Russia’s New Imperialism: Capital and IdeologyBy Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya MatveevStanford University Press, 2026

The origins of contemporary Russia’s foreign policy are often attributed to the personal predilections of Vladimir Putin. The aetiology of its violent imperialism is more complicated. Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev discuss the wider circumference of modern Russia’s dilemma. Less a direct creation of Putin’s imagination, aggressive actions in Ukraine, and elsewhere, are more an expression of Russian society’s nostalgia for a dwindling empire. Facing a pre-eminent China, an economy kaputt, pensions inflated into worthlessness, and foreign exile incredulous, perhaps the only game left is imperialism? Once a guarantee of success, this option cannot hope to generate genuine return on its economic or human investment. Indirectly, this is the conclusion of Budraitskis and Matveev (pp. 167–71). However, imperialism, like any brand of chauvinistic nationalism, is a powerful distraction. Putin manages to repurpose this imagination.

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Six substantial chapters interrogate the contradictions in Russia’s “imperial syndrome”. Nearly five years after Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Moscow has conquered only modest territory. Over half a million Russian soldiers have died, the economy is trashed, the Kremlin’s relationship with its enemies has rarely been worse, and ambiguity towards its arch-rival, China, only grows. Why does Putin not end what he envisaged as a hopeful special military operation? As part of the answer, Budraitskis and Matveev show the power of immersion politics and societal stalemate (pp. 15–37). They are suggesting a stronger answer may lie in distraction politics, more than the collective neo-imperialism of Putin’s obsession with Russia’s world-historical mission.

However, Budraitskis and Matveev have a still more novel (additional) explanation. It is that Kremlinophobes are torn between two opposing views. One side interprets Russia as a mafia racket of political entrepreneurs, tied to the Kremlin’s goals and accumulating wealth. These Russian entrepreneurs are not ideologues, espousing grand ideas, but see the Kremlin as a casino table at which they must keep playing. Conversely, Russia’s real ideologues suggest they remain an imperialist and nationalist country. So, its proud military culture necessitates subjugation of opponents in a style less of past Kremlin-bosses than of aggrandising Tsars. Both views have had a negative (and ultimately immiserating) impact on the financial disaster and moral stasis that Russia contemplates (pp. 58–79).

Thus, for that second group of thinkers (not the entrepreneurs, but the opportunists), Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022 actually manifests........

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