162-4 that they were run essentially as overgrown peasant holdings, with little attempt at modernisation. This inefficient use of resources, I suggest, seriously delayed the application of capital to either the modernisation of agriculture or the expansion of industry. The argument is not new, but I have tried to link it to the theme of empire. I do not deny that Russia's economy has usually been backward, but the real question is why all attempts to modernise it end up by replicating that backwardness. I am suggesting that the real reason is the burden of empire.
Some fascinating questions remain.
At least, not until the present. But today, we are genuinely in a new situation. There is no major geo-strategic threat to Russia, such as requires it to remain an empire, still less to try to recreate a former empire. Russia for the first time in its history has the luxury of being able to concentrate on becoming a nation-state of the kind which makes all its citizens feel they have a stake in it. It certainly hasn't succeeded in achieving that yet, but if my main thesis is correct, it has the chance to do so now, and thereby to banish for good the dual spectres of autocracy and backwardness.