經濟學博客 Marginal Revolution 於 2026 年 8 月 15 日刊出一篇題為「That was then, this is now」的文章，對歷史學者 Michael Khodarkovsky 的新書 The Steppe and its Empires: The Russian Empire & its Eurasian Counterparts 表示明確肯定。文章寫道，作者「非常喜歡」這本書，結尾也簡單寫下「Recommended」。文中摘錄的內容顯示，這本書特別適合關注帝國統治如何在不同歷史情境中被正當化的讀者，尤其是宗教、主權與權力語言彼此交織之處。

文章轉載了書中的兩段摘錄。第一段中，Khodarkovsky 論述俄羅斯與其他帝國傳統的不同：

Russia presented the most remarkable contrast to both Eurasian and Western empires. The power of Muscovite tsars and Russian emperors seemed to be completely unconstrained by moral or ethical boundaries. Whereas religious authorities in Europe, the Islamic world, and China kept some distance from the state and had a degree of independence from the rulers, in Russia the Orthodox Church was fully behind the autocratic powers of the tsars. Ivan III was the first to adopt the title samoderzhets (a calque of a title of Byzantine emperors, literally “autocrat” in Greek), which he used in the sense of a “sovereign” ruler. It took another half century before his grandson, Ivan IV, began to use the title to signal his exceptional, universal, and unrestrained power.

第二段摘錄則轉向更廣泛的歐亞統治者自我理解：

To begin with, each Eurasian ruler conceived of himself as the sovereign of a universal, not national, empire. Such a ruler was non plus ultra; confident in his superiority over other religious or political bodies, he was destined to rule the world, if not politically, at least rhetorically, an autocrat whose subjects’ servile condition was a natural state. Seen through the prism of a universal monarchy, the Eurasian imperial vision blurred the separation between metropolis and periphery, between the peoples within and outside the empire’s boundaries, between servitude and slavery. Whether they were elites or commoners, all were considered to be in personal servitude to an emperor and often referred to by a term interchangeable with slave. Consequently, Eurasian societies did not develop either the notions or the institutions that could enshrine the idea of freedom… The concept of universal monarchy allowed for little differentiation between internal and external territories.

Source: Marginal Revolution