It's not really clear that large empires are better than national states: two nearby countries that ended up in an empire, xinjiang and tibet, are not really i

It's not really clear that large empires are better than national states: two nearby countries that ended up in an empire, xinjiang and tibet, are not really in a much better state, and the previous empire that contained turkmenistan, was pretty dystopian too, at least at times. On the other hand some of the national states that broke off from USSR are better off now, than they would have been if they stayed with Russia.