Lieven 1995 Empire PDF

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as Imperial Polities
Dominic Lieven
Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 30, No. 4. (Oct., 1995), pp. 607-636.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0094%28199510%2930%3A4%3C607%3ATREATS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E
Journal of Contemporary History is currently published by Sage Publications, Ltd..
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/sageltd.html.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic
journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,
and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take
advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
http://www.jstor.org
Wed Sep 12 06:16:36 2007
Dominic Lieven
The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as

Imperial Polities
Empire is a difficult concept for the comparative historian and

social scientist. The word 'empire' has a number of rather different
meanings and applications, some of them vague and others
inclined to alter with time.' Some scholars have tended to concen-
trate on the external aspects of empire, investigating the roots of
expansionism, for instance, or the military and economic sinews
of power.2 Others have looked at the domestic constitutions of
empires, analysing, for example, the management of multi-eth-
nicity.?
One major problem is that 'empire' in the contemporary world
is a word with very strong negative connotations. A century ago,
European countries and their rulers welcomed the term. It implied
not only that a country was powerful but also, probably, that it
was in the forefront of progress, one of that very small group of
great powers entrusted, in Hegelian terms, with leading mankind
towards higher levels of culture, wealth and freedom. Flattering
comparisons were made with the great civilizations of the past,
almost all of them embodied in political terms in empires. In the
late twentieth century, however, empire implies exploitation of
weak communities by stronger ones, as well, particularly, as the
suppression of the Third World by Western power and culture.
Empire is seen, moreover, not merely as wicked but also as anach-
ronistic and doomed to disappear. In the post-1945 global econ-
omy, autarchy and physical control of territory are viewed as
largely irrelevant: peaceful access to food, raw materials and
markets seems assured, and the skills, unity and motivation of a
country's workforce are regarded as the keys to prosperity and
even power. Countries are unwilling to take upon themselves
Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New

Delhi). Vol. 30 (1995), 07-636.
608 Journal of Contemporary History
responsibility for far-flung territories and their multi-ethnic

populations.
If no contemporary state welcomes being described as an
empire, this is particularly true in the case of Russia. Under the
Soviet regime Russians were educated to believe that the USSR
was an equal community of free peoples. Far from being an empire,
it was the leader of the anti-imperialist camp. The causes and
implications of the Soviet Union's collapse are burning issues in
contemporary Russian politics. So, too, are the future international
order in Northern Eurasia and the fate of the 25 million Russians
who live in the other former republics of the USSR. Writing of
the Algerian struggle for independence, I. S. Lustick comments
that it mattered crucially how this conflict was defined in France.
If Algeria was not France and the problem was basically an
imperial one, then secession represented not the violation of the
sacred soil of the nation but rather a necessary and even perhaps
praiseworthy recognition of the realities of a post-imperial era.4
Similarly, if the USSR is defined as an empire, its demise can be
seen as legitimate and inevitable, whereas efforts to re-constitute
it in whatever form are immoral and doomed to failure. By defin-
ing the Soviet Union as an empire for the purposes of this article,
it is not my intention to make moral judgments or to take sides
in contemporary Russian political debates. In my view, the Soviet
polity possessed quite sufficient imperial characteristics to make
comparisons between it and other empires both valid and useful.
In my definition, an empire has to be a great power. To be
worthy of the name, an empire must play a major role in shaping
not just the international relations but also the values and culture
of an historical epoch. To be a great power has implications as
regards resources, ideologies, expansionist temptations and cul-
tural styles which, in historical terms, are implicit in the concept
of empire. But nations, and even city-states, can be great powers
without becoming empires. Empire implies possession of wide-
spread territories, with all the problems of control and exploitation
that this entails. In every case these territories are inhabited by
peoples varying widely in their history, ethnicity, religion and cul-
ture: the management of multi-ethnicity is a major task of empire.
In 1897, a British dictionary rather wisely defined empire both
as 'an extensive territory, especially an aggregate of many separate
states, under the sway of an emperor or supreme ruler', and as 'an
aggregate of subject territories ruled over by a sovereign ~ t a t e 'In
.~
Lieven: Russian Empire and Soviet Union as Imperial Polities 609
the context of modern European maritime empires, it is to some

extent legitimate to make sharp distinctions between metropolis
and periphery, and to speak of the domination of one nation over
others. In many other empires, however, royal and aristocratic
elites of mixed ethnic origin scarcely identified with any com-
munity of subject^.^ In such empires it could also be very difficult
to distinguish between metropolis and colony. The eighteenth-
century Russian serf, for example, was the subject of a state that
described itself as both Russian and imperial. But whereas a Rus-
sian serf could belong to an ethnically German or Protestant (or
even Tatar) landowner, no Russian noble could own Tatar,
Moslem serfs.'
Empire, therefore, is a more complex issue than the debate over
imperialism might imply. Nevertheless, it is a fair generalization
that empire implies an authoritarian polity, albeit one that may
benefit its subjects and be regarded as legitimate by the majority
of them. Moreover, although this polity may enjoy varying
degrees of control over a wide range of territories, the term empire
implies a considerable degree of direct administrative supervision,
as distinct from other more partial and indirect ways of asserting
influen~e.~
Even taking into account all the above criteria, my definition
of empire remains in some respects imprecise and impressionistic.
However, to attempt any tighter or more precise definition would
exclude criteria central to the history of empire, as well as some
polities which deserve the title 'imperial'. Moreover, in this article
I am not attempting to elucidate some all-encompassing ideal type
of empire. Rather, an attempt is being made to compare the
Russian and Soviet polities to a number of other ones whose
status as empires has never been questioned.
Comparing empires entails not just huge practical difficulties
but also conceptual problems as well. If, for instance, nationalism
is the mark of industrial, secular, educated and therefore modern
societies, does it make any sense to compare ancient and
modern imperial polities' methods of managing multi-ethni~ity?~
Moreover, individual empires evolve, sometimes changing very
radically in the course of their existence. Nor do they operate
according to the same principles throughout their dominions. The
British Empire, for instance, is generally regarded as having been
liberal, de-centralized and un-ideological by most imperial stan-
dards. Christopher Bayly, however, makes the point that this was
610 Journal o f Contemporary History
much more true in some eras than others. Britain lost its American
colonies partly because it had never created an effective apparatus
of imperial bureaucratic control. In response to the loss of
America, London attempted to rectify this weakness and was
carried still further in the direction of authoritarian, paternalist
rule by two decades of ideological and military confrontation
with revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Even in the 1820s, the
liberal, free-trading and de-centralized empire which emerged in
the Victorian era was scarcely yet in evidence.1
In the Soviet case, one has to make equally fundamental distinc-
tions between the 1920s and the Stalinist era. Under NEP, the
Soviet regime pursued policies of 'indigenization' and republican
cultural autonomy which, in Ukraine, resulted in Russians being
made to study in Ukrainian-language schools. In much of Soviet
Asia the regime itself created nations out of what had previously
been largely illiterate clan and tribal societies. Still more basic
were differences between empire in Romanov and Soviet Russia.
In the last decades of its existence the Romanov regime was
evolving from a dynastic-aristocratic ZIausrnacht towards a polity
appealing to Russian nationalist sentiment and reflecting Russian
interests and cultural values. It was thereby becoming more like
the British, French and German empires of its day. Under Stalin
Soviet imperial patriotism did absorb some elements of the Rus-
sian nationalist and imperial tradition. Nevertheless, in important
respects the Soviet regime was closer to the Ottoman Empire in
its heyday than to either Tsarist Russia or the maritime empires
of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Like the Ottomans, the
Soviet regime, especially in its early days, possessed a multi-ethnic
elite and a supra-national ideology rooted in dogmatic and mono-
theistic doctrines which claimed universal validity and sought
worldwide dominance."
In the Roman Empire, a fundamental distinction existed
between government in the primitive and barbarian West and in
the urban, civilized, Greek East.12 Most members of the Roman
elite indeed recognized the superiority of Greek culture, comfort-
ing themselves by pride in Rome's own military and political
virtues and triumphs. Still less would it have occurred to the
British to govern white colonists in the same manner as Asian or
African natives. O n the whole, the Romanovs' state was governed
in a more centralized and uniform manner than the Roman or
British empires. Nevertheless, in the eighteenth century, Russian
Lieven: Russian Empire and Soviet Union as Imperial Polities 61 1
elites did recognize European cultural superiority, which was one

reason why the Empire's non-Slav Western Borderlands were
allowed to retain Central European, corporate, self-governing
institutions which were totally alien to Russia's autocratic tra-
ditions." Unlike in the nineteenth century, however, acceptance
of Western cultural superiority could be offset, in a rather Roman
manner, by pride in Russia's military and political successes under
Peter I, Catherine I1 and Alexander I.
Under the Soviet regime, centralization and uniformity went
much further than under the Romanovs, let alone most other
imperial polities. In institutional and constitutional terms, govern-
ment operated on the same principles in all republics, Russia on
the whole included. Nevertheless, in practice, even under the
Soviet regime governmental policy differed considerably from one
republic to another. To take but one example: after 1953 Ukraini-
ans had much better opportunities than most non-Russians to
advance in the central political and security apparatus, but Ukraine
itself was subjected to a far more systematic policy of linguistic and
cultural russification than was the case in the non-Slav republic^.'^
Although there are considerable dangers and difficulties in
attempting comparisons between imperial polities across cultures
and eras, the effort is nevertheless deeply worthwhile. Many of
the most vital issues in contemporary Eurasia can be analysed
quite fruitfully from the perspective of problems of empire and
its aftermath. As regards the Indian sub-continent and the Middle
East this is obvious, but it is even to some extent true with respect
to Western Europe and East Asia.
At opposite ends of Eurasia, the contemporary world is faced
with the consequences of the Roman Empire's disintegration and
the survival of the Han Chinese imperial polity over the last two
millennia. The European Union will never be an empire but it is
an attempt to enjoy the economic and geopolitical benefits of
continental scale while maintaining individual freedom and entre-
preneurial dynamism, and confronting many centuries of ethnic,
state and national diversity. In China, by contrast, political unity
exists in a country of continental size and more than continental
population. Mao-tse-TungI5 was by no means unique in blaming
Chinese backwardness in the modern era on the institutions, tra-
ditions and ideologies necessary for the preservation of imperial
unity.'"n contemporary China, a key problem is how to relax
controls on individual and regional enterprise without imperilling
612 Journal of Contemporary History
national unity and political stability. At least in its Han core, China
presents the fascinating case of an empire far advanced along the
path to nationhood, which now faces the dramatic inequalities
and conflicts between regions which attend a centralized, imperial
communist polity's move towards the market." This polity must
also control non-Han ethnic minorities which predominate in
roughly half of China's territory." How effectively the Chinese
regime responds to a range of quintessentially imperial problemsw
will have a big impact on political stability and economic develop-
ment in much of East Asia.
In contemporary Eurasia, however, it is in the former Soviet
Union that problems of empire and its aftermath are most obvious
and dangerous Having shed its imperial Marxist-Leninist iden-
tity and abandoned direct control over most of its non-Russian
regions, Russia now has to find a new way of protecting its interests
in the 'Near Abroad' and defining for itself a new role, borders
and identity."'
Contrary to the view of many Russians, their present post-
imperial dilemma about identity and frontiers is by no means
unique and unprecedented. It has been shared by, among others,
the Austrians, the Turks and even the English. What does make
Russia unique are geopolitical aspects of its post-imperial status.
When Turkey, Austria or England lost their empires, they were
automatically relegated to second-class status or worse: their
homelands lacked the population or resources to sustain a great
power. Uniquely among the nineteenth-century European
empires, Russia has retained the jewel in its imperial crown,
namely Siberia. European maritime empires scattered their colon-
ists across the globe, in time losing them in newly independent
states. Russian colonists from the fourteenth century moved into
geographically contiguous areas, most of which remain within the
present-day Russian Federation. Even the 25 million Russians
who live in the 'Near Abroad' are a crucial potential arm of
Russian power and influence throughout the former USSR.
Because Russia remains a great power, potential rivals such as the
USA, China, Iran or Turkey will be very slow to challenge it
within its former empire. The contrast to Turkey's position in
1918-22, or even to Britain's hold on the Middle East and South
Asia after 1945, is striking. For these reasons, although Russia's
post-imperial traumas are not necessarily deeper or more difficult
than those of other former imperial peoples, they are certainly

more important and potentially more d a n g e r o ~ s . ~ '
This makes comparison with Austria's post-imperial crisis
interesting. The post-1918 Austrian republic, even more than the
present-day Russian Federation, lacked historical legitimacy. In
terms of both prestige and job opportunities it was a pale shadow
of the old Austrian Empire. Before 1918, Austrian-Germans had
tended to divide their loyalties between their individual Land and
the monarchy as a whole. Not altogether unlike Russian attitudes
to the USSR, 'in the identification with the monarchy was included
as a rule a quite unconscious assumption of the "German" pre-
dominance in the state structure'." The new republic was neither
an empire nor a historical Land. Many Austrian-Germans lived
outside the republic's borders, especially in the Sudetenland. The
collapse of economic links across the former Habsburg Empire
ruined Austria's hopes of prosperity and, together with the world-
wide economic crisis after 1929, wrecked the new republic's
chances of legitimizing itself through economic success. In these
circumstances, the attractions of Anschl~isswith Hitler's Reich are
less than surprising.
Comparisons between Russia and Turkey are even more to
the point. One reason why many Russians reject the idea that the
Soviet Union was an empire is that they instinctively associate
the concept of empire with the enrichment of the metropolis. In
their view, however, Russia was anything but enriched by the
Soviet regime, which, in addition, neither defended its interests nor
reflected its values. Russian nationalism's sometimes suspicious
attitude to the imperial polity has its roots in the pre-Soviet era.
Taking up themes familiar from court-versus-country disputes in
European history, Moscow's slavophile gentry in the 1840s began
to put forward the argument that the cosmopolitan Romanov
Ha~isrnachtreflected neither the values nor interests of the Russian
Land. In the last decades of the imperial regime the argument
between the imperial state and conservative, aristocratic national-
ism lessened, but it never entirely disappeared: hence the sus-
picions even during the first world war that the court was in the
grip of pro-German and anti-national 'dark forces'. The Soviet
regime destroyed the Russian peasantry and undermined the
Orthodox Church, traditional bastions of Russian values and
identity. By the 1980s there also began to be serious doubts as to
whether the communist regime could sustain Russia's position as
a superpower. Not at all surprisingly under such circumstances,

the regime's legitimacy in Russian circles began to falter, which
played a by no means inconsiderable part in the collapse of 1991.13
The perception that the Russian people did not benefit from
empire either under the imperial or the Soviet regimes is probably
true. More dubious is the Russian belief, born of an overdose of
Marxism-Leninism, that other imperial peoples were necessarily
great beneficiaries of empire. Some no doubt were. The Roman
population paid no taxes and enjoyed massive subsidies of free
food from the colonies. Even in the English case, however, there
is some legitimate debate as to just how much the English people
benefited from formal empire.24 In the case of the Castilian
metropolis of the Spanish Empire, it seems quite clear that the
Castilian people were squeezed hard in the service of the imperial
polity, though no doubt empire brought great temporary profits
to the Habsburg ~ t a t e . ' But
~ it is the Turkish case which allows
for least doubt. In 1900 Anatolia was one of the poorest and most
heavily taxed Ottoman provinces. To a far greater degree than the
Russian court and aristocracy, and indeed the Soviet Union's rulers
from the 1930s. the Ottoman 6lite totally distanced itself from any
Turkish ethnic identity or pride. That helps to explain why, at least
initially, the new Turkish republic was often very hostile to the
Ottoman heritage. Following the collapse of the old Islamic
imperial polity, the Turkish republic carved out a new identity and
new frontiers for itself. Not merely did this result in massive
bloodshed between 1918 and 1922, but the new secular nationalist
Turkey, unlike the old Ottoman Empire, had no place within it
for ethnic minorities. One result of this is the continuing small-
scale war between the Turkish state and its Kurdish minority.'"
At first sight it might seem strange to place the English, rulers
of the greatest of the maritime empires, in the same group as
Russian, Austrian and Turkish heirs to land-based imperial poli-
ties. Unlike the Russians, Turks or Austrians, the English created
a nation-state well before they built an empire.27The boundaries
between England and its overseas colonies were well defined not
only in law but also in the perceptions of both Westminster and the
colonists. The mere fact that one had made a long and sometimes
perilous sea voyage to one's new abode brought home the distinc-
tion between metropolis and colony to the English, or indeed
Spanish, emigrant in a manner inconceivable to the Russian, as
he continued his ancestors' generations-old advance into the

neighbouring Steppe.
English colonists carried with them their homeland's tradition
of law and self-government. The representative institutions which
quickly sprouted on colonial soil became a vital focus for colonial
territorially-based identity and self-defence. If Spanish America
lacked these traditions of representative government, it did inherit
the thoroughly legalistic habits of Spanish bureau~racy.'~The
American Audiencias, fulfilling some of the same roles as the old
French parlements and often packed with members of the Creole
elite, played a significant role in encouraging the colonists' sense
of territorial id en tit^.^" It is by no means fortuitous that the legal
and administrative boundaries of colonial Latin America became
in time the frontiers of independent states. Nor is it accidental
that in Siberia and New Russia the Romanov regime was very
careful not to create any sort of institutions around which colonial,
territorial patriotism could be focused.30
Some eighteenth-century British metropolitan politicians envis-
aged overseas colonies in time following the Athenian road of
independence from the metropolis. Preparation for eventual self-
government always appealed to some elements in British public
opinion as a vital aspect of empire's legitimacy. The British elites
brought to eventual de-colonization not merely a clear awareness
of the distinction between British nation and overseas empire, but
also the Whig traditions which had underlain the aristocracy's
gradual and non-violent surrender to democracy in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. No greater Whig ever existed than R. A.
Butler, Under-Secretary of State for India from 1932 to 1937, with
his archetypal concern for 'the balance of order and progress'
and his 'suffocatingly lofty' incarnation of Anglican liberal-con-
servative verities." Such men and their attitudes not merely helped
the British to escape from empire but also to do so in a manner
largely satisfactory to their pride and liberal self-image. It goes
without saying that neither such individuals and traditions, nor
the conditions in which they could operate, exist in the former
USSR.
Given the skill and relative painlessness of Britain's retreat from
empire, it might seem that comparisons with the former USSR
are likely to be unrevealing and talk of a British post-imperial
crisis of borders and identity very much exaggerated. The key,
however, is to take oneself back beyond the twentieth century's
sharp differentiation between Great Britain and its overseas colon-

ies to an eighteenth-century world in which the word empire
meant not merely American colonies and West Indian islands but
also Ireland and even the United Kingdom itself.72
Certainly in any comparison between English and Russo-Soviet
empires, the case of Ireland is a very interesting one. Between
1801 and 1921 the English attempted to solve their Irish problem
by integrating Ireland into the United Kingdom. The result was
an example of the costs to a liberal, and in the nineteenth-century
British case increasingly democratic, polity when it tries to inte-
grate a colony into the metropolis. It was not possible consistently
to deny the Irish the democratic civil and political rights of all
British citizens. But it was also impossible by democratic means
to sustain the Irish colonial social order and structure of power
which was essential to the union's maintenance. In addition, Irish
MPs at Westminster came to exercise a most unwelcome influence
on overall British domestic politics. When home rule for Ireland
came on the political agenda, as inevitably it must with the advent
of a democratic franchise, it was very much in Britain's interest
that Ireland as a complete unit remained within the British Empire
while being granted a considerable dose of autonomy. So long as
Ulster remained a loyal and Protestant Trojan horse within this
autonomous Ireland, it could be used as a threat and lever against
Catholic demands for further independence. Britain's Irish policy
failed, however, for two main reasons. In the first place, long-term
British strategy in Ireland was often subordinated to short-term
considerations of British party political manoeuvring. Second, and
most important, it proved impossible for London to control the
Ulster Protestants or manipulate them in its own interests. The
result was eventual Irish rebellion and secession from the empire,
combined with the creation of an unstable and dependent Ulster
which became a military, economic and psychological burden on
the English. The Irish republic depended economically on Britain
for many decades after 1921. It nevertheless retained a political
independence which, for instance in the second world war, was
galling and damaging to British interests. With Britain's post-war
decline and the emergence of an alternative centre of power in
Brussels, Ireland not merely enjoyed increasing independence
in every sphere but also in many ways accommodated itself more
realistically than Britain to the development of a new political
and economic order in Europe."
Modern Irish history has many interesting lessons for the former
Soviet Union. Is it likely that Brussels, Berlin or some other power
centre will in time come to rival Moscow for influence in some of
the peripheral republics of the former Soviet Union. Will Russia
follow Britain in regarding it as forever unthinkable to reassert
control over former 'colonies' by force? Will Moscow attempt to
use Russian minorities in former Soviet republics as Trojan horses
and, if so, will it actually succeed in controlling and manipulating
them in its own interests? Will not Moscow's policy in the Near
Abroad, even more than Britain's in Ireland, be determined by
the chance and logic of factional struggles in domestic Russian
politics? Will Russia annex border regions with Russian-speaking
majorities and, if so, will it pay the same price for this policy that
London is st111paying in Ulster? All these questions remain open
and vital in 1995.
The Scottish case is also interesting for the historian of empire
in Russia and the Soviet Union. Parallels exist between Scotland
and Ukraine. The two countries entered their respective imperial
polities at roughly the same time. In the early eighteenth century
the cultural distance between London and Edinburgh was not
dissimilar to that between Moscow and Kiev, though the Kingdom
of Scotland and its institutions had a much older history than the
Ukrainian Hetmanate. In the eighteenth century, many Ukrainians
made successful careers in the imperial service and some contri-
buted greatly to Russian culture. The same was even more true
of the Scots. Scottish and Ukrainian patterns diverged in the 1830s
and 1830s. It IS to these decades that one can trace the origins of
a radical and anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism, precisely at a
moment when Scots seemed at their most contented within the
British imperial polity. Under the 'CJnion, Scotland preserved its
law, church and system of local government. In contrast, by the
1830s the last vestiges of the Ukrainian Hetmanate and its insti-
tutions had been destroyed by the rationalizing and centralizing
hand of Romanov bureaucracy. Life under Nicholas 1's authori-
tarian and bureaucratic regime provided ample incentives to
invoke the myth of the freedom-loving Cossack as Ukraine's
ancestor and the symbol of its identity.'"
In general in the nineteenth century it was easier, particularly
for educated members of the middle class, to identify with the
world's richest, most liberal and most admired polity than with
authoritarian Tsarist Russia, Europe's backward stepchild. The
618 Journal of'Conternporary History
British union was constructed around the ideas of Protestantism

and liberty, which in English and Scottish eyes were seen as indis-
solubly linked. The union's enemy, always an important aspect of
the creation of a new group identity, was Catholic and 'despotic'
France. Between the 1690s and 1815 the English and Scots were
almost constantly at war with France, in a struggle that was usually
successful and ended in the emphatic victory of Waterloo. This
consolidated and legitimized the union, persuading its subjects
that God and progress were on its side, and winning for them the
material and psychological benefits of a far-flung empire. With
the demise of that empire after 1935 Britain is no longer great,
and the myths, opportunities and symbols embodied in that
imperial greatness have faded. The imperial monarchy itself
appears a rather top-heavy relic in a shrunken post-imperial age.
Measured against the consequences of the Austrian or Turkish
post-1918 trauma or the possible results of the current 'ex-Soviet'
crisis, the fate of the House of Windsor, or indeed of the United
Kingdom itself, may not be of great significance. Nevertheless, the
English too have not altogether evaded the problems of identity
and borders common to many former imperial people^.'^
An overall comparison between the British and Russo-Soviet
empires would have to recognize both considerable differences
and many similarities. Some of these have already been mentioned
in this article. In addition, it is an obvious but fundamental geopo-
litical fact that the defence of a far-flung seaborne empire is both
more difficult and more expensive than the security of an inte-
grated land mass.'h In the creation of the British Empire, private
economic and, even more, financial interests certainly played a
bigger role than was the case in Russia, though one should not
forget that the Russian aristocracy were the leading 'shareholders'
in the Tsarist state and major beneficiaries of its successful terri-
torial expansion. The dramatic shock and stark contrast between
British culture (and that of the other Western maritime empires'
colonists) and the native cultures of Americans, Africans and even
Asians was much less pronounced in the Russian Empire. The
Russians and Eurasia's Steppe peoples had lived side by side since
time immemorial, their aristocracies had sometimes intermarried,
and even racial types to some extent overlapped. Moreover, in
the Russian Empire there seldom existed the enormous gap
between the wealth of colonist and native which was a mark oS
the maritime empires' overseas possessions. These facts help to
Lieven: Russian Empirc. and Soviet Union as Imperial Polities 619
explain the relatively equal and even sometimes friendly relations

that British officials used to India noted with surprise when travel-
ling among ordinary Russians and natives in late Victorian and
Edwardian Central Asia." More important, the fact that Russians
and other subjects of the Tsar had lived for centuries within the
same ecological system meant that the dramatic epidem~cswhich
destroyed so much of the American and Australasian native popu-
lation only occurred in the outermost reaches of the Russian
Empire, such as Kamchatka."
Nevertheless, it is important not to exaggerate Russia's unique-
ness. One of the most fundamental facts of world history between
the sixteenth and twentieth centuries was the expansion of Christ-
ian and sedentary communities largely at the expense of Moslem,
Animist and often nomadic ones. Russia played a major part in this
process and did so by using European technologies and methods of
organization. Russian expansion was often extremely brutal, both
in the imperial and in the Soviet eras.'" It is hard to think of a
worse crime perpetrated by European imperialism in twentieth-
century Asia than Stalin's deliberate mass starvation of the
Kazakhs in the 1930s. Khrushchev's Virgin Lands scheme 20 years
later can legitimately be seen as the last gasp of European terri-
torial expansion at Asia's e ~ p e n s e . ~The
" economic relationship
between Moscow and Central Asia, not to mention its ecological
consequences, fully merits all the negative connotations of the
word 'colon~al'." Moreover, Russian demographic and even to
some extent political developments fit the overall pattern not just
of the expansion but also of the contraction of Europe. Since the
1950s, the Russian population has been growing far more slowly
than that of the former Soviet Moslem republics, in line w ~ t ha
general worldwide trend whereby 'back in 1800 around 20 per
cent of the world's population lived in Western Europe; nowadays
only 8 per cent do (and by next century under 5 per cent will)'.42
The collapse of direct Russ~anrule in Central Asia occurs in a
world in which expanding non-European peoples press against the
borders of their northern neighbours, not only in Siberia but also
in the Maghreb and on the Rio Grande.
Whereas comparisons between Western and Russian imperial-
ism have long since aroused political passions, comparisons
between Russia and the other great land-empires of Eurasia are
less common and less contentious. China shared with Russia a
long vulnerable frontier on the Steppes of Eurasia, whose nomadic
620 Journal r?f'Conternporaryhis to^,
warriors were only finally tamed by both empires in the seven-

teenth and eighteenth c e n t ~ r i e s .Rut
~ ? Russia's modern history was
to a considerable extent determined by proximity to the European
powers, whose threat to Russian security forced the empire into
a continuous though uneven process of modernization and West-
ernization from the seventeenth century onwards. Both much
stronger and far more remote geographically from Europe, China
only had modernization forced upon it two centuries later when
threatened from a totally new and unexpected direction by West-
ern maritime power.
From the Western perspective. both the Russian and Chinese
empires were realms of autocracy and collectivism. But although
Russian collectivism may seem 'un-European', especially to
Anglo-American eyes, its quintessentially pessimistic and Christ-
ian sense of human sinfulness sets it well apart from its Confucian
equivalent. For most of its history the Russian autocratic polity was
dominated both politically and culturally by aristocratic warrior-
landowners, not by civilian bureaucrats as in China. The transition
from the eighteenth-century Russian semi-aristocratic polity to
the nineteenth-century bureaucratic state mirrored a change which
had largely occurred in China a millenium before but which in
the Russian case was never as complete as in China. Nevertheless,
it is the case that scholars attempting to understand the nine-
teenth-century Romanovs' efforts to control and direct their
expanding bureaucracy have much to learn from parallels in earlier
Chinese history, some of them brilliantly analysed in recent sec-
ondary literature.j4
Chinese culture and the Chinese imperial tradition are, of
course, far older than is the case with Russia. Subject peoples
of the Han imperial polity had both much longer to absorb
Chinese culture and more incentive to do so. In comparison with
all other great empires, the Russian heartland was uniquely infer-
tile and remote from the traditional centres of civilization. Russian
high culture, even after the flowering of the nineteenth-century
intelligentsia, never had anything approaching the prestige and
the magnetic force enjoyed by Chinese culture in East Asia. The
southward expansion of Han culture and ethnicity also owed much
to the fact that Chinese agrarian techniques were much superior to
those of the indigenous peoples they encountered. By contrast,
not merely was the economy of the Russian Empire's heartland
always less developed than that of the Western Borderlands, even
Lieven: Rzr.ssian Empire and Soviet Union as Imperial Polities 621
Volga Tatar peasants had nothing to learn from their Russian

colonist neighbours." Nevertheless. though the Chinese were more
successful 'cultural imperialists' and assimilators than the Russians,
they too found it exceptionally difficult to erode the sense of
separate identity of their empire's Moslem subjects, even when
the latter were scattered in isolated communities and spoke the
Chinese language.JhGeography plays an important role in the two
empires' very different patterns of ethnicity and regional diversity.
European Russia and South-Western Siberia are basically an enor-
mous plain, much of which has been colonized by Russians in very
recent times. In China. not merely are settled communities far
more ancient but high mountain ranges and great rivers divide
much of the country into relatively well-defined and often rather
isolated geographical and economic regions. One result of this is
ethnic and linguistic diversity among the Han Chinese on a scale
unparalleled in Russia, even before the communists destroyed
traditional Russian rural society.j7
Distance and the hostile Steppe kept Russia and China well
apart until the late seventeenth century and indeed beyond. By
contrast, the Russians and Ottomans shared a similar geopolitical
position on Europe's periphery. From the sixteenth century
onwards, the growing power of the European states faced both
empires with a challenge and offered them possible models for
their own development. Historically, the Russians and Ottomans
had some traits in common. For instance, the Russian pomeste
and Ottoman firnor were similar mechanisms for recruiting a cav-
alry army and providing basic domestic policing. though the pome-
ste very quickly became hereditary property. Neither form of land
tenure embodied the contractual element, let alone the principle
of sub-infeudation, so crucial in the Western feudal relationship
between king, lord and tenant. L'ike the Ottomans (and Chinese)
but quite unlike the Western maritime empires, the Russians hap-
pily married and assimilated conquered Clites of varied races. The
Russian state on the eastern flank of Christianity's struggle with
Islam on the whole showed less of a crusading spirit and more
pragmatism and tolerance in its treatment of subject Moslems
than was the case in Habsburg counter-reformation Spain. The
immense role played by the Spanish Catholic Church in the con-
quest and conversion of the Indies far overshadowed Orthodoxy's
role in the non-Russian regions of the Tsarist empire. Especially
in its early period, the Russian state, like the Ottomans, had
622 .lournu/ of Contemporary History
powerful fiscal reasons for tolerating its subjects' 'heretical'

religions and opposing their mass conversion to C h r i ~ t i a n i t yThe
.~~
Russians and Ottomans may also have inherited their relative
tolerance towards rival creeds from the traditions of the Steppe,
in which both empires partly found their origins.
In both geopolitical and cultural terms, however, there were
sharp differences between the Russian and Ottoman empires. The
military and political centre of gravity of the Ottoman Empire
was the Balkans, in which Moslems were never more than one-
fifth of the population. In the nineteenth century, the rise of
Balkan nationalism and the pressure of the Christian Great Powers
made this fact extremely dangerous for the empire's rulers. Anato-
lia could never sustain a large population after the sixteenth
century and the rise of Safavid Persia cut the Ottomans off from
their traditional recruiting grounds in Turkic Central Asia. Massive
colonization is a way to consolidate an empire and the Ottomans'
rapid loss of effective control over their distant African territories
may, for instance, have owed something to their inability to use
this weapon.
On the whole, the Ottoman polity fits very neatly into the
pattern of Islamic empires of the Near East. Warrior tribes from
the periphery regularly conquered the centres of Islamic civiliz-
ation and then succumbed to their cultural and governmental
traditions, mostly drawn from Persia and Arabia. To the extent
that the Ottomans diverged from this pattern, it was above all in
the longevity of their rule. If one is seeking parallels with the
Ottomans from outside the Islamic Near East. the best ones are
to be found not with Russia but with the Mongol and Manchu
regimes in China. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
Russia was also far more open to Western ideas, technologies and
immigrants than the Ottomans. Russia's advance and the relative
decline of the Ottoman Empire were therefore crucially affected
by religious and cultural factors. In addition, however, the fact
that from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries the Ottoman
Empire was much more powerful and successful than Russia may
have contributed to its subsequent relative slowness and unwilling-
ness to borrow alien techniques and technologies."
It is therefore not surprising that the empire with which it is
easiest to compare Russia is its Habsburg neighbour."' From the
early eighteenth century, both Russia and Austria were major
European powers and therefore subject to many similar pressures,
ideas and temptations. For the next two centuries the empires'
ruling Clites belonged to very similar cultural worlds. They
absorbed the ideas of the Enlightenment and faced the challenges
first of the French revolution and then of nineteenth-century
democracy and nationalism. The great similarities between the
police-states of Metternich's Austria and Nicholas 1's Russia are
evident. All the more remarkable, therefore, was the fact that the
two empires had diverged markedly by 1900 in their response to
the nationalist challenge. Austria was moving in the direction of
concession, de-centralization, constitutionalism and even federalist
democracy. The Romanovs had attempted an intransigent defence
of centralized autocracy, gingerly beginning to mobilize Russian
popular nationalism in its defence.
One simple but important explanation for this divergence was
demography. In 1897 roughly 46 per cent of the Tsar's subjects
were Great Russians. About 23 per cent of Franz Joseph's sub-
jects were Austrian-Germans. However, Russia's rulers, and
indeed much of educated society, regarded Ukrainians and Belo-
russians as simply offshoots of the Russian tribe who spoke some-
what strange dialects. Given this premise, roughly two-thirds of
the empire's population were Russians, at which point a policy
of treating the whole polity as if it were, or ought to be, a nation
became plausible, if misguided. By contrast, it was inconceivable
that an empire less than one-quarter of whose population was
German could turn into anything approaching a nation, even had
an alternative, rival German national empire not existed to the
north.
Geopolitics reinforced demography. Situated in the centre of
Europe, the Habsburg Empire was surrounded by potential enem-
ies whose combined resources were much greater than its own. A
tradition of cautious alliance-building and moderation developed
in Vienna to match this reality. 'Patterns of Habsburg statecraft
that later became associated with Clemens von Metternich, such
as coalition and balance of power diplomacy and the maintenance
of legitimate frontiers, were already evident by the seventeenth
century."' Russian geopolitical perspectives could afford to be
much wider and more ambitious. With the collapse of the Golden
Horde and the decline of nomadic power on the Eurasian Steppe,
a huge area opened up for Russian territorial expansion in a
region in which it was very difficult for rival powers to check
Russia's advance.
624 Journal o f Contemporary Histoty
In the seventeenth century the Habsburgs tried to unify their

empire around the ideology of the militant Catholic counter-refor-
mation. They largely succeeded everywhere but in Hungary, thus
preparing the way for the monarchy's later formal division into
two halves. The failure of Vienna's efforts to coerce Hungary
owed a great deal to Ottoman support for Magyar rebels. Sub-
sequently. in the era after the Ottomans had ceased to be a threat,
the Habsburgs made two further efforts, in the 1780s and 1850s,
to bring Hungary into line. External pressure from Prussia was
vital in defeating both efforts. In Russia's case a crucial moment
in the consolidation of its empire came with Peter 1's victory
over the Swedes at Poltava in 1709. This opened the way to
the subsequent total destruction of Ukrainian autonomy and the
country's incorporation into the centralized, autocratic Russian
Empire. Later in the century Russia was able to extend its Ukrain-
ian territory right down to the Black Sea coast. In the nineteenth
century these Ukrainian provinces were to become the core both
of the Empire's agriculture and of much of its heavy industry.
Petersburg was able to establish unfettered control over this huge
and vital region largely for geopolitical reasons. Vast distances
enhanced its defensive security. Its traditional major rivals in East-
ern Europe - the Ottomans, Poles and Swedes -- were in full
decline. The two new great powers of Central Europe, Habsburg
Austria and Hohenzollern Prussia, were bitter rivals whose mutual
enmity neutralized them and made both of them seek Russia's
favour, thereby guaranteeing Petersburg security in the West and
the time necessary to consolidate its potential Ukrainian power
base.j2
But even geopolitics and demography combined d o not tell the
whole story. Habsburg Central Europe inherited feudal traditions.
amongst which was the existence of powerful estate institutions.
LJntil the eighteenth century it was these institutions rather than
the miniscule Habsburg bureaucracy which governed the prov-
i n c e ~ . Though,
'~ with the large exception of Hungary, deprived of
much of their power in the eighteenth century, these estates did
survive into the nineteenth-century era of nationalism, providing
a strong institutional focus for ethnic and territorial loyalty. The
durability of these estates and of the provincial loyalties they
embodied owed much to the manner in which the Habsburg
Empire had been created. Marriage rather than conquest brought
most provinces under the Habsburgs' sceptre and they therefore
came with all their traditional institutions and privileges intact. In

contrast, Moscow's rulers put their realm together by conquest,
amalgamating Clites and divorcing them from their traditional
territorial bases. The decisive acquisition, at least before the six-
teenth century, was the huge domains of Novgorod. The republic's
institutions and elites were uprooted and pulverized. Centraliz-
ation, homogenization, forced population transfers and terror
were employed. At a time when the Habsburg domains were a
hotchpotch of separate provinces periodically divided between the
dynasty's heirs, Russia already possessed a huge, homogeneous
core territory united by male primogeniture and exploited by
centralized military and fiscal offices. Medieval and early modern
Russian and Habsburg history did not pre-determine the two
empires' differing responses to the nineteenth-century nationalist
challenge but they certainly pre-figured and strongly influenced
these responses.
By 1914 the Romanov, Habsburg and Ottoman empires all faced
a rather similar dilemma. On the one hand they had somehow to
control the growing challenge of ethnic nationalism to the stability
and survival of great multi-ethnic imperial polities. On the other
hand, they had to mobilize military and economic resources with
sufficient effectiveness to survive in the ruthless world of pre-1914
imperialism, whose victims already included a number of once-
great empires. The most effective, and certainly the most civilized,
responses to multi-ethnicity include forms of consociationalism,
power-sharing and the maximum degree of devolution of powers
from the state to its constituent c~mmunities.'~ To some extent the
traditional Ottoman Empire, at least in principle, had embodied an
old-fashioned, imperial and specifically Islamic variation on this
theme. Government had confined itself to a very limited range of
activities. Through the millet system some minorities had gained
a considerable degree of self-government in a manner that did
not link ethnicity and territoriality." In their Brunn programme
the Austrian Social Democrats put forward similar schemes in
modernized form. The Hungarian radical, Oscar Jaszi, dreamed
of turning the Habsburg monarchy into an East European Swii-
~erland.'~
Switzerland, however, was not a great power, nor was it engaged
in a struggle for survival against potential predators. Mobilizing
resources to compete in great power politics seemed to require a
formidable, centralized military and fiscal apparatus. In the words
626 Journal of' Contemporary History
of the Russian liberal-nationalist philosopher Peter Struve,

modern experience witnessed to 'the strength of a state which
puts the national idea into its service'." The Russian imperial
polity inherited a tradition of authoritarian centralism. It also
moved in the direction of legitimizing itself through appeals to
Russian nationalism. But there were obvious political costs to be
paid when a multi-ethnic empire attempted to pretend it was a
nation-state. The Habsburg monarchy did not pretend this (except
in Hungary) and had largely given up the attempt to suppress
ethnic conflict in traditional autocratic style. The unceasing overt
battles between nationalities which resulted persuaded many
observers by 1914 that the empire was on the point of disinte-
gration. This was largely an illusion. With very few exceptions the
various nationalities neither wished to break up the Empire nor
believed it was in their power to do so. But the Empire's lack of
national legitimacy and its de-centralized constitutional structure
did seriously undermine its ability to sustain the military might of
a great power. In particular, the role of the Hungarian parliament
in undermining the Empire's security was f ~ n d a m e n t a l . ~ ~
In some ways the Soviet polity embodied an intelligent (albeit
brutal) response to modern empire's need to combine external
power with satisfying the aspirations of national minorities. The
highly centralized Communist Party, operating under the discipline
of Democratic Centralism, provided the framework for a formi-
dable 'national-security' state. The Empire's might and its victory
in 1941-5 brought it domestic legitimacy and persuaded even
unwilling subjects of its invincibility, thereby deterring opposition.
Meanwhile, the federal structure of government allowed a certain
degree of cultural autonomy to many non-Russians. It also pro-
vided them with jobs, status and patronage. Inevitably, the balance
between centre and republic was a difficult and delicate one,
requiring a degree of cautious and subtle handling which it cer-
tainly did not get under Gorbachev. By linking ethnicity to terri-
toriality the system created nation-states in embryo, capable of
birth if the centre weakened.
The basic problem, however, was that in the postwar era the
Soviet Union was a modernized and relatively sophisticated
imperial polity in an age when empire was increasingly redundant.
The regime managed the tasks and achieved the goals of empire
rather well. The great 'clash of empires' ended in victory in 1945.
The country became a superpower. Marxism-Leninism was
inherently more viable as an ideology of empire than any attempt

to sustain an imperial polity by appeals to metropolitan national-
ism. From the traditional imperialist's perspective, the Soviet
Union combined a mouth-watering degree of economic autarchy,
control over a vast array of commodities and sources of energy,
'protection of national labour', military power, and defiantly iso-
lationist and populist patriotism.
But the premises on which empire was traditionally based were
no longer valid. The supra-national, imperial ideology could not
compete with ethnic nationalism for the masses' loyalty. The
Empire did not legitimize itself through success because the social-
ist command economy and economic autarchy failed to match
the achievements of international capitalism. Marxism-Leninism's
predictions about imperialism proved wrong. The Bolsheviks had
come to power because of the first world war. The result of a
second war among the major capitalist powers was communism's
extension to China and Eastern Europe. It was not wholly implaus-
ible in 1945, therefore, to predict a future scenario of depression
and renewed conflict in the Western world. Even Britain's rulers
believed that the international economy's development after the
second world war might well repeat the 1920s. That was one reason
why they attached high value to Britain's control of commodities
and potential protected markets in their present and former
colonies.'"
In fact, these predictions proved false. Victorian free trading
principles reasserted themselves under American auspices and
capitalism boomed. Shorn of the responsibilities and mentalities
of empire, Germany and Japan outstripped the victorious imperial
powers, not merely the USSR but also Britain and France. Even
imported cheap labour could be treated as Gastarbeiter rather
than, for a time, as fellow citizens of Britain's and France's shrink-
ing empires. The Soviet Union found itself competing with a
restored capitalist coalition whose resources far outstripped its
own and whose success undermined the legitimacy of both
Marxism-Leninism and imperial autarchy.
By the 1980s, particularly when viewed from a Russian national
perspective, the price of empire far exceeded its benefit^,^ some-
thing long since evident to both the British and the French. In a
manner familiar from the history of Christian and Moslem empire,
Marxism-Leninism had split into two major camps, each with a
separate territorial base and its own version of doctrinal truth.
628 .Journal o f Contemporary Histov
Hence Russia was sustaining the costs of two imperial confron-

tations, one with the capitalist powers, the other with China. To
uphold illegitimate governments and failing socialist economies
among its East European clients, Russia was forced into a policy
of heavy subsidies and permanent readiness for military inter-
vention. By the 1980s. should force once again be required to
sustain the East European empire, both the economic and political
costs would be immense. Within the Soviet Union, Russia had
about as good a reason to shed direct responsibility for Central
Asia and its burgeoning problems as the nations of Europe had
in Africa. As in the maritime empires, the development of a
'native' middle class made the maintenance of imperial control in
the colonies politically more difficult and of less economic benefit.
Autarchy, state control and 'protection of national labour', carried
to their ultimate absurdity in the Soviet system, meant a vast
waste of human and material resources. Collapsing energy prices
ruined an economic strategy based on exporting culnmodities.
Huge and vastly expensive military power brought Russia few
tangible rewards, undermined the consumer economy and thereby
the regime's popularity, and ensured that oil and guns were the
Empire's only viable exports. So long as scores of millions of non-
Russians had to be held within an empire to which they did not
probably wish to belong. any hopes for democracy or even legality
in Russia were doomed. So. too, was the uninhibited expression
of Russian national traditions and identity. England failed to hold
Ireland within a democratic union and in the Russian case the
same was certain to be true of the Baltic republics and probably
of a number of others as well.
For Russia, empire was a blind alley but it also posed a terrible
dilemma. The Russian Empire and its Soviet successor had been
centuries in the making and ethnic communities were hopelessly
intermingled. In a centrally-planned economy covering so vast an
area, the overnight disintegration of imperial economic ties would
have economic consequences going far beyond even Austria's fate
in the 1920s. At best, coping with the aftermath of empire would
require the patient labour of a generation. At worst, it would entail
a recurrence of that pattern of anarchy. civil war and renewed
autocracy familiar from Russian history. Since the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's path has led through impoverish-
ment, uncertainty and bloodshed. By the standards of other col-
lapsing empires, however, history thus far has been extremely

kind."'
Notes
1. In 1815. for instance. the English referred to the United Kingdom itself as an
cmpirc. By the twentieth century the tcrm meant 'the overseas dominions etc.. as
opposed to Great Britain'. K. W. Burchficld. A Supplerneni to the Oxford English
Dictionury (Oxford 1972). vol. 1, 936. 1. S. Lustick. Unsettled States: Disprtted I,un[f.s
(Ithaca. NY 1993). 69-70.
2. A recent example is J. Snyder. Myihs und Ernpire, Domestic Politics nrld
Iniernuiionnl Arnhiiion (Ithaca, NY 1991). M. W. Doyle. En~pires(Ithaca. NY
1986) is also above all a study of expansionism and its roots. in other words of the
international rather than the domestic aspect of cmpire. Though he uses the tcrm
'great power' rather than 'cmpire'. Paul Kennedy's famous ?he Rise und Full of
/he Grerii Powers (New York 1987) is also essentially a study of the sinews
of imperial power.
3. S. N. Eisenstadt. The Politicul Sysrems c ~ fErnpircs, whose first edition was
puhlished in 1963, remains the most comprehensive study of the domestic consti-
tution of empires. P Dibb. ?he Soviet Union: The lncompleie Superpower (London
1988) was unusual in applying the term 'emplrc' to the lJSSR and looking at both
external (e.g. foreign and defence policy) and domestic (e.g. inter-ethnic issues)
aspects of the Sovlct imperial polity. A. Kappcler, Kus.slrind uls Vielvolkerreich
(Munlch 1993) is not merely a splendid study of prc-1917 Russia's imperial .const]-
tution'. ideology and management of multi-ethnicity. but also makes many intcrcst-
ing comparisons with other empires. D. Gcyer. R~t.ssirinlmperiulism. The I~lieruciion
of Domestic rind Foreign PPocj~1860-191.1 (1,eamington Spa 1987) attempts to tind
causal links between domestic and foreign aspects of cmpirc in late lmpcrial
Russia.
4. Lustick, Unseiiled Siures. passim hut especially chapters 1 and 2.
5. J. A. Murray (cd.), A New E~lglrshDictionriry on Hisioricrrl Princip1e.s (Oxford
1897). vol. 3. (E) 128.
6. J. H. Kautsky. ?%e Po1iric.s c~fAri.srocrrrtic En1pire.s (Chapel Hill. NC 1982)
supplements Eisenstadt. Politicrrl Systerns. Kappclcr. H~~.s.slrrnd rrls Vielvolkerreich,
stresses that for most of its history Imperial Russia was a dynastic-aristocratic
Hritr.srnrichi rathcr than an empire benefiting ethnic Russians or reflecting their
values.
7. A. Kappelcr. Ii~~s.slunds Ersie Nriiionulifiifen. Dns Zurerlreich und die V d k e r
&.s Mittleren Volgu vom 16 his 19 .lrilzrlzunderi (Cologne 1982). is the definitive
work o n Impenal Russia's relations with its Tatar subjects. The best English-
language study of Russia's colonial empire is M. Rywkin (cd.). Ru.s.siurl Coloniul
Expunsion to 1917 (London 1988). Admittedly. 'Russian Empire' is a translation
of 'Kossiv.skuyrr imperivn' and rossiyskiy (as distinct from russkiy) means 'of the
Kussian land and state' rather than 'of the Kussian people'.
630 Journal of Conterr~poraryHistory
8. A. Watson, The Evolrttion ofln~ernarionulSociety (London 1992) contrasts

emplre, meanlng dlrcct central bureaucrat~crule over colon~cs,to hegemony and
dominion, which entail varying degrees of usually indirect control.
9. This is not the place to enter the debate hctween 'primordialists' and 'mod-
ernists' about the origins of contemporary nationalism. Probably not even the
most devoted 'primordialist' would deny that nationalism has a numhcr of new.
vital and. from empires' point of view, verv dangerous characteristics in the modern
era.
10. C. A. Bayly, Inlperiul Meridirin, The British Ernpire and rhe World. 1780-1830
(IIarlow 1989).
11. Probahly the two best introductions to Soviet nationalities policy, especially
in the regime's early years. are: G. Simon, Nrrtionalism and Policy toward dze
Nafiorlri1irie.s in the Soviet Union (Boulder. C O 1991) and H. Carrkre d'Encausse,
The Great C'hallenge. Nationalities and the Bolshevik State 1917-I930 (New York
1992). Apart from Kappeler. Ru.s.sland,the bcst source on late-imperial nationalit-
ies policy is E. 'lhaden, R~~s.sificafion
in the Baltic Provinces and Finland 1855-1914
(Princeton 1981). For an unusual and thought-provoking angle on Kussian popular
nationalism in the late-imperial era, see chapter VI of J. Brooks, When Russia
Learned to Read (Princeton 1985).
12. O n Rome, see. for example, P. Garnsey and R. Saller, The Roman Empire.
Econon~y,Society and Cultrtre (Berkeley 1987), especially 11-19.
13. See E. Thaden. R~~.t.sia'\ Western Borderlands. 1710-1870 (Princeton 1984).
14. 'Ihc bcst survey of Ukraine under Soviet rule is B. Krawchcnko, Socirrl
Change and National Conscio~~sness in Twentieth-Century llkrai~le(London 1985).
C)n Ukraine's place within overall Soviet nationalltics policy and strategy. 5ee
chapter 1V of S. Bialer, Sralink Slrcce.s.sor.s(Cambridge 1980).
15. Mao himself, for instance, once commented: 'One good thing about Europe
is that all its countries are independent. Each of them does its own thing, which
makes it possible for the economy of Europe to develop at a fast pace. Ever since
China became an empire after the Qin dynasty. our country has been for the most
part unified. One of its defects has been bureaucratism. and excessively tight
control. The localities could not develop independently.' ? h e quotation is from
p. 136 of L. J. Moscr, Thc Chinese Mosrric. ?'he Peop1e.s urld Provinces of China
(Boulder, CC) 1985).
16. 'This theme is taken up, for example, hy W. J. F. Jcnner, The Tyrunny of
H~story.The Roots of Chinuk Crisis (London 1992). Scc also Zhengyuan Fu,
Autocrutic Trudirion rrrld Chir~esePolirics (Camhridgc 1993).
17. There is a rapidly growing literature o n these themes. Useful introductions
are: D. S. G. Goodman and G. Segal (cds). China L)rcon.str~~c.t.s. Politics, ?rude
rind Regionuli.srn (London 1994). G. Segal, Chinrr Changes Shupe: Regionrrlism rrrld
Foreign Policy. Adelphi Pupers, 287 (London 1994). Over the millennia the commit-
ment of Chinese Clites to imperial and Han unity has been the most crucial factor
in holding the polity together. but great efforts also went into creating a common
cultural world and shared rituals among the Han Chinese masses. See, for example.
J. L. Watson. 'Kites or Beliefs'? ? h e Construction of a Unlfied Culture in Late
Imperial China' in L. Dittmer and S. S. Kim (cds). Chinu's Quest for Nurional
Iderltitv (Ithaca, NY 1993).
18. T. Hcberer. Chinrr and irs Nurional Minorities. Autonorny or A.s.sin~ilution?
(London 1989).
Lieven: Russian Empire and Soviet Union us Imperiul Polities 631
19. For example, uneven economic growth bctwcen centre and periphery can
cause major problems of political readjustment for centralized bureaucratic
empires. 'lhe centre's loss of control over local Clitcs and taxes, and the revolt it
inspires by subsequent attempts to reassert this control, have played their part in
the decline of a number of imperial polities (c.g. in eighteenth-century Spanish
America and in Central Asia under Brczhncv and tiorbachev). See, for example.
I). Brading, 'Bourbon Spain and its American Empire', ch. 3 (1 12-62) in L. Bcthcll
(cd.), Coloniul Spani.sh Americu (Cambridge 1987); J. Lynch. "lhe Origins of
Spanish American Independence', ch. 1, 1 4 8 in L. Bethell (ed.), 172e Independence
of Latin America (Cambridge 1987). and C. J. MacLachlan, Sparn:~Empire in the
New World (Berkeley 1988). M. Goodman, 'Perestroika: Its Impact on the Central
Asian Republics and their Relations with Moscow' in t-1. Malik (ed.). Centrul Asiu.
Its Strrltegic lrnportrrnce rrnd Frtt~rreProspects (London 1994). Also J. Critchlow.
Nrrtionulisrn in Uibekistrm. A Soviet Republic's Rorrd to Sovereignty (Boulder, C O
1991).
20. '[he best book on Russia's re-emergence in new post-communist foml is J.
1)unlop. The Rise of R~r.ssirirrnd the Full o f t h e Soviet Union (Princeton 1993). On
the post-Soviet international order in Northern Eurasia, see K. Dawisha and B.
Parrott. Rllssirr und the New Strifes of Eurmiu (Cambridge 1994). M . Bettino (ed.),
In u Collupsing Empire. Underdevelopment, Ethnic. Conflicts und Nutlonalism in
the Soviet Union (Milan 1993) is a useful collection of essays on aspects of the
Soviet collapse. On Kussia's post-1991 diaspora see, in particular. N. Melvin, Forg-
ing the New Krtssiun Nrrtion, KIIA, Discussion Paper No. 50 (London 1994).
21. .I.Darwin, The End of the British Empire (Oxford 1901) discusses both
Britain's hopes of retaining a predominant informal influence in its former empire
and why this hope proved illusory.
22. E. Bruckmullcr, 'Tne National Identity of the Austrians', 196227 (here
p. 219) in M. 'l'eich and K. Porter (eds). The Nutionul Q~restionin E~rrope in
Historical Per.spective (Cambridge 1993). For a fuller discussion, see G. Stourzh.
Vorn Reich zur Kepublik. Stndien zrtrn O.sterreid~beu~~r.s.stsein im 20 Jrrhrh~rndert
(Vienna 1990).
23. On these themes see, for example, Dunlop, The Kise of Ru.s.siu and R.
Szporluk, 'Dilemmas of Russian Nationalism' in L. Hajda and M. Beissingcr (cds),
The Nutionri1irie.s Fucror in Soviet Politics und Society (Boulder, CO 1990). C)n the
Slavophiles, see M. Hughes, 'Independent Gentlcmen: the Social Position of
the Moscow Slavophiles and its Impact on their Political Thought', Sluvonic rind
Errst Europeun Revieua. 1993, 71, 66-88. For a more detailed introduction to Slavo-
phile thought, see A. Walicki, ?he Sluvophile C'ontroversy (Oxford 1975), and the
biographies of individual leading Slavophiles by P. Christof.
24. See. for example, L. E. Davis and R. A. Huttcnback. Mumrnon rrnd dze
P~rrsuirof Empire (Cambridgc 1988). 'Ihe debate on British imperialism and its
economic bases remains heated. ?he most impressive recent contribution is P. J.
Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Irnperiul~srn,2 vols: vol. 1. Innovrition und E.rprin-
sion, 161111-1914: vol. 2. C'ri.si.s rind Deconstrrtction, 191&1YYO (London 1993).
25. By 1631 even the state's rulers were beginning to question the advantages
of cmpire. In that year Spain's chief m~nistcr,the Count-Duke of Olivares. com-
mented that overall the American cmpire had wcakened the Spanish monarchy. J.
H. Elliott. Spriin und i1.s World, 1500-1700 (New Haven. CT. 1989), 25-6. On
reactions to the loss of the American empire, see M. I? Costelloe. Response
632 Journal of Conterr~poruryHistoiy
to Revol~~tion, Imperial Sprrin rind the Sprinish Anwicrin Revolrttions, 181011830

(Cambridge 1986).
26. The best up-to-date general studies of the causes and consequences of the
Ottoman Empire's demise arc two volumes by M. E. Yapp, ?he Making of
61e Modern Neur East 1792-1923 (London 1987) and ?he Neur East since the First
World Wrir (London 1991). See also S. S. Shaw. History of the Ottornun Empire
und Modern Turkey, vol 1. Ernpire o f t h e Grrzis, 1280-1808 (Cambridgc 1976) and
S. S. Shaw and E. K. Shaw, Hi.rtory of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Titrkey,
vol. 2. The Rise of Modern T ~ ~ r k e1808-1975
y (Cambridgc 1977). M. M. Gunter,
The Changing Kurdish Prohlenz in ntrkey, Conflict Studies 270 (London 1994).
27. 'Iherc is a good discussion on this in chapter 1 of L. Greenticld, Nationalism.
Five Road., to Modernity (Cambridge. MA 1992).
28. Philip 11's Castile had between 20,000 and 25,000 students, over 5 per cent
of the male university-age population. ?he great majority of these students were
lawyers. The constrast with the sixteenth-century Russian polity was total. Elliott.
Spuirl and its World, 15-16.
29. Not surprisingly. a key element in the Crown's attempt to regain control in
eighteenth-century America was a policy of ending Creole domination of the
Aurlirnciris. See M. A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler. From Impotence to A u t h ~ r -
ity. The Spuni.rh Crown rind the American Aurliencicrs 1687-1808 (Columbia 1977).
30. See. for example, two recent English-language works on New Russia: A. L.
Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov, Viceroy to the Xsar (Montreal 1990) and
P. Herlihy. Ode.r.ra, A History 1794-1934 (Cambridge, MA 1986). The bible of
Siberian autonomists was N. M. Yadrintsev, Sihir' kak koloniya (St Petersburg
1882).
31. D. A. Low. Eclipse qf Empire (Cambridge 1991) 71.
32. On changing definitions of empire in Britain. see Lustick, Unsettled States,
69-70: in his view the 1860s were the moment when the basic change occurred. B.
Bailyn and P. D. Morgan (eds). Strangers within the Realm (Chapel Hill. NC 1991)
is a fine introduction to the place of Ireland and Scotland within the broader
English Empire.
33. The l~teratureon this issue is enormous. I benefited greatly from the sense
of the broader historical background conveyed by R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland
(London 1988) and by the analysis of the early twentieth-century crisis by N.
Mansergh, The Unresolved Question. The Anglo-Irish Settlement and its Undoing,
1912-1972 (New Haven, CT 1991). G. Boyce. Nationalism in Ireland (London
1982) is a comprehensive introduction to most aspects of the problem. B. Crick
(ed.). Nrrtional Ident~ties The Constitution o f the Unrted Kingdom (Oxford 1991)
1s a thought-provoking introduction to the post-imperial crisis of British identity
and Ireland's role in this issue.
34. 'lhe best general history of Ukraine is 0 . Subtelny. Ukraine: A History
('lbronto 1988). On the country's fate during its first century under Russian rule
see Z. E. Kohut. Russian Centralism and Ukrainian Autonomy. Imperial Absorption
of the Hetmunate 1760,s-18.30s (Cambridge. MA 1988) and D. Saunders. The Ukrai-
nian Impact on Russian Crrlture. 1750-1850 (Edmonton 1985). On Scotland. see.
for example, B. P. Lenman, Integration and Enhghtmment. Scotland 17461832
(Glasgow 1981): E. Richards, 'Scotland and the Uses of the Atlant~cEmp~re',
h7-114 in Bailyn and Morgan (eds). Strangers within the Realm.
35. On the creatlon of Great Britain, L. Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation.
1707-1837 (New Haven. CT 1992) is splendid. On post-imperial Scotland, see. for

example. D. McCrone, Understanding Scotland. The Sociology of a Stateless Nation
(London 1992).
36. Modern technology does. however, alter old geopolitical truths. In the age
of inter-continental ballistic missiles, even Halford Mackinder's Eurasian heartland
is no longer a safe base for global domination: see M. Hauner, What i.s Asia to
Us? (London 1990).
37. See, for example. an interesting report by Captain A. Shuttleworth of the
British Indian army on Russian-native relations in Central Asia, dated 18 March
1910. Inter alia he comments on the ordinary Russian's lack of racial arrogance,
in contrast to the situation in British India. PRO, FO 371. 980, doc. 23559, 18
March 1910.
38. A. W. Crosby. Ecological 1mperiali.sm: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900-1 900 (Cambridge 1986).
39. See, for example. the comparisons in V. G. Kiernan, European Empires from
Conquest to Collapse (London 1982). On specific areas of Russian expansion in
Asia, see, for example. J. Forsyth, A History of the Peop1e.s of Siberia. Russiuls
North Asian Colony, 1581-1990 (Cambridge 1992). Paul Heme, 'Fire and Sword in
the Caucasus: 'The 19th-Century Resistance of the North Caucasian Mountaineers',
Central Asian Survey, 2, 1 (July 1983). 5-44. M. Gammer, Muslim Re.sistrmce to
the Tsar (London 1994).
40. M. B. Olcott. The Kazukhs (Stanford 1987). chs %10.
41. See, for example. B. Z. Rumer, Soviet Central Asia. A Tragic Experiment
(Boston 1989).
42. Low. Eclipse of Empire, 6 7 .
43. The most up-to-date study of Russian relations with nomads in this period
is M. Khodarkovsky. Where Two Worlds Met. The Russian State and the Kalmyk
Nomads, 160&1771 (Ithaca, NY 1991). For a broad survey of Chinese relations
with the nomads. see S. Jagchid and V. J. Symons, Peuce,War and Trade along the
Great Wall: Nomadic Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia (Bloomington
1989).
44. I made this attempt myself in chapter 5 of Lieven. Nicholas 11. Emperor of
all the Russius (London 1993) and was foolish enough not to have read R. Huang.
1587 a Year of N o Significance: the Ming Dynasty in L)ecline (New Haven. CT
1981) and. even more culpably, B. S. Bartlett. Monarchs and Ministers. The Grand
Council of Mid-Ching China. 1723-1820 (Berkeley 1991).
45. This is one of the major themes of Kappeler in Rus.slunds erste Nationalitaten.
China's cultural prestige and its effective policy of assimilation surpassed even that
of Rome, and of course persisted for far longer.
46. It was in large part a recognition of the Hui (Moslem) people's impermea-
bility to assimilation that led the Chinese communist government to recognize
them as a distinct national minority, despite the fact that they are widely scattered
and speak Mandarin, two factors which would normally rule out a claim for
minority status under Chinese law. See Dru C. Gladney. Muslim Chinese, Ethnic
Nationalism in the People's Republic (Cambridge, MA 1991).
47. The best survey of geography's impact on Russian history is by C. Goehrke,
'Geographische Grundlagen der russischen Geschichte', Jahrhiicher fur Geschichte
Osteuropus. 18,2 (June 1970). Much of recent Western historiography is an attempt
to look at Chinese history from rather different perspectives than the traditional
634 Journal qf Contemporary History
concentration on the state and the 'Great liadition': for example. over one third
of S. Naquin's and E. S. Rawski's survey, Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century
(New Haven. CT 1987) is devoted to exploring differences between China's
regions.
48. Kappeler. Russlund a1.s Vielvolkerreich, argues for tolerance originating in
Steppe traditions. N. Itzkowitz, Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition (Chicago
1980) chapter 2 provides a splendid introduction to Ottoman institutions, which is
amplified by I. M. Kunt. The Sultan's Servants. The Transformation of Ottoman
Provincial Government (New York 1983) for the crucial century between 1550 and
1650 when the Ottoman Empire began its relative decline. R. Mantran (ed.),
Histoire de L'Empire Ottoman (Lille 1989). and H. Inalcik and D. Quataert (eds).
An Economic and Social Hbtorv of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914 (Cambridge
1994) are the most recent and comprehensive surveys of Ottoman history. Chapter
7 of J. Lynch. Spain 15161598. From Nation State to World Empire (Oxford 1991)
analyses Christian Spain's relations with Islam in the sixteenth century. The author
stresses (p. 330) the realism and absence of crusading spirit in Philip 11's policy
towards the Ottomans. Nevertheless, the contrast between Orthodoxy's missionary
efforts on the one hand, and on the other the Catholic Church's sense of mission
and the scale of its role in Spain's colonies. is striking.
49. On Ottoman receptivity to European influences. see B. Lewis. The Muslim
Discovery of Europe (New York 1982). On nomads and empires. see P.S. Khoury
and J. Kostiner (eds), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (Berkeley
1990). For an attempted comparison between the Ottomans and Mongol China,
see Isenhike Togan. 'Ottoman History by Inner Asian Norms'. New Approachar
to State and Peasant in Ottoman History (London 1992). 185-210. T. Ertman. 'The
Sinews of Power and European State-Building Theory' (ch. 2. 33-51) in L. Stone
(ed.), The Imperial State At War. Britain from 1689 to 1815 (London 1994) argues
that latecomers enjoyed sign~ficantadvantages in creating effective administrative
and fiscal machines in early modem Europe. This may be relevant to Russo-
Ottoman comparisons. On the Ottoman Empire's geopolitical position, see also
an ~nterestingpiece by U. Ostergaard, 'The European Character of the Ottoman
Empire' in L. Anderson (ed.). Middle East Studies in Denmark (Odense 1994).
50. A number of useful recent surveys of Habsburg history now exist even in
English. They include: J. Berenger, A History of the Huhshurg Monarchy 1273-1700
(London 1994): C. Ingrao. The Hahsburg Monarchy 1618-1815 (Cambridge 1944):
A. Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815-1918 (London 1989).
Behind them tower R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Huhshurg Monarchy
155&1700 (Oxford 1979) and the immensely scholarly I? G. M. Dixon. Finance
and Government under Marin Theresia 1740-1780. 2 vols (Oxford 1987). We even
have the benefit of a recent collection of essays (albeit of varying quality) compar-
ing the Habsburg and Soviet empires: R.L. Rudolph and D. F. Good (eds),
Nationalism and Empire. The Hubsburg Empire and the Soviet Union (New York
1992).
51. Ingrao, Hahsblrr~Monarchy. 20.
52. On eighteenth-century geopolitics, see D. McKay and H. M. Scott, The Rise
of the Great Powers, 1648-1835 (London 1983); E. Luard. The Balance o f Power.
The S ~ s t e mof International Relations 1648-1815 (London 1992): H. M. Scott.
'Russia as a European Great Power' in J. Hartley and R. Bartlett (eds), Russia in
the Age of the Enlightenment (New York 1990) 7-39.
53. On the early-modem history o f the Habsburg estates, see R. J. W. Evans

and T. V . Thomas (eds). Crown, Church and Estates Central European Politics in
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York 1991).
54. J. McGarry and B. O'Leary, The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Reglclation
(London 1993) is a useful introduction to this theme.
55. For an introduction to the principles o f traditional Ottoman government,
see N . Itzkowitz. Ottoman Empire and 1.slamic Tradition (Chicago 1972). ch. 2;
Yapp. Making of the Modern Near East. ch. 1 . On the millets. see above all B.
Braude and B. Lewis (eds). Chri.stians and Jews In the Ottoman Empire, 2 vols
(London 1982). Note too Peter Sugar's description o f the actual working o f the
orthodox millet in Ottoman Europe: Sugar, Solrthra.stern Europe trndrr Ottoman
Rule 1354-1804 (Seattle 1993). especially 273-4.277-9. On the Ottoman Jews and
their millet. see S. J. Shaw, The Jews of the Ottomarz Empire and the Turkish
Rc,puhic (London 1991). On the semi-autonomous late-Ottoman Lebanon. see E.
Ankarli. The Long Peace. Ottonzan Lebanon 1861-1920 (London 1993).
56. For an introduction to the Austro-Marxists. see the chapters by Theodor
Hanf and Alfred Pfabigan in CJ. Ra'anan. M. Mesner. K . Armes and K . Martin
(eds). State and Nation in Multi-ethnic Societies (Manchester 1991). For a fuller
study, see H. Mommsen. Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitatc~nfrajir im
Hahshurgischm Vielvolker.staat (Vienna 1963).
57. Quoted in D. C. B. Lievcn. Ru.s.sia and the Origins of the Fir.st World War
(London 1983). 127.
58. lstvan Deak. 'The Fall o f Austria-Hungary: Peace. Stability and Legitimacy'
in G. Lundestad (ed.). The ball of Great Powers (Oslo 1994). N. Stone, 'Army and
Society in the Habsburg Monarchy 1900-1914'. Past and Pre.sent, 1966, vol. 33. On
the travails o f the Habsburg officer in a nationahst era. see I . Deak. Beyond
Nationalbm. A Social and Political Hbtory of the Hahshurg Officer Corps
IN#-1918 (Oxford 1990). For a thoughtful survey o f the monarchy's international.
domestic and military standing in 1914. see chapters 1-3 o f S. R. Williamson,
Austria-Hungary and the Origins o f the Arst World War (London 1991).
59. Darwin. End of the British Empire. ch. 3: D. Reynolds. Britannia Overr[rled
British Policy and World Power in the 20th Cmtury (London 1991). 185-92.
60. Dibb. Soviet Union: Incomplete Superpower, presented this argument in a
comprehensive and balanced manner. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the most
famous Russian exponent o f this view. For a useful short synthesis combining
international and domestic aspects o f Russ~a'scrisis o f empire. see M. Galeotti,
The Age of Anxiety. Sec~rritvand Politics in Sol'ret and Post-Soviet Rlcssia (London
1995).
61. For example. between 1912 and 1923. as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, 62
per cent o f the Moslem population fled from areas conquered by the Christian
Balkan states and 27 per cent o f them perished. Parts o f Anatolia were also
depopulated and the Armenians became the victims o f full-scale genocide Yapp,
Making of the Modern Near East. 16.
Journal of Contemporary History
Dominic Lieven
is Professor of Russian Government,
London School of Economics and
Political Science. His publications include
Rz~ssiaand the Origins of the First World
War (London 1983); Rz~ssia5 Rulers under
the Old Regime (London and New
Haven, CT 1989); Aristocracy in Ez~rope,
1815-1 914 (London 1992); Nicholas 11,
Emperor of all the Rz~ssias(London 1993).
He is presently working on a comparison
of Russia's solutions to the problems of
empire (external and domestic) with
those adopted by other great empires.

Lieven 1995 Empire PDF

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Lieven 1995 Empire PDF

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as Imperial Polities

Journal of Contemporary History is currently published by Sage Publications, Ltd..

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as

Empire is a difficult concept for the comparative historian and

Journal of Contemporary History (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New

responsibility for far-flung territories and their multi-ethnic

the context of modern European maritime empires, it is to some

elites did recognize European cultural superiority, which was one

than those of other former imperial peoples, they are certainly

a superpower. Not at all surprisingly under such circumstances,

he continued his ancestors' generations-old advance into the

sharp differentiation between Great Britain and its overseas colon-

British union was constructed around the ideas of Protestantism

explain the relatively equal and even sometimes friendly relations

warriors were only finally tamed by both empires in the seven-

Volga Tatar peasants had nothing to learn from their Russian

powerful fiscal reasons for tolerating its subjects' 'heretical'

In the seventeenth century the Habsburgs tried to unify their

came with all their traditional institutions and privileges intact. In

of the Russian liberal-nationalist philosopher Peter Struve,

inherently more viable as an ideology of empire than any attempt

Hence Russia was sustaining the costs of two imperial confron-

lapsing empires, however, history thus far has been extremely

8. A. Watson, The Evolrttion ofln~ernarionulSociety (London 1992) contrasts

to Revol~~tion, Imperial Sprrin rind the Sprinish Anwicrin Revolrttions, 181011830

1707-1837 (New Haven. CT 1992) is splendid. On post-imperial Scotland, see. for

53. On the early-modem history o f the Habsburg estates, see R. J. W. Evans

Potrebbero piacerti anche