The Curse of Empire: Ukraine, Poland, and the Fatal Paths in Russian History

Russia’s attack on Ukraine marks an epochal break in European and global history. Undoubtedly, the decision to go to war is closely linked to one person, Vladimir Putin, but Russia’s war is not driven solely by one man’s power calculations. We can only make sense of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, argues the distinguished historian Martin Schulze Wessel, by putting them in the broader context of the history of Russian imperialism and the influence it continues to exert today.

Schulze Wessel argues that Russian imperialism was shaped by Russia’s relationship to Poland and Ukraine. Both of these states were absorbed or partitioned by Russia in the 18th century, but Russia’s rule over Poland and Ukraine was contested both by the Poles and by the Ukrainians. The entangled history of Russia, Poland and Ukraine produced path dependencies whose impact is still felt today: Poland and Ukraine share a common history characterized by Russian domination and Polish and Ukrainian resistance to it, and just as the Polish question challenged the Russian empire in previous centuries, so too does the Ukrainian question today. Schulze Wessel argues that as a result of Russia’s confrontation with the Polish and Ukrainian questions, Russia’s national identity merged with imperial claims in ways that were pernicious and consequential - the curse of empire.

By placing the war in Ukraine in the context of an era of Russian imperialism that spans three centuries, this book sheds new light on one of the bloodiest and most destructive conflicts of our time.

Martin Schulze Wessel is Professor of Eastern European History at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.