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Alexander J. Motyl


Alexander John Motyl (Ukrainian: Олександр Мотиль; born October 21, 1953, in New York City) is an American historian, political scientist, poet, writer, translator and artist-painter. He is a resident of New York City. He is professor of political science at Rutgers University and specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the Soviet Union.

Motyl graduated from Regis High School in New York City in 1971. He studied at Columbia University, graduating with a BA in History in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Political Science in 1984. Motyl has taught at Columbia University, Lehigh University, and Harvard University and is currently professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark.

Motyl has written extensively on the Soviet Union, Ukraine, revolutions, nations and nationalism, and empire. All his work is highly conceptual and theoretical, attempting to ground political science in a firm philosophical base, while simultaneously concluding that all theories are imperfect and that theoretical pluralism is inevitable. In 2001 in Imperial Ends he posited a theoretical framework for examining the structure of empires as a political structure. He makes use of the standard model that geographic and political areas are constituted by a core and a . The empire's structure relates the core elite to the peripheral elite in a mutually beneficial fashion that can be established through any number of means: aggressive, coercive, or consensual. And while there is a vertical relationship between the core and periphery, there is a lack of substantive relations between periphery and periphery.

This relationship he describes as an incomplete wheel: there are hubs and spokes, but no rim. Empires, in this theoretical concept, depend on this relative absence of relationships in the periphery, the core's power partly dependent on its role as a neuralgic center.

Motyl describes three types of imperial structures: continuous, discontinuous, and hybrid. In a continuous empire, all the territories are adjacent to one another on land. The Mongol Empire, Russian Empire, Aztec Empire, and Akkadian Empire are examples of such continuous empires. A discontinuous empire is one in which the ruled territories are overseas or are exclaves far from the imperial core. Maritime empires, such as the European colonial empires, are examples of discontinuous empire. A hybrid empire had both adjacent ruled territories and far-flung ruled territories. An example might be the German Reich, which had imperial possessions in Europe as well as overseas in Africa. He discussed the Russian example also in his earlier book, The Post Soviet Nations.


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