953 Book Reviews there is such a thing as Bonapartism as an essentialized political type? Did the French Revolution really end “feudalism while simultaneously inaugurating in Europe an age of industrial capitalism” (212)? One also wonders about the depth of understand- ing of the French revolutions among party members, given their low literacy rates in the early Bolshevik years. Overall, the book is a goldmine of detail about a formative infuence on the Bolshevik leadership. Jonathan Daly University of Illinois at Chicago Russian Imperialism Revisited: From Disengagement to Hegemony . By Domitilla Sagramoso. Contemporary Security Studies. London: Routledge Publishers, 2020. xviii, 368 pp. Index. Tables. Maps. $136.00, hard bound. doi: 10.1017/slr.2022.56 Russia’s relations with the former Soviet space has not been linear, the assertiveness of the Kremlin varying over time due to a series of endogenous and exogenous fac- tors. The book of Domitilla Sagramoso examines Moscow’s interaction with its “Near Abroad” over almost thirty years, trying to understand whether Russia’s actions have been motivated by legitimate state interests or by the desire to restore an informal empire. Afer a short theoretical framework, where the author presents the imperialist argument, the book develops an empirical analysis rich in details, aimed at determining whether afer the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s actions in the newly independent republics resemble neo-imperialist behavior, similar to that of France in sub-Saharan Africa. Sagramoso looks at Russian policies from diferent angles: political, economic, military, and institutional, granting particular attention to the integrationist projects—the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Union State of Russia and Belarus, the Eurasian Economic Community (EvrAzEs), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), as well as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The frst part of the book scrutinizes Russian relations with the former Soviet space under Yeltsin’s two terms as President. The author argues that in the afermath of the Soviet Union’s dissolution, despite the longing for empire, the Russian leader- ship, motivated by a strong anti-imperialist attitude, recognized the former Soviet republics as sovereign and independent states. However, the harsh criticism of the political opposition, the partial discrimination of Russian minorities, the eruption of military conficts, and the economic interdependence among the newly indepen- dent republics would soon lead to a more assertive stance by Moscow towards the former Soviet space, which only crystalized during the second term of Boris Yeltsin. Yet, the economic weakness of Russia and the chaos in its political decision-making have strongly impacted Moscow’s ability to project its power onto the former Soviet space, reducing its ability to behave assertively. As such, the author argues that the record of Russia’s neo-imperialism during Yeltsin’s Presidential terms is a mixed one, with elements of anti-imperialism, neo-imperialism, hegemony, and legitimate state- interests altering or inter-mingling and co-existing. With Vladimir Putin as President, Russia adopted a much more assertive policy towards the former Soviet space. While in the early 2000s Russia’s policy towards the former Soviet space was characterized primarily by a pragmatic approach, by the end of the frst decade of the twenty-frst century, the Kremlin increasingly put in place