First Published in 1997. This book is the ninth in a series often volumes produced by the Russian Littoral Project, The project shares the conviction that the transformation of the former Soviet republics into independent states demands systematic analysis of the determinants of the domestic and foreign policies of the new countries. The series of volumes is intended to provide a basis for comprehensive scholarly study of these issues. This volume was shaped by the author's view that future scholarship about the post Soviet world requires both specialized research and broad-gauge studies that carefully juxtapose the breakup of the Soviet empire with the transformation of other multinational empires.

Karen Dawisha is professor and director of the Center for the Study of Post Communist Societies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Bruce Parrott is professor and director of Russian Area and East European Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where he has taught for twenty years.

Part I Theoretical Perspectives on the Forms and Development of Empires; Chapter 1 Analyzing the Transformation of the Soviet Union in Comparative Perspective, Bruce Parrott; Chapter 2 The Rise, Fall, and Future of the Russian Empire, David A. Lake; Part II Imperial Disintegration; Chapter 3 The Fall of the Tsarist Empire and the USSR, Roman Szporluk; Chapter 4 The Disintegration of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, Solomon Wank; Chapter 5 Decolonization, Michael Graham Fry; Part III Peripheral Successor States and the Legacies of Empire; Chapter 6 State Building in the Shadow of an Empire-State, Mark R. Beissinger; Chapter 7 The Habsburg and Ottoman Empires and Their Aftermaths, Dankwart A. Rustow; Chapter 8 Peripheral Successor States and the Legacy of Empire, Robert I. Rotberg; Chapter 9 The Imperial Culture of North-South Relations, Ali A. Mazrui; Part IV Metropolitan Successor States and the Question of Imperial Reconstitution; Chapter 10 The Fate of Empire in Post-Tsarist Russia and in the Post-Soviet Era, S. Frederick Starr; Chapter 11 Between the Second and Third Reichs, Carole Fink; Chapter 12 Empires, Neo-Empires, and Political Change, Miles Kahler; partV Changing Forms and Prospects of Empire; Chapter 13 The Prospects for Neo-Imperial and Nonimperial Outcomes in the Former Soviet Space, Hendrik Spruyt; Chapter 14 Constructing and Deconstructing Empire in the Post-Soviet Space, Karen Dawisha;