Stefan Hedlund

Stefan Hedlund (b. 1953) is a Swedish academic and historian whose primary field of interest is Russian history. He has studied in detail the recent history of Russia and Central Asia more broadly, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aftermath, as well as the uneven trajectory of Western social and economic models in post-Soviet Russia. He has published around twenty books and some two hundred articles on these topics. In his 2025 work Russia Reverts to Muscovy, the author seriously engages with the idea of reinterpreting the current Russian administration’s claim to speak on behalf of all of Russia, while in reality continuing the expansionist policies of medieval Muscovy – a perspective that helps explain, among other things, attacks on what is often regarded as the cradle of Russian culture, the city of Kyiv. Hedlund has also taken an interest in Estonia – for example, in The Baltic States and the End of the Soviet Empire (1993), co-authored with Kristian Gerner, he analyses the process of the restoration of independence of the Baltic states.