Riccardo Mario Cucciolla is a research fellow at the Università Roma Tre and adjunct professor of Russian history at the LUISS Guido Carli in Rome. In 2017, he got a PhD in political history at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, and in 2017-2019 he was a postdoctoral research fellow of the International Center for the History and Sociology of World War II and Its Consequences at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. He specializes in the political history of Soviet Russia and Central Asia—particularly in the evolution of Soviet center-periphery relations during perestroika. His research interests include the history of international relations, military history, history of journalism and colonial studies. He has edited the volumes "The Power State is Back? The Evolution of Russian Political Thought After 1991" (Rome: Reset, 2016), "State and Political Discourse in Russia" (Rome: Reset, 2017) and "Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism. Historical Drama and New Prospects (Cham: Springer, 2019). He works on a monograph about the crisis of the Soviet periphery during the Cotton Affair.