Imperial History and Postcolonial Theory after the Russo-Ukrainian War: A Transfiguration of Concepts

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered furious debates. No theoretical or historical concepts have been used more frequently in these debates than the I-words such as imperial, imperialist, anti-imperialist, and post-imperial, and the related C-words such as colonisation, decolonisation, postcolonial, and colonialism. Controversies abound – in the wartime context, even theoretical and historical concepts undergo weaponization. Some believe that Eastern Europe and Northern Eurasia belong to a different world than the West – a world that, allegedly, has not known colonisation. In fact, we see persistent patterns of colonisation and recolonisation, and we need a fresh revision of these basic concepts. This requires work on many levels – theoretical and empirical, fundamental and applied – that would revise the meaning and usage of I- and C-concepts in their application to Eastern Europe and Northern Eurasia. Postcolonial and decolonial approaches, which have been developed mostly in Latin America and South Asia, over-generalise the experience of formerly colonial countries that have been politically independent for a long time. Applying these approaches to Eastern Europe is hard. While it makes full sense to talk about postcolonial Ukraine, talking about postcolonial Russia sounds premature. Parts of the Russian Federation, Belarus, and the occupied parts of Ukraine are still subjects of imperial rule, and applying decolonial or postcolonial templates to these countries or regions has been deceptive. Arguably, one cannot talk about the postcolonial condition in a political situation that has not undergone effective decolonisation or national emancipation. 

This project will trace the global history of the imperial-colonial cluster of concepts; test these concepts in the ongoing political situation that is marked by decolonial and / or revanchist wars in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia; work on a comparative history of adopting, adjusting or denying this conceptual cluster in Russian and Chinese scholarship of the 21^st century; elaborate the concept of revanchism as a particular case of imperialism, and revanchist war as a specific stage of imperialist war; and, finally, revise the conceptual apparatus of critical theory in its analysis of war, peace, and polycrisis of the 21^st century.