When it comes to Russia, everyone's first reaction must be: this country's territory is so large. For the image of Russia's land-loving and crazy expansion, it can be said that a stereotype has been formed in the whole world, that is, the Russians' attachment to the land is unparalleled in the world.
Admittedly, russians do enjoy expansion. However, Russia was actually at its peak, the territory was not as large as the Mongol Empire and the British Empire, and the territory it occupied was more due to its discovery and development of Siberia, except for this no-man's land, and if you look closely, you will find that the expansion ability of the Russians is not very prominent.
So, since the unification of Russia in 1533, is it really the expansion of Russia, as people think, as long as the more territory is better, aimlessly expanding around the infinite? Are there any rules to follow?
Russia was just unified in 1533
In fact, although the Ambitions of the Russian Empire are great, they are not fascists who want to unify the world, and in the 458 years between its unification and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's expansion was not an unlimited pursuit of territorial expansion, and it was also a regular one.
So what is the reason for Russia's expansion?
If you analyze it carefully, you will find that Russia's expansion is not only not prominent, but also in the whole world, at least compared to the Westerners who built a colonial empire in the four oceans, its territorial expansion is quite moderate, and except for Siberia, the large territories that can be obtained may only be annexed in Central Asia by a few khanates, unlike the British and French colonial empires, which spread across five continents and had the crazy plunder of all four major races.
To understand the reason for its expansion, the underlying logic of the Russian state, let's look at the country's history.
The history of this country is that in the history of human civilization for five thousand years, it was blank for four thousand years, and it was not until the 9th century AD that a Kievan Rus' state was established. If this country is considered to be the beginning of Ukraine, Russia will continue to push back to the 14th century, when its history was just beginning, moscow was a small principality under the khanate of Chincha, which emerged under the rule of the Mongols, and later unified the Rus' principalities, and this year, in 1533 AD.
In other words, the formation of a unified Russian state is less than 500 years.
Mongol rule cast an indelible shadow over the Rus', and the unified Rus' state, deeply inland on three sides and backed by the Arctic ice sheet on one side, was essentially a landlocked country except for a warm water outlet in the Barents Sea that could not be used at the time. Surrounded by no mountains and rivers, the Mongol-Tatar Khanates were under great pressure to the east, the aggressive Polish-Lithuanian United Kingdom to the west, the ambitious Ottoman Turks to the south, and the Then Nordic power, Sweden, to the north, which controlled the outlet to the Baltic Sea and was highly vulnerable to attack.
In a short period of time, Russia experienced the humiliation of Moscow being burned by the Tatars and the monarch being embraced by the Poles.
A dispassionate examination of Russia's early history reveals that the country was only a weak landlocked country and, most importantly, that it was so vulnerable and so poorly defended that it could be imagined that these marquee-like aggressors had brought unimaginable psychological shadows to the Rus' state and nation.
Russia's home country, the Byzantine Empire
So its subsequent expansion, at least in the beginning, was not out of ambition, but — they really needed security.
Insecurity deeply affects Russians, which is a very important reason.
Another factor is that Russia was very poor and backward in the early days and was deeply inland. However, the historical process interrupted by the Mongols was a psychological obstacle that they could never pass, and they could remember that before the rule of the Golden Horde, the Rus' had accepted the suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire, which had long since collapsed by 1533.
He was the successor of the Eastern Romans, and the reconquest of Constantinople, and the need to go out and gain access to the sea were the second factor in Russia's expansion.
To be honest, the ambitions of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were indeed great. The ambitions of the Russian state have also grown in the subsequent history. But the logic of Russian expansion is not just ambition, on the contrary, ambition is secondary, and the sense of security and the sense of access to the sea are still deeply rooted in the bones of russians.
When it comes to the Russians' outlet complex, it is actually not ambitious to a greater extent, after all, Peter the Great's will has little operability. The attachment to the sea is still essentially a security concern – that is, if Russia does not obtain the sea, it is in danger of being resealed inland, and if it is blocked inland, it will fall into a situation where there is no danger to defend around.
Next, let's take a look at russia's expansion for hundreds of years, what it has expanded, and how it has expanded.
In the time of Ivan IV, the Russian state was often invaded and attacked by the Mongol Tatar khanates such as the Kazan Khanate, the Astrakhan Khanate, the Nogai Khanate and the Crimean Khanate, so the expansion of this period was basically for security reasons, and these Khanates left over from the Mongol Western Expedition had to be eliminated one by one to ensure the survival of the Rus' nation. This is the first stage.
In the second stage, colonial exploration of Siberia. This stage is basically simple, except for a Siberian khanate with a population of only 200,000, which is basically a no-man's land along the way, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Expansion on the Western Front was much less intense and occupied far less territory. If we follow the traditional Eurasian dividing line, that is, east of the Don-Azov line, Russia can be said to have fought hundreds of years of war with europeans, and not a single inch of European land has been obtained.
World War II was the worst invasion in Russian history
Russia's western part still lacks natural borders, and the land and sea routes are blocked by many countries. The invasions of Napoleon and Hitler both cost Russia almost annihilation, and each time relied on the extremely cold weather to force the enemy away, never effectively defending the enemy from the country's gate, so Russia's thinking was: to attack instead of defend, the weak to strengthen themselves, relying on continuous territorial expansion to expand the buffer zone until it reaches the place where there are mountains.
This is the true logic of Russia's expansion, and unlike other empires that are purely for wine and women, Russia's expansion has a tragic connotation.
To be honest, every time Russia expands, it is this statement. For example, to exchange twice as much land for Finland, the reason is to ensure the safety of Leningrad. Of course, others do not want to see it, thinking that this is a blackmail of strong words.
But then again, from the Finnish point of view, this is indeed blackmail, but from the Russian point of view, it is really not for the sake of ambition, but still responds to the sentence: they really need security.
This logic, including the establishment of the Eastern Front and the demand for the independence of Outer Mongolia. Its international practice is really unflattering, each time it attracts more enemies, and in order to face these more enemies, it has to carry out a new round of offensive and defensive, and over time, this has become a paradox of the Russian state, and gradually it has changed its taste.
Stalin's Eastern Front
Russia, then, demanded expansion to its natural borders in the west, but never crossed Poland. Poland, on the other hand, is a great plain, so Russia has been in an aggressive offensive in Europe. But in fact, this kind of offensive is more of a bluff, and for hundreds of years, the russian national territorial border line not only did not eat Poland, but retreated hundreds of kilometers to the east, and Moscow also changed back to the capital of the border.
Whenever the European direction was frustrated, Russia turned to the south, first to the southwest of the Near East began to expand, trying to recover Constantinople, but Constantinople was always out of reach, the European powers in order to prevent Russia from taking this strategic place, at the expense of jointly supporting the Ottoman Empire, as a result, Tsar Nicholas I was forced to commit suicide, Russia did not take Constantinople in the end. And the great powers controlled this place in order to gain the ambition of world domination, and for Russia this ambition was certainly there, but it was incidental—it really wanted to take back the capital of its mother country, Byzantium.
After a setback to the southwest, Russia turned south and began to expand into Central Asia, continuing to occupy the Khanates of Central Asia as far as Afghanistan.
Then there was the Far East, where Russia fought with Japan for the warm water port in the Far East, and the result was well known to the world and will not be repeated here.
To be sure, after acquiring Central Asia and the Far East, although the sea access was still not satisfied, after all, there was no problem with national security, so the border line of Russia in these places was basically fixed, and there was no further unlimited expansion until the Khrushchev period.
But the security of Europe was not yet complete, so Russia turned around and returned to the west, taking the opportunity of participating in the First World War, trying to completely defeat the German-Austrian Group and the Ottoman Empire, and solve the security problems in the west once and for all, the result was beyond the limits of national strength, and the Russian Empire collapsed.
Europe before World War I
It can be seen that since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has basically expanded in the order of Europe - the Near East - Central Asia - far east, or the Baltic Sea - Black Sea - Caucasus - Central Asia - Far East, basically safe in the East, but in the West it was defeated, and finally in the uprising of the three Baltic states and the German attack on the Baltic coast, the country began to disintegrate and finally fell apart.
The Soviet period was actually an accelerated deduction of this process. Still for the sake of security, Stalin established the Eastern Front, the Battle of the Second World War, there was Hitler, a madman, who wanted to fight, who wanted to fight, who did not want to fight, the Red Army chased out of the border until it occupied Berlin, it was also a blessing in disguise, the Soviet Union achieved a basically satisfactory buffer of spheres of influence in Europe, and the basic logic of the Cold War to continue in Europe was that the Russians really felt safe in Europe, so there was no need to launch a hot war in Europe.
The Soviet Union (including Finland) was the largest sphere of influence of the Soviet Union
But at this time, because of the blessing of misfortune at the same time because of the misfortune, the Soviet Union achieved security in Europe, encountered insecurity in the world, the territory in Europe was too large to lead to the joint encirclement of Western countries, the Soviet Union's security problems were increasingly prominent in Asia, which was already satisfied, in order to break the blockade, the Soviet Union tested in Turkey and Iran after World War II, supported the Kurds, turned to Central Asia and the Far East after failure, clashed with China, and invaded Afghanistan in 1979, trying to support the pro-Soviet regime. Opening the mouth of the Indian Ocean to break the Western blockade, but once again overdrawing the national strength, in 1989, the Soviet Union, which had withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan, returned to Europe from Asia, and at the beginning of the Baltic Sea, the Three Polish States once again played the role of Russia's gravedigger.
It is conceivable that even if Russia were to revive in the future, its borders would still be unlikely to exceed the sphere of influence of 1947, which was the largest sphere of influence obtained by Russia's expansion, and it is also inherently logical.
In the Soviet-German war, pan-Slavism played a role. If you look closely at the Soviet sphere of influence, you will find that it is very similar to the distribution area of the Slavs, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, all Slavic countries, as for Hungary, Romania, Albania and East Germany, including Finland, are either in the middle of these Slavic countries or close to these countries, in fact, they all have more or less Slavic elements, including East Germany. As West German Chancellor Adenauer said half-jokingly: "Peel off a Prussian and inside is a Slav who has forgotten whose ancestors were." "Thus, elsewhere in Europe, on the territory of the Germans and Latins west of Vienna, it was a place that Russia could never have acquired.
The distribution map of the Slavs is highly consistent with the sphere of influence of the Soviet And Eastern Bloc
Berlin and Vienna are where a hidden boundary line is located, and Metternich famously said: "Out of the walls of Vienna is Asia." West Germany during the Cold War also considered Berlin to be on the threshold of Asia, when in fact Berlin joined the Holy Roman Empire only later.
Therefore, the law of Russian expansion is: based on security and access to the sea, expand the buffer zone for the country and find access to the sea, other empires expand everything for plunder, and the Russian Empire expands everything for security.
Now, this line of thinking of attacking instead of defending has proved unsuccessful, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia fell back hundreds of years overnight, guarding only its headquarters in 1533 and an uninhabited Siberia.
So apart from Siberia, there is basically only a little coastline along the Baltic Sea coast and the autonomous republics of the North Caucasus, as for Crimea, it is not expansion, it is a stop loss, Russia has taken Crimea, to ensure that not all of Ukraine will be thrown into the arms of the West, at least to preserve Crimea and Donbass, of course, Dnieper Ukraine is impossible to take back.
So where can Russia expand in the future, assuming that it is strong again? Except for the sphere of influence of 1947, the only areas that could have potential were Asia Minor, Cyprus and Greece, because this was the home of the Byzantine Empire, and the rest of the places were unlikely.
So where does Russia have to expand to basically achieve the sense of security it has not acquired for centuries? Taking the sphere of influence of 1947 as the basic disk, we may wish to assume that in addition to the Byzantine homeland mentioned above, Russia will also take all of Germany, where Germany is based on the standards of the Second German Empire, and the three Scandinavian countries and the three Low Countries, and even Switzerland, leaving europe with only Latin Europe and the British Isles hanging overseas, taking Hokkaido in the Far East, and turning the north of the Great Wall of China into Yellow Russia, or stripping it off as a buffer zone, and continuing to expand its territory south of the South Caucasus. Use Iran and Afghanistan as buffer states and expand their sphere of influence in the Arctic. In this way, perhaps Russia will be safe. Since there will not be a great power of its own power on The Eurasian continent, especially in Europe, Russia, which has gained Northern Europe and the Netherlands, will no longer be effectively blockaded.
Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Slavic Empire
However, this is not possible. Even if Central Asia and the Far East remained the same, it would not be possible to expand in Europe with all its might. And then again, Russia has a vast Siberia, which is already much larger than the average country, and if it were not for such blind expansion, it would not have made too many enemies and invited encirclement, but it just couldn't think of it. It can only be said that this is because the country was overly feared after more than two hundred years of Domination by the Tatars, and if the Soviet Union had had less chauvinism and hegemony in the post-World War II great powers and made extensive friendships with the Asian countries in the south, then in the case of the satisfaction of the European buffer zone, there would be no need to launch an Afghan war and world expansion, and perhaps there would be no tragedy of national disintegration. But who can blame all this? Can only sigh in the empty space.