The book belongs to the genre of retrospective political science, which is still rare for Russia. Attempting a functional analysis of empires, the author connects, within a single concept, the ideal and institutional plans of the imperial organization, describes the main characteristics of this insufficiently investigated type of political systems. The subject of special attention is the changes taking place in the empires under the influence of modernization processes. The productivity of the proposed general model is demonstrated by the application to Russian realities - both historical and modern. This made it possible to make a number of non-trivial observations regarding the fundamental features and prospects for the evolution of Russian ethnopolitics. The publication is addressed to historians, political scientists, sociologists whose area of ​ ​ interest is the systematic analysis of macrosocial systems.