Summary
Russian history has too often fallen victim to contradictory biases and Western viewpoints, rather than being taken for what it is.
François-Xavier Coquin prefers to speak of the " Russian world " rather than Russia, because Russia, incorporated into the Tsarist empire, was not merged with it, but was divided between Moscow, the imperial capital, and St. Petersburg, the capital of all the emperor's subjects.
This empire helped shape the Russians' " national consciousness ", but it (and the Soviet Union) cannot be equated with a classic colonial empire : " prison of the peoples ", it was also a crossroads of nationalities.
The revolutionary break was not radical, and there are elements of continuity beyond 1917. The links between Soviet history and that of the Tsarist empire form the profound unity of the Russian world. Today, after the collapse of the USSR, are the reforms underway in keeping with the culture and traditions of the Russian world ?
Opening lecture published under n° 127.
