The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as Imperial Polities
Author(s)
Lieven, Dominic
Abstract
The Russian Empire and the succeeding Soviet Union were built over many centuries and their ethnic communities were inseparably intertwined. The disintegration of imperial economic connections at the advent of a centrally-planned economy had severe and far-reaching consequences. The fall of the empire would take at least a generation to resolve and at times, patterns of anarchy, civil war, and renewed autocracy, so familiar in Russian history, would recur.
