Almost all children are familiar with the story of Goldilocks. The little girl finds herself in a bear den and, through trial and error, finds everything “just right.”
How fortuitous then that the nation eponymous with the bear today has found itself in the same position throughout its history.
Here, one can attempt to explain how Russia, more specifically the Russian security establishment, perceives itself and its position relative to the world.
Like one has done before for this publication, the best beginning point is to understand the history.
Kyiv: The Mother of all Russian Cities
In the late 9th century, with the Vikings laying roots throughout Europe, a mediaeval polity emerged beyond the Pripyat marshes. The Scandinavian “Varangian” prince named Rurik, with the Finns and Slavs allegedly inviting him to rule over them, established a royal family that will feature through much of our accounting of Russian history.
In this period, the family ruled over the Kievan Rus, whose borders were expanded by Rurik’s descendants, and it was a period of development for the Slavic peoples of the region as the state, owing to its position on the Eurasian plain, became an important trade hub.
Eventually, however, the state fell to infighting and fragmented into competing principalities, beginning an age of strife that lasted almost two centuries.
The Golden Horde: Mongol Rule and the Origins of Tsardom
By 1240, the Mongols, under Batu Khan, had conquered and subjugated Russian lands. Having become part of the Golden Horde, the city-states of the region were subject to taxation by Sarai, the capital of the Horde. It was here that Muscovy rose to prominence. Positioned at the crossroads of key trade routes, it benefitted from economic growth and security. Its princes, particularly Ivan I “Kalita,” gained favour with the Golden Horde by serving as tax collectors, allowing them to consolidate power and weaken rival principalities. Over time, Muscovy expanded its territory, defeated the Mongols (Battle of Kulikovo, 1380), and was declared the centre of a unified Russian state under Ivan the Great.
The ensuant monarchs draped themselves in the symbols of imperial majesty and mystique, with Ivan the Terrible aligning the budding empire with Byzantine cultural and religious traditions and establishing the infamous double-headed eagle against a gold field as the flag of the empire.
Beyond that point, Russian leaders pursued almost ceaseless expansion eastward, westward, southward, and northward, almost always in search of a natural border for their empire. In fact, Russia expanded at roughly the rate of two Belgiums a year (~55,000 km²).
Western Invasions
For much of its history, the major contenders of Russia, militarily, were to the East. Russian expansion eastward and south led it to conflict with major powers such as the Ottomans and the Chinese.
Russia’s relations with its western neighbours were more or less stable. For instance, repeatedly partitioning Poland with Prussia. This was not to last, however, as Russia came into conflict with the continental European powers during the Napoleonic Wars, WW1, and later during Operation Barbarossa.
These invasions, however, carried a valuable lesson to the Russian state: the western border of Russia had no natural border.
They had the Pacific to the far east, the vastness of Siberia between that and the Urals, mighty rivers and mountains in the Caucasus, and the Arctic cold to the north. Scandinavian wilderness in the northwest. But the western border’s salient geographical feature was the Eurasian Steppe, flatlands that had been the highway for migration and invasion for ages.
Modern Russia: Prisoners of Geography
The solution for Russia’s western insecurity was found in establishing depth, pushing as deep as possible into Western Europe, such that an invading army would have a long march to the Russian heartlands, by which time the full force of the Motherland could defeat an enemy that was already battered by the vastness of Russia. “The vastness of Russia devours us” is indeed a famous quote from Gerd Von Rundstedt.
The Western buffer of the Russians stretched farther than it ever had in the past in the form of the client states of the Warsaw Pact. Russia was a veritable fortress at this point. Scant surprise then, that upon the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the balkanisation of the USSR into its constituents, Russia is a state that feels insecure.
Eastward expansion of NATO was a concern for Putin since the early days of his rule, with the Americans hoodwinking the Russians at every turn by expanding NATO into regions that they swore were off-limits, effectively encircling Russia.
No state goes to war without a reason, and the current Russo-Ukrainian war cannot be divorced from the undue, unhelpful, and unsustainable American influence in Europe militarily. The entire western border (excluding Belarus) is ringed by NATO powers (the Baltics and Poland) and Ukraine.
Latterly, the Scandinavian expansion of NATO has completed the encirclement.
Russia is no longer a fortress; though vast, it has never been in a worse position in modern times. Small wonder, then, that Putin has begun to bank upon refugees to destabilise the NATO allies and that nuclear rhetoric has begun to fly about.
A new cold war seems afoot in Europe; this time, it seems Russia, reduced to a shell of the former fortress, would be far less prone to calm. The heartland itself is now under threat.
Pax Americana? One wonders….