This article is aimed at investigating the question of imperialism as it appears in the traditions of the founders of Marxism and of world-system analysis. In the article, a synthesis is put forward of the theory of imperialism of V.I. Lenin and of the theory of systemic cycles of capital accumulation as formulated by G. Arrighi. This makes it possible to determine more precisely the nature of the increasingly acute imperialist contradictions in the history of capitalism during the fi rst half of the twentieth century, and also to explain the return of international capitalism to the path of economic, political and military antagonism in the modern world after several decades of moving in the direction of globalisation. Hence the struggle to divide up the world and the acceleration of the processes of capitalist monopolisation and financialisation–described by Lenin as imperialism, that is, the highest stage of capitalism–refl ected only the culminating stage in the development and terminal crisis of the British systemic cycle of capital accumulation. In the same fashion, the processes of deglobalisation seen in present-day capitalism are a feature of the terminal crisis of the American systemic cycle of accumulation. The article examines the phenomenon of sub-imperialism and its role in the development of modern international politico-economic conflicts. Russia, occupying a place in the semi-periphery of the global capitalist system, is also included actively in the struggle to divide up the world. This determines the dual position of Russian capital: on the one hand, the process of accumulation in Russia is based on the extraction of raw-material rents, which renders Russia dependent on the countries of the “centre”, while on the other, Russian TNCs as a result of carrying out large-scale capital exports have substantial economic interests outside the country, and seek to defend these interests through reliance on the institutions of the state.