One has to wonder why someone would fight against Russia. Expecially after centuries of enduring war. There is a reason the USSR was so big. Because the Russian empire conquered many people.
One has to wonder why someone would fight against Russia. Expecially after centuries of enduring war. There is a reason the USSR was so big. Because the Russian empire conquered many people.
No it didn't. The West conquered many people. All over the world. Russia settled in lands all across Siberia and even the Pacific Northwest of North America and never once herded anyone into an Indian reservation. Russians founded communities without trying to conquer every tribe they encountered. Russia has a history of being invaded but has very little history as an invader. You are switching around who did what to whom. Africans say over and over that Russians were the first Northerners to treat them as people.
I have read about that. And Russians did battle Native Siberian tribes too. The expansion outward nearly always leads to conflicts. But in the pantheon of European expansion and conflict with the "other" Russians acted the least atrocious among all. Russians generally fought defensive engagements outside their Forts which grew in Russian cities and Russians declined broadly at assaulting native communities. And even today, there are no Siberian Indian Reservations. Native Siberians are Russian Federation Citizens and live in cities in their own communities. Russia's defense minister is himself a member of one of these minorities, a fact that has subjected him to hate filled comments in Ukrainian Telegram channels and militia videos. And Russia's exploitation of native labor was bad but it wasn't slavery and exacted far less economic price or blood than the British-American slave trade, slavery in America, or the brutal costs of the Raj in India. You are trying to make Russians into the American West or the British Empire and that's untruthful to a huge degree. It might not have been fair or even pretty but Russians East of the Urals were saints compared to European-American standards of conduct.
The Russians very nearly arrived at the 20th century while effectively still occupying the 17th century. Serfdom was only abandoned in 1861.
Russia was little more than a late medieval feudal society while the West was busy creating new modes of government administration based on egalitarian principles, initiating the modern system of alliances and treaties among nation-states, jump-starting and spearheading the Industrial Revolution, and incrementally engineering an economic system that produced historically unprecedented wealth while dramatically raising living conditions for millions.
The inhabitants of the Russian steppe were closer in outlook to Genghis Khan than Abraham Lincoln. In effect, the whole of Russia was incapable of making mischief on an international scale even if they had the inclination to do so. They were, however, quite adept at beating back other nations' large and substantially more sophisticated armies, as Napoleon learned and Hitler later would.
On the other hand, War and Peace was a hell of lot more readable than Moby Dick or Middlemarch.
Sure. There's a lot there to dislike, including Russian Fur Companies forcing Inuit to hunt for them with little compensation, and even some battles when natives attacked Russian settlements but never once did Russians massacre anyone or conquer their villages. In all the time Russians spent on Hawaii they never overthrew the Queen and annexed the islands, as the Americans did in the 1890's. Reading List:
Journal of Early Modern History: "Political Claims, an Extensible Name, and a 'Divine Mission': Ideology of Russian Expansion in Siberia"
"The Russian Fur Trade 1550-1700" by Raymond Henry Fisher"
Andrei Grinev Val'terovic translated by Richard Bland "Russian Colonization of Alaska: Preconditions, Discovery, and Initial Development 1741-1799. University of Nebraska Press.
Thanks. Appears I don't know much! I'm trying to accept that there's a lot to know. And yet, Magritte: "We think that if life is seen in a tragic light it is seen more clearly, and that we are then in touch with the mystery of existence. We even believe that we can reach objectivity thanks to this revelation. The greater the terror, the greater the objectivity. This notion is the result of philosophies (materialist or idealist), that claim that the real world is knowable, that matter is of the same essence as mind, since the perfect mind would no longer be distinct from the matter it explains and would thus deny it." I've been trying to absorb information for 71 years. ЁЯд╖ЁЯП╗тАНтЩАя╕П Maybe I'm missing the bigger point. Thanks for the references!
MissAnneThrope for what itтАЩs worth I live in PNW. Have engaged in conversation with elder Russians while walking around an Orthodox Russian cemetery. Also agree with RickyтАЩs other comments. Hard for me to understand why Americans get so enmeshed with the slaughter of peoples in other countries while тАЬ not rememberingтАЭ the past & yes even present atrocities done to ( outdated label btw) Native Americans.
It appears we hold a similar world view. No people - no nation, no empire - is exempt from committing atrocities against others, however they be sorted and named. I'm not excusing any of it. I'd like to think maybe - maybe - we can do better. We already know that individuals are able to overcome prejudices and long-held animosity when working towards a common goal. In this perilous time for humans, it seems that's a reasonable way to proceed. (Y'all can rain on me for being foolish. Hope remains a smoldering ember in my heart for my grandchildren and all living beings.)
I think you will be waiting a long time, then. The history of Russian expansion from the time of Peter the Great until the collapse of the Soviet Union is well known. Russia conquered Finland and the Baltic States, took its chunk of Poland (and suppressed several revolts in the 19th century), grabbed parts of the Ottoman Empire (including the Caucasus and up to Crimea) among other things. The sparsely populated Siberia could not resist Russian military advances. ThereтАЩs a reason that today the bulk of PutinтАЩs conscripts for his Ukraine war came from the Russian hinterlands and not Russia proper. ItтАЩs suggestive of how Russians value their non-Russian fellow citizens.
As to the views of Africans, it was more a consequence of Russian тАЬanti-colonialismтАЭ which itself was a policy directed more at weakening the West than out of any regard for the long suffering Africans.
That the West is hardly without sin does not exonerate Russia. Invoking a phony Russian past doesnтАЩt help clarify matters either.
Again, this is a misreading of history. A lot happened before Dorothy dropped in. There are backstory's to everything. Finland was part of the Russian Empire because of Prince politics and marriage, as happened to France with regards to a 300 year war waged on them by England who claimed the French throne. The Baltic states and Poland invaded Russia many times over the past thousand years, often using either subterfuge or the help of distant and more powerful states. In WW2 these alliances played out again: Finns helped besiege St. Petersburg, Balts joined the Third Reich, Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian Armies joined in the German invasion, In fact, the first blows in the Red Army counterattack at Stalingrad fell on flanking Romanian and Hungarian armies.
The part about Russian conscripts is nothing but a lie. Russian mobilized last autumn came from all geographic regions of Russia and were 100% without fail men of previous military service. Russia's annual conscription includes some 80,000 young men divided by levy from all across Russia; there are no ethnic percentages and burden forcing as you suggest.
And in most of Russia's history in Siberia there were no military advances. The Siberian landmass was HUGE, still is. An indigenous settlement 100km up some river like the Yenesei might as well have been on the far side of the Moon. Russians did exact tribute in Pelts. That was the custom in those centuries, and the Mongols had done the same in the region for centuries before. This led to conflicts where natives attacked Russian settlements and Russian expeditions punished them, but there were no tribal massacres or village conquests. No Indian reservations either. Westerners are creating these fictions out of their own histories; they have zero relationship to the historical realities. One can see it today, ethnic Siberians across Russia live in self-governing cities, in self-governing Oblasts, while American Indians still live in Reservation trailers, with large percentages of alcoholism, domestic violence, and drug abuse.
I take your point, but every nation can justify its past if it wishes too. If geography is to some extent destiny, the Russian people chose (so to speak) a pretty indefensible location on the Eurasian plains. Over the centuries, you could argue that Russia gave as good (or better) than it got.
But that was then, and the days of the Mongols, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and much else is past. Now in 2023 we might hope that Russia could see things in a, shall we say, less paranoid light. One personтАЩs economic opportunity or chance at greater democratic possibilities is an autocratтАЩs nightmare. But that doesnтАЩt mean invasion is nigh, only that many citizens might be dissatisfied with the current economic and political structures in their own country.
NATO is a defensive alliance, but if you project onto it the Warsaw PactтАЩs interventionist streak (even though its invasions were limited to other Warsaw Pact countries), you can easily imagine the West will invade at any moment. Maybe Putin is simply channeling his inner-Stalin and doesnтАЩt want to be caught flat footed when your ally suddenly turns against you and wages a war of conquest - this time not with but against you. Who can say.
In the end, and in the case we are discussing, itтАЩs up to the Russian leadership to decide their countryтАЩs fate. Personally, I had hoped they would have opted for a future in collaborating with the West, but they would have had to recognize and internalize their economic status as a middling power, not that of a superpower.
ThatтАЩs a very difficult adjustment for any previously Great Power to make. Neither the UK nor France have completely made that transition and our turn will no doubt come eventually.
If things continue on their present course, RussiaтАЩs future might prove to be that of a Chinese vassal state.
Anyway, it doesnтАЩt really matter what we may think. Time will tell.
Russia tried a future of collaboration with the West. In the 1990's CIA Agents literally lived in the Kremlin and ran Yeltsin's 1996 campaign, facts covered in a Time Magazine cover story of that period. Western financiers created the Oligarch class and helped steal billions in Russian state assets. Vladimir Putin said last year "they called us 'friend" but treated us like a colony, siphoning trillions of dollars out of the Russian economy by various schemes." The West wants integration but on their terms only; other states and societies must agree to be a cog in the western scheme servicing western elites and their international constructs. Russia rejected that, being a civilizational state with its own manifest destiny. Instead of sharing the world the West chose confrontation, withdrawing from the ABM Treaty and promulgating "Full Spectrum Dominance." Russia responded to this and the West struck back by overthrowing Ukraine's elected government in 2014 and creating a Russophobic and extremely nationalistic government in Kiev to try and take down Russia by way of a huge conventional proxy force next door. That's the reality.
If what you say were true, one would have expected a true Russian leader to confront these oligarchs who stole RussiaтАЩs wealth. Instead, any тАЬconfrontationтАЭ resulted in a redistribution of wealth among Putin and his loyal oligarchs. So maybe something isnтАЩt quite correct in your narrative of Russian victimhood, weakness and lack of agency.
Lots of that stolen wealth ended up abroad, City of London lived on it for decades and still does. However during Putin's "oligarchic dictatorship", the average Russian gained 8 years of life expectancy and per-capita BDP (in real purchase parity terms) doubled. Last time similar advance happened in the US was in the 1950 and 60ies.
Not sure how thatтАЩs in any way responsive to my comment, but it is true to point out that where massive amounts of ill-gotten wealth winds up benefiting third parties, those people tend to look the other way for as long as possible. Had Putin not invaded Ukraine, the City of London (and other places) would still be welcoming Russian oligarchs (or at least their money) with open arms. ItтАЩs one of those ugly aspects of human nature we need to acknowledge.
It goes to show how you and people like you ignore the Russian governments effort to improve the lives of the Russian people, including creating a public health insurance system. And Putin invaded Ukraine? Only in the minds of Western MSM readers. The sequence of events was that areas of Ukraine with large ethnic Russian populations voted for a government in Ukraine that was then later overthrown by nationalist forces, supported by the West. These ethnic Russian regions called foul on Ukrainian "democracy" and attempted to leave Ukraine, and armed conflict happened. Russia attempted a diplomatic solution for seven years, a process that Ukraine and the West later admitted to abusing in order to arm Ukraine up. The OSCE recorded a huge uptick in artillery shelling in the region in February 2022, two thirds of it coming from Ukrainian lines into the breakaway regions. Ukraine openly stated that the Minsk agreements would not be honored. Russia then recognized both breakaway regions and signed a mutual defense pact with them. Ukraine stopped shelling them...for six hours. Then resumed with gusto. The Kremlin then launched the Special Operation into Ukraine. Your worldview leaves a lot of factual details out.
Defensive alliance? That destroyed countries like Libya (which now only exists in name), occupying Afghanistan and brutalizing their population for 20 years, bombing Serbia and creating a NATO puppet state to surround one of the largest NATO bases in Europe (Camp Bondsteel). Fine "defensive alliance". NATO member Turkey now occupies parts of 3 countries (Cyprus, Syria, Iraq) and we don't hear much about "sovereign and internationally recognized borders" for those. US itself occupies almost 1/3 of Syria, without UN (or for that matter US congress) authorization.
One has to wonder why someone would fight against Russia. Expecially after centuries of enduring war. There is a reason the USSR was so big. Because the Russian empire conquered many people.
No it didn't. The West conquered many people. All over the world. Russia settled in lands all across Siberia and even the Pacific Northwest of North America and never once herded anyone into an Indian reservation. Russians founded communities without trying to conquer every tribe they encountered. Russia has a history of being invaded but has very little history as an invader. You are switching around who did what to whom. Africans say over and over that Russians were the first Northerners to treat them as people.
Perhaps you should read about Russians keeping natives captive and ransoming their families for Sea Otter pelts. Humans suck.
I have read about that. And Russians did battle Native Siberian tribes too. The expansion outward nearly always leads to conflicts. But in the pantheon of European expansion and conflict with the "other" Russians acted the least atrocious among all. Russians generally fought defensive engagements outside their Forts which grew in Russian cities and Russians declined broadly at assaulting native communities. And even today, there are no Siberian Indian Reservations. Native Siberians are Russian Federation Citizens and live in cities in their own communities. Russia's defense minister is himself a member of one of these minorities, a fact that has subjected him to hate filled comments in Ukrainian Telegram channels and militia videos. And Russia's exploitation of native labor was bad but it wasn't slavery and exacted far less economic price or blood than the British-American slave trade, slavery in America, or the brutal costs of the Raj in India. You are trying to make Russians into the American West or the British Empire and that's untruthful to a huge degree. It might not have been fair or even pretty but Russians East of the Urals were saints compared to European-American standards of conduct.
The Russians very nearly arrived at the 20th century while effectively still occupying the 17th century. Serfdom was only abandoned in 1861.
Russia was little more than a late medieval feudal society while the West was busy creating new modes of government administration based on egalitarian principles, initiating the modern system of alliances and treaties among nation-states, jump-starting and spearheading the Industrial Revolution, and incrementally engineering an economic system that produced historically unprecedented wealth while dramatically raising living conditions for millions.
The inhabitants of the Russian steppe were closer in outlook to Genghis Khan than Abraham Lincoln. In effect, the whole of Russia was incapable of making mischief on an international scale even if they had the inclination to do so. They were, however, quite adept at beating back other nations' large and substantially more sophisticated armies, as Napoleon learned and Hitler later would.
On the other hand, War and Peace was a hell of lot more readable than Moby Dick or Middlemarch.
Thanks Ricky!
Wow. I believe you. I would value finding out more about this. Books? Sources? Sincerely, not sarcasm.
Sure. There's a lot there to dislike, including Russian Fur Companies forcing Inuit to hunt for them with little compensation, and even some battles when natives attacked Russian settlements but never once did Russians massacre anyone or conquer their villages. In all the time Russians spent on Hawaii they never overthrew the Queen and annexed the islands, as the Americans did in the 1890's. Reading List:
Journal of Early Modern History: "Political Claims, an Extensible Name, and a 'Divine Mission': Ideology of Russian Expansion in Siberia"
"The Russian Fur Trade 1550-1700" by Raymond Henry Fisher"
Andrei Grinev Val'terovic translated by Richard Bland "Russian Colonization of Alaska: Preconditions, Discovery, and Initial Development 1741-1799. University of Nebraska Press.
Thanks. Appears I don't know much! I'm trying to accept that there's a lot to know. And yet, Magritte: "We think that if life is seen in a tragic light it is seen more clearly, and that we are then in touch with the mystery of existence. We even believe that we can reach objectivity thanks to this revelation. The greater the terror, the greater the objectivity. This notion is the result of philosophies (materialist or idealist), that claim that the real world is knowable, that matter is of the same essence as mind, since the perfect mind would no longer be distinct from the matter it explains and would thus deny it." I've been trying to absorb information for 71 years. ЁЯд╖ЁЯП╗тАНтЩАя╕П Maybe I'm missing the bigger point. Thanks for the references!
Russian fur companies... Hudson's Bay...
They saved all that for Russians. 25 million dead thanks to Lenin, Stalin, and their buddies.
MissAnneThrope for what itтАЩs worth I live in PNW. Have engaged in conversation with elder Russians while walking around an Orthodox Russian cemetery. Also agree with RickyтАЩs other comments. Hard for me to understand why Americans get so enmeshed with the slaughter of peoples in other countries while тАЬ not rememberingтАЭ the past & yes even present atrocities done to ( outdated label btw) Native Americans.
It appears we hold a similar world view. No people - no nation, no empire - is exempt from committing atrocities against others, however they be sorted and named. I'm not excusing any of it. I'd like to think maybe - maybe - we can do better. We already know that individuals are able to overcome prejudices and long-held animosity when working towards a common goal. In this perilous time for humans, it seems that's a reasonable way to proceed. (Y'all can rain on me for being foolish. Hope remains a smoldering ember in my heart for my grandchildren and all living beings.)
I think you will be waiting a long time, then. The history of Russian expansion from the time of Peter the Great until the collapse of the Soviet Union is well known. Russia conquered Finland and the Baltic States, took its chunk of Poland (and suppressed several revolts in the 19th century), grabbed parts of the Ottoman Empire (including the Caucasus and up to Crimea) among other things. The sparsely populated Siberia could not resist Russian military advances. ThereтАЩs a reason that today the bulk of PutinтАЩs conscripts for his Ukraine war came from the Russian hinterlands and not Russia proper. ItтАЩs suggestive of how Russians value their non-Russian fellow citizens.
As to the views of Africans, it was more a consequence of Russian тАЬanti-colonialismтАЭ which itself was a policy directed more at weakening the West than out of any regard for the long suffering Africans.
That the West is hardly without sin does not exonerate Russia. Invoking a phony Russian past doesnтАЩt help clarify matters either.
Again, this is a misreading of history. A lot happened before Dorothy dropped in. There are backstory's to everything. Finland was part of the Russian Empire because of Prince politics and marriage, as happened to France with regards to a 300 year war waged on them by England who claimed the French throne. The Baltic states and Poland invaded Russia many times over the past thousand years, often using either subterfuge or the help of distant and more powerful states. In WW2 these alliances played out again: Finns helped besiege St. Petersburg, Balts joined the Third Reich, Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian Armies joined in the German invasion, In fact, the first blows in the Red Army counterattack at Stalingrad fell on flanking Romanian and Hungarian armies.
The part about Russian conscripts is nothing but a lie. Russian mobilized last autumn came from all geographic regions of Russia and were 100% without fail men of previous military service. Russia's annual conscription includes some 80,000 young men divided by levy from all across Russia; there are no ethnic percentages and burden forcing as you suggest.
And in most of Russia's history in Siberia there were no military advances. The Siberian landmass was HUGE, still is. An indigenous settlement 100km up some river like the Yenesei might as well have been on the far side of the Moon. Russians did exact tribute in Pelts. That was the custom in those centuries, and the Mongols had done the same in the region for centuries before. This led to conflicts where natives attacked Russian settlements and Russian expeditions punished them, but there were no tribal massacres or village conquests. No Indian reservations either. Westerners are creating these fictions out of their own histories; they have zero relationship to the historical realities. One can see it today, ethnic Siberians across Russia live in self-governing cities, in self-governing Oblasts, while American Indians still live in Reservation trailers, with large percentages of alcoholism, domestic violence, and drug abuse.
I take your point, but every nation can justify its past if it wishes too. If geography is to some extent destiny, the Russian people chose (so to speak) a pretty indefensible location on the Eurasian plains. Over the centuries, you could argue that Russia gave as good (or better) than it got.
But that was then, and the days of the Mongols, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and much else is past. Now in 2023 we might hope that Russia could see things in a, shall we say, less paranoid light. One personтАЩs economic opportunity or chance at greater democratic possibilities is an autocratтАЩs nightmare. But that doesnтАЩt mean invasion is nigh, only that many citizens might be dissatisfied with the current economic and political structures in their own country.
NATO is a defensive alliance, but if you project onto it the Warsaw PactтАЩs interventionist streak (even though its invasions were limited to other Warsaw Pact countries), you can easily imagine the West will invade at any moment. Maybe Putin is simply channeling his inner-Stalin and doesnтАЩt want to be caught flat footed when your ally suddenly turns against you and wages a war of conquest - this time not with but against you. Who can say.
In the end, and in the case we are discussing, itтАЩs up to the Russian leadership to decide their countryтАЩs fate. Personally, I had hoped they would have opted for a future in collaborating with the West, but they would have had to recognize and internalize their economic status as a middling power, not that of a superpower.
ThatтАЩs a very difficult adjustment for any previously Great Power to make. Neither the UK nor France have completely made that transition and our turn will no doubt come eventually.
If things continue on their present course, RussiaтАЩs future might prove to be that of a Chinese vassal state.
Anyway, it doesnтАЩt really matter what we may think. Time will tell.
Russia tried a future of collaboration with the West. In the 1990's CIA Agents literally lived in the Kremlin and ran Yeltsin's 1996 campaign, facts covered in a Time Magazine cover story of that period. Western financiers created the Oligarch class and helped steal billions in Russian state assets. Vladimir Putin said last year "they called us 'friend" but treated us like a colony, siphoning trillions of dollars out of the Russian economy by various schemes." The West wants integration but on their terms only; other states and societies must agree to be a cog in the western scheme servicing western elites and their international constructs. Russia rejected that, being a civilizational state with its own manifest destiny. Instead of sharing the world the West chose confrontation, withdrawing from the ABM Treaty and promulgating "Full Spectrum Dominance." Russia responded to this and the West struck back by overthrowing Ukraine's elected government in 2014 and creating a Russophobic and extremely nationalistic government in Kiev to try and take down Russia by way of a huge conventional proxy force next door. That's the reality.
If what you say were true, one would have expected a true Russian leader to confront these oligarchs who stole RussiaтАЩs wealth. Instead, any тАЬconfrontationтАЭ resulted in a redistribution of wealth among Putin and his loyal oligarchs. So maybe something isnтАЩt quite correct in your narrative of Russian victimhood, weakness and lack of agency.
Lots of that stolen wealth ended up abroad, City of London lived on it for decades and still does. However during Putin's "oligarchic dictatorship", the average Russian gained 8 years of life expectancy and per-capita BDP (in real purchase parity terms) doubled. Last time similar advance happened in the US was in the 1950 and 60ies.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/life-expectancy
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-per-capita-ppp
Not sure how thatтАЩs in any way responsive to my comment, but it is true to point out that where massive amounts of ill-gotten wealth winds up benefiting third parties, those people tend to look the other way for as long as possible. Had Putin not invaded Ukraine, the City of London (and other places) would still be welcoming Russian oligarchs (or at least their money) with open arms. ItтАЩs one of those ugly aspects of human nature we need to acknowledge.
It goes to show how you and people like you ignore the Russian governments effort to improve the lives of the Russian people, including creating a public health insurance system. And Putin invaded Ukraine? Only in the minds of Western MSM readers. The sequence of events was that areas of Ukraine with large ethnic Russian populations voted for a government in Ukraine that was then later overthrown by nationalist forces, supported by the West. These ethnic Russian regions called foul on Ukrainian "democracy" and attempted to leave Ukraine, and armed conflict happened. Russia attempted a diplomatic solution for seven years, a process that Ukraine and the West later admitted to abusing in order to arm Ukraine up. The OSCE recorded a huge uptick in artillery shelling in the region in February 2022, two thirds of it coming from Ukrainian lines into the breakaway regions. Ukraine openly stated that the Minsk agreements would not be honored. Russia then recognized both breakaway regions and signed a mutual defense pact with them. Ukraine stopped shelling them...for six hours. Then resumed with gusto. The Kremlin then launched the Special Operation into Ukraine. Your worldview leaves a lot of factual details out.
Defensive alliance? That destroyed countries like Libya (which now only exists in name), occupying Afghanistan and brutalizing their population for 20 years, bombing Serbia and creating a NATO puppet state to surround one of the largest NATO bases in Europe (Camp Bondsteel). Fine "defensive alliance". NATO member Turkey now occupies parts of 3 countries (Cyprus, Syria, Iraq) and we don't hear much about "sovereign and internationally recognized borders" for those. US itself occupies almost 1/3 of Syria, without UN (or for that matter US congress) authorization.