"What is the connection between the Russian nostalgia for the Soviet past and Putin’s war in Ukraine? How do societies emerging from a totalitarian system deal with the crimes of the past”? Putin, the current leader of Russia, famously stated that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a “geopolitical catastrophe”, a position that allowed him to identify Stalin with the victory over Nazi Germany, while glossing over the terror and atrocities he committed at home. In this context, we will discuss the notion of a so-called “Russian world” used to justify Putin’s imperial policies aimed at absorbing the former Soviet republics, re-instating the empire, and crushing three-decades-old democratic institutions and processes in both Russia and its “near abroad.” Our empirical cases will include Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008; its provocation of a civil war in Eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014; and its unprovoked all-out war against Ukraine since February 2022. Readings will include selections from major scholarship on Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and post-Soviet space, along with archival sources, official governmental reports, and journalistic accounts."