russia’s federation is a lie

The Russian Federation is a post Soviet invention, a re-titling of the ‘Soviet Socialist Republics’ that the Bolsheviks created after the end of the civil war in 1922/3 and the peace signed with newly independent Poland. They had thrashed the Red Army after Poland was established following the defeat of Germany in 1918 and the treaty of Versailles, signed exactly five years to the day of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand’s assassination on June 28 1919, formerly gave Poland independence.

The treaty recognized an independent Finland, which had been created by the treaty of Brest-Litovsk between a victorious Germany and the new Bolshevik government in Moscow in January 1918, along with recognition of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as independent states. Ukraine was pretty much occupied by the Germans but semi-autonomous for a few months. When Germany surrendered, it was forced to evacuate all of the occupied East. That allowed Russia to retake Ukraine.

It was the post WW1 borders of Russia – that they really had no say over because they were too weak to do anything about it at the time, that Stalin was so keen to revise with Hitler in the 1939 Non-Agression Pact signed on 23rd August that year, that allowed Germany to attack Poland and the Second World War to begin.

In that deals secret protocols, Russia and Germany cut up Poland – Stalin got back the land he’d lost to the Poles in 1922. He also got the go ahead to invade the three Baltic states which he did in 1940. At the same time as try to bully Finland out of territory which led to a war (The Winter War of 1939-40) that was a travesty for Russia but they ultimately got what they wanted. The Finns didn’t forget it and joined Germany in 1941 when they attacked Russia. Even then, the Russians in 1944 were not willing to invade Finland and they negotiated a settlement that has held to this day.

This was not the only part of the deal with Hitler. What is now modern Moldova was then known as Bessarabia. It was given to the Romanians in 1919 as part of the Versailles peace deal, but Germany coerced the Romanians into giving it to the Russians in 1940.

After WW2 the Russians made sure they got all of this territory back, which they took by military force. There was no general treaty of peace, so the occupied East was set up how the Russians wanted it. It remained that way until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia’s conquests in Europe took centuries – it was originally established as a Moscow-based entity and even in 1490 was barely a twentieth of the size it is today. Everything west of Moscow was in effect a military conquest, some of it changing hands over the centuries, so many times you can barely keep count. Wars with Poland-Lithuania (they were one nation), wars with Sweden, with the Ottomans, the Austro-Hungarians, the Prussians over the centuries drove the borders westward. None of it was genuinely Russian. To this day ‘Muscovy’ was and is the centre of Russia proper.

When Moscow and Beijing go on as they do now that the West is some great colonial enemy, both have expanded their empire’s on land at the expense of other nations.

In the late 1700’s and for most of the 1800’s, Russian Imperialism ran riot over Northern and Central/South Asia. They pushed into the Caucasus mountains and conquered Dagestan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia as we know them now. Georgia and Armenia were both ancient kingdoms, the Armenians resisted the Roman and Persian empires in their day.

The Russians punched their way through what is now modern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – not one of which had the slightest cultural, linguistic or religious sentiment as their new colonial masters.

Russian swept up the Mongol and Tartar populations of the high arctic and Siberia, even settling in Alaska which they were forced to sell to United States because they were nearly bankrupt from endless wars and expansion.

At one time in the 1732-42’s the Russians even controlled the Caspian Sea coast of Iran. They constantly struggled with the British over influence there, and in Afghanistan especially. When in 1902 Britain allied itself with a rapidly emerging Japan the Russians were incensed, seeing it as just another British attempt to block their expansion in Asia, not that there was much left to expand into at this point.

Russia’s empire eastward outside of Moscow is basically a colonial land empire that was deliberately broken up into Soviet Socialist Republics, that conformed to an easier way of managing and controlling them, frequently deliberately detached from their Czarist administrations so that ethnic and cultural identities could be more easily crushed and eradicated and Russian language and culture superimposed upon them.

Bizarrely, Stalin, who was a Georgian by birth and upbringing saw no issue with this. Entire cultures were mass deported and resettled – German Teutons from the North Caucusus, Circassians, Crimean Tartars, the list just went on and on. Tens of thousands at a time were force marched across vast tracts of Russian steppes in winter or the heat of summer and dumped in the middle of nowhere, the survivors told to get on with it. And we all know how the Holodomor was used to kill the Ukrainians in a deliberate genocide.

It would be all the more horrific if Stalin and his mass extinction campaigns were just him. Germany had Hitler, Russia had Stalin. Yet the problem with Russia is none of this was new. It was just a continuation of decades of oppressing the Poles (who were mostly under Russian occupation until 1914-15 and treated appallingly), and just about any other minority inside its conquered empire. ‘Russification”, the compelling of other cultures to bend to and accept Russian first and foremost as the the first stage, then eventually educate the follow on generations into being Russian, it was just a routine state practice. Just as launching state sponsored pogroms against Jews was repeatedly used by the Czars to distract disruptive populations and give then an enemy to fight.

The collapse of the Soviet Union 1989-91 allowed so many to escape – and now they have no wish to return. Ukraine is in the midst of fighting Vladimir Putin’s new imperialism even now.

So when you hear and see Russia – and Chinese – leaders boasting about their nations and calling us colonizers and occupiers, when you see former African colonies of the western maritime empires bowing to Moscow as some sort of liberator, do not be fooled. Russia is the epitome of the colonial empire that hasn’t entirely collapsed and that has no intention of letting any of its constituent ‘federation’ members to leave, even if they wanted to. It is all a myth, a legend. The European colonial empires have long gone. It’s time Russia’s joined them, from Siberia to Kaliningrad.

The Analyst

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The maps are from Muir’s Historical Atlas published in 1976.