Many observers of Russia continue to hope that the Russian state will behave as a responsible actor on the international stage. Recent developments, however, suggest that the imperial impulse remains a constant that is difficult to abandon.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a brief impression that the Russian political elites and society had accepted the loss of the empire. The Russian Federation – the largest and most populous of the former Soviet republics – seemed to be moving towards building a democratic nation-state, recognizing the independence of the other republics.
Nearly 34 years later, this trajectory has been reversed. Instead of a fragile democracy, Russia has returned to an authoritarian system, and through the war launched against Ukraine, it is trying to reassert itself as an imperial power, writes Bohdan Klid, research director of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), University of Alberta, in Kyiv Post.
A recurring historical pattern
This is not the first time Russia has missed or abandoned a chance for democratization after the collapse of an empire. A similar situation arose in 1917, after the February Revolution, when the fall of the monarchy opened a brief period of democratic freedoms and self-determination for the non-Russian peoples of the empire. Ukraine, for example, created its own political institutions.
This opening, however, was quickly curtailed. The Bolshevik coup in November 1917 ended the democratic process, and the new regime resorted to force to reconquer lost territories, including Ukraine and Georgia. In 1922, a new empire was formally established in the form of the Soviet Union.
Over the following decades, Soviet foreign policy was marked by military interventions, territorial expansion, and confrontation with the West, alongside rigid and repressive internal control. Maintaining the empire required the constant use of force, both externally and internally.
This evolution contrasted with the dominant trends of the 20th century, when most European empires disintegrated, being replaced by independent nation-states, the expert underlines.
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