One or Three Countries? On Continuity and Gaps in Russian History

Abstract

In the present essay the author refl ects on whether their exists the continuity among pre-revolutionary Russian Empire, the USSR and today’s Russian Federation. It constitutes a polemical response to the recently expressed radical opinion that we are dealing with three different countries here, and the idea of one country, Russia, and the “mirages of succession” serve only to justify “aggression in the Ukraine”. It is stated that despite the regime's change of political structure and even types of state, the country remains the same. The complexity of the Soviet phenomenon is proved as complex and internally containing contradictory phenomena and trends. The part of the Soviet contained traditional and Christian values, even in a transformed form, should be close and valuable to modern Russian conservatives