Czarist rule withstood many harsh tests during its long history peasant revolts, conspiracies, and the alienation of the educated class.

There has been no return to Soviet or pre revolutionary times, despite the regime s attempts to appropriate the symbols of Czarist Russia.

It was also the first Asian country to emerge as a world power, defeating Manchu ruled China and Czarist Russia in separate wars.

So, if Putin is concerned about Russia, he should abandon his czarist notions of power and leave high office, if not politics altogether.

Throughout its history, Estonia was mostly in the spheres of influence of its neighbours, Czarist Russia, the Swedish crown or the German barons.

The latest events clearly indicate that a czarist mentality survived the revolution, reflected in a Byzantine model of political power an emperor and his court that has as its main vehicle largely unconstrained presidential authority.

Heir to an imperial tradition that has shaped its national identity, Russia is resuming in the Middle East a role and status more in tune with the one it had from the Czarist era to Soviet times.

In the generation before World War I, the safe assets were thought to be the debt of governments tied to the gold standard, which supposedly offered protection against the inflationary populist viruses that afflicted countries like Mexico, France, or the United States. But investors in British government debt faced huge losses when Britain s commitment to World War I produced inflation, and investors in Czarist bonds papered their bathrooms with them after the October Revolution.