Many Western observers often imagine a future in which, after Putin’s departure, Russia evolves into a more open and cooperative nation. Wouldn’t it be appealing if Russia joined the global community of states that embrace free trade and safe tourism? This vision reflects our own ideals, making it easy to assume that Russia might share them—but history suggests the reality may be far more complex.
A review of Russian history from Tsar Nicholas II to the present reveals a persistent pattern of authoritarian governance. Although Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in 1861 and introduced several liberal reforms, these changes faced strong resistance. Many reforms were ultimately reversed, as they diminished the power of the nobility, provoking significant opposition despite their positive perception in the West.
On March 31, 1881, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in St Petersburg, Russia. His habit was to ride his carriage to a military roll call that day of the week. The route was along the Catherine Canal. An assassin threw a bomb under the horses and it exploded as the carriage rolled over it. The emperor’s carriage was bullet proof, a gift from Napolean III. Alexander exited the damaged carriage uninjured and paused to survey the scene. As he was doing this, a second assassin tossed another bomb at his feet which exploded, later killing him and killing and injuring many others in the vicinity. Afterwards a beautiful cathedral was built on this site called the Cathedral of the Savior on Blood.
Cathedral of the Savior on Blood. Included here only because it is a beautiful image. Image from Wikipedia.
Cathedral of the Savior on Blood. Included here only because it is a beautiful image. Image from Wikipedia. I was awestruck when I visited.
If you end up in Saint Petersburg, which I whole heartedly recommend, this cathedral is well worth a visit. It’s newer and, in my opinion, perhaps even more beautiful than the famous Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow along Red Square,
Following Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication in 1917, a provisional government briefly assumed power before being overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution. The ensuing civil war ended with Bolshevik victory, elevating leaders such as Lenin, Trotsky, and Molotov. In November 1917, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), the Russian Soviet State declared itself a sovereign state.
The revolution triggered widespread unrest, with numerous factions pursuing divergent objectives. The Bolsheviks relied on the Red Army, while the White Army comprised former imperial officers and Ukrainian anarchists opposed Bolshevik control as well. Additionally, thirteen foreign powers—including Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire—intervened against the Bolsheviks.
In 1922, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic ratified a constitution and formally established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), written in Cyrillic as CCCP.
Amid the turmoil of the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia ceded territories previously seized by Germany during World War I. The collapse of the Russian Empire sparked a protracted struggle among various ethnic groups and factions to reclaim land and assert authority. By 1923, the Russian Civil War had concluded.
Let me say that although the western block vigorously opposed the Soviet communism later in the Cold War, the break from monarchy by popular uprising to form the Federative Soviet Republic and later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a remarkable achievement for that part of the world. To transition from a monarchy with serfdom to the USSR in ~60 years was a world-class achievement. The sad part was the rise of Stalinism and cementing in state authoritarianism as well as revolutionary expansion to global communism. Global socialism was an early goal of the Bolshevik leadership. Socialism was interpreted as a precursor to true communism.
So, why can’t they be like us? Because their history and cultural development never included exposure to free markets, private ownership, foreign travel and individual freedoms we in the west are accustomed to today. No Magna Carta setting limits on the power of the monarch and no parliament sharing power with the monarch. Russia did not participate in global travel as western European nations did which led to colonization and the extraction of wealth from their colonies producing gold, silver, spices, salt peter, slaves, etc. The wealth accumulation and theft of colonial resources set the pace for producing vibrant and wealthy countries in Europe, but not in many of the colonies. The American colonies are a famous exception.
Summary-
This summary only scratches the surface of the October Revolution and the subsequent civil war. For further detail, readers are encouraged to consult additional sources. The period was marked by extreme complexity and violence, resulting in an estimated 7–12 million deaths.
All of this Russian/Soviet history is meant to highlight that from the very beginning the Soviet state was born from the fire of violent conflict. The Soviet State prevailed in the end and many Soviet revolutionaries migrated into positions of power in the new USSR. It is difficult to believe that the leadership of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war were left unaffected by this conflict as they moved down the timeline building the USSR. It had to affect how they thought of power and how to keep it. Did this experience set the ball rolling for an centrally controlled authoritarian state? Was the tight control over the state emphasized by the early war experience? It is not just authoritarianism as offices and red tape, but it includes institutionalized paranoia and a lack of reluctance to use imprisonment and execution as tools of the state. The gulag system was built under Stalin. This brutal leader sent millions of people to the gulag system to labor. They weren’t executed outright because the state needed laborers to build the camps and to work on public works projects and build and operate factories. Starting in the 1930s, Stalin began to push for extensive industrialization all over the USSR. Agriculture in particular was industrialized, especially in Ukraine. This was behind the Ukrainian Holodomor of 1932-1933.
Given this history of conflict, authoritarianism, and systemic repression, it is unsurprising that Russia continues to exhibit traits of a closed and deeply security-conscious state,
Note: Not residing in Russia, I cannot grasp the full extent of the events and mood unfolding there. All that remains is to perch on a power pole across the polar cap and try to discern fact from fiction.
>>> Let’s ask a very basic question about today’s Russia. Why can’t Russia Putin play nice? <<<
Like most, I have anxiously watched Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The prevailing Russian narrative is trying to say that the sovereign nation known as Ukraine has historically been a part of Russia or some earlier Russian empire, a view promoted by Putin. Following the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin directed the Bolsheviks to seize the territory now recognized as Ukraine. The goal was to claim territory for the Soviet Union, but also territory that was extremely fertile. Stalin ordered that Ukrainian industry and agriculture were to be collectivized. An independent Ukrainian government was briefly established but just as quickly collapsed. After several years of intense Ukrainian resistance and significant suffering, Lenin conceded and established Soviet Ukraine, enabling its incorporation into the Soviet Union as a constituent republic.
In the current action, with the support of an extensive security apparatus, Vladimir Putin has resolved that what is now Ukraine will be assimilated into a growing Russian empire. The process will methodically transform its Ukrainian identity through Russification, transforming it into southwestern Russia. Ukraine is expected to become an agricultural hub and potentially a strategic forward base for further military operations into Poland the Baltic states, and likely Moldova.
Why does Putin desire Ukraine when there is considerable open land to the east and north? Well, it’s the geography. The land beyond to the north and east of Moscow consists of vast stretches of challenging subarctic taiga and arctic permafrost, much of which is now thawing, making it unsuitable for roads, urban development, agriculture, and industry. In contrast, Ukraine boasts rich, productive farmland with significant annual grain exports. Additionally, along its southern coast, including Crimea, Ukraine possesses the only warm water ports available in the region, other than possibly the Neva River to the north which are vital for commerce and the military.
Historically, western European colonization was driven by the prospect of trade opportunity including raw materials, cheap labor as well as power projection. Like all countries, Russia would like room for its prosperity to grow. It is desirable that agricultural and industrial capacity also rise. However, Russia has learned the hard way the value of having a buffer zone between Moscow and Western Europe. The relative ease with which both Napolean and Hitler crossed the Eastern European territory enroute to Moscow, Leningrad and other cities through greater Russia did not go unnoticed by Stalin. By absorbing the Eastern European territories after WWII, Stalin built a picket fence protecting the Soviet state.
As the Nazi’s Operation Barbarossa was failing and Stalin’s Red Army began pushing the Germans into a westward retreat, the Soviets took advantage of the opportunity to install Soviet political structure in captured Nazi territory like the Baltic states, Eastern Europe and the eastern half of Germany. While Stalin did not share Hitler’s enthusiasm for exterminating Jews, he did act to eliminate preexisting local political structures which included substantial Jewish presence. This meant executions and large-scale banishment of politically unreliable people to the Russian gulag system. Poland was hit particularly hard by both Hitler and Stalin because it was directly between Russia and Germany and had a large Jewish population.
The above map shows the population density of Russia. A substantial fraction of Russians live in the southern and western regions of the country. If you assume that people are living there because it is at least somewhat livable, then the map shows the extent of land poorly suited for habitation.
Map of Russia showing areas that are 90 % populated by ethnic Russians.
Russia has a great deal of acreage but the livable turf is much smaller.
Putin views the world partially from the old cold war perspective. It’s Russia against the aggressive, corrupt and immoral west, but without the fever dream of a Soviet-style socialist world. Putin’s state-controlled media endlessly repeats that the west wants what the Russians have and stokes the fires of fear. For the Soviets, “aggressive, corrupt and immoral” included resistance to Soviet influence.
In my many years of trying to be as informed as possible in many areas in a free and open society, not once have I heard anyone suggest “Gosh, I wish the USA could occupy Russia (or the USSR) as an American territory and take all of their stuff.” Imagine the scope of the folly in stupidity of such an attempt. It is mindbogglingly absurd to believe that one could or would want to do such a thing. Russia is for the Russians. Maybe one day they will hit upon a way to craft a free and open society.
The Soviets were ardent promoters of global socialism. Although not overtly socialist, Putin appears more focused on preserving Russian culture and dominance from across a substantial territorial buffer with the West. He asserts his aim to shield Russia from Western cultural influences and what he perceives as a “belligerent” military stance.
The “belligerent military stance” of the West amounts to NATO responding to Soviet adventurism and their habit of hybrid warfare. They would say the same thing from their perspective, but which side was the more authoritarian?
Historically, Russia has endured invasions by King Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon, and later Hitler. The history of the Kievan Rus from 830 to 1241 is jammed with bloody feuds, wars and invasions. From the Principality of Moscow in 1281 to the end of the Tsardom in 1917, and even beyond into the era of the Soviet Union and into Putin’s time, near continuous conflict has plagued the Russian people. Fortunately, Russia’s northern geography and harsh winters have often played to its advantage, compelling invaders into prolonged conflicts and misery with eventual withdrawal. But not always.
Most nations would like to have global hegemony. Putin is fond of saying that Russia has suffered greatly from American and Western hegemony since WWII and hopes to put an end to it. He has reestablished a Soviet-like security state apparatus with strict media control when he assumed power after the 8 years of Yeltsin’s chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is trying to resume for present day Russia the former Soviet Union’s international status but largely without the manpower and resources of the former adjacent Soviet states.
Source: The Fuller Project. Unexploded cluster bomb in Ukrainian wheatfield.
Like his Soviet predecessors, Putin both envies and worries about overreach of western hegemony and is moving to unseat the West. For that matter, so is China. This is only natural. I believe they resent western influence generally. The English language as the global lingua franca and the US dollar as the standard international currency are seen as an annoying affront to their own cultures, sovereignty and political significance. Again, this is only natural. And so is the temptation to use power projection or coercive propaganda to achieve their own hegemony. Casualties would be considered the West’s fault for being in the way.
Both Russia and China have long been critical of the West for internal propaganda purposes but to be fair there has been some valid criticism as well. In truth, the US has done some bone-headed things that we should not be proud of and that hardly serve to highlight our presumed “special” nature. But in fairness, most all cultures can look back at regrettable conduct in their history. Neither Chairman Mao’s China or Stalin’s USSR have sparkling clean histories either. Often the benefit of hindsight doesn’t come into focus until far down the timeline.
The Soviet Union in the person of Joseph Stalin, had brutalized Ukraine previously in an attempt to halt its independence. The Holodomor, meaning death by starvation, of 1932-33 is estimated by scholars to have killed 3.5 to 5 million people. This period of time is marked by forced collectivization of agriculture and industry in the USSR and Ukraine. Collectivization meant taking control of farmland owned by the peasants (especially the Kulaks), many times banishing them to the gulags never to be seen again. Already by 1931, Moscow had taken 42 % of the Ukrainian grain harvest, forcing some locations even to turn over seed for the following harvest. By early 1932 some districts in Ukraine were already experiencing famine. The governing committees in Ukraine in 1932 believed that the 6 million tons of grain demanded by Moscow was unachievable, yet they ratified the plan anyway.
The current brutal murder and devastation of Ukrainian citizens and their infrastructure and agriculture will take a generation or more to repair even if Russia prevails. Russia has done great damage to the Ukrainian environment in addition to the many casualties. Much of the country is cratered, littered with destroyed vehicles and war debris, denuded of vegetation, and rendered deadly by the landmines.
The great equalizer among the leading nations is Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, by virtue of the threat of the use of nuclear weapons for mutual annihilation. Sometimes just called “the bomb”, it was indeed invented by an international cast of scientists and engineers using American uranium and Plutonium and first used in successive releases by the US on Japan near the end of WWII in the Pacific theater. This will darken a stretch of American history indefinitely. Some continue to argue that the bombing was not necessary because Japan was soon to surrender, but it happened, and nothing can change that. However, to our credit, the US has never used it since and has actively sought with other nations to suppress the proliferation of nuclear weapons and remove the hair triggers for their use. That said, the US remains a no-first-use country but will participate in the principle of Mutual Assured Destruction as needed.
A Nuclear Sidebar
Very soon after the discovery of nuclear fission in December, 1938, in Nazi Germany by German-born chemists Hahn and Strassmann, and Austrian-born physicists Meitner and Frisch, the theoretical potential of using the vast energy output of nuclear fission for a bomb was quickly realized. On May 4, 1939, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, H. Von Halban and L. Kowarski in Paris filed for three patents using a fission chain reaction. Two involved power generation and the third was for an atomic bomb, patent No. 445686. Fission was experimentally discovered in Dec. 1938, theoretically explained in January 1939, and a patent for the atomic bomb was filed on May 4, 1939.
The point of this atomic interlude is to highlight the short time interval between the discovery of nuclear fission, conceiving the idea of the atomic bomb and filing for a patent by scientists. On August 2, 1939, a letter written by Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein was sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning that Germany may be developing an atomic bomb. This led to the Manhattan Project and America’s entry into nuclear weaponry.
During and after the Manhattan Project, Stalin’s spies detected and infiltrated the American bomb project and presumably used important stolen information for their own nuclear program. This was an important shortcut benefitting the Soviets greatly. The first Soviet atomic bomb burst so soon after the war shocked the world.
Humans have a gift for the invention and use of weapons. I’m sure it has always been that way for humans. The inclination for war and conquest is also an ancient instinct. It is hard to see how aggression will ever change. In view of this distressing thought, how are we to proceed?
Looking forward
In the short term we in the west must continue to discourage Putin’s expansionist push. A win for Ukraine will set a precedent that might even unseat Putin. It is up to the many good people in Russia to be rid of him. However, Russian citizens will have to struggle against the vast authoritarian political machine in place just like the Poles, East Germans and the other Soviet states had to do in the late 1980’s. The intimidation and resources of the Putin authoritarian state are a huge obstacle.
My guess is that in general, doing the “right thing” in a culture of normalized authoritarianism, bribery and corruption is more difficult to accomplish than doing the “right thing” in a free and open culture where doing the right thing is occasionally practiced and always admired.
To a westerner like me, Russian withdrawal from Ukraine seems like the optimal solution to Russia’s present economic and military race to the bottom. Even in winning, Russia will inherit a devastated region that will require vast resources and a decade to repair, as well as a population of angry and vengeful citizens looking to kill a Russian or two. Then there are all of the land mines to contend with. There is amputation or death by landmines in the future for many unsuspecting people regardless of who wins.
A cessation of hostilities led by Putin is likely to end his career. Thus far, Putin’s invasion has led to over 500,000 Russian casualties, of which there have been over 80,000 Russian fatalities. In a way, this pales in comparison to Stalin’s murderous handiwork, but the comparison is really more like “terrible versus really, really terrible.”
Whether or not Putin is a reanimated Soviet leader or “just” another Tsar isn’t a question to dwell on. He is a creature of his time who happens to be a former Soviet KGB officer but has rejected Marxist/Leninism and rules by a roughly mafia-style kleptocracy behind closed doors in the Moscow Kremlin. For Russian citizens, the rule of thumb is if you stay out of political business, the government will stay out of your business.
Mikhail Gorbachev, 91, last leader of the Soviet Union, has died after a protracted illness. He will be buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow next to his wife Raisa who died in 1999. He has been described by many as “one of the greatest figures of the 20th century” and universally credited with ending the cold war. He is fondly remembered by liberal democracies in the west as a lead figure in the decommissioning of the USSR following a period of glasnost and perestroika. He was reviled by many Russians as having thrust the country into a prolonged reduction in the standard of living.
Gorbachev lamented the deconstruction of his legacy of detente and arms control with the west owing to the leadership of Vladimir Putin. He called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Ukraine and urged peace negotiations.
There was a period in the 1990s after Gorbachev’s resignation where some think Russia could conceivably have taken on a more liberal democratic model of government, but Russia had no tradition of democratic culture or structures so there was nothing from which to build upon. Instead, privatization and wealth were scooped up by a small group of people including those later to be known as the oligarchs under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin completed the dissolution of the Soviet Union that Gorbachev began.
It remains to be seen if the economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the west will have even a smidgen of effect on Putin. Western sanctions on the USSR had substantial effect on the Soviet people back in the cold war days, but the leadership of the USSR lasted for a very long time in this condition. It is naive of us to think that it will be any different with the Putin regime. Look at Iran and North Korea. They have lived under extreme sanctions for a very long time while under the tight control of their leadership and even have developed or will develop nuclear weapons.
One difference today in Russia is the relatively large middle class. They are accustomed to a lifestyle where goods and services are abundant. The smack down of the Russian economy will adversely affect them. But will it make a difference in Putin’s autocratic behavior? In the past, Putin’s response to dissent has been to crack down using the police and security services to enforce draconian law. Putin does not report to the Russian people. Like the old story of boiling the frog, he has cannily built a tight power structure around himself over time.
Will pinching the finances of the oligarchs make the difference? There is already talk of them turning to block chain schemes to park their money. Sanctions mean that money will begin to flow elsewhere. It seems doubtful that Putin would have allowed this kind of Achilles Heel of a powerful class to exist. Some think that the oligarchs report to Putin and not the other way around.
One beneficiary of this situation is thought to be China. It surely hasn’t gone unnoticed in China that the disconnection of western business will provide a great many business opportunities in Russia as well as an expansion of their sphere of influence. All we can do is to watch it unfold.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will bring negatives to his regime. Whether it will bring him down seems unlikely. Historical precedence does not give much hope to the idea that Putin will have a ‘come to Jesus’ moment and cause him to relent.
Russia’s status as a nuclear power worries everyone, of course. Adherence to the strategic doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) between nuclear states has limited warfare to the use of conventional arms for generations. It has been the doctrine of the US to incorporate a fire break between the use of conventional and nuclear arms. Whether this is true for Russia is unclear. They may see nuclear arms as part of a normal escalation in force. This would be most unfortunate if true. How the west would respond to the release of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or against other states of the former Soviet Union is also unclear, but there are surely contingency plans for this eventuality somewhere in the pentagon. I hope.
The unifying affect on the west in responding to Putin’s aggression is encouraging but it may not be enough to stop Putin from further invasions. Let us hope that this madman can be contained.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
