ABSTRACT
When the USSR disintegrated in December 1991, many Russians rejoiced. They celebrated the end of a Soviet empire which had, they believed, exploited Russia rather more than it had ill used other parts of the country and in which Russians had suffered disproportionately under Stalinism. Few Russians identified themselves with the pre-revolutionary Tsarist empire and none saw Russia as the exploiter of the other peoples within that empire. On the contrary, many of them nurtured the belief that Russian imperialism had been a civilizing force that had enriched the peoples who had been incorporated into the Russian empire.
