ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is about the Soviet empire and its key agent in a national republic, the second secretary. The theme of second secretaries is immediately recognized in Moscow, the capital and center of the former empire, although there a somewhat different meaning is conveyed. The very fact of the dispatch of the second secretary to a Soviet republic and the establishment of the political institution of second secretaries marked, without any doubt, a new stage in the relations between the center and titular nomenklatura, but at the same time conveyed the continuity of imperial control over the periphery. The issue of the empire is broader than just the collapse of the Soviet system. Imperial schemes have not vanished even after the disintegration of the state referred to as ‘the evil empire’.
