International records / OpenAlex research

The Soviet Union: From an Empire into Nothing?

It has become commonplace to call the Soviet Union an "empire," usually with clear negative connotations. But, if the USSR was an empire, then what kind of an empire was it? How similar was it to the great European empires that ended their existence in the first three post-war decades—the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish empires? In the European empires, the metropolis was always clearly contrasted to the colonial periphery. The metropolis always had its own system of legislative, executive, and judicial powers. Only citizens of a metropolis had the right to elect natio…