SUMMARY:

In his informal memoir, presented as a talk at the conference “The Russian Empire as a Great Power and Multiethnic Polity” in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on June 30, 2024, the historian Dominic Lieven explores the history of imperial Russia and its place in world history. Through anecdotes about his family’s complex history in Russia, Britain, and elsewhere, Lieven reflects on his own personal and intellectual development as a scholar of empire. He examines the legacy of tsarist Russia, including the Russian Revolution and World War I, and analyzes the challenges of modernization, imperial collapse, and the enduring influence of empires on the present.