By Claude Franc (Revue Défense Nationale 2015/4 N° 779)
Translated By Mohamed SAKHRI
The constant policy pursued by Russia has involved, first, reaching the seas from Moscow, and then securing year-round access to ice-free seas. This has translated into expansion to the south and east along four axes: Finland, the Black Sea, Central Asia, and the Far East. Russian history resembles that of a continuous colonization.
The “Russian messianism,” which allowed an empire to gradually develop from the small principality of Moscow, emerged after Alexander Nevski’s victory over the Teutonic Knights in 1242. It was only under the reign of Ivan the Terrible, crowned as tsar in 1547, that the Russian state reached the Caspian Sea and made contact with the Ottoman power for the first time. However, it was with Peter the Great, starting in 1682, that Russia entered the system of powers: the first ports were conquered on the Baltic, and Russia established itself in the Baltic regions, Pomerania, and Finland. Most importantly, with the victory at Poltava over the Swedes in 1709, Sweden was forced to retreat from continental Europe, allowing Russia to position itself as a major power in Northern Europe. Peter founded Saint Petersburg as a challenge to the Swedes. In Asia, Russia extended to the Pacific, colonized Siberia, and to the south, annexed the western and southern coasts of the Caspian Sea.
Catherine II would continue this imperialist program: she dismembered Poland, attacked Turkey, and positioned herself as the “protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire.” Having secured free navigation rights in the Black Sea, she established the port of Odessa. In 1809, Finland came under Russian control. At the Congress of Vienna, Alexander did not align with the European balance of power favored by Metternich, affirming his control over Poland. Beginning with the Greek War of Independence, Russia became the champion of the emancipation of Balkan countries from Ottoman rule, seeking to secure access to the Mediterranean by controlling the Dardanelles. A significant setback occurred in 1856, after the Crimean War, when Russia lost access to the Straits. England triumphed.
Prior to this, Russia had supported the Germanic world: during the events of 1848, it saved Austria by sending military means to help crush the Hungarian revolution; from 1863 to 1870, this political line continued, as Russia allowed Bismarck to realize German unification around Prussia. Then, despite the Reassurance Treaty with Berlin, a shift in alliances took place: in 1875, Russia deterred Germany from attacking France before formally signing an agreement with Paris in 1893. In 1877, during a new war with the Ottoman Empire, Moscow seized Bessarabia and part of Armenia, and intervened in 1879 in Tajikistan, capturing the Zulficar Pass, a natural passage between Persia, Afghanistan, and Russia. London retaliated in the framework of the “Great Game” in Afghanistan by placing one of their allies on the throne in Kabul: Russian progress towards the Indian Ocean was halted, and a “buffer” state protected India from the Russian threat.
Skillfully balancing its influence, Russia then turned to the Far East: after founding the port of Vladivostok in 1860 and seizing the northern half of Sakhalin Island, Russia captured Port Arthur in 1898 and, two years later, began its penetration into Manchuria. A confrontation with Japan became inevitable, culminating in the disaster of Tsushima: Russia abandoned Port Arthur and Sakhalin and was effectively excluded from the division of China and sidelined in Korea by Japan. This represented a tremendous humiliation, and naturally, the Russian pendulum swung back towards the Balkans in Europe. In 1912, the Balkan Alliance was sponsored by Russia, and following the events of the Balkan Wars—where Russia was the natural ally of Serbia and Bulgaria, competing over Macedonia—the Sublime Porte was expelled from Europe. In 1914, the spark of war came from the Balkans, and Russia gained recognition from France for the legitimacy of its claims on the Straits.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed with Germany after the October Revolution, was a disaster for Moscow: Russia lost the Baltic states, Poland, and a significant portion of Belarus, while Finland and Ukraine achieved independence. On balance, at its inception, Soviet Russia was smaller than Muscovy during Ivan the Terrible’s reign: it found itself cut off from the Baltic, isolated from Central Europe by Poland, and pushed further into the continent. In the euphoria following the Revolution in 1918, the Soviet government declared an end to any annexationist policy and proclaimed, according to the right of peoples to self-determination, the possibility for the peoples of the Empire to emancipate: Georgia became independent, the British and Americans landed in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, and the French in Odessa. Japan occupied Vladivostok. The following year, the Kremlin reversed course, and by 1921, Georgia’s independence was brutally crushed, and following this example, Ukraine was reluctantly reintegrated into Moscow’s fold. Simultaneously, Soviet Russia reestablished its presence in Afghanistan. The success of the civil war led to the withdrawal of all Western allied contingents.
Before refocusing on the Far East to secure its European “rear,” threatened by Poland, Moscow signed an agreement with Weimar Germany in Rapallo on April 16, 1922. That same year, Vladivostok was reoccupied, and the Japanese were expelled from Siberia. To allow its fleet to transition from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific, a large canal was constructed from the White Sea. The port of Murmansk, which provided Moscow direct access to the Barents Sea, gained significant importance.
Having achieved a “strategic flawless” position by signing a non-aggression treaty with Berlin in August 1939, Stalin recognized that he was merely delaying the moment of armed confrontation with the Reich. Having reclaimed the Belarusian part of Poland, the Karelia isthmus from Finland, and subsequently captured the Baltic states and Bessarabia in 1940, Stalin erased the disastrous conditions of Brest-Litovsk.
In 1945, the Soviet Union shared the victory with the United States. In the Far East, it regained all territories lost in 1945; in Europe, it annexed eastern Poland (in accordance with the German-Soviet treaty of 1939), northern East Prussia, the Baltic states, sub-Carpathian Ukraine, Bessarabia (Moldova), and northern Bukovina. Its armies occupied a vast protective glacis including the remainder of Poland, Germany between the Elbe and Oder Rivers, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, part of Austria, and all of the Balkans except Greece. In 1948, Tito’s schism marked the halt of Soviet expansion westward. Stabilized in Europe, the Soviet Union, resuming the tradition of old Russia, redirected its efforts to the Far East: it supported Chinese and Korean communists, as well as the Viet Minh.
Stalin’s successors, Khrushchev and Brezhnev, continued this traditional Russian policy: following a schism with Mao’s China, Moscow worked to break the emerging axis between Beijing, Tokyo, and Washington, while establishing solid support in the region with Hanoi and Phnom Penh. At the same time, under the guise of supporting Arab countries fighting against Israel, the Soviet Union gained bases in the Eastern Mediterranean.
And today? Putin is positioned precisely in line with the same political trajectory as his predecessors: just as Stalin sought to erase the shame of Brest-Litovsk, he strives to restore the power of the former Soviet Union, diminished by the disintegration of the Empire. This explains actions in Chechnya, in South Ossetia yesterday, and in Ukraine today. Outside the sphere of the former Empire, his policy still follows that of his predecessors: his alliance with the regime in Damascus holds significance primarily through the access to the port of Tartous. Thus, regardless of the regime—whether tsars from Peter the Great to Nicholas II, Soviet leaders, or today’s Russian leaders—there is a remarkable continuity in their actions.
Notes
[1] Russian transcription of the Latin “caesar.”
[2] But not through London, which remains vehemently opposed and advocates for their internationalization.
[3] With Murmansk, Sevastopol, and Vladivostok, the Soviet navy acquired a global operational capacity.
[4] Just as Hitler had erased the consequences of Versailles.
