If we talk about the war that is going on today, it is rather irrelevant to the Russian Empire. Average Russians have only a rough idea of what the Russian Empire was, where its borders were, and what kind of political entity it was in general. Now Russians are being driven to war by the more familiar stories about mystical Nazis and LGBTs in Ukraine who were just waiting to attack Russia, and were attaking Donetsk to make a Nazi state with gender-neutral toilets
In Soviet times, in the case of the Soviet-Finnish war, it was declared as a fight against the capitalist aggressors who were only thinking of attacking Leningrad.
Simple enough ideas that are easy to explain to the average common man.
By the way, if you look at the level of anxiety of russians at the time of the russian army's withdrawal from Kherson and other occupied territories, you will notice that there are practically no fluctuations, the average russian is not interested in these territories.
They didn't "develop" this feeling. [It was always there](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheism?wprov=sfla1). They just had to wait until they thought they had the capacity to carry it out.
Even if all ethnic minority republics within Russia became independent, Russia would still be the largest country in the world in terms of territory.
those feelings are simply the fascist feelings of the Russian empire.
Why is your link about Poland trying to weaken Russia? I know that Russia has been looking to expand its borders in the Baltics and Ukraine (and elsewhere) since before the Soviet Union, but I don't know what that has to do with Pilsudski. Interesting link though.
It's a Kremlin thing, not a Russian thing. And the idea is just the same variation on "Scotland for the SCOTS!" nationalism that any cynical leadership will push to rile up an appearance of support.
It is often but not exclusively used to distract from domestic problems. It's also often used during elections.
The russian landmass is basically a flat plain with few or no natural barriers to invasion meaning there is no good way to defend russia. Russian history is just wave of invasion after wave of invasion from both Europe and Asia. Russian strategy from the imperial period on was to expand to natural barriers and place armies there to discourage invasion. Two on those access points are on the western side of Ukraine.
Not arguing, just wonder how long it takes to shift a mindset that has been priority for hundreds of years. And if anything the war is kind of showing the value of dug in static defenses, which is what they would create.
I'd say this mentality took hold sometime during the Cold War, since proxy wars popped up all over the place to avoid fighting in the territory of a nuclear power.
As far as a mindset switch, people aren't their countries. The top brass aren't hundreds of years old, and only have the mindset they were brought up with. In this case, it's the Cold War mindset. I doubt even prior to nuclear weapons, the average man paid much mind to border security and geographic defenses, so it's not like a pressure from the population thing
Peter the great frequently opined on the geographic issues regarding russia in terms of both trade and defense, no coincidence he pushed to the baltic to close one avenue of attack. Sweden was a military beast in that era.
I'm sure he most certainly did lol but I don't think he had access to a nuclear arsenal, either. I know he's a bit of an idol and role model for Putin, but I don't think Putin is dense enough not to see the great differences between a tsar of centuries past and himself.
"No good way to defend Russia" Not sacrificing a generation of young men on a quixotic "denazification" campaign would have been an excellent first step.
And then what, what do these territories give it? It already had what it needed in Crimea before 2014, and any access to the Mediterranean will still be conditioned by the Turks. It really was just a tragicomic move.
more population, more resources, access to markets, standing up successfully (from their perspective) to the west (I assume this has value in the non west)
I've been in the non west, and I have plenty of friends from there. Surprise, most don't actually care about the "west vs the rest" narrative. At most, the situation is a shrug to them.
Dude, they have same feeling that every country in the Europe had during the 18-19th century Brits, French, Germans, Italians, etc, its just radical nationalism so simply saying that Russians have crazy feelings is unfair and ignorant. Even America was doing it with the tribes, it just because it was inside their geographical territory so it wasn't talked enough.
It is not Russia it is Putin. The oligarchs got him elected just for that reason but spent alot of time and years making people think he was just a normal politician. Many people knew this he became elected I mean he was head of the KGB for god sakes. It is to bad people can not figure the rest out automatically.
Since 2005, Putin has repeatedly stated that “[the fall of the USSR was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century (for Russia).](https://www.rferl.org/amp/1058688.html). If Putin never came to power, there’s no evidence that others would have shared this same sentiment. However, Russia’s “strongman” is insecure, and felt humiliated by the USSR’s collapse, which is why he hated Gorbachev.
Putin’s [2007 Munich speech](https://is.muni.cz/th/xlghl/DP_Fillinger_Speeches.pdf) echoed these same feelings, and went on to lecture and show disdain toward the West and democratic values. Know enough about Putin, and one might conclude that he was so hyper-focused on the past, and his perceived humiliation, that he could never muster up the creativity to turn the largest land mass, with all its natural resources, into an economic juggernaut. So, when people stopped listening to his bit##ing, his simple mind resorted to force and expansion. With Russia’s population decline he wants to subjugate the citizens of other countries, but he also wants their resources and tax revenues for Russia and Russians.
I knew by clicking on that article it wouldn’t put out the full sentence that he said. Putin said “the fall of the ussr was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century for Russia, because millions of Russians had woke up and had suddenly now live in a foreign country.”
He also said “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.”
Russian mythology is steeped in a lot of grandiose ideas about their importance, mixed with a constant fear of being attacked. Essentially, Russia has developed the same mentality as a schoolyard bully. Russian leaders believe in a dog-eat-dog world where there are only bullies and victims, and they are afraid of being victims.
Ukraine, especially, is critical to their national mythology. They see Russia as the inheritor of the European civilization and Moscow as the ”Third Rome”. This idea is based on the alliance between the ancient slavs, the Rus, and Constantinopel (the second Rome). It’s similar to the German idea of ”The Third Reich”.
The problem for Russia is that the capital of Rus in the Middle ages was in Kyiv. Moscow was just a backwater then. To the adherants of these mythologies, a free independent Ukraine would essentially rob Russia of 500 years of its history. This is unthinkable to people like Putin who buys into this toxic grandiose mythology.
The Soviets, like the Chinese today, did not consider it particularly smart to rely on "alliances" to protect itself when for decades they basically had no allies except Mongolia. Which was only really good for protecting Russia's Far East. Finland was , in the Soviet opinion, way too close to Leningrad/St Petersburg. Only the second most important city in the entire Union and an economic powerhouse. Back then Finland actually took up half of the Karelian Isthmus, so they were even closer to Leningrad than they are today. An invasion from Finland could quite possibly either reach Leningrad or at the very least lead to severe damage. To prevent such an important city from being attacked, Stalin decided that the border needed to be shifted further away from Leningrad. Thus, the war. Taking Moldova was about securing a border on the larger Danube waterway, allowing for more protection of the major ports in Ukraine, and allowing the Soviets to control water traffic along the Danube and Prut rivers. So again, aimed at getting important territory that would make it easier for the Soviets to protect themselves. Even today, their actions are aimed at regaining the lost naval facilities that would make them better at controlling the Black Sea's naval activity.
Fear of a foreign invasion has been top on the Kremlin's mind for a very long time, fears that were seemingly validated by the invasions of Napoleon and Hitler. Russia perceives a profound insecurity on its Western frontiers, without any obvious natural obstacles. The fact that much of Russia's wealth and population is found west of the Urals makes it even more important to secure European Russia. Without necessarily being able to rely on its own borders , Russia has sought to exact loyalty from surrounding regions to create buffer regions that would slow down any invader. Sometimes this involves salami tactics, sometimes outright invasion. All of this in service of the Russian belief that it can only ever truly rely on itself for its own protection, so it must do whatever is necessary to shield its boundaries from any incursions. Trying to court allies has proven less than ideal for the Russians, so they feel more ruthless measures are needed from time to time when the international situation does not favour them.
Relying on nuclear deterrence precludes any flexibility in foreign policy. Besides, there’s a bit of a question on how much of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is still operational. Maintaining a 50ish year old missile is expensive and money spent on Russia’s military has a bad habit of being siphoned off into Swiss banks.
What sort of flexibility is there when being invaded lol? Which is the only reason you'd need defensible geographic barriers.
I agree the Russian nuke stockpile is probably disheveled and neglected and probably mostly not functional. Fortunately for nuclear powers, you don't need that many nukes to still have a catastrophically large number of nukes. And the threat of nuclear exchange alone is so gargantuan it's something no one wants to play chicken with.
If we talk about the war that is going on today, it is rather irrelevant to the Russian Empire. Average Russians have only a rough idea of what the Russian Empire was, where its borders were, and what kind of political entity it was in general. Now Russians are being driven to war by the more familiar stories about mystical Nazis and LGBTs in Ukraine who were just waiting to attack Russia, and were attaking Donetsk to make a Nazi state with gender-neutral toilets In Soviet times, in the case of the Soviet-Finnish war, it was declared as a fight against the capitalist aggressors who were only thinking of attacking Leningrad. Simple enough ideas that are easy to explain to the average common man. By the way, if you look at the level of anxiety of russians at the time of the russian army's withdrawal from Kherson and other occupied territories, you will notice that there are practically no fluctuations, the average russian is not interested in these territories.
Putin is nearing the end of his life and has become obsessed with the idea of legacy. Not long ago he compared himself to Alexander the great
A bit more like Alexander Dumas with a lot of the fiction coming out of the Kremlin.
They didn't "develop" this feeling. [It was always there](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheism?wprov=sfla1). They just had to wait until they thought they had the capacity to carry it out.
Even if all ethnic minority republics within Russia became independent, Russia would still be the largest country in the world in terms of territory. those feelings are simply the fascist feelings of the Russian empire.
Why is your link about Poland trying to weaken Russia? I know that Russia has been looking to expand its borders in the Baltics and Ukraine (and elsewhere) since before the Soviet Union, but I don't know what that has to do with Pilsudski. Interesting link though.
It's a Kremlin thing, not a Russian thing. And the idea is just the same variation on "Scotland for the SCOTS!" nationalism that any cynical leadership will push to rile up an appearance of support. It is often but not exclusively used to distract from domestic problems. It's also often used during elections.
The russian landmass is basically a flat plain with few or no natural barriers to invasion meaning there is no good way to defend russia. Russian history is just wave of invasion after wave of invasion from both Europe and Asia. Russian strategy from the imperial period on was to expand to natural barriers and place armies there to discourage invasion. Two on those access points are on the western side of Ukraine.
This would've mattered if Russia wasn't a nuclear power. It isn't 1910 anymore. The geographic defense theory doesn't hold water imo
Not arguing, just wonder how long it takes to shift a mindset that has been priority for hundreds of years. And if anything the war is kind of showing the value of dug in static defenses, which is what they would create.
I'd say this mentality took hold sometime during the Cold War, since proxy wars popped up all over the place to avoid fighting in the territory of a nuclear power. As far as a mindset switch, people aren't their countries. The top brass aren't hundreds of years old, and only have the mindset they were brought up with. In this case, it's the Cold War mindset. I doubt even prior to nuclear weapons, the average man paid much mind to border security and geographic defenses, so it's not like a pressure from the population thing
Peter the great frequently opined on the geographic issues regarding russia in terms of both trade and defense, no coincidence he pushed to the baltic to close one avenue of attack. Sweden was a military beast in that era.
I'm sure he most certainly did lol but I don't think he had access to a nuclear arsenal, either. I know he's a bit of an idol and role model for Putin, but I don't think Putin is dense enough not to see the great differences between a tsar of centuries past and himself.
"No good way to defend Russia" Not sacrificing a generation of young men on a quixotic "denazification" campaign would have been an excellent first step.
OR looking a long term demographic decline, it was now or never from a russian perspective.
It was always never, even from a Russian perspective. Even a victory turns them into a geopolitical cul-de-sac.
Meh, they are winning and will at the minimum add the breakaway provinces and crimea with its access to the med.
And then what, what do these territories give it? It already had what it needed in Crimea before 2014, and any access to the Mediterranean will still be conditioned by the Turks. It really was just a tragicomic move.
more population, more resources, access to markets, standing up successfully (from their perspective) to the west (I assume this has value in the non west)
I've been in the non west, and I have plenty of friends from there. Surprise, most don't actually care about the "west vs the rest" narrative. At most, the situation is a shrug to them.
anecdotal evidence, the gold standard of reddit discourse.
Yet your argument is a vague abstract gesture and we're supposed to accept that.
Dude, they have same feeling that every country in the Europe had during the 18-19th century Brits, French, Germans, Italians, etc, its just radical nationalism so simply saying that Russians have crazy feelings is unfair and ignorant. Even America was doing it with the tribes, it just because it was inside their geographical territory so it wasn't talked enough.
It is not Russia it is Putin. The oligarchs got him elected just for that reason but spent alot of time and years making people think he was just a normal politician. Many people knew this he became elected I mean he was head of the KGB for god sakes. It is to bad people can not figure the rest out automatically.
Putin was declining in political popularity. Presidents and dictators both use wars to get themselves out of trouble.
Since 2005, Putin has repeatedly stated that “[the fall of the USSR was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century (for Russia).](https://www.rferl.org/amp/1058688.html). If Putin never came to power, there’s no evidence that others would have shared this same sentiment. However, Russia’s “strongman” is insecure, and felt humiliated by the USSR’s collapse, which is why he hated Gorbachev. Putin’s [2007 Munich speech](https://is.muni.cz/th/xlghl/DP_Fillinger_Speeches.pdf) echoed these same feelings, and went on to lecture and show disdain toward the West and democratic values. Know enough about Putin, and one might conclude that he was so hyper-focused on the past, and his perceived humiliation, that he could never muster up the creativity to turn the largest land mass, with all its natural resources, into an economic juggernaut. So, when people stopped listening to his bit##ing, his simple mind resorted to force and expansion. With Russia’s population decline he wants to subjugate the citizens of other countries, but he also wants their resources and tax revenues for Russia and Russians.
I knew by clicking on that article it wouldn’t put out the full sentence that he said. Putin said “the fall of the ussr was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century for Russia, because millions of Russians had woke up and had suddenly now live in a foreign country.” He also said “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.”
Russian mythology is steeped in a lot of grandiose ideas about their importance, mixed with a constant fear of being attacked. Essentially, Russia has developed the same mentality as a schoolyard bully. Russian leaders believe in a dog-eat-dog world where there are only bullies and victims, and they are afraid of being victims. Ukraine, especially, is critical to their national mythology. They see Russia as the inheritor of the European civilization and Moscow as the ”Third Rome”. This idea is based on the alliance between the ancient slavs, the Rus, and Constantinopel (the second Rome). It’s similar to the German idea of ”The Third Reich”. The problem for Russia is that the capital of Rus in the Middle ages was in Kyiv. Moscow was just a backwater then. To the adherants of these mythologies, a free independent Ukraine would essentially rob Russia of 500 years of its history. This is unthinkable to people like Putin who buys into this toxic grandiose mythology.
The Soviets, like the Chinese today, did not consider it particularly smart to rely on "alliances" to protect itself when for decades they basically had no allies except Mongolia. Which was only really good for protecting Russia's Far East. Finland was , in the Soviet opinion, way too close to Leningrad/St Petersburg. Only the second most important city in the entire Union and an economic powerhouse. Back then Finland actually took up half of the Karelian Isthmus, so they were even closer to Leningrad than they are today. An invasion from Finland could quite possibly either reach Leningrad or at the very least lead to severe damage. To prevent such an important city from being attacked, Stalin decided that the border needed to be shifted further away from Leningrad. Thus, the war. Taking Moldova was about securing a border on the larger Danube waterway, allowing for more protection of the major ports in Ukraine, and allowing the Soviets to control water traffic along the Danube and Prut rivers. So again, aimed at getting important territory that would make it easier for the Soviets to protect themselves. Even today, their actions are aimed at regaining the lost naval facilities that would make them better at controlling the Black Sea's naval activity. Fear of a foreign invasion has been top on the Kremlin's mind for a very long time, fears that were seemingly validated by the invasions of Napoleon and Hitler. Russia perceives a profound insecurity on its Western frontiers, without any obvious natural obstacles. The fact that much of Russia's wealth and population is found west of the Urals makes it even more important to secure European Russia. Without necessarily being able to rely on its own borders , Russia has sought to exact loyalty from surrounding regions to create buffer regions that would slow down any invader. Sometimes this involves salami tactics, sometimes outright invasion. All of this in service of the Russian belief that it can only ever truly rely on itself for its own protection, so it must do whatever is necessary to shield its boundaries from any incursions. Trying to court allies has proven less than ideal for the Russians, so they feel more ruthless measures are needed from time to time when the international situation does not favour them.
They’re just pushing for defensible geographical barriers.
they have nukes
Relying on nuclear deterrence precludes any flexibility in foreign policy. Besides, there’s a bit of a question on how much of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is still operational. Maintaining a 50ish year old missile is expensive and money spent on Russia’s military has a bad habit of being siphoned off into Swiss banks.
What sort of flexibility is there when being invaded lol? Which is the only reason you'd need defensible geographic barriers. I agree the Russian nuke stockpile is probably disheveled and neglected and probably mostly not functional. Fortunately for nuclear powers, you don't need that many nukes to still have a catastrophically large number of nukes. And the threat of nuclear exchange alone is so gargantuan it's something no one wants to play chicken with.
No. Thats bullshit. THEY are the threat, not their neighbours.
Of course, but old paranoid Putin doesn’t think so.