Question: Can the USSR be restored without communism? If so, would that be a bad thing?
Before communism there was Imperial Russia. Look at a map of Europe\Russia for 1914. The differences now are Finland, Poland and the Baltic nations. They are not part of that empire. Putin’s dream might be to make them so but its not going to happen with Poland & Finland, the Baltic nations, maybe!
So yes the empire can exist without communism, it existed before and can exist again!
Czarist Russia, at some point, ruled an area larger than the USSR. Does Russia have a claim on Alaska? Does Turkey claim Hungary?