Vladimir Alexandrovich Kucherenko (Russian: Владимир Александрович Кучеренко; born December 21, 1966), better known by the pen name Maxim Kalashnikov (Максим Калашников), is a Russian writer, publicist, and political activist.

His writings focus on praising the Soviet Union and its political and economic system from a Russian nationalist perspective, criticizing the Russian government, and discussing the perceived NATO (particularly American) threat to Russia and the likelihood that this antagonism will result in a nuclear war between Russia and NATO.

As an expert in Russian history, economics, and military, he criticizes modern Russia and praises the Soviet system, or more precisely what it was under Joseph Stalin and what it could have become without Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev.

He is an advocate of "a federated Russian Empire" consisting of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, parts of Belarus, Moldova's breakaway Transnistria, and Georgia's Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

[2][better source needed] In September 2009 President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev urged the government to study Kalashnikov's ideas[3] for speeding the development of the country’s innovative economy posted at LiveJournal.