The son of a high-ranking government official, Timofeev graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

Timofeev's 1985 book The Technology of the Black Market or the Peasant Art of Starving was published in the West by Telos Press.

Timofeev was arrested and sentenced to 11 years of hard labour and internal exile on the grounds of "anti-Soviet propaganda".

He was appointed professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Timofeev was for many years director of the Center for Research on Extralegal Economic Systems and advised the government of Boris Yeltsin.

[2][3] In early 2000 Timofeev retired from politics and teaching and embarked on a career of a novelist: since 2004 he published three novels and a collection of short stories.