Dr Ilya Matveev
Small Group Project 2022-23
Income inequalities in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia: finance, rent and wealth in the age of neoliberal capitalism
With Balihar Sanghera & Elmira Satybaldieva & Kuat Akizhanov
The project’s main purpose is to develop an understanding of the impact of financialisation and rent extraction (rent-seeking activities or rentierism) on economic inequality. The distributional patterns and their relations to neoliberalisation in three former Soviet countries of Eurasia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia) between 2000 and 2020 will be analysed and compared. This research addresses the question whether financialisation and rentierism facilitate uneven capital accumulation, and generate conditions that increase income and wealth disparities.
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Biography
Dr Ilya Matveev is a political scientist whose research focuses on Russian politics and political economy, and comparative and international political economy. He holds a Candidate of Sciences degree (analogous to a PhD) from Moscow State University, where his thesis examined questions of knowledge and political engagement, and completed graduate training in political science at the European University at Saint Petersburg.
He previously served as Associate Professor at the North-West Institute of Management, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA Saint Petersburg), and was a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley's Program in Critical Theory from 2023 to 2025. He is currently Post-doctoral Researcher at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen and a grant-funded researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki.
His published work has appeared in journals including Problems of Post-Communism, Post-Communist Economies, Europe-Asia Studies, and Russian Politics, and his co-authored book Russia's New Imperialism: Capital and Ideology, written with Ilya Budraitskis, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2026. He is a member of the Public Sociology Laboratory.
He previously served as Associate Professor at the North-West Institute of Management, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA Saint Petersburg), and was a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley's Program in Critical Theory from 2023 to 2025. He is currently Post-doctoral Researcher at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen and a grant-funded researcher at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki.
His published work has appeared in journals including Problems of Post-Communism, Post-Communist Economies, Europe-Asia Studies, and Russian Politics, and his co-authored book Russia's New Imperialism: Capital and Ideology, written with Ilya Budraitskis, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in 2026. He is a member of the Public Sociology Laboratory.
Biographical details correct as of 19.04.26