Empires Don’t Resurrect Twice

Russia’s political class is going through a brutal geopsychological breakdown, far sharper than in 1991. The current cycle of alienation and hostility spells Moscow’s doom. Make us preferred on Google Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied People carry Soviet flags during a pro-Russian protest in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on May 8, 2022, amid the war in Ukraine and during commemorations to mark the 77th anniversary of the 1945 victory against Nazi Germany. (Photo by Yann Schreiber / AFP) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google The most eminent mediocrity of Russia’s political class has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” In our view, it produced above all the greatest psychiatric catastrophe in the minds of those who modestly style themselves the Russian political elite, including that very “thinker.” For decades, one obsession has united these shell‑shocked figures: “domination in the post‑Soviet space,” the creation of a “zone of privileged interests,” the restoration, in one form or another, of the old Horde‑Tsarist‑Soviet empire. The Russian Empire has collapsed twice. The first time was in 1917. After defeating the White generals in the ensuing civil war, the Bolsheviks quickly enacted their opponents’ program of “a single and indivisible Russia,” restoring almost the entire imperial space. How did this miracle happen then, and why will it not happen today? Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . This was because Lenin and Trotsky did not try to impose on the peoples of the former empire an alien and empty idea of “Great Russia” to those peoples. The Red Army carried on its bayonets, and its commissars carried in their propaganda the intoxicating communist promise of social justice and the liberation of the oppressed. It is irrelevant that the idea later proved false and its implementation criminal; that became clear only afterwards. At the time, it captivated millions regardless of nationality and did not merely resemble a quasi‑religion; it functioned as a genuine new faith. Other Topics of Interest Telegram Founder Updates App to Bypass Total Ban in Russia Founder Pavel Durov announced a “digital resistance” campaign and new anti-censorship protocols after Moscow blocked the app, urging users to switch to VPNs to maintain access. Andrei Amalrik was absolutely right. As early as the late 1960s, this brilliant dissident, who predicted the Soviet Union’s collapse, wrote that just as the adoption of Christianity prolonged the life of the Roman Empire by three centuries, the adoption of communism prolonged the life of the Russian Empire by several decades. The USSR could have fallen a little earlier or a little later, by one scenario or another, but once the communist religion died in the souls first of its priests and then of its flock, the Soviet theocratic empire was doomed. What, then, can today’s Russian “elite,” tormented by phantom imperial pains, offer its former comrades from the great foundation pit of the Soviet project? Nothing but pompous talk about its own greatness, about the messianic imperial vocation of the Russian ethnos, about “sacred” Chersonesus. But none of this interests anyone except Russians. Thieving and incompetent, swaggering and cowardly, shuttling between Courchevel and Lefortovo, Russia’s political “elite” cannot grasp the simple fact that nobody in the post‑Soviet space needs it as a moral tutor or a natural center of gravity. Not because some American or some Brit has “spoiled” these countries, but because Putin’s Russia cannot be attractive to anyone. Perhaps a few socially close brothers‑in‑spirit might be found in the post‑Soviet space if this hoarse, West‑hating “elite” were prepared to offer them a serious Grand Anti‑Western Ideological Project. But everyone knows where these “new nobles” of a supposedly rising great power actually keep their treasures, where they go to rest, to be treated, to give birth to heirs, and to pay for their education. The narcissistic “elite,” lost in its own megalomaniac fantasies, is incapable of taking the independence of the CIS states seriously, not just formally, on paper, but inwardly and psychologically. Its astonishing deafness to how neighbors might react, its spiritual laziness and imperial arrogance, its refusal to make even a minimal effort to see itself through their eyes, all this generates a self‑perpetuating cycle of alienation and hostility across the entire post‑Soviet space. As far back as 1997, all these phantom great‑power complexes were spelled out in a now‑infamous document titled “The CIS: The Beginning or the End of History?” . Since then, the recommendations of that opus have run like a red thread through endless publications by “experts” on the “near abroad” and have been translated into the Kremlin’s actual policy toward the post‑Soviet space: On Ukraine: “Coercing Ukraine into friendship; otherwise, gradually imposing an economic blockade modeled on the US blockade of Cuba.” On the South Caucasus: “Only the threat of serious destabilization in Georgia and Azerbaijan, backed by a demonstration of Russia’s resolve to go all the way down this path, can prevent Russia’s final expulsion from the region.” “Coercion into friendship,” that magnificent Orwellian oxymoron, is a ruthless self‑diagnosis of the Russian political class’s mental state. In today’s conflict with Ukraine, these would‑be coercers of friendship, the Putins and Solovyovs, are historically doomed to the pathetic role of impotent rapists. Russia’s political class is going through a brutal geopsychological breakdown, far sharper than in 1991. Back then, everything still seemed temporary; today it has become obvious that the new reality is permanent. The reassuring ambiguity of the phrase “near abroad” has vanished. A new expression is being cautiously rolled around on the tongue of Russia’s anti‑Western “elite”: “China’s near abroad.” In our desperate attempts to gather at least some vassals in “our near abroad,” we somehow failed to notice how we ourselves are turning into the near abroad of China. All Russian “Eurasianism” is, in essence, ideologically second‑hand. It is a function of resentment toward the West and serves the Russian “elite” as a psychological cushion during the critical days of its relationship with that same West. All these themes were brilliantly captured in Alexander Blok’s famous poem “The Scythians.” A passionate declaration of love for Europe turns, at the slightest doubt of her reciprocation, into a threat. If you do not accept us, “we have nothing to lose, and treachery is within our power… we will turn to you our Asiatic snout.” These mood swings are indispensable to the Russian “elite” as it works through its relationship with the eternally hated and eternally loved West. It is not to some random drinking companion but to the heavens of the West that the existential Russian question is addressed: “Do you respect me?” PS. The key author of that 1997 report was Konstantin Zatulin . To give him his due, this is not a mediocre man. To a far greater extent than Putin himself, he can be called one of the spiritual fathers of the Russo‑Ukrainian war. But five years into that war, he seems to have grasped the fatal flaws of the ideology that led to it. Zatulin is now saying it publicly . We should be talking to him. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post. Anton Eremin is a Washington D.C. founder and leader of a civic, nonpartisan community focused on human rights, the rule of law, and a democratic future for Russia.