The End of “Putin’s Empire?” Ontological Problems of Russian Imperialism in the Context of the War against Ukraine, 2022

ABSTRACT

Vladimir Putin seeks to build a modern Russian empire on the post-Soviet space, as confirmed by the invasion of Ukraine. In the present article, the author shows why modern Russia represents a geopolitical project called “Putin’s Empire,” and what the ideological justifications for this empire are. The author also proposes to consider what is happening as a clash of different forms of imperial orders—neoliberal democracy and the concept of the “Russian world.” The author concludes that Russia, as an empire, is in a protracted political crisis, but this does not mean the empire will disintegrate.

Introduction

We can see that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has launched many bifurcational processes, which in the context of the global world order may have different consequences.¹ However, their nature is usually of the same origin—the revision of the spheres of influence of existing or potential empires, that is, the clash between empire-challengers and the hegemonic empire. The purpose of this article is to identify the main imperial characteristics of contemporary Russia. Its aggressive foreign policy, its pretensions to regional dominance, its geopolitical rivalry with the United States, and its promotion of an alternative global order (the concept of the “Russian world” in the post-Soviet space and a situational alliance with China) demonstrate several important features. First, this is a redefinition of the post–Cold War global order that defined US hegemony (Stoner 2021, 13). Second, these are attempts to restore not so much territorial but spatial boundaries of the former Russian-Soviet empire (Shinar 2017, 7). Third, this is the global constitution-making of the ideological agenda in the form of the concept of the “Russian world,” which can be described as a civilizational confrontation.

We see that modern Russia, as the successor to the long history of Russian imperialism, repeats the logic of the geopolitical behavior of its predecessors. First, it is a continuation of the geopolitical spiral of the Soviet Union; that is, it attempts to consolidate authoritarian political regimes around the idea of opposing democracy and capitalism, that is, the idea of a “Collective West.” Second, it is the construction of an imperial system of power, within which there is a centralized control apparatus headed by a charismatic leader. Third is what I call “imperial inertia,” that is, the desire of political elites to recreate an empire, or at least imperial governance structures.

In this article I suggest that contemporary Russia is a continuation of a long imperial historical project rooted in the medieval tsardom of Russia. This empire spatially seeks to reproduce its own ideology and political order; chronologically, it is replaced by new imperial forms, combining previous experience with the demands and challenges of the present; infrastructurally, it seeks to develop universal mechanisms of center–periphery relations for managing imperial space. First, I will outline the conceptual features of the empire as a category of political science, considering the political, ideological, and world-systemic approaches. Next, I will illustrate the modern Russian imperialism in the context of building the “Russian world” in the post-Soviet space. Here we will speak about the imperial world, the system of control, as well as what I call “satrapization of territory” and “imperial inertia.”

Empire as a Form of Order

At first glance, it might seem that empires were left behind in the twentieth century after large-scale processes of decolonization and “parades of sovereignty.” However, modern geopolitical processes demonstrate that this is far from being the case. Former empires, once strong regional actors transformed into nation-states in the twentieth century, are trying to play a more prominent role in the modern world. The examples are militaristic Turkey led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Cagaptay 2020), or Communist China led by Xi Jinping (Zhao 2021), or Russia led by President Vladimir Putin (Rumer 2018, 17).

The role of these new and potential empires is not only to construct models of imperial power within the political system, but also to challenge the contemporary global order, and to challenge contemporary global political processes. This implies, at a minimum, the construction and constitution at the regional level of alternative political orders. It seems to me, one should not delude oneself by implying the construction of a global empire, as Hardt and Negri (2000, 57) do, for example. Because empires are much more realistic political systems than they might seem at first sight. This means that we need to understand what an empire is not only from a historical point of view, but also from a social and political one.

History shows that empires, as a rule, cannot get along with each other because they are mutually exclusive political systems, for example, Rome and Carthage, the Mongol Empire and the Song Empire, the German and Russian Empires, and so on. Herfried Münkler notes, however, that there are cases in which empires can coexist with each other at a distance and derive mutual benefits without threatening each other’s political order; that is, they can exist in parallel with each other (Münkler 2007, 12). The “clash of empires” is quite a logical process because the empire is characterized by a tendency to expansion, militarization of the economic and political system, and the formation of a non-alternative political order with the subsequent construction of imperial ideology. An empire always claims a specific globality, but only in the Ecumene that is familiar to the empire and which the empire is able to keep under its control. Going beyond the “familiar world” can mark the beginning of deconstruction of the empire or disintegration processes. After all, such an exit requires a large number of resources that the empire accumulates from the periphery.

In other words, we are talking about empire as a form of political order in which the center of the empire, with the help of various networks of power, constitutes the mechanisms of governance of the periphery. This means that the empire orders multiple peripheries into a single political organism capable of sustaining the empire’s geopolitical ambitions. However, the political order of the empire is vulnerable when it uses only violent instruments of coercion to subjugate (hard power). As a rule, such methods are “universal” in the period of empire formation and in crisis situations. However, the creation of the imperial world and the legitimization of the political order require the use of soft power mechanisms, that is, mechanisms of ideologizing the social reality of the empire’s population.

In other words, the imperial logic of governance is the logic of combining a high level of violence on the part of the political elites of the center and a high level of consent to obey on the part of the political elites of the periphery. When we talk about a minimum level of violence and a maximum level of consent, then we can talk about hegemony. However, hegemony is not synonymous with empire. On the contrary, hegemony is the opposite of empire. However, we know examples in history when empires managed to form their own hegemony: Spanish Empire, British Empire, Romanov’s Russian Empire.

Also, one should not identify empire with the state, since empire is the whole world, while the state is a structural unit of the potential world. In this context, empire is very close in meaning to the world-empire of the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, who defines world-empires as redistributive systems based on the withdrawal of surplus product through tribute or rent and its (re)distribution along the hierarchical vertical of power (Wallerstein 2011, 36–37). The world-empire is always a metropolis (a highly developed center) and a set of peripheries (dependent territories). The world-empire is a large territorial state that is hierarchically organized and controls the inner and outer periphery. It is a state that controls many other potential states. However, here I must disagree with Wallerstein.

In the world-empire, it seems to me, politics always dominates over economics, and the empire itself seeks to constantly expand its own space. The imperial logic of governance is that the center must always cooperate with the bureaucracy to reproduce the political order. That is, the empire, first, exercises political control over the social space. In their turn, economic resources are a set of tools for the creation and reproduction of the imperial order, as well as the policy of expansion. Economic resources are also used by the ruler of the empire to ensure the loyalty of political elites of both the center of the empire and the periphery of the empire.

Alexander Motyl also points out that the definition of empire must be understood through the prism of center–periphery relations, since “the core is home to the imperial state and the ruling elite, while the peripheries house the core state’s administrative outposts and the peripheral elites” (Motyl 1999, 128). To legitimize center–periphery relations and create conditions for the subordination of the population and elites to the periphery, it is necessary to construct an imperial ideology that will variously “assimilate” social groups into a single imperial space. In other words, imperial ideology should be universal for the entire population of the empire; it should be a mechanism for codifying social relations within the empire. But the ways of implementing the imperial ideology may differ depending on the remoteness of the periphery from the center of the empire. After all, the further the periphery is from the center of the empire, the more autonomous and “independent” it is. Consequently, the implementation process can have different social, cultural, or institutional practices (Motyl 1999, 133). That is, the empire, as defined by Alexander Motyl, is a hierarchically organized political system within which the elite of the center dominates the elite of the periphery, acting as mediators for political and other interactions (Motyl 2001, 4).

Empire is not just a political system; it is rather a political necessity in the context of the reality in which it is created when historical circumstances force a potential empire into geopolitical dominance. Therefore, the empire is most often referred to as a geopolitical project (Zaporozhchenko 2021, 14). Considering the dual nature of empire as both a form of political order and a geopolitical project, I also draw attention to the idea of the German political scientist Herfried Münkler, for whom empire is a political way of managing social reality. For him, empire is a political world (Münkler 2007, viii) in which multitudes or social structures build a new reality.

His vision of world and short-term empires is an attempt to infer the dichotomy of empire vs. state. If empires are complex systems that cover the entire space of our planet, then short-lived empires are fragile regional hegemons that sooner or later are limited in expansion by a stronger and more powerful empire. However, I consider that empires are architects of political reality because they are trying to curb physical space and turn it into symbolic space. Certainly, empires are not only a geopolitical project, but also a temporal one. The time of the empire’s existence depends on its resources and the strength of the imperial idea.

I consider empire as a form of order within which the imperial Pax² is constituted—a unique, universal state of empire that strives for completeness and integrity. After all, the architectonics of the empire is not reduced only to wars and conquests; it builds a complex system of interaction between different objects—the center and peripheries. However, the subject of such relations is only the empire. Therefore, an empire always fears chaos; it acts as a defender of order (Münkler 2007, 15), which is unalterable, unique, and ideologically strong because the imperial world is a political and ideological level of legitimation of imperial power.

Since the imperial world is a complex combination of politics and ideology, Münkler sees in the empire his political logic, which is very often complex, mercantile, and prosaic (Münkler 2007, 27), but it is this logic that helps the empire to establish its dominance in the region or the whole world. I assume that the use of hard power (violence and coercion) is a way of expanding the empire—expansion. The use of soft power (consent and cooperation) is, in its turn, a mechanism for establishing and legitimizing the imperial order—potential hegemony. At the same time, the ordering of the imperial space is due to the construction of a new social reality—imperial reality.

Imperial reality is a set of mechanisms for articulating the imperial idea, sacred meanings, ideological constructs, and so forth. Such mechanisms are used through the prism of symbolization of space: myths, images, symbols, rituals, practices, discourses. An empire needs to mark a part of its own space with a certain symbol, to fix its own dominance. The examples can be a monument to the Russian poet Pushkin on the former peripheries of the Romanov Empire; colonial architecture in the British or French colonial empires; names of streets or cities in honor of historical or cultural figures. In addition, the symbolization of space is also a way of ordering the empire.

Deepak Lal, for example, rightly points out, “that the major argument in favor of empires is that, through their Pax, they provide the most basic of public goods—order—in an anarchical international society of states” (Lal 2004b, 2). In other words, order is a condition for the viability of the empire. The imperial order is always unique and universal. Therefore, the desire of the empire to export its order to non-imperial territories is a way of ordering and fighting chaos. Various options for integrating non-imperial territories into the empire are not only a way to expand the empire, but also a mechanism for building an imperial order as defined by Pax. The imperial order is both a catalyst for political processes and a set of mechanisms for optimizing and organizing space. As soon as the conditional boundaries of the imperial space are outlined, the process of building a universal system of governance for further legitimization of the imperial order begins.

Unlike the modern state, which is a form of control with different configurations of order, the empire is a form of order with different configurations of control systems. Since “empires were conceived as autonomous, self-contained foci of the charismatic elements of the social and political, and often also of the cosmic cultural order, as the major embodiment of the charismatic qualities of the cosmic order” (Eisenstadt 1993, lii). Therefore, the legitimacy of the imperial order depends on the political and ideological design of the empire. The imperial order requires not only the methods of its establishment, but also the mechanisms of further legitimation, which can be of a diverse nature: violence, subjugation, persuasion, cooperation, consent, coercion.

Summing up the conceptual foundations of my research, I can state the following. Empire is a form of political order that is formed by constructing a new social reality. The rationale for this reality is an imperial ideology (and hence the functional features of ideological structures), which suggests several potentialities: (1) empire is endowed with a civilizational mission of global scope; (2) empire acts as a protector against chaos or disorder; (3) empire seeks completeness and hence sets for itself an a priori unrealizable goal or idea. It cannot be stated unequivocally that the goal of empire is the construction of the Pax Imperium. However, the desire to create such a world and reproduce its features is a sign of imperial power. In addition, one should not forget the more structural features of empire, which include centralization and sacralization of power, regulated autonomy of the periphery, center–periphery relations, and the strong role of the military-repressive apparatus.

Back to the Future of the Russian Imperialism

The formation of a stable imperial world is one of the reasons why I introduce such a concept as “imperial inertia.” I suppose that an empire goes through a certain cycle from emergence to decline, but during this cycle it can construct an ideological justification for its restoration, albeit in a different form. We know of cases in history where new imperial forms emerged in the space of an empire that was in decline or had ended its existence. Some of the examples may be the following. First, after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire continued to exist, but as the Byzantine Empire, while the Western Roman Empire was for a long time dominated by the idea of empire building, first in an ideocratic way (the Roman Catholic Empire) and then in a dynastic way (the Habsburg Empire). Second, the Mongol Empire, which was in crisis, partly contributed to the emergence of the Yuan Empire in China and the Mughal Empire on the territory of modern India and Pakistan, Third, on the territory of modern Iran, there have been successive empires. Here the imperial history of Russia is not an exception, but rather the rule, which confirms this pattern.

As history has shown, any configuration of the empire in Russia is always a geopolitical project that becomes the beginning of the creation of the empire (the reforms of Peter I and the Westernization of Russia in the eighteenth century; Stalinist industrialization on the model of American Fordism in the twentieth century; attempts to liberalize Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union), and its natural disintegration (participation in World War I and the February revolution; the war in Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet Union). That is, we are talking about the fact that for Russia, as for most centers of former empires, what I call imperial inertia applies—the property of an empire to preserve its structural and value features for their further restoration in the form of a new empire.

In relation to Russia, this logic is quite acceptable because we can identify at least three historical examples of empires: the Russian Empire of the Romanovs, the Soviet Empire, and “Putin’s Empire.” However, we should not delude ourselves here and start from just a chronological basis for the empire’s existence. We must consider both the spatial factor (the formation of a regional center–periphery system with the construction of a cultural hegemony) and the structural-functional factor (the creation of certain power structures, the codification of the political order, and the interaction of mechanisms for exercising power). In other words, the idea of the creation of empire is outside the official historiography; it should be sought in the very architectonics of power relations and the infrastructure of the imperial order.

It is impossible to unequivocally assert when the idea of empire originated on the territory of Russia; and it is even more impossible to assert when exactly Russia itself emerged as a geopolitical entity. However, the signs of empire, as we define them in political science today, were already visible in the time of the Moscow Tsarist Empire (Shaw 2006, 30–32). First, there was a policy of active and often aggressive expansion when neighboring political entities were weak enough and the imperial power, which relied on military and administrative structures, had enough power to subdue new territories. That is, Russia “forcibly acquired and unilaterally settled the lands of other peoples and exploited them for its own purposes” (Gibson 2002, 182). For example, as we see in Map 1 below, more than 80 percent of the territory of the future Russian Romanov Empire (1721–1917) was conquered before the “official” formation of the empire.

Map 1. Expansionist politics of the “Tsardom of Russia,” 1547–1721 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Growth_of_Russia_1547-1725.png).

Here we should point to an instance of rare historical good fortune: to the east of the Moscow kingdom was a huge and poorly defended space, which allowed a rapid expansion into and development of these lands. This, in turn, influenced the strengthening of imperial power through the arrival of huge quantities of resources. Such good fortune had previously accompanied the Western European empires during the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries. Thus, for both the Romanov Russian Empire and the Soviet Empire, expansion played a key role because it allowed them to endure as an important geopolitical actor. Also, expansion allowed maintaining the spatial character of the empire—the desire to export imperial ideology beyond the conditional boundaries of the empire, for example, by opening “a large number of consulates and by a commercial agreement on a most-favored-nation basis” (Cheshire 1934, 90). And so, the logic of Russian imperial power was to use explicit resources to expand the empire. Military force was used to seize specific territory in which there was a priori weak political organization. Diplomatic force was used to expand space: exporting culture, economy, ideology, and thereby creating buffer zones between the spaces of the Russian Empire and others, such as the British, Austro-Hungarian, or Ottoman Empire.

My point is that Russian imperialism is a geopolitical project where an empire must compete with other empires for regional or global domination using as many resources as possible. For this, the empire needs to modernize. Here, I define modern as a geopolitical imperative characterized by the presence of a powerful military-industrial complex, renewal of the governance system, and the codification of social practices and processes. We see several modernization waves³ in Russian history, among them: (1) modernization under Ivan IV—orientation to the Ottoman Empire⁴ and its management logic; (2) modernization under Peter I—orientation⁵ to Sweden, Holland, and England; (3) modernization under Alexander II—orientation to European empires; (4) Soviet modernization under Stalin—orientation to Marxism and Leninism with elements of American Fordism.

Equally important is the construction of center–periphery relations between the capital and the periphery. In this case the contours of the center of a potential empire (the king or emperor and his/her entourage), which is the center of political decision-making, and the periphery (colonies distanced by political and strategic interests), which must be integrated into the already existing political system, are drawn out. This occurs through the creation of local colonial administrations, the codification of social relations, and the imposition of the dominant ideology (culture, religion, norms, and traditions). This was because “the goal of transforming Russia into a systematized, regulated, and uniform absolutist state based on the western European model left no room for the rights and traditions of non-Russians that had been respected in the past” (Cracraft 2010, 177).

Shmuel Eisenstadt, for example, outlines the fact that the ruler in a bureaucratic empire did not want to be “the first among equals,” but tried to build a system of power in which his or her authority and political status were much higher than the rest (Eisenstadt 1993, 118). This means that the ruler was forced to take into account the bureaucracy in order to form the center for making political decisions and the center for exercising political power at the same time. In such a context, the ruler and the bureaucracy established control over the resource network while minimizing the control of other real or potential centers. That is, the logic of center–periphery relations, in my opinion, boils down to the following situation: imperial management is equal to positive and non-contradictory interaction between the emperor and the bureaucracy (ruler and political elites) to exercise control over the (re)distribution of resources and prevent growth of the role of other centers in the imperial space.

To exercise control, the ruler of the empire uses regulation (codification), dependence (monopolization), coercion and subordination (hegemony or violence). The main thing is that the imperial center is a direct channel for the transmission of sacred meanings and their conversion into an imperious gesture. This means that the ruler, relying on the apparatus of the bureaucracy, constitutes the center–periphery relations as a way of reproducing and maintaining legitimate relations. This means that we can consider imperialism as a mechanism for building channels of communication between the center and the periphery when the imperial space is fixed as sacred.

For example, Russian imperialism carried out practices of forcible coercion to impose the dominant Russian culture. Some examples included baptism into Orthodoxy, the introduction of administration in the Russian language, and practices of censorship or cultural ostracism (e.g. the first censorship charter of 1804; the censorship terror and committee in 1848; the “Valuev circular” of 1863, which prohibited the publication of literature in the Ukrainian language). From the point of view of the imperial elite, the process of colonization was perceived not as the acquisition of new territories in order to saturate the center of the empire with resources, but as a “vital force for progress and forward movement” (Sunderland 1998, 176). In this sense, the Russian imperial idea needed dynamic propagation, as expansion was presented as both the greatness of the empire, its infinity, and its special civilizing mission: “increasingly the ideology which justified expansion was that of European civilizing mission” (Lieven 2006, 10).

As Willard Sunderland points out, Russia sought to be part of a European imperial identity, and therefore divided its space into “European Russia” and “non-European Russia” (Sunderland 2007, 44). First, this contributed to the creation of the morphology of imperial power, highlighting the center of the empire as a set of structures for the reproduction of the imperial order. Second, it was a proof of the spatial nature of the empire, when the periphery was perceived not as a territory, but as a space of potential resources necessary to ensure imperial power. However, here we should point out that the farther the periphery was from the center of the empire, the less interested it was in the center and the more power the local rulers had.

As Andrei Grinev’s research shows, beginning with Catherine II, the colonial policy toward the outlying territories was indefinite, ill-considered, and situational (Grinev 2015, 28). Still, the space of the empire was constructed based on political distancing between the center and the periphery. From the tactical point of view, it was an attempt to create the most centralized system of management of a huge space. Strategically, it was the geopolitical influence of its neighbors and the empire’s interest in creating buffer zones that preserved both the capital and the imperial power.

It should be noted that the imperial center was managed exclusively from the metropolis, which means that the local political elites were mostly immigrants from the capital of the empire. For example, in the Russian Romanov Empire, there was the factor of the “table of ranks,” which not only emphasized the noble origin of the territory’s governor, but also established a certain political distance between him and his entourage, between them and other members of the bureaucracy. In the Soviet Empire, such a factor was identification with the Communist Party, as well as formal loyalty to Marxism-Leninism.

The third important factor is the inversion of Orthodox religion, that is, the use of religious authority as a mechanism to legitimize the imperial order. The creation of the Russian imperial world implied the organization of a stable and universal ideology that justified the existing political order. In the case of Russia, I distinguish several options for this policy: either the subordination of the church organization to imperial power; or the displacement of the church organization outside the ideological field, and thus its replacement by new ideological apparatuses for the distribution and production of power.

In the case of the Russian Romanov Empire, it was the first option, when the Most Holy Governing Synod (1721–1917) was established as the official supreme body of church–state administration under the leadership of a secular official appointed by the emperor. The Synod was given the right to regulate church relations, appoint priests, engage in religious education, and so on. Thus, the synod was the central node in an extensive network of communication between the imperial authorities and the population of the empire. Therefore, I consider this synod as a tool for reproducing imperial ideology, as well as a tool for exercising control over social and cultural relations between different communities.

In the case of the Soviet empire, it was the second version, in which the church organization was displaced and replaced by the party organization: instead of churches there emerged party organizations and bureaucratic apparatuses, instead of priests there were party leaders, known in the post-Soviet space as “red directors” or nomenklatura. This version implied a violent deconstruction of the social institution of the church and the subsequent institutionalization of party structures. The important thing was the presence of charismatic power, which declared an image of a strong and indestructible empire and created the preconditions for the legitimization of political structures. We are talking not just about a specific charismatic leader (for example, Stalin), but about an entire “charismatic bureaucracy” (Kotkin 2017, 821). And just as the clergy had a certain sacredness, the party bureaucracy had both sacredness and charisma.

The last, no less important argument of Russian imperialism is the construction of a special imperial mission that has a civilizational character and possesses the features of messianism. Both processes are oriented to the internal space of the empire since they are necessary to legitimize the political order among the heterogeneous population of the empire. The features of “royal messianism,” as Vatro Murvar noted, are, among other things, “exclusiveness based on the absolute security that theirs is the only one true faith; sainthood and asceticism and life-long dedication to the cause above and against material interests” (Murvar 1971, 284). That is, the legitimization of imperial power is based not only on the mechanisms of violence (military-repressive apparatus) and the desire to build cultural hegemony, but also on the sacralization of the ruler (king, emperor), his or her special role and special status. As a rule, most Russian rulers were charismatic (Ivan IV, Peter I, Catherine II, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev), and surrounded themselves with a no less charismatic environment. Helen Constas notes that from a charismatic sect, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was transformed into a charismatic bureaucracy (Constas 1961, 286–87) capable of maintaining the faith of the proletariat in building communism.

In other words, we can see that Russian imperial history is a long process, wherein empires, after a series of systemic crises, once again seek to reproduce—that is, they exhibit “imperial inertia.” This implies not only the use by the new empire of the practices of the exercise of power of the previous empire, but also their expansion, improvement, and supplementation. During the collapse of the old empire and the formation of a new empire, a systemic crisis and ideological anomie occur, which means that the new empire denies the old political order (supports the process of delegitimation) as it constructs a new one. However, after the creation of a new empire, there is a need to use the “old” mechanisms of exercising power, that is, to legitimize elements of the old imperial order to reproduce and legitimize the new imperial order. This applies not only to the use of historical narratives, but also to structural transformation. For example, after the Second World War, Stalin restored the ministerial positions that were in the Russian Empire before the establishment of the Soviet system.

Russian Imperialism and the Politics of the “Russian World”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union there appeared a political vacuum, that is, a state of political uncertainty; a state of rupture with the old political order and a search for a new order emerged in the post-Soviet space. This was a process that combined the logic of imperial governance and attempts to build a nation-state. The logic of imperial governance consisted in the reproduction of center–periphery relations, patrimonial relations with former Soviet republics, and the use of energy resources to reproduce mechanisms of coercion and subordination.

Vladimir Putin’s accession to power and his domestic policies during the first eight years of his presidency were not at all an “economic miracle” for Russia; rather, they marked a failure to reform the economy and a setback to the construction of a nation-state. At the same time, the first eight years of his presidency showed clear signs of imperial power, although some researchers call this the construction of an authoritarian political system (for example, Nichols 2002, 212). Such a system is characterized by the centralization of power, the strengthening of the military-repressive apparatus, the monopoly on political decisions, the subordination of the church to the political elite, the “satrapization of territories,” the formation of an ideological basis for the imperial order (the concept of the “Russian world” and the special role of Russia in the world), and active participation in geopolitical projects. It was the subordination of regional elites to a strict vertical of power and the establishment of control over a raging feudalism, to allow for the strengthening of presidential power and the creation of a manageable and controllable democracy (Shlapentokh 2001, 375, 382). The determinism of political governance prevailed over economic reforms, which also indicated an imperial orientation: the creation of regulated center–periphery relations with the support of a military-repressive apparatus to consolidate power in the hands of the ruler and use it for geopolitical ambitions.

The modern form of Russian imperialism must start to be viewed in the context of political elites, since the degree to which imperial power is exercised depends on their level of agreement with the ruler and their collective interaction. From the point of view of political elites in modern Russia, researchers note the established form of kleptocracy as a mechanism of power production (Lanskoy and Myles-Primakoff 2018, 83). The combination of economic and political elites makes the Russian government quite flexible in the context of political decision-making (Steen 2001, 700) and provides great opportunities for the use of informal political practices (corruption, nepotism, clientelism, favoritism). The modern political elite of Russia somewhat resembles satraps (from Persian xšaθrapāvan—keeper of the kingdom) in the Persian Empire, when the Persian king ruled a vast space with the help of faithful vicars—the guardians of his possessions. Such power was based on the loyalty of satraps to the king, as well as the monopoly on the use of violence in the territory entrusted to the king. However, in the Russian framework, we are speaking not so much about specific territories (regions, republics, districts) as about specific structures of power, for example, Gazprom, the Russian Orthodox Church, Sberbank, Rosneft, the state-owned media conglomerate VGTRK, the United Russia party, and so forth.

That is, in each vital direction of the empire there is its “keeper of the kingdom” who performs the function of reproducing and maintaining the imperial order. What is important is that such a “keeper” is Putin’s personal supporter—that is, that the head of an economic or political institution is approved by him personally. Under Putin, a rigid vertical of power has finally emerged in Russia, where the main element— the center of political decision-making—is the office of the president and the president personally. For this purpose, a unique institutional and constitutional design was proposed, according to which the power of Russia belongs to the president, who has the sovereign right to a (re)distribution of power. It was sovereign law that formed the basis of Russia’s proposed concept of sovereign democracy (Sakwa 2012, 5), that is, a managed and regulated form of relationship between politics and society. Such democracy is a necessary condition for the implementation of the architectonics of “Putin’s Empire,” in which power is not only a monopoly on the use of violence, but also a way of interpreting domestic politics.

Consequently, such a power needs a reliable and high-quality system of universal control over the social and political processes within the empire. The system of control is necessary to distinguish between friends and enemies; to prevent the destabilization of the political order; to prevent the emergence of potential political threats to the system. Support of the system of strong control, which we observe today in “Putin’s Empire,” needs an administratively repressive apparatus, which includes judicial power, militia, the prosecutor’s office, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian Guard (Rosgvardiya), the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor), and other power structures. It is the repressive apparatus in the empire that acts as the main catalyst for the political order. However, the viability of such an apparatus usually depends on the ability of the supreme authority to support its activities with resources. As soon as these resources run out or do not meet demands, a situation of delegitimation of supreme power arises—leading, for example, to participation of the Praetorian Guard in the election of the Roman Emperor, or palace coups with the participation of military regiments in the Russian Empire.

“Putin’s Empire” builds its center–periphery relations on the principle of neopatrimonialism, whereby traditional values and loyalty to the ruler are fundamental. Since “neo-patrimonial systems can contain a wide range of personalized and formal institutions, of patronage and bureaucratic hierarchy” (Robinson 2017, 349), the access to resources is determined through an extensive network of social and personal connections. This means that the level of loyalty and devotion to the ruler will determine the quantitative and qualitative indicators of possession of both social and political capital. For example, we can talk about the so-called “Putin team,” whose representatives occupy important positions in the structure of power: Dmitry Medvedev, Nikolai Patrushev, Alexander Miller, Igor Sechin, Sergei Ivanov, Herman Gref, Evgeny Prigozhin, Vladimir Yakunin and others. All of them are friends or classmates of Putin, that is, people close to him. This means that they actually establish a bureaucratic type of government and perform the function of controlling the strategic directions of imperial government. The main feature of this design of the empire is that the ruler considers the empire as his personal property, over which he alone has sovereign power. But to maintain control, he needs to interact with the bureaucracy to prevent the emergence of alternative centers and minimize their potential impact (Eisenstadt 1993, 118).

In fact, in addition to the political center, there are other centers that connect the imperial space through communication channels. Such centers function in the ideological field, that is, they are aimed at the construction and constitution of the imperial order, as well as the legitimization of imperial power. Ideology in this context is a second-order tool that is used to ensure continued faith in the political order. If we talk about ideology as a process of building social reality, then Louis Althusser proposes to separate the ideological apparatus of the state and the repressive apparatus of the state (Althusser 2001, 89–92). However, it should be clarified that both of these devices, as a rule, belong to the state; that is, the state uses these devices to consolidate or fix its position in relation to the population.

In the context of Russian imperialism, we can distinguish two ideological centers (apparatuses) that are used by the Russian leadership. The first center is the Russian Orthodox Church, which is headed by Patriarch Kirill, and which deals with the sacralization of the imperial order and Putin personally. In the imperial history of Russia, the church has always played the role of a catalyst of political will (Anderson 2007, 188), and not a conductor of social demands. The fact is that for any empire, it is vital to connect the material and immaterial worlds, since this allows the empire to demonstrate its all-pervading capability. So religion in the imperial order, as noted by Richard Horsley, creates conditions where cultural elites construct the religion of subordinate people for their own purposes (Horsley 2003, 14), which, in my opinion, is precisely the factor, “the development of imperial religion that expresses and even constitutes the imperial power relations” (Horsley 2003, 14), and not as a separate type. That is, the church is the theological and teleological instrument of imperial power.

We know examples of how, in the Roman Empire, the emperor was also a great pontiff; in the British Empire the emperor was also the head of the Anglican Church; in the Soviet Union religion was banned but the cult of personality was constituted. In modern Russia, which is secular, a political leader cannot be both a political and a spiritual leader for his population. Therefore, Putin created a loyal and devoted church to articulate his interests, to consolidate the population around his political elite, and to create mechanisms for the sacralization of his ideas. An example of such a consolidation of religious and political power is Putin’s first inauguration in 2000, when, after an official ceremony, Patriarch Alexy II held a prayer service for the health and longevity of the new head of state, and also blessed the new president. That is, we see an analogy with tsarist Russia, when the patriarchs blessed the tsar to rule. Or the example of the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the subsequent annexation of the property of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church (Meduza 2020).

The second center is a concept of the “Russian World,” which is a tool for the geopolitical claims of contemporary Russia. As Marlene Laruelle writes, “the ‘Russian World’ is an updated version of the ancient perception of a shared civilizational space” (Laruelle 2015, 3). In other words, this concept is a kind of manifesto for the civilizational mission of Russian imperialism. Within this concept it is considered that Russia’s “geopolitical body” should be much larger than its established territorial boundaries; hence there should be legitimate political relations between Russia as a geographical entity and its kindred peoples who live outside state borders (Suslov 2018, 333). Therefore, to reproduce the ideas of this concept, Russia actively uses the international foundation Russian World and a variety of media resources (the international television broadcasters Russia Today, Channel 1, RBK Group). This is necessary not only to construct an image of Russia in the world, but also to maintain contact with the Russian diaspora.

The concept of the “Russian World,” as rightly noted by Pieper (2018, 5), fixes at the state level such categories as “ethnic Russians” (russkie), “Russian speakers” (russkoiazychne), “cultural Russians” (rossiiane), “compatriots” (sootechestvenniki), “countrymen abroad” (zarubezhnye sootechestvenniki), or “fellow tribesmen” (soplemenniki). That is, within this concept lies the perception of not only the national characteristics of modern Russia, but also cultural, linguistic, and ethno-political ones. This means that each of the above categories can be used as a precedent (and tool) for the foreign policy actions of the modern Russian authorities. The examples include the desire to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians in Donbas in 2014, the military invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as a preventive measure to protect the Russian-speaking population from “genocide” by the Ukrainian authorities (Fortuin 2022), claims regarding the infringement of the rights and freedoms of Russians and Russian speakers in the territories of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and the Moldovan and Latvian republics.

Also, the concept of the “Russian World” is a cultural and civilizational project, that is, a set of mechanisms for the dissemination of Russian culture through various ideological apparatuses, such as religion, culture, education, or the media. So, for example, in 2007, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the “Russkiy Mir” (Russian World) Foundation was established, the purpose of which is to popularize Russian culture throughout the world. Another example is the positioning of Moscow as the “Third Rome,” to demonstrate the religious continuity of Rome–Constantinople–Moscow. The Russian Orthodox Church in this context is used as an ideological tool designed to maintain the legitimacy of the Russian authorities. Such support is based on traditionalism, conservatism, and popularization of the core values of the Russian World: Orthodox culture, Orthodox fundamentalism, traditions, history, and more.

At the same time, the concept of the “Russian World” is both a tool for constructing social and political reality (self-identification of the population with the empire) and a mechanism for promoting geopolitical strategies (claims for collective memory, historical past, disagreement with the Russian “alternative” political order). In this sense, the concept of the “Russian World” is rather prosaically explained by Rogers Brubaker’s idea of national identity. Brubaker points out (Brubaker 2005, 6) that there are three configurations of identity construction, among which are (1) dispersion—of a diaspora across state borders, (2) “homeland orientation”—broadly defined as a certain collective memory and emotional attachment to the “ homeland,” and (3) “boundary-maintenance”—which he defines as the “preservation of a distinctive identity vis-à-vis a host society.”

In this case, we see a rather interesting matrix. First, this is the formal recognition of state borders after the collapse of the USSR, but the nominal disregard of these borders on national, ethnic, or historical grounds. The second is the reproduction and monopolization of the structures that provide the “homeland orientation.” This means that the Russian government seeks to maintain a monopoly on the past (on collective memory). For example, the sacralization and “privatization” of Victory Day; an appeal for the return of the historical regions of the Russian Empire (Little Rus’, White Rus’, the Baltic territories); and confrontation with the countries of the “collective West.” Third, the diaspora is also a key actor in the foreign policy activities of the Russian authorities: it not only reproduces Russian culture but is also a conductor of the foreign policy of the Russian leadership. For example, in 2007, an act was signed on the reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (Putin personally attended this event).

But one of the most important factors in the concept of the “Russian World” is the sacralization of political power—the ruler. This practice finds its reflection during the reign of the Romanov dynasty, where the tsar was “God’s anointed,” which means that the legitimization of his power was based on ideological foundations. In the Soviet period, the features of sacralization were also preserved, and became the basis for the formation of the personality cult of Lenin, Stalin, or Brezhnev. In modern Russia, we also observe practices of sacralization of Putin: approval and support from the Orthodox Church; the level of trust of Russian citizens at 79 percent (Statista 2022); the formation of a cult of personality, at least among the political elite and radical organizations. Such a cult of personality is connected, first of all, with the messianic image of Putin and his charisma (Lewis 2020, 531).

The reproduction of the political order is likewise implemented by the media, which articulate the official position of the Russian government, and also deal with the reconstruction of the historical memory of Russian society. First, Russian state media organizations are used to promote the ideas of the “Russian World” concept. This is connected with the constitution of collective memory, the reproduction of historical narratives, and the formation of a subservient political culture. But the main thing is the creation of a sustainable political discourse that affects the collective memory of the modern population of Russia and, at the same time, is a tool for making use of the collective memory of the past (Vázquez-Liñán 2017). Second, media organizations are used as tools in Russia’s information war with specific states or organizations, as in Russia’s efforts to influence Belarus during a political crisis between the two states (Szostek 2015). Media organizations are seriously considered by the Russian leadership as part of the country’s armed forces (Wagnsson and Hellman 2018, 1169).

The Ukrainian Factor and Post-Soviet Affairs

The Ukrainian factor plays a special role in Putin’s policy. The goal is not only to create a buffer zone between Russia and Europe, but also to maintain imperial domination in the post-Soviet space. Dominic Lieven writes that it is vital for empires to secure their center from potential threats; that is, to create a buffer zone that will be under the indirect or direct influence of the empire (Lieven 2000, 214–16). We can see that Russia is trying to build individual relations with the countries of Central Asia, considering the internal political factors of each country.⁶ However, in the context of the European part of Russia we can observe various bifurcation processes (e.g. the Russia–Ukraine war). We see that the territories of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States are important for modern Russia. And here we also see an analogy with the Romanov Empire. These territories denote not only the security of the center, but also their involvement in European history and European politics. For example, the Baltic is the key to Kaliningrad and the North Sea, and Ukraine is the key to Transnistria and dominance in the Black Sea. And these foreign policy vectors have been salient since tsarist Russia.

Thus, the invasion of Ukraine was both a geopolitical ambition and a test of Russian imperialism’s geopolitical and military might; yet the reasons for this invasion lie precisely in Russia’s long imperial history and its desire for regional domination. In his work on empires, Deepak Lal, based on the ideas of the Italian philosopher Machiavelli, suggests three options for an empire to retain occupied territories (Lal 2007, 15). In my opinion, the USSR used all these three options to create spheres of influence and spread leftist ideology in the world. The first option—the destruction of the local political organization and its replacement by the imperial order—was implemented by the USSR during the Civil War, 1918–1922. Local elites who sought to create independent states were displaced by the Soviet leadership as the political order that was created after the collapse of the Russian Romanov Empire was replaced by the Soviet political order. What happened was the Sovietization of the periphery and their integration into the Soviet political system. The second option, which I will designate as “political missionary”—the resettlement of inhabitants of the empire to this territory—was carried out by the Soviet government on the principle of Russification of the population as well as the mixing of homogeneous local ethnic groups. As a result, a heterogeneous society was created with dominant ethnic groups, including the Russian ethnic group.

The third option, which I designate as the “satrapization of the territory”—granting local authorities the right to live according to their own laws, but entrusting power only to a small group of trusted persons—was carried out by the Soviet leadership in countries that fell within its sphere of influence. We are speaking about (pro)communist regimes in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The use of all options for holding territories in the bosom of the empire allowed the Soviet Union to establish its hegemony for a long time, but this also marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire. The first two options were implemented inside the collapsed Russian Romanov Empire, that is, they focused on the internal political field of the imperial space. The third option, however, had foreign policy orientations, that is, it became an instrument of geopolitics. In this context, a situation was formed in which many peripheries needed many resources of the empire. To this one should add the constantly emerging bifurcation points that needed to be localized and neutralized. Such points include, for example, the Prague Spring, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the war in Afghanistan, opposition to communist regimes in Latin America, and others.

“Putin’s Empire” continued to use the options outlined above, but with its own specifics and in the new political reality. To begin with, the radius of empire building was limited to the post-Soviet space (although we can also observe Russia’s participation in military conflicts in Syria and the Central African Republic). The greatest possibility for ensuring hegemony was offered by the third option—the satrapization of the territory. This option was chosen due to the common Soviet past, as well as the construction of strong neopatrimonial political regimes in most of the republics of the former USSR (Fisun 2012, 92–94). In Central Asian countries (Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan), the Russian government supported local political elites—the former party leaders of local communist organizations. The same principle was used in Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine. However, the gradual separation⁷ of Georgia and Ukraine from Russia (Kaszuba 2018, 53), as well as the revolutions that took place in these states, undermined the unity of imperial influence as well as the implementation of the concept of the “Russian World.” In my opinion, the unwillingness to lose important strategic zones is what provoked Russia to act not diplomatically, but militarily.

The use of familiar tools to maintain the imperial order by Russia, namely soft power, proved impossible in Ukraine. First, an empire is always very jealous of its periphery, and Russia continues to consider Ukraine its periphery. Second, over the 30 years of independence in Ukraine, the normative-value matrix has changed dramatically; this can be designated as civilizational (see Wawrzonek 2014). The population of Ukraine, following the political leadership of the country, was becoming increasingly ready to choose a pro-European path of development (Morozova 2019, 324). In other words, Ukraine is trying to become part of a different political order—a neoliberal one. Third, two revolutions have taken place in Ukraine during the period of its independence in 2004 and 2014.

Any revolution, despite multiple epistemological attempts to conceptualize this process (see Beck 2018), entails radical structural and value changes that turn the system “upside down.” The nature of the revolution can take various forms, but, as a rule, during a revolution there is chaos—the collapse of the old order and attempts to outline the contours of the new order. Let me remind you that the empire is a defender of order, whose mission is to destroy chaos. For “Putin’s Empire,” the revolution in Ukraine became the trigger of geopolitical processes and the beginning of the use of hard power in relation to Ukraine.

The revolution of 2004, as it seems to me, was perceived rather restrainedly, since Putin and his entourage had a high level of public trust in Russia. However, the revolution of 2014 became a bifurcation point—a critical state of the system in which the system becomes unstable. The resulting chaos could easily spread to the territory of Russia, given the experience of the 2011–2013 Russian protests. Consequently, “Putin’s Empire” used the accumulated resources, as well as international influence, for the annexation of Crimea, the creation of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LPR and DPR), and the social and political destabilization of Ukraine. In other words, there was a transition from the policy of “satrapization of the territory” to “political missionary work,” which was incorporated into the concept of the “Russian World.” The beginning of aggressive actions against Ukraine in 2014 was an attempt to stabilize “Putin’s Empire,” a quick and winning war to ensure political stability within the empire.

Concluding Discussion

“Imperial inertia,” which contributes to the restoration of the imperial order, is one of those macro-historical factors that influence the architectonics of power in contemporary Russia. For more than 500 years Russia has manifested signs of imperialism, based on aggressive expansion, the constitution of center–periphery relations, and the construction of an imperial world as a legitimate ideology of empire. All these are not only featuring of the politics of imperialism, but also factors in the vitality of empire as a certain idea, within which there is messianism and a civilizational aspect. The long imperial history of Russia is a non-linear history of imperial projects that succeeded each other chronologically, but complemented each other in content.

It is interesting that each such imperial project is a specific cycle of the empire-building process. The empire-building stage is associated with rapid and aggressive expansion, since the potential empire is more developed and stronger in military-repressive terms. At the head of a potential empire is a charismatic leader who implements modernization processes borrowed from already existing and dominant empires, at least in the region. The examples may include modernization along the lines of the Ottoman Empire, the Dutch Empire, the German Empire, or the British Empire. The stage of empire formation is associated with the constitution of the imperial world, that is, the legitimization of the political order through the ideological apparatuses of empire. As a rule, at this stage the idea of empire as a non-alternative, universal and unique order, that protects the population from external threats and chaos, is formed. The very idea of empire as a “protector of order” is a projection of the justification for constant violence and the coercion of consent to obedience.

The world-imperial stage is characterized by relative peace within the imperial space, cultural development, satisfaction of socio-economic demands, and the accumulation of resources while maintaining center–periphery relations. However, these relations are characterized by relative autonomy and the dominance of local interests over imperial ones. As a rule, it is at this stage that the preconditions for the development of nationalism and territorial sovereignty are formed. However, an absolute imperial power structuring social relation also constitutes itself. The crisis stage of the empire is manifested in the emergence of many bifurcation processes, which the empire is forced to spend a huge number of resources to combat. Such geopolitical traps contribute to the inability to ensure the unity of the empire, and the strengthening of separatism and nationalism in the periphery. The stage of the collapse of the empire occurs not so much at the expense of overstretched resources and the collective (un)action of political elites (both center and periphery), as due to the delegitimization of the very idea of Empire, the ideological justification for its existence. In the case of the Russian Empire, it was the delegitimation of tsarist power and World War I; in the case of the Soviet Empire, it was the delegitimation of communism and the war in Afghanistan.

However, in today’s Russia there is still a strong belief in ideology (and thus in a charismatic leader), as demonstrated by sociological surveys (Statista 2022). Also, the war in Ukraine, which is still ongoing, has an ambiguous character for Russian society and power structures. For example, the mobilization in Russia in the autumn of 2022 demonstrated the outflow of Russian citizens of draft age abroad (Kakasenko 2022); there are also local pockets of resistance to both the mobilization and the actions of the Russian authorities (Liffey 2022). Nevertheless, despite this, we see the reproduction of stable patterns of subordination of the population to political leadership.

Although such a situation could be called political hegemony within the imperial space, outside the empire, it is coercion to consent to subjugation. For example, Russia uses gas blackmail in relation to member states of the European Union (Cienski and Jack 2022); and is also trying to play a key role in the post-Soviet space through the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Also, the concept of the “Russian World,” which is at the heart of Russia’s international policy, remains relevant. The architectonics of this concept includes the practices of “privatization of history,” “satrapization of territories,” neo-patrimonialism, and the active use of soft and hard power.

What is important is the fact that Russian imperialism is a definite evolution of both the structural-functional and normative-value features of imperial power. Each successive empire that emerges because of a systemic crisis (revolution or collapse) first denies the previous imperial experience, contrasting it with a new political order (e.g., socialism instead of tsarism, liberalism instead of socialism); and then must use it for its own purposes. This is because the construction of an imperial reality requires stable patterns, which are, for example, historical events or personalities; myths about a “Golden Age”; the heroic past not so much of the empire as form, but of the population as the content of that form. The return of contemporary Russia’s imperial elite to the past is therefore an attempt both to reproduce imperial ideology and to legitimize it among the population of the post-Soviet space, for example in Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic States, or Central Asia.

As for the impact of the war against Ukraine on the architectonics of imperial power—this is still a moot point, because the war (a) is not over and (b) has not been lost by Russia. Further attempts to predict the future of Russian imperialism are therefore pointless at this stage. I will only emphasize the fact that empires, as history shows, rarely collapse because of a lost war. Empires collapse because of the political elite’s inability to collectively interact with one another and because the empire’s ruler loses his or her sacredness and charisma. And such events happen because an empire spends too many resources in pursuit of its geopolitical ambitions.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the Editor-in-Chief Dmitry Gorenburg and anonymous reviewers for thorough reviewing and helpful advice. The author is also grateful to the Ukrainian people, who show their courage and fight for freedom and justice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For example, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement of a special military operation in Syria; aggravation of US–China relations over Taiwan (including Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan); a special Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip in August 2022; statements about the food crisis in the MENA region and other processes; protests in Sri Lanka.

2. Deepak Lal points to the fact that “the imperial pax has also historically been associated with globalization—which is not a new phenomenon—and the prosperity it breeds, for two important reasons” (Lal 2004a, 4). And here, indeed, such remarks have their place. For the Pax is more an invention of historians than of the inhabitants of the empire themselves. However, one must take into account the fact that Pax is a world in the sense that it represents the maximum level of development of the empire, in which relative autonomy of the periphery is achieved; cultural hegemony is established; and a process of self-identification of the periphery’s population with the empire takes place. These processes are, of course, the “ideal future” to which the empire aspires. But if we take into account the violent practices of empire creation and management of imperial space, we are forced to give a different interpretation of this phenomenon. That is, Pax should be defined as the ideological justification of the imperial idea, with which local (peripheral) political elites either agree or are forced to agree, above all.

3. Here it is necessary to explain the specifics of Russian modernization. Russia is characterized by a so-called secondary or catching-up modernization, that is, a change in the political system and socio-cultural structures as a response to an external challenge from more developed countries. The catching-up modernization is carried out mainly under the influence of the borrowing of foreign technologies and forms of organization of production and society. Such modernization is based on a focus on the most developed empire or the most developed state in a particular historical period.

4. The reforms of Ivan IV are very similar to those in the Ottoman Empire that were passed by the sultans Bayezid II and Selim the Grim. These reforms involved the creation of a new military organization (Janissary—Streltsy), bureaucratic structures (Divan—Prikaz), administrative-territorial units (Sanjak— Voivodship), an official and institutionalized church (the caliph in the Ottoman Empire and the tsar appointing a metropolitan).

5. Although Peter I spent a long time in Holland, which was considered the center of the world system at that time, his reforms included elements of other European states (see more in Cracraft 2003), including Sweden (military reform and civil code), England (church reform), Germany (administrative reform). The social organization, and therefore the economic system, was based on the Dutch model of capitalism. However, its implementation in Russia was ambiguous.

6. At a minimum, Russia’s geopolitical dominance over Central Asia, including Kazakhstan,Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, persists. There is also a situational alliance with China and Afghanistan (the Taliban government). In this regard, Russia’s authoritarian political regime seeks to find allies with similar authoritarian regimes to promote the idea of confrontation with the West and to find new markets for its resources to support geopolitical projects.

7. Today we can also observe that Armenia is also trying to distance itself from Russia; notably, on November 24, 2022, the prime minister of Armenia refused to sign the resolution of the CSTO Council. The reason for this decision is the unsatisfactory activities of the organization in the context of the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.