Friedrich Asschenfeldt is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His research focuses on the interplay of economic policy, geopolitics, and authoritarian rule in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Having completed his PhD at Princeton in 2025, he is currently finishing his first book, which examines the strategic significance of food and agriculture in Russia and Ukraine throughout the twentieth century. His new project examines the Soviet military-industrial complex and its afterlife in Russia and Ukraine.