After Empire: The Russia That Might Come Next

By Matthew Parish

Friday 11 September 2026

The decline of Russia as a Great Power is frequently discussed as though it must culminate in catastrophe. This is understandable. Russia’s twentieth century provides abundant precedents for catastrophe: revolution, civil war, famine, Stalinism, invasion, economic stagnation and finally the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Russian political imagination itself has consequently become accustomed to a stark choice between greatness and chaos. Vladimir Putin has built much of his legitimacy around precisely this proposition. Russia must be powerful because otherwise she will be dismembered; she must possess a sphere of influence because otherwise hostile powers will surround her; she must maintain an authoritarian state because otherwise the country will collapse.

Yet there is another possibility. Russia might cease trying to be an empire without ceasing to be Russia.

Indeed the most intriguing possibility about Russia’s long-term future is that relinquishing imperial ambitions might ultimately make her more prosperous, more stable and in certain respects more powerful. The resources currently devoted to controlling neighbours, sustaining enormous armed forces and maintaining geopolitical confrontation might instead be directed towards the extraordinary economic potential of the country itself. Russia’s principal historical problem may not be that she possesses insufficient resources to flourish. It may be that for centuries she has repeatedly squandered those resources in pursuit of empire.

The psychology of empire

The first obstacle to a post-imperial Russia is psychological rather than economic. Russia has seldom possessed a settled conception of herself as an ordinary nation-state. Britain lost her empire but remained Britain. France lost most of hers but remained France. Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands underwent similar transformations. Their national identities ultimately proved capable of surviving the disappearance of their imperial possessions.

Russia’s historical development was different because the distinction between country and empire was never particularly clear. The Russian Empire expanded continuously across adjoining territory. There was no ocean separating the imperial centre from the colonies. Siberia, the Caucasus, Ukraine, Central Asia and the Baltic territories were gradually incorporated into a single political organism. When the Bolsheviks reconstructed much of the former empire as the Soviet Union, they gave its constituent territories the formal status of republics while preserving Moscow’s ultimate political authority.

The Soviet collapse therefore created an unusual identity crisis. Russians did not merely lose an overseas empire. Millions of people who had regarded themselves as living within a single political civilisation suddenly found themselves separated by international borders. Cities intimately connected with Russian history — Kyiv, Odesa, Sevastopol, Kharkiv, Riga and others — were suddenly foreign.

This helps explain why the collapse of the Soviet Union continues to possess an emotional significance that outsiders sometimes underestimate. It does not justify attempts to reverse history through military conquest. But it explains why such attempts have found a political constituency.

Russia’s eventual transformation will therefore require something deeper than a change of government. She must answer a question she has repeatedly postponed: where does Russia end?

Borders that cease to be humiliations

The mature nation-state accepts that international borders do not necessarily correspond precisely with historical, linguistic or cultural communities. German speakers live outside Germany. Hungarians live outside Hungary. French speakers live outside France. The existence of cultural relationships across borders does not confer sovereignty upon the neighbouring state.

Russia has struggled with this proposition because Russian political thought frequently treats Russian-speaking populations abroad as extensions of the Russian state. This creates a permanently revisionist foreign policy. Wherever Russian speakers live, Moscow can discover an argument for intervention.

A post-imperial Russia would have to abandon this principle. Russians living in Kazakhstan, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine or elsewhere would remain culturally Russian without thereby becoming instruments of Russian sovereignty. Moscow might legitimately concern herself with their rights through diplomacy and international institutions, just as other countries concern themselves with diaspora communities. But she would cease treating ethnicity, language or historical memory as grounds for territorial claims.

The effect upon Russia’s security could eventually be profound. Russia claims that she requires buffer zones because she is surrounded by enemies. Yet many of those enemies exist precisely because they fear Russian territorial revisionism. If Russia credibly ceased threatening the independence of her neighbours, the strategic purpose of containing Russia would gradually diminish.

Russia might discover the paradox that many former empires eventually learn: accepting smaller borders can produce greater security.

The Ukrainian settlement

No post-imperial Russian future can be imagined without addressing Ukraine. The war has become the most consequential expression of Russia’s unresolved imperial identity and its eventual conclusion will influence European politics for generations.

The territorial details of a future settlement are impossible to predict with confidence. Wars have a habit of confounding forecasts. What matters more fundamentally is whether Russia ultimately accepts Ukraine as a genuinely sovereign political community entitled to determine her own alliances, institutions and national identity.

That intellectual concession would be more important than any individual treaty clause. Russia and Ukraine share profound historical, cultural, religious, linguistic and familial connections. Those connections need not disappear. Indeed in some distant future they might again become a source of friendship. But friendship can exist only between societies that recognise one another’s freedom.

The tragedy of the present war is that Russia’s attempt to preserve influence over Ukraine has destroyed much of the influence she once possessed. Before 2014 Moscow enjoyed enormous cultural and political leverage within Ukrainian society. Russian television, literature, business, language and popular culture were ubiquitous. Millions of Ukrainians travelled regularly to Russia and possessed relatives there. Russia’s soft power was immense precisely because it was informal.

Military coercion destroyed much of it.

A future Russian government seeking reconciliation would therefore face a project measured in decades rather than diplomatic conferences. It would require acknowledgement of suffering, security guarantees, reconstruction arrangements and above all an abandonment of the assumption that Ukraine’s political choices must receive Moscow’s approval.

This would be painful. It might also liberate Russia from the most expensive geopolitical obsession of her modern history.

The peace dividend

The economic consequences could be enormous. Russia currently devotes an extraordinary share of national resources to military purposes. The war has stimulated parts of the economy and created employment, but producing missiles and artillery shells is not equivalent to accumulating productive wealth. Weapons are peculiar economic goods because their ultimate purpose is destruction.

Imagine instead a Russia gradually reducing defence expenditure towards levels compatible with the protection of her recognised borders. Even a partial reallocation of military resources could transform civilian investment.

Russia requires enormous infrastructure expenditure. Her territory is vast and many regions remain poorly connected. Roads, railways, airports, telecommunications networks, housing, water systems and energy infrastructure could absorb investment for decades. Siberia and the Russian Far East possess extraordinary natural wealth but enormous distances impose substantial economic costs.

Russia also possesses an intellectual inheritance capable of supporting far more sophisticated industries than resource extraction. Russian mathematicians, physicists, programmers and engineers have repeatedly demonstrated exceptional abilities. A political and commercial environment encouraging entrepreneurship rather than bureaucratic dependence could convert this human capital into globally competitive companies.

The alternative to empire is therefore not weakness. It is investment.

Bringing the Russians home

Perhaps the most important resource Russia has lost during the Putin era is not territory but people. Political repression, economic uncertainty, mobilisation and war have encouraged substantial numbers of educated Russians to leave. They can be found across Europe, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Israel, the United States and elsewhere.

A successful post-imperial government might make their return a national priority.

This would require more than issuing patriotic appeals. People return when they believe their property is secure, their careers depend upon ability rather than political connections and their children will enjoy opportunities. Russia would need predictable courts, credible commercial law, less arbitrary administration and genuine protections against expropriation.

Such reforms are sometimes described as concessions to Western liberalism. That misunderstands their economic purpose. Property rights and reliable courts are technologies for producing wealth. Investors commit capital when they believe contracts will be enforced. Entrepreneurs take risks when successful businesses cannot simply be appropriated by politically connected officials. Scientists innovate when intellectual inquiry is not subordinated to political orthodoxy.

Russia does not need to become Denmark. She needs institutions sufficiently predictable that Russians themselves prefer investing their savings at home.

The extraordinary geography of Russia

One should not underestimate the economic advantages Russia would retain after abandoning imperial ambitions. She would still be the largest country on Earth. She would still possess enormous reserves of oil, gas, coal, timber, metals, minerals, agricultural land and fresh water. She would retain Arctic territory of growing strategic importance and a geographical position connecting Europe and Asia.

Climate change, although potentially catastrophic in many respects, may create peculiar opportunities and risks for Russia. Northern shipping routes may become more commercially significant. Some agricultural zones may move northwards, even as permafrost degradation damages infrastructure. The Arctic will become an increasingly important theatre of resources, transportation and geopolitics.

A peaceful Russia could exploit these advantages through cooperation rather than confrontation. She could become one of the principal commercial bridges between Europe and Asia, connecting Chinese manufacturing, European markets, Arctic shipping and Eurasian resources.

The geography that has historically encouraged Russian rulers to think in military terms might instead become commercial geography.

Europe after hostility

The most consequential strategic choice would concern Europe. Russia has spent much of her history uncertain whether she belongs to Europe, opposes Europe or constitutes a civilisation separate from Europe. The answer need not be exclusive.

Russia is culturally European in countless respects while geographically Eurasian. Her literature, classical music, philosophy, Christianity, scientific traditions and major cities are inseparable from European civilisation. At the same time her territory stretches to the Pacific and her historical relationships with Central Asia, the Caucasus and East Asia are profound.

A post-imperial Russia would not need to choose between Europe and Asia. Her greatest advantage might lie precisely in maintaining constructive relations with both.

This would also reduce her dependence upon China. Contemporary Moscow and Beijing share powerful reasons for cooperation, but their relationship is structurally unequal. Russia’s isolation from Western markets gives China leverage. A Russia capable of trading freely with Europe, China, India and the United States would possess far greater strategic autonomy.

Paradoxically, therefore, reconciliation with the West might make Russia more genuinely independent.

The nuclear question

Russia would remain a nuclear superpower under virtually any plausible political settlement. This guarantees her security to an extent unavailable to most states. No rational government can contemplate the conventional conquest of a country possessing Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

This makes the persistence of Russian strategic insecurity particularly strange. Moscow behaves as though every neighbouring country joining an opposing alliance creates an existential danger, yet Russia possesses the most formidable possible deterrent against invasion.

A post-imperial Russian strategy could recognise this reality. Nuclear deterrence, conventional forces adequate for territorial defence and diplomatic relationships with neighbouring states would provide extraordinary security without requiring military domination of Eastern Europe.

The Russian state could consequently move from the concept of strategic depth to strategic stability. The distinction is important. Strategic depth requires controlling territory beyond one’s borders. Strategic stability requires making aggression against one’s actual borders prohibitively expensive.

Russia already possesses the means to accomplish the latter.

What happens to the Russian state?

The more difficult question concerns domestic politics. It is tempting to assume that post-Putin Russia will become a Western-style liberal democracy. There is no particular reason to believe this will happen immediately and attempting to impose such expectations may be counterproductive.

Political cultures evolve through their own histories. Russia has possessed authoritarian government for much of her existence and the transition from a personalised regime may produce an extended period of uncertainty. A successor government might initially remain highly centralised. Security institutions will not disappear overnight and powerful economic interests will seek to protect themselves.

The crucial transformation would not necessarily be instantaneous democratisation. It would be institutionalisation.

Russia needs rules capable of surviving rulers. She needs mechanisms by which presidents leave office without the state collapsing around them. She needs courts whose decisions are sufficiently independent that commercial actors can rely upon them. She needs regional administrations possessing meaningful competence and a civil service in which professional advancement is not wholly dependent upon personal loyalty.

The distinction between an authoritarian state and a personal dictatorship is substantial. Even limited institutional pluralism could begin changing Russia’s trajectory. Political liberalisation might then emerge gradually because prosperous, educated societies tend to demand greater participation in their own government. But the sequence cannot safely be prescribed from abroad.

The danger of another 1991

There is nevertheless a darker possibility. Imperial decline is dangerous precisely because political systems frequently resist it until the costs become unbearable. The Soviet Union appeared remarkably stable shortly before it collapsed. When political authority weakened, economic crisis and nationalist movements accelerated simultaneously.

The Russian Federation itself contains numerous republics and ethnic communities. Most predictions of Russia’s imminent territorial disintegration are exaggerated, but the possibility cannot be dismissed entirely if the central state were to suffer a catastrophic legitimacy crisis.

This is why Western governments should be cautious about making the disintegration of Russia an explicit strategic objective. A collapsing nuclear-armed state extending across eleven time zones would not necessarily make Europe safer. Questions concerning control of nuclear weapons, refugee movements, regional conflicts and competing military formations could become extraordinarily dangerous.

The preferable outcome is not the destruction of Russia. It is the transformation of Russian statecraft.

Ukraine requires security from Russia. Europe requires security from Russia. But ultimately Russia requires security from her own imperial mythology.

Germany’s lesson

There is a historical analogy worth considering, although all such analogies must be handled cautiously. Germany spent generations seeking security through territorial expansion. German strategists repeatedly concluded that the country was geographically vulnerable and therefore required greater strategic depth. The consequence was precisely the opposite: Germany’s neighbours repeatedly formed coalitions to contain her.

After 1945 West Germany adopted the opposite strategy. She accepted borders, embedded herself within international institutions and pursued economic rather than territorial power. The transformation was extraordinary. Germany became vastly wealthier and, eventually, more influential over European affairs than German armies had ever managed to make her.

The comparison with Russia is imperfect. Germany’s post-war circumstances were unique and involved military defeat, occupation and American protection. Russia will follow her own path.

Yet the underlying principle is universal. Influence obtained through attraction is cheaper and more durable than influence obtained through fear.

Russia has spent centuries learning how to make neighbouring countries afraid of her. She has seldom explored systematically what might happen if neighbouring countries wanted her to succeed.

The return of Russian culture

There would also be a cultural dividend. Russia possesses one of the world’s great civilisational traditions. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Turgenev, Pushkin, Bulgakov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and countless others created works that belong not merely to Russia but to humanity.

War inevitably politicises culture. Russian cultural institutions become associated with the Russian state and arguments arise over whether performances, exhibitions and academic exchanges amount to normalisation of aggression. This is understandable during a major European war but culturally tragic.

A peaceful Russia could again exercise enormous soft power. Russian literature, music, science and intellectual traditions have historically generated fascination far beyond Russia’s borders. These are forms of influence no sanctions regime can permanently extinguish.

The Kremlin has frequently treated culture as an instrument of state policy. Yet Russian culture is most powerful when it does not require instructions from the Kremlin.

The meaning of greatness

Ultimately the transition from empire requires redefining greatness itself. Putin’s conception of Russian greatness is essentially nineteenth-century. Great states possess territory. They maintain armies. They compel weaker neighbours to acknowledge spheres of influence. They demonstrate sovereignty by resisting external pressure. They insist upon respect and interpret compromise as weakness.

But the most powerful societies of the twenty-first century increasingly derive their strength from different sources. They create technologies other countries need. They possess universities foreigners wish to attend, companies foreigners wish to invest in and cities foreigners wish to inhabit. Their currencies are trusted. Their legal systems are used for international contracts. Their passports are desirable. Their scientific institutions attract talent.

These forms of power are quieter than tanks but considerably more productive. Russia possesses the human and natural resources to develop many of them. What she lacks is a political philosophy that regards such achievements as equivalent to the possession of territory.

After Putin

Eventually Vladimir Putin will leave power. Whether this occurs through retirement, political transition, illness, internal displacement or the ordinary biological limits imposed upon every human being cannot be known. The important point is that Putinism cannot be immortal even if some of its institutions survive its creator.

His successors will inherit a formidable but difficult country: nuclear-armed, resource-rich, territorially immense, highly educated in some sectors, demographically troubled, economically distorted by military expenditure and surrounded by neighbours deeply suspicious of Russian intentions.

They will face a choice. They can attempt another cycle of restoration. They can argue that previous failures occurred because Russia was insufficiently ruthless, insufficiently mobilised or betrayed from within. Russian history provides ample ideological material for such a movement. Another nationalist leader might therefore emerge promising to complete unfinished imperial projects.

Or Russia’s rulers may eventually recognise that the imperial experiment has exhausted itself. That moment, if it comes, would not represent Russia’s humiliation. It could represent her liberation.

A Russia that no longer needs an empire

Imagine Russia several decades after such a transformation. Her recognised borders are secure. Her nuclear deterrent makes invasion inconceivable. Defence expenditure has fallen substantially. Russian engineers who once designed weapons develop civilian technologies. Emigrants return to Moscow, St Petersburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg because salaries and opportunities are attractive. European capital returns cautiously. Chinese trade continues. Siberian resources are developed under predictable commercial rules. Russian universities once again compete aggressively for international scholars and students.

Ukraine remains independent and heavily armed but no longer expects another Russian invasion. Trade slowly resumes. Families divided by war begin visiting one another again. Historical arguments continue, as they always will, but they cease determining military policy.

Russia remains difficult, proud and distinctive. She does not become a satellite of Washington, Brussels or Beijing. Nor need she become culturally indistinguishable from Western Europe. She simply becomes a country whose greatness is measured increasingly by what Russians build within their borders rather than by how much influence Moscow can impose beyond them.

Such a Russia might possess less territory under her political control than the Soviet Union did. Yet ordinary Russians could be substantially richer, safer and freer. Russian culture might again command admiration rather than suspicion. Moscow could balance relationships between Europe and Asia rather than becoming progressively dependent upon Beijing. Russia’s enormous natural resources could finance modernisation instead of military confrontation.

There is nothing utopian about this possibility. It would be difficult, slow and repeatedly endangered by the habits of Russian political history. Reconciliation with Ukraine alone may require generations. Institutional reform could suffer reversals. Nationalists would accuse reformers of surrender. Members of the existing elite would resist changes threatening their privileges.

Nevertheless the underlying proposition is remarkably simple.

Russia does not need Ukraine in order to be Russia. She does not need Georgia, Moldova, Belarus or the Baltic states in order to be secure. She does not need frightened neighbours in order to be respected. She does not need to compete territorially with the Soviet Union in order to possess a future.

The greatest achievement of a future Russian statesman may therefore be something that generations of Russian rulers would have regarded as weakness: persuading Russians that their country is already large enough.

For centuries Russia has expanded because her rulers believed that possessing more territory would make her safer. Expansion created new frontiers, new minorities, new enemies and therefore new reasons for further expansion. Empire became its own justification.

Breaking that cycle would be one of the greatest political transformations of the twenty-first century. It would also reveal the final paradox of Russia’s imperial decline. Russia may discover that the moment she finally abandons the ambition to be an empire is the moment she begins to become a successful Great Power again.