Ilya Budraitskis is a political theorist and researcher in Russian intellectual history. He is the author of Dissidents Among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and the Left in Post-Soviet Russia (2022).Ilya Matveev is a researcher in Russian and international political economy. He is a member of the Public Sociology Laboratory.

"A pathbreaking analysis of Russia's war and the political economy behind it. Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev move beyond both realist geopolitics and simplistic Marxist models to reveal how post-Soviet capitalism, state power, and imperial ideology combined to produce a profoundly irrational and destructive imperial project. Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the present world order." —Robert Brenner, University of California, Los Angeles "Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev—two of the sharpest analysts of contemporary Russia—trace how post-Soviet 'adventurist capitalism' and the myths of 'Historical Russia' fused under Putin into an ideology of ruthless survival. This masterwork of political synthesis exposes the invasion of Ukraine as the chilling culmination of a decades-long remaking of Putinism."—Alexei Yurchak, University of California, Berkeley

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The New Capitalist Imperialism2. The Birth of Ideology Out of the Spirit of Cynicism3. The Kremlin's Complexes of Ideas4. From Annexation to Invasion5. Myths and Failures of Empire6. In Search of the "Imperial SyndromeEpilogueNotesReferencesIndex

Ilya Budraitskis is a political theorist and researcher in Russian intellectual history. He is the author of Dissidents Among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and the Left in Post-Soviet Russia (2022).Ilya Matveev is a researcher in Russian and international political economy. He is a member of the Public Sociology Laboratory.

"A pathbreaking analysis of Russia's war and the political economy behind it. Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev move beyond both realist geopolitics and simplistic Marxist models to reveal how post-Soviet capitalism, state power, and imperial ideology combined to produce a profoundly irrational and destructive imperial project. Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the present world order." —Robert Brenner, University of California, Los Angeles "Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev—two of the sharpest analysts of contemporary Russia—trace how post-Soviet 'adventurist capitalism' and the myths of 'Historical Russia' fused under Putin into an ideology of ruthless survival. This masterwork of political synthesis exposes the invasion of Ukraine as the chilling culmination of a decades-long remaking of Putinism."—Alexei Yurchak, University of California, Berkeley

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The New Capitalist Imperialism2. The Birth of Ideology Out of the Spirit of Cynicism3. The Kremlin's Complexes of Ideas4. From Annexation to Invasion5. Myths and Failures of Empire6. In Search of the "Imperial SyndromeEpilogueNotesReferencesIndex

Ilya Budraitskis is a political theorist and researcher in Russian intellectual history. He is the author of Dissidents Among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and the Left in Post-Soviet Russia (2022).Ilya Matveev is a researcher in Russian and international political economy. He is a member of the Public Sociology Laboratory.

"A pathbreaking analysis of Russia's war and the political economy behind it. Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev move beyond both realist geopolitics and simplistic Marxist models to reveal how post-Soviet capitalism, state power, and imperial ideology combined to produce a profoundly irrational and destructive imperial project. Essential reading for anyone trying to understand the present world order." —Robert Brenner, University of California, Los Angeles "Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev—two of the sharpest analysts of contemporary Russia—trace how post-Soviet 'adventurist capitalism' and the myths of 'Historical Russia' fused under Putin into an ideology of ruthless survival. This masterwork of political synthesis exposes the invasion of Ukraine as the chilling culmination of a decades-long remaking of Putinism."—Alexei Yurchak, University of California, Berkeley

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. The New Capitalist Imperialism2. The Birth of Ideology Out of the Spirit of Cynicism3. The Kremlin's Complexes of Ideas4. From Annexation to Invasion5. Myths and Failures of Empire6. In Search of the "Imperial SyndromeEpilogueNotesReferencesIndex