The current reluctance to part with the imperial past is often interpreted as a tragic feature of the Russian people. We exalt Stalin, attribute mythical merits to him, regret the collapse of the USSR and rejoice at the return of Crimea. We are ready to deprive ourselves of a comfortable future in order to mentally live in a wonderful past, although it would be more correct to say in that fictitious past, which is very different from the dull reality of the Soviet Union.

This state of affairs shocks the thinking part of society so much that the number of pessimists who believe that Russia will never be able to get out of the vicious imperial circle is increasing by leaps and bounds. In this regard, it is interesting to look at the experience of two other European empires, which at one time went through a difficult test - a humiliating defeat that removed them from the ranks of the great powers. We are talking about France and Germany.

During the Napoleonic Wars, France was completely defeated. The victors established a political order in which the restoration of this country as a great power was unlikely. Indeed, France no longer gave Europe such a shake-up as under Napoleon. Does this mean that the French instantly re-educated themselves, stopped loving the empire, lost their aggressiveness, abandoned their messianism and began creative work? It would seem that common sense should have set them up for exactly this. After all, the Napoleonic wars caused terrible damage to the country, mowing down an entire generation of intelligent people, doomed to pull the soldier's burden instead of working.

Alas, common sense did not distinguish the post-Napoleonic era, just as it does not distinguish the post-Soviet era. The Bonapartists were one of the influential informal parties of the 1830s and 1840s. They sought to return in one form or another the “wonderful romantic past.” The Bonapartists persisted in achieving their goal and actually achieved it when the French cast their votes after the 1848 revolution for President Louis Bonaparte, who soon staged a coup and became Emperor Napoleon III.

The regime of the little Napoleon was in practice as similar to the regime of the great Napoleon as the current Putin system is similar to the Stalinist one. By supporting the new emperor, the French rather sought to satisfy their dream of national greatness than to return to the times of terrible, bloody battles with all of Europe. And when the dream finally diverged from reality, the regime of Napoleon III fell under the blows of the Prussian army, and the French did not show the slightest signs of the heroism characteristic of them during the era of the Napoleonic wars. The country preferred well-fed bourgeois moderation and no longer bothered the world with its passionarity.

In general, France went through a rather long journey of parting with its imperial past. The current idea of an almost innate democratic culture of the French, characteristic of many intellectuals in our country, is a myth that has no serious basis.

The situation is similar with Germany, which emerged a century later than the French, but stepped on almost the same rake. After defeat in the First World War, the Germans did not accept the Weimar democracy that pragmatic intellectuals wanted to establish. The Germans supported Hitler and moved towards a new world massacre. At that moment, it probably seemed to many people in the West that these people were hopeless, that they represented a pack of aggressive criminals, rejecting civilization and brazenly, without foundation, harping on the greatness of German culture alone.

Germany after the First World War was humiliated much more than France after the defeat at Waterloo. Therefore, in particular, the German imperial syndrome also resulted in aggressive revanchism. Hitler, unlike Napoleon III, was engaged not only in the symbolic revival of the “great past” - he also waged wars to return the past in a geopolitical sense. The catastrophic consequences of National Socialism under Hitler differed significantly in practice from the relatively peaceful resuscitation of Napoleonic ideas under Louis Bonaparte, but the processes were based on the same problems characteristic of both France and Germany.

Moreover, even after the defeat in World War II, the Germans did not immediately calm down. The military generation sometimes remembered Hitler with a kind word, despite the devastation he left behind, and only subsequent generations were able to fully carry out the denazification of minds. So the idea, which is sometimes widespread among us, that Hitlerism was a brief, random episode in the history of Germany, does not correspond to reality.

Russia today has its own post-imperial path. Our longing for the great past, fortunately, does not give rise to such catastrophic consequences as the German one. But, unfortunately, the leader’s ability to unite the people on the basis of old ideas does not contribute to the economic development of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which took place in France under Napoleon III. Our imperial melancholy has given rise to a purely Russian melancholy, in which we don’t want to go to work or fight. We have as few enthusiasts who want to boost Russian business as there are fanatics who wanted to fight for Novorossiya. “Feats” are accomplished not in real life, but in the speeches of professional demagogues and in the words of some pseudo-folk songs like “Uncle Vova, we are with you.” We boldly go to work and to battle only in words.

Nevertheless, in general, the Russian people are similar to the Germans and French of the past. The imperial syndrome is based on the same trauma for everyone. Such injuries do not heal quickly. Therefore, any fantasies that if it weren’t for Putin’s tyranny, or Yeltsin’s mistakes, or something else that hindered development, then we would have already built a modern democracy are wrong. But equally erroneous are the ideas about the imperial uniqueness of the Russian people, their inability to modernize and build a modern type of democracy.

The author is a professor at the European University in St. Petersburg

How to overcome the post-imperial crisis