn. Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev examine Russian foreign policy and the Kremlin's project to remake the Russian people to better serve its imperialist agenda."
I would be happy to write an op-ed, give a talk or collaborate in other ways. Please reach me at
ilyamatveev1 at protonmail dot com
I am also (still) on Twitter.