Chapter 3 - Russia is unthinkable without the Empire

3.1 The lack of Russian "nation-state"

Russia has never been an analogue of those "nation-states" that are characteristic of modern Europe and whose model was projected onto Asia and the Third World as a whole in the colonial and postcolonial era.

The “nation-state" is based on administrative unity and bureaucratic centralism, which form the political community created by the state and closely connected with the state. Without a doubt, the first model of the "state of the nation" was formed in absolutist France, and then it was fixed in the Jacobin revolutionary model. The "nation-state" was originally emphasized secular nature and was primarily a political unity. In this concept, the term “nation” was understood as a “totality of citizens”, and not as a “people” or “peoples” in an organic, “holistic” sense. This type of state is based on ethnic, confessional and estate leveling of the population,on the approval throughout society of similar legal and procedural standards that do not take into account either regional, religious, or racial characteristics. Nominally, a “nation-state” can be monarchic, democratic, and socialist. An essential element in it is not the specificity of the political system, but the understanding of the state as an administrative-centralist authority, put above all social-ethnic and cultural-religious differences. It should be emphasized that the “nation” in this case has a purely and exclusively political meaning, which differs sharply from that which the nationalists put into this concept.

The "nation-state" historically arose in Europe during the final collapse of imperial unity as a result of the destruction of the last remains of the imperial system, preserved in the form of feudal regional structures. The “nation-state" is inherently fraught with the dominance of profane, bourgeois values ​​that reduce qualitative social differences to a simplified quantitative administrative structure. The "nation-state", as a rule, is governed not by a "divine idea" (like theocracy or the Holy Empire), not by a "heroic aristocratic person" (like a feudal system), but by a "dictatorship of the law" ("nomocracy"), which gives enormous power jurists and legal bureaucracy. In fact, the "nation-state". It is the most convenient for management and the most quantitatively ordered political reality, since all non-quantitative, "irrational" factors in it are minimized.

In Russian history, the "nation-state" did not arise. When it was precisely this model that began to take root in Europe from the 18th century, Russia desperately resisted it by any means. The tsarist regime sought to keep the imperial structure as untouched as possible, although some concessions to the European model were constantly made. Despite the pro-European Petrine reforms, the Russian Empire retained both theocratic elements and the aristocratic principle, and the transfer of priests and nobility to the rank of state bureaucrats was never carried out in practice until the end (in contrast to the countries of Western Europe). The national element opposed such a degeneration of the Empire into a "nation-state" that regularly generated waves of spontaneous or conscious reaction from both the people and the elite. Even with the same sovereign in Russia, reformist and reactionary sentiments often changed, and from liberal reforms they often turned to mystical restoration projects (this was most clearly manifested in the reign of Alexander I, the founder of the Holy Union).

Only at the beginning of the 20th century did Russia come close to the realization of a "nation-state" according to the European model. However, this time too, the process was thwarted by a revolutionary outburst, which absorbed (albeit unconsciously) an in-depth national protest against a type of state structure in which there would be no place for the manifestation of a spiritual people's mission. Beyond the modernist rhetoric of Bolshevism, the Russians vaguely recognized their own eschatological ideals, the triumph of Idea, Justice, Truth. The Soviet state was perceived by the people as the construction of the "New Empire", the "kingdom of the world", the "monastery of spirit", and not as the creation of the most rational device for administering and managing quantitative units. The tragedy and fanaticism of the Bolshevik cataclysms was caused precisely by the "ideality" of the task, and by no means an inability to organize human resources more “humane” and less costly.

The USSR did not become a "nation-state", it was a successor of purely imperial national traditions, clothed in extravagant external forms and opposed by the later tsarist model, sliding down to the ordinary bourgeois society, to the "dictatorship of the law." The Soviet Empire, like any political construct, knew the three stages of the “revolutionary stage” of building a unique system (Lenin’s youth), the stable stage of strengthening and expanding the state (Stalin's maturity) and the stage of collapse and decrepitude (Brezhnev old age). Moreover, it was the Late Brezhnev period that created the political and administrative structure that closely resembles the bureaucratic centralism of a typical “nation-state”. During perestroika, the life cycle of this entire Soviet formation ended. Along with this, the next stage of the national history of the Russian people ended.

It is important to note that in Russian history there is such a pattern: when it comes to turning Russia into a “nation-state”, disasters follow, and in a new round the nation finds another (sometimes quite extravagant) way to escape from the seemingly inevitable transformation. The Russians seek at all costs to avoid such a turn of events, since their political will is incompatible with the narrow standards of rational and average quantitative existence within the framework of a bureaucratically effective mechanism. Russians are ready to make unthinkable sacrifices and hardships, if only the national idea, the great Russian dream, were realized and developed.

And the nation sees the borders of this dream, at least in the Empire.

3.2 Russian people of the Empire

Not a mono-ethnic state, not a nation-state; Russia was almost originally a potentially imperial state. From the unification of Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes near Rurik to the gigantic scale of the USSR and territories under its influence, the Russian people steadily walked along the path of political and spatial integration, imperial construction and civilizational expansion. It should be emphasized that Russian expansion had precisely a civilizational meaning, and was by no means a utilitarian pursuit of colonies or a banal struggle for “living space”. It was not the lack of this “living space” and economic necessity that prompted the Russian people to expand their borders more and more east, south, north, west. The lack of land has never served as the true cause of Russian imperialism.The Russians expanded as carriers of a special mission, the geopolitical projection of which consisted in a deep awareness of the need to unite the gigantic territories of the Eurasian continent.

The political integrity of the Eurasian space is completely independent for Russian history. We can say that the Russians feel responsible for this space, for its condition, for its connection, for its integrity and independence. Mackinder rightly considered Russia to be the main land power of our time, which inherits the geopolitical mission of Rome, the Empire of Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, etc. This is the "geographical axis of history", which simply cannot but fulfill its geopolitical mission, regardless of external and transient factors.

The Russian people are so connected with geopolitical reality that space itself, its experience, its awareness, its spiritual perception shaped the psychology of the people, becoming one of the most important definitions of its identity, its essence.

Real earth space is not a purely quantitative category. Climate, landscape, geology, waterways and mountain ranges are actively involved in the formation of an ethnic and, more broadly, civilizational type. From the point of view of geopolitics, civilization and its specifics are generally strictly determined by geography and are subject to special qualitative laws with necessity. The Russians are the land, continental, North Eurasian people, and the cultural specificity of the nation is such that its “soul” is maximally predisposed to “openness”, to the implementation of the “integrating” function, to the subtle and deep process of developing a special continental, Eurasian community.

The cultural factor is a natural complement to the purely geopolitical predestination of Russia. The geopolitical mission is recognized at the cultural level, and vice versa, culture conceptualizes, shapes and activates the geopolitical impulse. Space and culture are two of the most important components of the Russian people as a people-imperial builder in the first place. It was not blood, not race, not administrative control, and not even religion that made the Russian people a special, incomparable community from part of the Eastern Slavs. It was made by the endless Eurasian expanses and the ultimate cultural, spiritual openness. Under the sign of “space and culture”, ethnic, political, ethical, and religious aspects were rethought. The Russians have formed, developed and matured as a nation precisely in the Empire, in the heroism of its construction, in the exploits of its defense, in campaigns for its expansion. The rejection of the imperial-building function means the end of the existence of the Russian people as a historical reality, as a civilizational phenomenon. Such a denial is national suicide.

Unlike Rome (the first Rome), Moscow, Russia have in their imperial impulse a deep teleological, eschatological meaning. Hegel developed an interesting concept that the Absolute Idea in an eschatological situation should manifest itself in a final, “conscious" form in the form of the Prussian state. However, on a planetary scale, Prussia, and even Germany, taken separately, are geopolitically insufficient to be taken seriously in this concept. Russia, the Third Rome, both religiously, culturally, spatially, and strategically perfectly corresponds to a similar teleological view of the essence of history and clearly seeks to fulfill this very mission. The absolute idea of ​​Hegel in the case of Russia is the spiritual root of Russian imperial construction, gravitating towards the civilizational development of the continent-Eurasia. It is absurd to apply such serious Hegelian criteria to a "nation-state", which obviously implies next to it other "nation-states" with their own goals, myths and interests. To communicate such a relative structure to the quality of absolute significance is rather absurd. But in the case of a gigantic Empire, based on specific, largely paradoxical, and in some ways not entirely clarified principles, it’s a completely different matter, and it was not by chance that the ancient Empires were called “Holy Empires”: the quality of “holiness” was communicated to them by the fulfillment of a special spiritual mission, predestiningly representing the "Empire of the End," the continental Kingdom of the Absolute Idea.

The Russian people moved step by step precisely to this goal. At each stage of the expansion of their state, the Russians went to the next stage of messianic universalism, first rallying the Eastern Slavs, then including the Turkic stream of the steppes and Siberia, then moving south into the deserts and mountains, and finally forming a gigantic political bloc controlling in the Soviet period, literally, half the world. If you realize that the Russian people in their essence are this imperial-building process, the strong-willed geopolitical vector of creating a "state of the Absolute Idea", it will become completely obvious that the existence of the Russian people directly depends on the continuation of this process, from its development, from its intensification. By cutting or suppressing this vector, we will hit the Russians in the heart, depriving them of their national identity, turning them into a historical rudiment, disrupting the global teleological, eschatological planetary process.

3.3 The trap of a "regional power"

The Russian people, with their civilizational and geopolitical mission, has traditionally been (and is) a serious obstacle to the widespread dissemination on the planet of a purely liberal Western model. Both the tsarist and Soviet regimes, obeying inexorable national logic, impeded the cultural and political expansion of the West to the East and especially deep into the Eurasian continent. Moreover, the seriousness of the geopolitical confrontation has always been reflected in the fact that Russia federated within itself and around itself different countries and peoples into a powerful strategic imperial bloc. It was as a continental Empire that Russia participated in world politics and defended its national and civilizational interests.

At present, after the collapse of the USSR, the West seeks to impose another geopolitical function on Russia, to turn Russia into such a political structure that would be unable to directly participate in world politics and have a broad civilizational mission. A 1992 report by Paul Wolfowitz to the U.S. Congress unequivocally states that "the main strategic objective of the United States is to prevent the creation of a large and independent strategic entity in the territory of the former Soviet Union capable of pursuing a policy independent of the United States." It was on the basis of such an urgent need of the West of Russia that the role of a "regional power " was proposed .

A “regional power” is a modern geopolitical category that characterizes a large and fairly developed state, whose political interests, however, are limited only to areas that are directly adjacent to or included in its territory. For example, India, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, China, etc. are considered regional powers. The specificity of a regional power is that it has more political weight than an ordinary ordinary state, but less weight than a superpower or Empire. In other words, a regional power does not have a direct influence on planetary civilization and global geopolitical processes, being subordinated in the main strategic lines to the balance of forces of more powerful Empires.At the same time, a regional power has a certain freedom in relation to its immediate (weaker) neighbors and can exert political and economic pressure on them (naturally, only in cases when this does not contradict the interests of superpowers).

The status of a "regional power", proposed (imposed) by Russia by the West today, for the Russian nation is tantamount to suicide. The point is to artificially and under strong external influence, reverse the vector of Russian national history, reverse, interrupt the coherent process of the geopolitical formation of Russians as an Empire. Russia as a regional power will constitute a rejection of the deep impulse of the nation that underlies its highest and deepest identity. For Russians, the loss of an imperial scale means the end and failure of their participation in civilization, the defeat of their spiritual and cultural value system, the fall of their universalist and messianic aspirations, the depreciation and debunking of the entire national ideology, which revived many generations of the Russian people and gave strength and energy for exploits, creation ,struggle, overcoming adversity.

Given the specifics of Russian national imperial self-identification, it becomes quite obvious that the adoption of the status of a "regional power" by Russia cannot become the last line of defense. The blow thereby inflicted on the national identity of the Russians will then be so strong that the matter will not be limited to the framework of the Russian Federation or a similar territorial space. Having lost their mission, the Russians will not be able to find the strength to adequately affirm their new, “diminished” identity in a “regional state,” since the assertion of this identity is impossible in the state of passion that logically arises when the nation loses its imperial scale. Consequently, the processes of disintegration are likely to continue in the "regional power",and the growing wave of regional and religious separatism, destitute Russians can no longer oppose anything.

Even in order to fix the “regional status” of post-imperial Russia, it will be necessary to awaken a powerful wave of nationalism, moreover, nationalism of a completely new, artificial, based on energies and ideas that have nothing to do with the traditional and only genuine and justified Russian imperial tendency. One can compare this with the small, “secular” nationalism of the Young Turks, who created modern Turkey, a “regional power” through the “national revolution” through the “national revolution”. But the nationalism of the Young Turks had nothing to do with the geopolitical and religious nationalism of the Ottoman Empire, and in fact, present-day Turkey, both spiritually, ethnically, and culturally, is a completely different reality than the Turkish Empire at the beginning of the century.

The same, if not worse, threatens Russia, and most likely attempts to gain a foothold as a "regional power", abandoning the civilizational mission and universalist values, will bring to life the politicians of the "Young" type (similar to the Young Turks), which are very likely will profess a special sectarian ideology that has nothing to do with the main line of the Russian national idea. Such Russian "non-imperial" nationalism, secular and artificial, will play geopolitically only in the West’s hands, since it will secure a "regional" status for Russia, lead to illusory and short-term internal stabilization, and at the same time lay the foundation for future domestic Russian ethnic and religious conflicts. But if Turkey has two or three large ethnic communities, capable of actively opposing Young Turk centralism, hundreds of peoples live in the Russian Federation, perfectly coexisting in the imperial model, but not fit into the framework of "small Russian nationalism". The conclusion is obvious: Russia will gradually become drawn into an endless chain of internal conflicts and wars, and, in the end, will fall apart.

This will be a natural result of the Russians losing their imperial mission, since this process cannot be limited to a relative reduction of territories and must necessarily reach its logical limit to the complete destruction of the Russian nation as a historical, geopolitical and civilizational subject.

3.4 Criticism of Soviet Statehood

The last form of imperial organization of the Russian people was the USSR and the geopolitical area dependent on it (Warsaw Pact countries). In the Soviet period, the sphere of influence of Russians expanded geographically to previously unimaginable limits. Land development and military campaigns included vast territories in the geopolitical zone of the Russians.

In the spatial sense, such an expansion, it would seem, should be the highest form of Russian statehood. And it is impossible to deny the fact that the axial construction of the Soviet Empire was precisely the Russian people, who embodied their specific universalism (at least partially) into the Soviet ideological and socio-political model.

Today, at first glance, it seems that the prospect of genuine Russian national development in the current conditions should coincide with the restoration of the USSR and the reconstruction of the Soviet model and Soviet statehood. This is partly true and logical, and in this case the neocommunist movement, which advocates the reconstruction of the USSR, is closer to understanding the geopolitical interests of the Russian people, more clearly and more clearly represents the essence of its strategic and civilizational aspirations than some neo-nationalist circles inclined toward the “Young Russian” (analogies with the "Young Turkish") model of "small", "truncated", "ethnic" nationalism. Of course, the geopolitical restorationism of neocommunists is justified, and their nationalism is more organic and "national", rather than romantic and irresponsible in form (and subversive in results) narrow-nationalist projects of the Slavophil, Orthodox-monarchist or racist wing of the patriots. If the choice lay between the reconstruction of the USSR and the construction of a mono-ethnic or even monocultural Great Russian state, then in the interests of the Russian people it would be more logical and correct to choose the USSR project.

However, the reasons for the collapse of the USSR and the collapse of the Soviet Empire need an objective analysis, which in no case can be reduced to the identification of external (hostile) and internal (subversive) influence, i.e. to the "conspiracy theory." The external pressure of the liberal-democratic West on the USSR was really enormous, and the activities of "subversive elements" inside the country were extremely effective and harmonious. But both of these factors became decisive only in such a situation when the existence of the Soviet Empire entered the stage of an internal crisis with deep and natural causes rooted in the very specifics of the Soviet system and the Soviet system. Without an understanding of these internal causes of the collapse and their analysis, any attempts to restore the USSR (and especially the creation of the New Empire) will be futile and futile. Furthermore, any purely inertial conservatism in this matter can only worsen the situation.

We will reveal several factors that led the Soviet Union to a geopolitical and socio-economic collapse.

First, at the ideological level for the entire existence of the socialist regime, purely national, traditional, spiritual elements have not been introduced into the general complex of communist ideology. Being largely a national-communist de facto, it never transformed into such a de jure, which impeded the organic development of Russian-Soviet society, generated a double standard and ideological contradictions, and undermined clarity and awareness in the implementation of geopolitical and socio-political projects. Atheism, materialism, progressism, "enlightened ethics", etc. were deeply alien to Russian Bolshevism and the Russian people as a whole. In practice, these provisions borrowed from Marxism (by the way, and in Marxism itself, which are rather arbitrary elements of a tribute to the old-fashioned positivist humanism in the Feuerbach style) were recognized by the Russian Communists in the spirit of folk mystical, sometimes unorthodox eschatological aspirations, and not as rationalistic fruits of Western European culture. However, the ideology of national Bolshevism, which could find more adequate, more Russian terms for the new socio-political system, was never formulated. Consequently, sooner or later, the limitations and inadequacy of such an ideologically contradictory design should have a negative effect. This was especially evident in the late Soviet period, when senseless dogmatism and communist demagogy finally crushed all ideological life in society. Such a "freezing" of the ruling ideology and the stubborn refusal to introduce components organic, national and natural for the Russian people into it, resulted in the collapse of the entire Soviet system. The responsibility for this lies not only with the "agents of influence" and "anti-Soviet", but, first of all, with the central Soviet ideologists of both the "progressive" and the "conservative" wing. The Soviet Empire and ideologically and actually destroyed the communists . It is now not only impossible to recreate it in the same form and with the same ideology, but it is also pointless, since even the same premises will be reproduced hypothetically, which already once led to the destruction of the state.

Secondly, at the geopolitical and strategic level, the USSR was uncompetitive in the long run for resistance to the atlantist western bloc. In terms of strategy, land borders are much more vulnerable than sea borders, and at all levels (the number of border troops, the cost of military equipment, the use and deployment of strategic weapons, etc.) After the Second World War, the USSR was in an unequal position compared with the Western capitalist bloc grouped around the United States. The United States had a gigantic island base (American continent), completely controlled and surrounded on all sides by oceans and seas, which were not difficult to defend. Plus, the US controlled almost all coastal zones in the south and west of Eurasia,creating a gigantic threat to the USSR, while remaining virtually out of reach for potential destabilizing actions of the Soviet Union. The division of Europe into Eastern (Soviet) and Western (American) only complicated the geopolitical position of the USSR in the West, increasing the volume of land borders and placing it close to a strategic potential adversary, and in a situation of passive hostility of the European peoples themselves, who were held hostage in a geopolitical duel, the meaning of which was not obvious to them. The same thing happened in the southern direction in Asia and the Far East, where the USSR had direct neighbors or controlled by the West (Pakistan, Afghanistan, pre-Homei Iran) or rather hostile powers with a non-Soviet socialist orientation (China). In this situation, the USSR could acquire relative stability only in two cases: either rapidly advancing to the oceans in the West (Atlantic) and in the South (Indian Ocean), or creating neutral political blocs in Europe and Asia that are not controlled by one of the superpowers. This concept (of neutral Germany) was still proposed by Stalin, and after his death, Beria. The USSR (together with the Warsaw Pact), from a geopolitical point of view, was too big and too small at the same time. Maintaining the status quo was beneficial only to the United States and Atlanticism, as the military, industrial, and strategic potentials of the USSR wore off more and more, and the power of the United States, a protected island, increased. Sooner or later, the Eastern bloc would inevitably collapse. Hence,the reconstruction of the USSR and the Warsaw block is not only almost impossible, but also not necessary, because even in the case of (almost unbelievable) success, it will only lead to the revival of the obviously doomed geopolitical model.

Thirdly, the administrative structure of the USSR was based on a secular, purely functional and quantitative understanding of internal division. Economic and bureaucratic centralism did not take into account either the regional, let alone ethnic and religious features of the internal territories. The principle of leveling and purely economic structuralization of society has led to the creation of such rigid systems that suppressed, and at best "canned" the forms of the natural national life of various peoples, including (and to a greater extent) the Russian people themselves. The territorial principle acted even when nominally it was a question of national republics, autonomies or districts. At the same time, the process of regional-ethnic leveling became more and more distinct as "aging" of the entire Soviet political system, which towards its last stage was more and more inclined towards the type of Soviet “nation-state”, and not the Empire. Nationalism, which in many respects contributed to the creation of the USSR in the early stages, in the end became a purely negative factor, as excessive centralization and unification began to generate natural protest and discontent. The atrophy of the imperial principle, the ossification of bureaucratic centralism, the desire for maximum rationalization and purely economic productivity gradually created a political monster from the USSR, which lost its life and was perceived as a center imposed by force on totalitarianism. Some communist theses of the literally understood “internationalism” are largely responsible for this. Consequently, this aspect of the Soviet model, operating not with specific ethnic groups,culture, religion, and with the abstract "population" and "territory" should not be revived in any case. On the contrary, one should get rid of the consequences of such a quantitative approach as soon as possible, whose echoes so tragically affect the issue of Chechnya, Crimea, Kazakhstan, the Karabakh conflict, Abkhazia, Transnistria, etc.

Fourth, the economic system in the USSR was based on such a "long" socialist cycle that gradually the return of society to a specific person ceased to be felt at all. The utmost socialization and detailed control of the state are necessary over all economic processes, up to the smallest, as well as the delegation of redistribution functions to a centralized, purely apical authority, creating a climate of social exclusion, apathy, and disinterest in society. Socialism and all its advantages became unobvious, invisible, faded into the background before the gigantic construction of the bureaucratic-state machine. A person and a specific collective were lost before the abstraction of “society”, and the cycle of socialist distribution lost touch with reality, turned into an inexplicable, alienated and seemingly arbitrary logic of a soulless machine. Socialism itself is not responsible for this state of affairs, but its version that has historically developed in the USSR, especially at its later stages, although the origins of such degeneration should be sought already in the doctrine itself, in the theory itself. Totalitarian state socialism deprived the economy of flexibility, people of enthusiasm and a sense of complicity in the creative process, contributed to the inculcation of a parasitic attitude towards society, which was absolutized today in a mafia-liberal style. Communists were also responsible for this post-Soviet excess, who were unable to reform socialism in relation to the national element and maintain a decent life in it.

These four main aspects of the former Soviet model are the main factors in the collapse of Soviet statehood, and it is them who are responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Empire. It is quite natural that, with a hypothetical reconstruction of the USSR, radical conclusions should be drawn in this respect and radically destroyed the reasons that have already historically doomed the great nation to a state catastrophe.

However, if the restoration of the USSR will take place under the banner of an ideology that has abandoned materialism, atheism, totalitarianism, state socialism, the Soviet geopolitical space, administrative structure, internationalism, centralism, etc., is it right to speak of “USSR” or "Soviet state", about "communism", "restoration", etc.? Would it not be more correct to call this the creation of the "New Empire"?

3.5 Criticism of Tsarist Statehood

Today, more and more often you can hear calls for a return to the royal, monarchist model. This is quite natural, since the discrediting of Sovietism makes Russians turn to those forms of statehood that existed before the communist period of Russian history. This model has some positive and some negative aspects. Regardless of the incredible difficulty of restoring the pre-communist state system, this project is being discussed more and more seriously.

Given the historical logic of the geopolitical development of the Russian nation, it makes sense to talk about the late periods of the Romanov rule, when Russia reached the borders of its maximum territorial imperial volume.

The most positive in this project is the ideological foundation of Tsarist Russia, where (albeit nominally) allegiance was declared to the national spirit (Nationality), religious truth (Orthodoxy) and the traditional sacred political system (Autocracy). However, as the Russian Eurasianists rightly remarked, the Uvarov formula (Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality) in the last periods of tsarist Russia was more an idealistic slogan than a real content of political life and social structure. Russian Orthodoxy, shocked by secular reforms of Peter, during this period was quite far from the ideal of "Holy Russia", being virtually subordinate to state control and largely losing its sacred authority and harmony of the Orthodox symphony. Having lost spiritual independence, The Russian Church was forced to compromise with the secular power embodied in the Synod subordinate to the Tsar, and thereby was limited in the freedom of genuine confession of unearthly Truths.

Autocracy, for its part, has increasingly lost its sacred significance, being drawn into the solution of purely political problems, sometimes forgetting about its highest mission and religious mission. Although the desacralization of the tsarist government never, up to the abdication of the last Emperor, never reached the level of that empty parody in which European monarchies, primarily the French and English, turned, the influence of Europe in this area was very great.

And finally, the “Nationality” of the famous slogan was rather purely declarative, and the people themselves were deeply alienated from political life, which was manifested, for example, in general indifference to the February and later October revolutions, which radically destroyed the monarchist model.

A direct appeal in our conditions to the restoration of this triad is likely to lead to the restoration of the skinny and more demagogic compromise that in practice was hidden behind these three principles in the late Manomanian era (in which they, by the way, were formulated). Moreover, given the absence of unambiguous pretenders to the Russian throne, the unstable and uncertain state of the current Orthodox Church, as well as the abstract meaning of the term “nationality” (which is often understood only as a superficial, folkloric style or even fake imaginative intellectuals as a people), it is easy to foresee that a return to Uvarov’s ideology will become even more a parody than the pre-revolutionary tsarist regime.

The tsarist model also has a serious geopolitical flaw, which in the same way led the Russian Empire to collapse, as did the Soviet Union seventy years later.

A return to the tsarist and, consequently, to the whole "Slavophil" geopolitics is fraught with a terrible threat. The fact is that in the last half century of the Romanov’s reign, the foreign policy of the ruling house was determined not by the Eurasian traditions of Alexander the First and the prospects of the continental Holy Union (based on the alliance of Russia and the powers of Central Europe), but by pro-British and pro-French projects for which Russia was drawn into suicidal conflicts on side of their natural geopolitical opponents and against their natural geopolitical allies. Support for Serbian demands, the irresponsible myth of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, the involvement of French Masons in European anti-German intrigues, all of this forced Russia to fulfill a political role, not only not peculiar to it, but directly destructive for it.Trying to settle in Eastern Europe on a Slavophile basis and constantly getting involved in a conflict with the Central European powers (Russia's natural allies), the tsarist regime systematically undermined the foundations of the Russian state, led Russia straightforwardly to geopolitical suicide. The Turkish wars and the war with Japan also belong to this. Paradoxically, it seems that Russia sought to best serve the Atlantic interests of progressive France and colonial-capitalist England, instead of fulfilling its natural Eurasian mission and seeking alliance with all similar (both politically and spiritually) conservative and imperial regimes. The Slavophile geopolitical utopia cost Russia the Tsar, the Church and the Empire, and only the arrival of the Eurasian-oriented Bolsheviks saved the country and people from total degradation, from becoming a "regional power."

An attempt to follow such a Late Manomanian, "Slavophil" line in our conditions cannot but lead to a similar result. And even the appeal to pre-revolutionary Russia itself carries potentially suicidal political motives that are much more dangerous for the Russian people than the projects of the Soviet restoration.

There is another factor that is extremely dangerous in the case of monarchical tendencies. We are talking about the capitalist form of the economy that was inherent in Russia at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. Although this was a variation of national capitalism, limited by state, social, and cultural boundaries, rather than a “wild” free market, the effect of economic exclusion characteristic of any capitalism was extremely strong. The Russian bourgeois firmly took the place of the state and military aristocracy, the clergy, displacing officials and employees. This type of Russian bourgeois (quite different from the representatives of the traditional, pre-capitalist, feudal merchants) actually opposed cultural, social and ethical norms, which were the essence of the system of Russian national values. Accepting the lessons of English economic liberalism, feeling the taste of financial and stock market speculation, cleverly using economic inefficiency still constrained by the code of honor of the Russian aristocracy, the Russian bourgeois came to the forefront of Russian political life, perfectly fitting into the general picture of the popular monarchist pseudo-patriarchy, which had lost all its life sacred content. It was the Russian capitalists (and very often the nationalist, "Black-Hundred" orientation) who became the first conductors of English and French influences in Russia, natural agents of that Atlantist trading model that developed and took shape in Anglo-Saxon and French societies.

The late-Manoman political system is a combination of a desacralized-monarchist facade, suicidal Slavophil geopolitics and Atlantist-oriented market capitalism. In all cases, national rhetoric was only a screen and a figure of speech, behind which there were political and social trends, not just far from the true interests of the Russian people, but directly opposite to these interests.

Another element of this model is rather doubtful is the principle of the provincial administrative division of the Russian Empire. Although in practice this did not interfere with the free development of the peoples that were part of the Russian Empire, and in the normal case the Russians only helped ethnic groups to form and develop their own specific culture, legal rejection of cultural-ethnic and religious autonomies, some tough state leveling centralism were not the best methods of involving nations into a unanimous and free continental imperial construction. Elements of the "nation-state" appeared in the last periods of the Romanovs in exactly the same way as in the last decades of the USSR, and the effect of this was very similar to the alienation of ethnic groups from Moscow (St. Petersburg) and the Russians, separatist sentiments, a surge of "small nationalism", etc. .e. And as a response, there followed the degeneration of the great Russian messianic will into banal national chauvinism.

In monarchist Russia, it was precisely the cultural and religious side, the nominal fidelity to sacred traditions, the memory of the ideal of Holy Russia, the Holy Kingdom, and Moscow the Third Rome that was positive. The Orthodox Church as a bulwark of dogmatic Truth, a symphony of Autocracy, an awareness of the historical mission of the God-bearing Russian people are spiritual symbols of the true Russian Empire, which have archetypal, enduring value, which, however, should be cleared of formalism, demagogy, and the Pharisee raid. But unnatural geopolitics, compliance with capitalization, underestimation of ethnic and religious factors among small intra-imperial peoples, anti-German, anti-Japanese and anti-Ottoman orientations of the late Romanov Empire, all this should be recognized as a dead end political path,having nothing to do with the genuine interests of the Russian people, which was proved by the historical collapse of this model.

3.6 Toward a New Eurasian Empire

Based on the foregoing considerations, certain conclusions can be drawn regarding the prospects of the coming Empire as the only form of worthy and natural existence of the Russian people and the only opportunity to complete its historical and civilizational mission.

1 . The coming Empire should not be a "regional power" or a "nation-state ." It is obvious. But it should be especially emphasized that such an Empire can never become a continuation, development of a regional power or a nation-state, since such an intermediate stage will cause irreparable damage to the deep national imperial tendency, involve the Russian people in the labyrinth of insoluble geopolitical and social contradictions, and this, in in turn, it will make impossible a planned and consistent, logical imperial construction.

2. The new Empire should be built right away just like an Empire, and the foundation of its project should now be based on fully-fledged and developed purely imperial principles. This process cannot be attributed to the distant future, hoping for favorable conditions in the future. There will never be such conditions for the creation of a great Russian Empire, if already now the people and political forces striving to speak on his behalf will not consciously and clearly affirm their fundamental state and geopolitical orientation. Empire is not just a very large state. This is something completely different. This is a strategic and geopolitical bloc that surpasses the parameters of an ordinary state; it is a Superstate. Almost never did an ordinary state develop into an Empire. Empires were built immediately as an expression of a special civilizational will, as a super-goal, as a giant world-building impulse. Therefore, today it should definitely be said: not the Russian State, but the Russian Empire. Not the way of socio-political evolution, but the path of the geopolitical revolution.

3. The geopolitical and ideological contours of the New Russian Empire should be determined on the basis of overcoming those moments that led to the collapse of historically previous imperial forms . Therefore, the New Empire must:

• Not be materialistic, not atheistic, not economic-centric.

• Have either maritime borders or friendly blocs on adjacent continental territories;

• To have a flexible and differentiated ethno-religious structure of the internal political and administrative structure, i.e. take into account local, ethnic, religious, cultural, ethical, etc. features of the regions, giving these elements a legal status;

• Make state participation in economic management flexible and affecting only strategic spheres, sharply shorten the social cycle, achieve organic participation of the people in distribution issues;

(These first four points follow from an analysis of the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Empire.)

• To fill the religious-monarchist formula with truly sacred content, lost under the influence of the secular West on the Romanov dynasty, to carry out the Orthodox “conservative revolution” in order to return to the roots of a true Christian worldview;

• To transform the term "nationality" from the Uvarov formula into the central aspect of the socio-political structure, make the People the main, fundamental political and legal category, contrast the organic concept of the People with quantitative norms of liberal and socialist jurisprudence, develop the theory of "people's rights";

• Instead of Slavophile geopolitics, turn to Eurasian projects that reject the anti-German policies of Russia in the West and anti-Japanese policies in the East, to end the Atlantic line disguised as “Russian nationalism”;

• Impede the processes of privatization and capitalization, as well as the stock market game and financial speculation in the Empire, focus on corporate, collective and state control of the people over economic reality, and discard the dubious chimera of "national capitalism";

• Instead of the gubernial principle, proceed to the creation of ethno-religious areas with the maximum degree of cultural, linguistic, economic, and legal autonomy, strictly restricting them to one thing in political, strategic, geopolitical, and ideological sovereignty.

(These five points follow from criticism of the tsarist model.)

The builders of the New Empire must actively resist the “Young Russian” tendencies in Russian nationalism, striving to secure the status of a “nation-state” for Russia, as well as with all nostalgic political forces containing in their geopolitical projects an appeal to those elements that already led the Empire to disaster.

The existence of the Russian people as an organic historical community is inconceivable without imperial-building, continental creation. The Russians will remain a nation only within the New Empire.

This Empire, according to geopolitical logic, this time should strategically and spatially surpass the previous version (USSR). Consequently, the New Empire must be Eurasian, great continental, and in the future World.

The battle for world domination of the Russians did not end.