The U.S. and Global Security Review - Blog by Michael Novakhov

What the Bolsheviks and Nazis can teach us about Russia today Sunday March 15 th , 2015  at  9:45 AM 1 Share By Alexander Motyl   March 14 The following is a guest post from Rutgers University-Newark political scientist  Alexander Motyl . In a post at The  Monkey Cage last week , Motyl argued that realist scholars were doing a poor job explaining Russian behavior.  Here, he suggests an alternative theoretical lens, that of empire. ***** Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the concept of  empire entered Soviet and post-Soviet studies , as scholars attempted to place the end of the Soviet multinational state in an appropriate comparative framework. A variety of excellent books was the result, including edited volumes by Bruce Parrott and Karen Dawisha ,  Barnett Rubin and Jack Snyder ,  Richard Rudolph and David Good , and  Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen . No less important, the concept of empire entered the post-Sovietological discourse a