title: 7 November in post-Soviet politics of history
abstract: The system of public holidays in the Russian Federation reflects the indecision of its political leadership concerning the alternatives of empire and of nation-state. Obviously, Putin is of the opinion that he can both eat his cake and have it – maintaining an ethnically homogeneous state of the Russian nation in domestic politics, while also establishing a post-Soviet empire of what the 1993 constitution calls the “multinational people of the Russian Federation” in the eyes of the outside world