He was. Started a long form book, but one thing that strikes is is that Russia is an empire more like Spain, and much less than even the prewar American empire, or the British or French. They were brutal, but Russia looks more like a colony in the modern sense than a metropolitan power.

I might just write that for medium first, as an essay. Just got a new copy of Pipes works, because relevant as well. But this crew, they see themselves as a new nobility, ergo, the tsar boyar dynamic is relevant again.