Valeriy Pekar, entrepreneur, public figure, publicist, lecturer at Kyiv Mohyla Business School
I started reading the book Why Empires Fall by Cambridge economist John Rapley and historian Peter Heather from King’s College London. The book is positioned as a revolution in our view of the decline of empires.
From the very first pages, the main thesis is proclaimed : the key reason for the decline of empires is not inside the metropolis, but in the processes that take place on the periphery.
Well, we knew this in the twentieth century as national liberation movements, but the authors apply the same thesis to the Roman Empire, using the data of archaeological research over the past half century to debunk Gibbon’s classic thesis that Rome had been declining economically for a long time and finally collapsed completely.
Shortly before its collapse, the authors argue, Rome was at the peak of economic growth. The reasons for the decline were on the periphery: the local elites had become much more independent than the imperial centre wanted.
If we apply this model to the current Russian empire and Ukraine as its colony until recently, our economic and political success means the death of the empire, even if a directly renewed Ukraine does not threaten Russia (does not displace it from markets, etc.).
The Russian invasion is intended to delay a process that is inevitable. They think that time can be stopped and turned back. But we know that they have not studied history well.
That is why our task is not just to survive, but to become successful. This is the death of Koshchey. I’ll write about Koshchey another time.
It is also important to keep the Caucasus, the Volga region and Siberia moving. The independence of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Ingushetia, Sakha-Yakutia and other capable republics will put an end to the empire. Then some other story will begin. Medieval kingdoms and early modern cities were not descendants of the Roman Empire, it was a completely different story.
We can wait for this to happen. We can accelerate this process. We can accelerate this process a lot. The choice is ours.