Between Imperial and Post-Imperial Discourse: Ideas of Empire and Revolution in the Optics of XXI Century Researchers (Res. in: The idea of empire and the idea of revolution in Russian philosophy and culture of the XIX–XX centuries: a collective monograph / Edited by I.I. Evlampiev. SPb.: Izd-vo RCHGA, 2023. 420 с.)

The paper analyses the collective monograph: “The Idea of Empire and the Idea of Revolution in Russian Philosophy and Culture of the XIX–XX Centuries”, its content being a reflection on one of the most intellectually acute and complex contradictions of Russian history – the problem of empire and revolution. This problem invariably awakens philosophical thought, forcing it to search for an explanation of the notorious “pendulum of Russian history”, the genesis of power, the vector and track of Russian history, which are intellectual outgrowths of the fundamental problem – the problem of Russian civilizational and state identity. The content of the work is an analysis of empire and revolution – the main concepts that are in the focus of philosophical interest and reflection in Russian culture of the XIX–XX centuries. Its aim is to demonstrate the theoretical demand to continue the analysis and philosophical reflection of the concepts of empire and revolution, with the task of rethinking and reinterpreting them. The thesis is presented about the inexhaustibly traditional historical-philosophical narrative (liberalism-conservatism) and the discursively traditional nature of the range of topics, problems and questions, centred on the concepts of “empire” and “revolution”, with the same inexhaustibly traditional duality of interpretation (“us–them”, “East–West”). The result of the analysis of the sections that make up the content of the monograph is the conclusion about the epistemological and axiological value of the concepts of empire and revolution, and the heuristic productivity of the works related to their analysis in the context of the challenges faced by the Russian society and state. The latter can be used as analytical tools for works that develop and deepen the problems of empire and revolution on a modern historiographical basis. The historiographical basis of the article is the works of well-known Russian and foreign authors specializing in this field of humanities, and the methodological basis is hermeneutic analysis with the involvement of the discourse of cultural studies, political science and history.