Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals [Hardcover]

Mr. Dominic Lieven (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

How does one empire differ from another? Why do empires rise and fall? What has made empires flourish in some eras and regions of the world but not in others? In this broad and ambitious book, Dominic Lieven explores the place and meaning of empire from ancient Rome to the present. The central focus of the book is Russia and the rise and fall of the Tsarist and the Soviet Empires. The overwhelming majority of works on empire concentrate on the European maritime powers. Lieven's comparative approach highlights the important role played by Russia in the expansion of Europe and its rise to global dominance. The book contrasts the nature, strategies, and fate of empire in Russia with that of its major rivals, the Habsburg, Ottoman, and British empires, and considers a broad range of other cases from ancient China and Rome to the present-day United States, Indonesia, India, and the European Union.

Many of the dilemmas of empire persist in today's world, and Lieven throws new light on some of the most intractable current examples, including the crisis in the former Soviet Union, the troubles in Ulster, and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans. This major examination of the imperial experience presents history on the grandest scale, combining formidable erudition with stimulating readability.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lieven's compelling assessment of the forces behind the decline of political imperialism tend to sink from view in his dense, far-reaching historical investigation. The first chapter's discussion of the shifting definitions of empire, though at times taxing to the reader's attention, is astute and evenhanded. With the czarist and Soviet empires as his primary focus, Lieven (Russia's Rulers Under the Old Regime) bolsters his study with treatments of various empires, beginning with ancient China and Rome. His expertise on czarist Russia informs the book's outstanding section on this period. Lieven, professor at the London School of Economics, argues that the Russian empire was stronger than the declining Ottoman and Hapsburg empires and, in the 19th century, exerted power comparable to that of the British Empire. He explicates the role of World War I in the downfall of the czarist regime cleanly and convincingly: wartime preoccupation and weakening of Russian elites and of capitalist Europe precluded significant counterrevolution. And while a variety of external and domestic forces contributed to the demise of the Soviet empire, Lieven attributes much to the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. In the end, he says, the U.S.S.R. was likely the last empire in the strict sense of the word: "The lesson of Soviet history is that empire does not pay in today's world, even in terms of its own narrow priorities of power." The book's broad, scholarly worldview will appeal to a readership of academics and lay historians. (Mar.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

British author Lieven, a Russian scholar who has written a biography of Nicholas II and other works on pre-Soviet Russia, here offers an ambitious, even groundbreaking book. After a review of Rome and Byzantium, a glance at China, and a rejection of the notion of a U.S. empire, Lieven zeroes in on four historical exemplars: the British, Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian (both tsarist and Soviet) empires. The two Russian ones engage the lion's share of his attention. He is defensive about the difficulties in defining his subject, but his fears that he will be criticized as "a poor Russianist" for his audacity are unwarranted. He has in fact done a very impressive job, using shrewd judgments to draw upon an extensive bibliography. His final section, "After Empire," is particularly timely, offering much food for thought. For public and academic libraries. Robert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300088590
• ISBN-13: 978-0300088595
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,282,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dominic Lieven is professor of Russian history at the London School of Economics. His previous books include Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals and Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire. Three of his direct ancestors were generals in the Battle of Leipzig.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rambling, but not uninteresting, April 27, 2003

By 

Antonio (Bogotá, Colombia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (Paperback)

Dominic Lieven, the historian of Imperial Russia (he is the author a very cogent biography of Czar Nicholas II), has written a long book on a big subject. In spite of the broad title ("Empire"), the book, as suggested by the sub-title, is really a comparison between modern continental European empires (Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Soviet) and a modern Atlantic Empire (British). He also takes a couple of stabs at the Chinese empire, although wisely steers away from making many points about this subject, which is likely to suck in the unwary. He does not attempt a definition of empire as such, and while acknowledging the socio-geographical school of thought (pioneered by Montesquieu and currently incarnated in Huntington), largely steers clear of "German-philosophy-type-First-Principles" and such. This is a relief, because he has much to say just looking at actual facts.

Although he concludes that, after the (probably terminal) eclipse of France as a continental great power after the First Empire, the real competition is between Germany and Russia, and that when one is in the ascendant (as was Germany in 1871-1945 and since 1990) the other one is in the relapse (Russia was ascendant between the Vienna Congress and the creation of the German Reich). While his arguments are intuitively appealing, Lieven does not say enough about Germany proper (the "Drang Nach Osten", for example) to support this contention, given that his focus is on the Southern part of cultural Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire.

As a historian of Ukraine, Lieven observes that the Russian heartland is Ukraine and that Russia may not be a great power separated from Ukraine, which raises the ugly likelihood of a future anexation of Ukraine and other neighbouring territories of historical, cultural or military significance by the extant Russia, not unlike what Germany did with the Saarland, the Sudetenland and other regions, prior to invading Poland and precipitating we-know-what. What is clear is that Russia is not likely to remain within its current borders, which have stripped out virtually all territorial gains made by the successive Russian and Soviet Regimes since Peter the Great at least.

He points out that Russia has experienced three modernization waves: one, starting with Peter the Great and probably "petering" out with the disappointments of Alexander I and the regression of Nicholas I (i.e., circa 1700 to 1825), the second one starting with the liberation of the serfs by Alexander II and extending to the Soviet times, winding down with the ossification of the regime with Breznev and Andropov after a failure by Kruschev to re-ignite the revolutionary fires (1861-1964), and a third one started by Gorbachov and still apparently in full swing (1985-Present). Given that each renewal was accompanied by a period or Russian Hegemony (the first one culminated during the second half of the XVIII century, under Catherine the Great and the second one in the 1940s and 1950s, under Stalin and Kruschev), it is clear that Lieven believes that a Russian comeback is waiting around the corner, hard is it may be to believe this now.
Very perceptively, Lieven notes that growing unrest with Islamic nations can only lead to a rapprochement between the USA and Russia. This was published in 2000, well before S-11 and the current entente cordiale between the 2 great nations.
He also has a few things to say concerning current multi-lingual "empires", such as Malaysia, Indonesia and (surprise, surpise) the European Union. As may be expected with an author writing on this subject, he has antipathy towards nationalism and thinks that such "empires" may yet make a comeback. But he acknowledges that they are not sustainable absent an over-arching ideology powerful to overcome nationalism, such as counter-reformation in the Habsburg Empire in XVI and XVII centuries or Communism in the Soviet Union (or Nazism in the Third Reich, or Islam in the Ottoman Empire). Whether contemporary multinational "empires" have such ideologies is not obvious (particularly defficient in this respect is the European Union).

Although Lieven is erudite and writes engagingly, and in spite of the interest of his mildly revisionist views on the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, I missed some of the other empires that competed with the Russians in their quest for continental mastery. A small chapter dealing with the Baltics (Polish, Swedish and Lithuanians) would have been useful. A major rival empire that fought Russia not once but twice within the XX century, Japan, is barely mentioned. And British rivalry with Russia in the context of the "Big Game" (over Afghanistan) also is mentioned only in passing.

Still, it's difficult not to like such a sane writer, who clearly sees that apparatchik kleptocrats such as those lording it over most of the former Soviet Union (and some of its satellites) are probably preferable to gaunt, angry cultural nationalists who are still waiting on the wings and sometimes getting their licks in (when the two groups merge, as in Milosevic's Serbia, the results are scary indeed). The same point was made perhaps more humoristically by P.J. O'Rourke in some of his earlier books. He sees very clearly that the Soviet Union was just a nastier version of the Russian empire and faced some of the same problems, such as dealing with large, rich, culturally distinct "colonies" (such as Poland). He clearly misses the multi-cultural empires such as the Austro-Hungarian empire (a short detour on the Spanish-Italo-Belgian empire would not have been amiss either), which he believes looks positively dazzling when compared with the hellishness of Hitler's Ostmark and the colonization of Soviet times. Whether his domesticated empires (of which the European Union is the most recent version) will survive is anybody's guess.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Within an inch of truth, December 29, 2001

By 

Milos Tomin (Netherlands) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (Hardcover)

Lieven's book is a rare animal among the industry of histories explaining Russia and post-Soviet Russia. By putting his main subject within a historical span of several thousand years through including chapters on China and Rome, Lieven throws light on some universal aspects which were common to all empires and those that were unique.

That said this book tells more about traditional land based empires (Russia, China, Rome) than examples of emporocratic ones like Britain and Netherlands in the broadest sense. Chapters on "After Empire" show the legacy of Soviet policy towards minority nations and why they failed, this is also interesting in view of break up of communist Yugoslavia which is commented upon in several chapters. Lieven also makes interesting comparisons between Ottoman and Austrohungarian empires.

As an overview of what makes an empire an "Empire" and how this idea relates to current European political trends this book is indispensable. Suggested as supplement reading of a thorough historical analysis from an altogether different perspective on imperial idea is Julius Evola's Revolt Against the Modern World.

9 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hits and Misses in History Writing, August 28, 2001

By 

Ralph Schwegman (Schenectady, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (Hardcover)

If history writing is facts, dates, figures, this book is a winner. It contains a sufficient number of insights to make it a useful history. But it is more pedestrian in analysis, surprisingly self-referential in its style (and perhaps the style of thinking,)and turgid in organization, jumping backwards and forwards in time and topic. Its writing style is tedious, plodding, unimaginative, clumsy, almost as if Lieven were writing in a language other than his own. That begins on page vii of the Preface when the author says about himself, "the historian found little difficulty orientating (sic) himself." Where was his editor? Where were John Murray or Yale University Press? Where was his English teacher? I'd be glad to compare editing notes in gruesome detail.