XLIV.

"The Russian empire is one of those empires that continued, arguably — not arguably, it was the case — after the four empires disappeared with World War I. The Russian empire continues, though it continues under a very different way with what became the Soviet empire. That's what it became. With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991-92, the Soviet Empire collapsed, the Soviet Union collapses, and I guess the only remaining empire in the world is that of the United States, which is a more informal empire, but still one that is out there almost everywhere with the military bases everywhere."


© John Merriman
Yale Lectures on European Civilization, 1648-1945 (2008)