The Curse of Empire

Russia's attack on Ukraine marks an epochal break in European and global history. Undoubtedly, the decision to go to war is closely linked to one person, Vladimir Putin, but Russia's war is not driven solely by one man's power calculations. We can only make sense of Russia's actions in Ukraine, argues the distinguished historian Martin Schulze Wessel, by putting them in the broader context of the history of Russian imperialism and the influence it continues to exert today.
Schulze Wessel argues that Russian imperialism was shaped by Russia's relationship to Poland and Ukraine. These states were absorbed or partitioned by Russia in the eighteenth century, but Russia's rule over them was contested both by the Poles and by the Ukrainians. The entangled history of these three states produced path dependencies whose impact is still felt toda. Poland and Ukraine share a common history characterized by Russian domination and Polish and Ukrainian resistance to it; just as the Polish question challenged the Russian Empire in previous centuries, so too does the Ukrainian question today. Schulze Wessel argues that, as a result of Russia's confrontation with the Polish and Ukrainian questions, Russia's national identity merged with imperial claims in ways that were pernicious and consequential - the curse of empire.
By placing the war in Ukraine in the context of an era of Russian imperialism that spans three centuries, this book sheds new light on one of the bloodiest and most destructive conflicts of our time.
Also available as an audiobook.

Martin Schulze Wessel is Professor of Eastern European History at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

Introduction
Chapter 1. Russia's Empire, the Hetmanate, and the Republic of Poland (1700-1795)
Moscow's Road to Europe
The Ukrainian Hetmanate between Poland and Russia
Poltava
Europ's First East-West Conflict
Russia and Ukraine after the Northern War
Catherine II: Completing the Works of Peter I
Chapter 2. Imperial Order and the National Challenge (1796-1856)
Russia's Empire in the Age of Napoleon
The Holy Alliance
The November Uprising in Poland as a European Event
Russia's Response to Europe
Polish and Ukrainian Ideas of Liberation
The Identity Politics of the Tsarist Empire
Geopolitics in Exile
The European Revolution and the War over Crimea
Poland's Revolt and Russis's Fear of the Ukrainian Question
Chapter 3. The Idea of Russian Exceptionalism and the End of the Tsarist Empire (1856-1917)
The Imperial Set of Ideas Following the Crimean War and the Polish Uprising
Ukrainian Alternatives
Tsarist Symbolic Politics and the Search for a Foreign Policy Doctrine
National and Social Dynamics in Ukraine
The First World War
The Founding of the Nation State in Kyiv
Revolution and Civil War
Chapter 4. The Soviet Experiment and the Imperial Tradition (1917-1991)
Old Borders, New Borders
Nationalization of Culture, Centralism in the Economy
Poland and Prometheism
Holodomor
The Return of the Great Russian People
From Rapallo to the Hitler-Stalin Pact
War against Poland
The Great Patriotic War
Russian and Ukrainian Myths
Yalta and the Cold War
Ukraine as the Second Nation of the Soviet Union
Post-Stalinism
The New Policy toward the East (Ostpolitik)
Poland and Ukraine in the Last Years of the Soviet Empire
Chapter 5. Post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia's Neo-imperialism (1992-2022)
The Belated Revolution in Ukraine
Russia's Road to Dictatorship
Empire Fatigue and Soviet Nostalgia
Imperial Infrastructures
Imperial Fantasies: Dugin and Putin
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Maps
Bibliography
Notes
Index