A monarchist media oligarch is set to teach history at Russia’s top university. He believes his country is the heir to the Roman Empire.

Far-right media mogul Konstantin Malofeev used to be an influential but fringe figure in Russian politics. While he reportedly funded pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine as early as 2014 and has long amplified Kremlin propaganda, his extreme views led the authorities to bar him from more serious institutions such as the Federation Council and public universities. Now, that’s apparently set to change: according to Meduza’s sources, Malofeev will teach a course to sophomore students at Russia’s preeminent university. Meduza outlines the views that Malofeev is all but certain to push on his students.

Konstantin Malofeev, the Russian far-right media oligarch whose Orthodox Christian news network Tsargrad TV promotes ultranationalist and monarchist ideas, is set to become a lecturer at the prestigious Moscow State University (MSU), a source at the school told Meduza.

His course, The History of Empire, has already appeared in the university’s course calendar, which also lists someone with Malofeev’s initials and surname as the instructor.

While we don’t know for certain what the media mogul will say in his lectures, he has spoken and written extensively about his views on empires — namely in his quasi-historical “Empire” book series, the third volume of which was published in 2022. He explained the book’s premise in an interview with far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin that same year.

According to Malofeev, two civilizational types — the “Empire” (with a capital “E”) and the “anti-empire” — have been locked in opposition since antiquity. In the ancient world, he argues, the embodiment of the “anti-empire” was Carthage, which fought against the Roman Empire.

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Malofeev also lists the main characteristics of both types of “civilization.” An “empire,” he argues, is defined by a “tsar” or “emperor” figure, who “answers only to God.” He writes: “God, as the force that establishes an imperial state, is essential. Without God, you can’t have an empire.”

The businessman goes on to say that the most important words for an “Empire” are “service,” “honor,” and “duty.” “Anti-empires,” by contrast, are ruled by traders and oligarchs, according to Malofeev, which means their priorities are profit, enrichment, personal success, consumerism, and personal comfort. “The most important thing in the life of an Empire is providing the best possible existence for its citizens — but not comfort. Comfort destroys a state,” he contends.

In Malofeev’s framework, an empire “exists across the centuries”: the Roman Empire, he says, transformed into the Byzantine Empire, which in turn became the Tsardom of Muscovy and then the Russian Empire. Today’s Russia is its continuation. “Empire is our past and our future — we have no choice but to be an empire,” he declares.

Meanwhile, the “anti-empire” can be embodied by multiple states and structures simultaneously. Malofeev applies the label to Carthage, the Venetian Republic, the United States, and even “transnational corporations.”

“Christ himself was registered under Roman authority during the Roman census, and that means the Roman Empire is eternal until the Second Coming,” Malofeev claims. “There is no empire other than Rome. The Roman kingdom is one, it must be continued — and we have succeeded.” In contemporary Russia, he says, the bearers of this imperial spirit are “the church, the army, and the family.”

Plummeting standards

“My alma mater isn’t just scraping the bottom of the barrel, it’s carrying out industrial excavations,” an MSU employee who studies power and society told Meduza, commenting on the appearance of Malofeev’s course.

MSU’s political science department is relatively young, having been established in 2008 on the basis of the Philosophy Department’s political science program. One of the department’s programs is led by Leonard Slutsky, leader of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and head of the State Duma’s international relations committee. He retained the MSU post even after three journalists from the Duma’s press pool accused him of sexual harassment in 2018.

According to Meduza’s source at the university, several years ago, the Putin administration’s domestic policy team privately discouraged professors at the university from working with Malofeev, an MSU graduate himself. As Meduza has previously reported, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s political aides took a suspicious view of Malofeev’s political activity: in late 2012, a court prevented him from being elected to the Federation Council, and in 2019 he was blocked from taking a leadership position in the party A Just Russia.

However, in recent years, Malofeev has “genuinely strengthened his position,” according to a Meduza source close to the Putin administration’s political team. This is in large part thanks to his 2024 marriage to Russian Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, which came soon after Lvova-Belova divorced her previous husband, a priest. “The husband of a senior government official with regular, direct access to the president is, by definition, a fairly high-status figure,” the source said.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, whom it considers “allegedly responsible for [the] war crime” of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children. As of early 2026, they are the only Russians the ICC has officially deemed responsible for war crimes committed in Ukraine.

However, the source close to the Putin administration’s political team added that the Kremlin’s position on Malofeev’s participation in big-time politics has not changed. “He can organize lectures, some kind of public movement — sure. But no one is going to hand him a political party,” the person said.

But over the past two years, the ideas Malofeev promotes have begun to surface in official ideological discourse as well. For example, the claim that “Russia is characterized by a particular, integrative type of empire” appears in the curriculum of Foundations of Russian Statehood, an ideologically charged course that has been mandatory for all first-year university students since 2023.

Story by Andrey Pertsev