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Soviet Empire expresses a political term used in Sovietology to describe the actions and nature of the Soviet Union, as a state, similar to those of a colonial empire.

In the wider sense, the term refers to the country's geopolitical imperialist foreign policy during the Cold War: the nations which were part of the Soviet Empire were officially independent countries with separate governments that set their own policies, but those policies had to remain within certain limits decided by the Soviet Union and enforced by threat of intervention by the Soviet forces, and then the Warsaw Pact, which in fact happened in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980 and in the Soviet–Afghan War . Countries in this situation are often called satellite states. Similarly, the post-Soviet states and countries formerly allied with the Soviet Union continue to improve relations.

The term "New Russian Empire" is sometimes used since Vladimir Putin took office in 2000 and to describe his aggressive foreign policy in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, in the illegal annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014 and in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.
Characteristics
Although the Soviet Union was not ruled by an emperor and declared itself anti-imperialist and a people's democracy, it is argued that it exhibited tendencies common to historic empires. The onset of this studies is traditionally attributed to Richard Pipes's book The Formation of the Soviet Union . Several scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states. It has also been argued that the Soviet Union practiced colonialism as did other imperial powers. The Soviets pursued internal colonialism in Central Asia, one example being that the state's privileging of grain production over livestock production in Kyrgyzstan favored Slavic settlers over Kyrgyz natives, perpetuating the inequalities of the tsarist colonial era. Maoists argued that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade, or social imperialism. Another dimension of "Soviet imperialism" is cultural imperialism. The policy of Soviet cultural imperialism implied the Sovietization of culture and education at the expense of local traditions. Leonid Brezhnev continued a policy of cultural Russification as part of Developed Socialism which sought to assert more central control. Seweryn Bialer argued that the Soviet state had an imperial nationalism.