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However, the problem with Trenin’s analysis is not only that it is too simple, but also that it contradicts the facts. One of these facts is that during Putin’s reign the phase of “empire fatigue” has definitively come to an end. Under the guise of the “Eurasian Customs Union,” “Eurasian Economic Union,” and—most recently—“Eurasian Union,” new efforts of empire building have begun. As concerns xenophobia, presented by Trenin as an effective antidote against empire building, history shows that xenophobia, far from eliminating an imperialist drive, it often accompanies it. One does not have to go back to the 1930s to find extremely xenophobic regimes that at the same time were expansionist and imperialist. A good example of this combination in contemporary Russia is the leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party in the Duma, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who, in his book Poslednyy brosok na yug (Last Push to the South), likens immigrants to Russia from the Caucasus or Central Asia to “cockroaches” (tarakany) who should be expelled from the European center of Russia.^[7] This does not prevent Zhirinovsky from pleading for a reconquest of both the Soviet and tsarist empires (the latter included parts of contemporary Poland and Finland). Zhirinovsky even claims Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan as exclusive spheres of influence, not excluding that “Russia gets a frontier with India.”^[8] Trenin’s argument that the widespread xenophobia in Russia will prevent Russia from becoming imperialist is therefore not valid. In fact the contrary is true: ultranationalism and imperial chauvinism are often most developed in xenophobic and racist countries.

Ironically, Trenin mentions in his book a number of facts that undermine his own theory of Russia as a post-imperium. These facts are rather disconcerting. When Trenin mentions how Putin called the demise of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” he writes that “Putin’s words were interpreted as evidence of an active Kremlin nostalgia for the recently lost empire, and even as a sign of his intention to bring back the USSR. This was a misinterpretation.”^[9] Trenin is certainly right that Putin did not want to bring back the USSR—because, as he rightly stresses, Putin “blamed the non-performing communist system for losing the Soviet Union.” But a Russian empire does not have to be a communist empire, as the tsarist experience proves. Trenin also mentions Putin’s remark at the Bucharest NATO summit in April 2008 that Ukraine “was not even a state” and “would break apart.” This was, according to Trenin, neither an expression of Russian imperial arrogance and contempt, nor a barely disguised threat. Putin, he wrote, “was probably highlighting the brittleness of Ukraine’s unity, which would not survive a serious test.”^[10]