La Russia in Europa: un "impero-fenice"?

The essay outlines a reflection on the use and usefulness of the category of “empire” in in- terpretating the history of Russia – Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet. The author focuses in particular on the post-1991 “imperial turn” in the historiography of the Tsarist and Soviet periods, on the growing popularity, since 2014, of neo-imperial, as opposed to post-imperial, representations of post-Soviet Russia, on the adoption of postcolonial/decolonial approaches in the study of post-communist countries.