Russia seeks to restore itself as an empire. The empire must disappear. The war for Ukraine is the empire’s last battle… We often repeat these or similar sentences, leaving ourselves not even a crumb of doubt about the imperial nature of the neighboring state. After all, until 1917, this country was called the Russian Empire, thanks to Peter I, and the Soviet Union left no doubt of its imperial essence.
But if it is an empire – perhaps the last continental empire that cannot disappear – why does it behave so strangely? The largest country in the world by territory, which remains unpopulated in its non-European part for centuries, has been fighting for Avdiivka or Kostiantynivka for four years, spending petro-dollars primarily on war – and this despite the fact that only a few regions remain in Russia that can feed the state.
Alright, it’s Putin’s madness. But even in the 1990s, when there was no money at all, Russia maintained control over Transnistria or Abkhazia with its own army and was ready to resolve the conflict with Ichkeria through a bloody war. And the 1920s of the last century! Devastation, famine, complete catastrophe, yet the Red Army attempts to restore imperial borders, and Bolshevik leaders couldn’t calm down literally until the 1940s, until the annexation of Tuva… Meanwhile, there is no development in the majority of annexed lands – even Russians start talking about a strange empire forced to spend money on what it has plundered.
Russia really is a strange empire. In world history, there are two types of empires. The first is the “settled” empire, which sends troops for foreign resources; this is an eternal story, from Rome to Great Britain. And the second is the nomadic empire, which primarily fights for living space and does not particularly count resources, as they are not its main concern. A striking example of such an empire is the Golden Horde.
Amazing mutation occurred with Moscow. The Moscow principality turned out to be a settled periphery of a nomadic empire and inherited its political culture. The decline of the Golden Horde began precisely when it was unable to expand over new territories and literally started shrinking, disintegrating to the benefit of its own outskirts. The most fortunate and brutal heir was precisely Moscow, whose entire history is one of relentless expansion, which began literally from the first days of the principality’s transformation into an independent state and never ended, literally never. At the same time, it cannot be said that Russians need living space – they cannot even settle the European part of their country, let alone Siberia and the Far East.
And at the same time, it cannot be said that they are waging some meaningful war for resources—everything happens according to the behavior of the beloved Russian fairy tale hero Emelya, who builds his career without leaving his native stove. If oil deposits were found on the captured territory—great, we will live off the oil and build new cannons and tanks to seize even more. But if there aren’t any—well, that’s fine, as the captured territory is “equal to four Frances,” how about that! Everything has to be grand and meaningless—the Tsar Cannon, which never fired, the Tsar Bell, which never rang, the Tsar Territory, which was never populated or developed.
Therefore, I think the whole meaning lies in this unrestrained expansion, not even in the empire. There needs to be movement to mask civilizational impotence, the inability to create anything independently, the need to constantly imitate and steal—and movement allows the stolen to be passed off as one’s own and even teach others from the heights of one’s own “moral authority,” based not on quantity, but on size.
Thus, the communist revolution could indeed initially succeed in Russia, because it matched this idea of expansion and was—not to forget—a “world” revolution, not a Russian one, hence all those Hungarian and Bavarian Soviet republics. Stalin defeated the main ideologist of the “world revolution,” Trotsky, because he soberly assessed the forces of Soviet Russia and realized that there would be enough to restore the old empire under new slogans, but not for the whole world! But when the Soviet Union found itself among the victors in World War II, expansion began that even Trotsky would have applauded—Central Europe, China, half of Korea, Cuba, later Angola with Mozambique, and even Ethiopia!
Everything began to fall apart with Afghanistan, but the reason was not only in the ill-conceived war, but also in the fact that Moscow was simply incapable of developing countries within the new vast sphere of influence or consuming their resources. It led them to degradation and degraded itself—and it was not just about communism as such, but specifically about Russia. It is enough to simply compare the living standards and realization of people in communist Yugoslavia under Marshal Tito with the neighboring countries of the Soviet bloc to understand everything. And I remember very well how in Soviet times many intellectuals dreamed of at least such Yugoslav socialism, not realizing that the main problem was in the essence of Russian expansion, not just in communist ideology.
It would seem that the collapse of the Soviet Union should have been a lesson for the Russians, but it wasn’t! Initially, they simply didn’t notice the collapse and decided they were now living in the CIS. And when they realized that they were still in Russia, they wanted to expand this Russia at least to the borders of that very CIS. Transnistrian “independence” was supported by the Russians literally a few months after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They sent troops and “volunteers” to the Caucasus. Then there was the war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, Ukraine—and at the same time, the Russian man steals toilets in Bucha!
In recent days, amid the unexpected catastrophe in Crimea for Moscow, I have been pondering what they will do if they stop, cannot defeat Ukraine, and are forced to halt their expansion. Are they even capable of stopping if expansion is the essence of their strange and wild civilization? What will they do without expansion when everything they have done so far has been for the sake of expansion? Will they vent their malice on non-Russian peoples, prompting them to attempt to separate and create new opportunities for “gathering lands”? Bicker among themselves? Or will they simply grit their teeth, pretend to understand everything, find themselves a new young Putin, and prepare for a new war and new expansion?
Photo: qha.com.ua
