Alexander Semyonov is a founder and co-editor of Ab Imperio Quarterly (AI) - an international bilingual professional periodical.

Ab Imperio was founded in 2000 as an international bilingual professional periodical. Affiliated with the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), AI adheres to the principle of external double-blind peer review of the materials submitted for publication. Playing an instrumental role in the creation and development of the multidisciplinary field of new imperial history and nationalism studies of the post-Soviet space, AI functions as an international think-tank. Since 2000, we at AI have been fortunate to have worked with over 1,000 of the most dynamic and original scholars (historians, social scientists, anthropologists) from several dozen countries. The new research paradigm advanced by AI represents the first original contribution of Russian humanities to international scholarship since Iurii Lotman and his Tartu school of semiotics, and thus promises to overcome the parochialism and isolationism of Russian scholarship vis-à-vis American and European traditions of studying the region, and even more – of the provincialism of “Russian studies” in general, in comparison to “European history” or “American history.” With subscribers all over the world (in addition to those reading the journal through popular databases such as Project Muse or EBSCO’s Historical Abstracts with Full Text), Ab Imperio has had a distribution network in Russia and other post-Soviet countries that is unrivaled by any other professional periodical: some 120 libraries receive the hardcopy version of the journal, and many more access the journal online.

Imperial Transformations – Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet History

Alexander Semyonov with Ronald Grigor Suny are the series editors of Imperial Transformations – Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet History.

The series includes work on a wide range of subjects related to Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet empires. It covers work on the imperial peripheries as well as the imperial centre, on social, religious and marginal groups and the lived experiences of empire as well as politics and imperial elites, and on legal and constitutional frameworks and the intellectual underpinnings of empire.

The experiences of Russia and the Soviet Union as empires, from the perspectives both of great power politics and also the government of large, diverse populations, has much to contribute to wider historical studies of empire and colonialism, where much of the focus has concentrated on Western European countries and their overseas colonies.

Besides the work of Western scholars, the series includes a strong strand of books from a new rising generation of very promising young historians from the region itself.