But Russia also faces a major issue that most former imperial powers, especially the maritime empires, did not encounter—the definition of the Russian nation per se. In the words of the British historian Geoffrey Hosking, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire—and perhaps still is.” The traditional view holds that Russia’s problem with self-identification derives from the fact that it acquired an empire before it acquired a nation. This is probably true for a number of empires, including the British, the Spanish, and the Portuguese, but what makes the Russian situation unique is that
...more
