Conclusion

In sum, what the century-long Russian experience with self-determination demonstrates us

is that national self-determination can as easily function as a script for building empires as

for dissolving them by utilizing the discourses and forms of self-determination as a tech-

nology of control, emptying it of its substance. But as the collapse of the Soviet Union also

suggests, there are significant risks of such imperial strategies over the long term. Contem-

porary Russia may deploy self-determination as a script for territorial expansion. But that

same script provides alternative templates for challenging Russian control by imbuing hol-

lowed out forms of self-determination with genuine substance, potentially coming to be

deployed in ways that Russian rulers may not have fully anticipated.