I also wanted to call attention to this post by Andrew Michta at RealClearDefense:
Russia is not and has never been a nation state in the sense of the consolidated societal and institutional framing that has undergirded the foundations of Western democracies. Since the 15th century when the Duchy of Muscovy began to shed the Mongol Yoke – for two centuries Moscow was a vasal state of the Tatar Golden Horde – Russia expanded and formed its civilization as a multinational empire. For centuries, Russia extended its reach across the Eurasian mainland and into Europe, defeating Poland and Sweden and colonizing Central Asia and the Far East. This rapid imperial expansion fueled top-down governance that rested on state-sanctioned violence and absolutism buttressed by ideology – tsarist at first, subsequently communist, and now a mixture of orthodoxy and professed “Eurasianism,” but always resting on the primacy of centralized, top-down governance. As the empire grew, the people shrank. Expansion became the sine qua non of the Russian state’s existence and the foundation of the ruler’s power. The might of the empire and the perennial homage paid to the leader – whether the tsar, the general secretary or now the president – was justified by the glory of the motherland and the Great Russian People (velikiy russkiy narod). Simply put, Russia cannot exist without its expansionist drive, for only continued expansion can generate the requisite centripetal forces to hold together the patchwork of nations imprisoned within the bonds of empire.
I think that Dr. Michta does a real service in trying to educate Americans on the history of Russian imperialism. In general Americans are indifferent to history which I think weakens our foreign policy. Russia’s eastward expansion in the 19th century is reminiscent of American westward expansion in during roughly the same period.
I do have a question for Dr. Michta. Is it actually true that Russia has incessantly tried to expand westward into Europe? Or is it the other way around, that European countries including Poland (in the form of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire) invaded Russia in the 17th century and was ultimately ejected from conquered territories in the 18th century? Germany invaded Russia during World War I and then, again, during World War II, killing millions of Russians.
France and Britain invaded Russia and then the Soviet Union in the 19th and 20th centuries.
I genuinely want to know. I’m trying to distinguish between Russian imperialism and Polish irredentism. There are contemporary political currents in Poland that articulate territorial claims grounded in historical memory, and they deserve to be taken seriously. The question, however, is whether such currents—contested, constrained, and non-hegemonic—are meaningfully comparable to Russia’s long-standing pattern of state-driven imperial expansion. Are we observing symmetrical national impulses, or fundamentally different political structures producing superficially similar rhetoric?
The idea that Russia seeks to conquer Western Europe is a dangerous Western delusion that makes normal relations impossible. However, repeated Western attempts to conquer Russia, which includes the current Western-driven war in Ukraine, are the norm. Historically, Russian western expansion ends in Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and parts of modern Lithuania.
The Warsaw Pact was created after NATO, and was a response to a Soviet-perceived threat from the West. Diplomatic records show that the Soviet Union asked to join NATO in 1954 after Stalin’s death. When they were in power, and as recently as 2009(?), Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, and Medvedev all proposed Russian membership in NATO. In Putin’s words (a riff on De Gaulle), “a united Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” The US coup in 2014 ended those overtures, and drove Russia eastwards into China’s (and Iran’s) arms.
In this ongoing tragedy, the US and its European allies are the bad guys. We are openly supporting self-proclaimed Nazis.
I note that Russia’s conquest of Siberia did not include genocide or ethnic cleansing of the native peoples, as our western expansion did from the gitgo in 1607.
How many times did Poland invade Russia (once?), and how many times did Russia invade Poland (many?).
Before the Commonwealth invaded Russia, Russia invaded the Baltic states (Livonian War). The Commonwealth itself was a product of perpetual invasion from Russia, from whom Lithuania was too weak to protect itself. From 1494 to 1522, Russia seized almost half of Lithuania.
Before Napoleon invaded Russia, Russia had been part of various coalitions, motivated in part (like other members) to acquire new territories. When allied with France, Russia conquered Finland and acquired a part of Austria.
Before Germany invaded Russia in WWI, Russia fought Germans on German soil. To save itself, Russia became a de facto ally of Germany, which is what initially motivated Allied intervention. Before Germany invaded the Soviet Union in WWII, Russia partitioned Poland with its NAZI allies.
More generally, Russia expanded East and South far more easily against weak polities, and adopted a fairly deferential hand to local chieftains and cultures. Russia expansion to the West was more difficult, with boundaries going back-and-forth, alternating between repression of non-Russian nationalities and promotion, but it was conquest, sometimes motivated by ideology of Russia as the Third Rome, but mostly opportunistic.
Was there some purpose to leaving out Russia dividing Poland with Germany in WW2? Invading, conquering and displacing thousands from the Baltic states?
Steve
I suffer from a recency bias. I have seen The Soviet Union occupy the Eastern Bloc for a decent portion of my lifetime. I think if you were to ask people in Bulgaria, Albania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Former East Germany, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, if Russia had territorial expansion desires, they would all agree that they do.
Russia and the Soviet Union are very different. Russia’s leader is Russian. The Soviet Union’s leader during the period you’re describing was Georgian. Today’s Russia is irredentist. The Soviet Union was apocalyptic and millennialist.
Sorry Dave. That dog don’t hunt. The USSR was a Russian enterprise and if a given leader was born outside of Russia they ruled because they were carrying out Russian goals and with the support of Russian leaders. It was Russia that invaded and conquered the countries that made up the USSR. It wasn’t Georgia that was the driving force behind the USSR.
Steve
That is utter, uninformed baloney.
If the Russians are such a dire threat, a preemptive nuclear strike is required.