Russia, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” as Churchill described it, has the largest territory in the world ~ six million square kilometres spread over eleven time zones. Most of it is however flat and open without a natural barrier like a mountain, and hence easy for an army to advance. While the east is protected by the barren Siberian wilderness, Russia had to face numerous invasions from the West through the open North European plains that stretch from the French Atlantic coast right up to St. Petersburg.

Three-fourths of its territory lies in Asia, mostly in mineral-rich Siberia, a harsh and unforgiving landscape of swamp, taiga and frozen soil where hardly anything grows ~ and hosts only 22 per cent of its population. Russia lacks the connectivity infrastructure or manpower to project its power over China in the south across Siberia; in fact, it is the other way around. The Chinese are slowly making inroads into the depopulated wilderness of Siberia and establishing their cultural control over it, which may translate into political control someday.

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Russian history dates back to the 9th century, with a loose federation around Kiev of Eastern Slavic tribes known as Kievian Rus. But by the 13th century, attacks by invading Mongols had forced the fledgling state to relocate to the north-east around Moscow. This Principality of Muscovy, as it was known then, lay in the open flatland vulnerable to easy invasion by the Mongols. Ivan the Great (1480-1505) drove them away, but the only way to protect the Empire was to expand outwards so that the centre, which included the capital and the main cities, could be protected by the sheer distance from the outermost periphery.

His grandson, Ivan the Terrible (1547-1584) – the first Czar – did that precisely, expanding the territory to Urals in the east, Caspian Sea to the south and Arctic Circle to the north. The process of expansion was carried forwards further by the Romanov Czars, and by 1689 when Peter the Great ascended the throne, the Russian empire had expanded far beyond the Urals, incorporating the vast Siberian Plain and Plateau right up to the Pacific coast, till the Bering Sea across North America. It would be virtually impossible for an invading army to stretch its supply lines over thousands of kilometres, both on the East and the West, in order to advance to the capital, as both Napoleon and Hitler would learn at great cost.

Peter the Great (1689-1725) and Catherine the Great (1762-1796) would carry forward this process of expansion and by the 19th century, the Russian empire commanded a vast territory spread over two continents, from the Black Sea, Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea in the south to Bering Sea in the east, and from the Baltic Sea and Carpathian Mountains in the east to Arctic Ocean in the north. Russia now was a major world power no one could ignore. After the Second World War, it emerged as one of the two superpowers.

Vladimir Putin probably had this grandeur in his mind when he described the breakup of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”, when Russia lost its power and influence in the world ~ especially in Eastern Europe, besides losing territories it had controlled for centuries ~ Ukraine, Crimea, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, Lithuania, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the other Central Asian Republics like Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan ~ which are rich sources of oil, gas and other minerals. As George Friedman pointed out, the territory lying between Ukraine and Kazakhstan which is only 300 miles wide is a lifeline for Russia; much of its oil and gas pipeline to Europe passes through this gap. At the centre of the gap is Vologorod, formerly Stalingrad, to protect which a million people had laid down their lives during World War II, so as to prevent the Germans from closing this gap.

Journalist Tim Marshall described an interesting incident at the Urals, when, at the point where Europe becomes Asia, he had asked his Russian cameraman if he was European or Asian. The gentleman replied, “Neither, I am a Russian”. Indeed, a century before Samuel Huntington proposed his theory on clash of civilisations, the historian Nikolay Danilevsky wrote that Russia was primarily a Slavic civilization, distinct from the European. Russia could not be a part of Europe, despite its European culture and institutions, because it is a Eurasian country with a unique destiny.

Putin holds that breakup of the USSR had made Russia one of the largest divided nations in the world. For him, in the post-Soviet era also, Russia remains a territory where ethnic Russians continue to live, needing the support of the Russian Federation. Language determined how diverse peoples were integrated into the Russian nationality ~ the Russian-speaking people, according to Russian understanding, belonged to the Russian nation, and the Russian State has a moral right and obligation to protect them. Thus, a major focus of Russian foreign policy has always been countries or areas with a concentration of Russian-speaking people. Russia also has a law that obligates the Government to protect ethnic Russians. Russia used this pretext to annex Crimea which has 60 per cent of ethnic Russians; actually, it needed Crimea to gain absolute control over Sevastopol. The concept of a “Russian World” is at the core of Putin’s world view and foreign stratagem.

Many academics like Sergey Karaganov believe that Russia should look to the east and south of the Eurasian continent. For historical reasons, in the post-Soviet space, Russia has very few allies in the world, and they are not countries with much geopolitical or economic heft, countries like Cuba, Vietnam, Syria and Libya, leaving aside India and Pakistan. With its neighbours, for historical reasons again, it has complicated relations and disputes. It has a Eurasian Economic Union with Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, but these small countries do not contribute to Russia’s power, Russia remains the core of the Union. Similarly, it has a collective security treaty akin to NATO with the Commonwealth of Independent States which were once part of the USSR ~ but they again do not add to Russia’s power ~ Russia remains the core of this alliance too.

Russia is a continental power, and predominantly a land power. Lacking warm water ports, it has always struggled for access to the sea from the very beginning of its history. For centuries, it has also occupied what the British geographer Halford Mackinder called the “Heartland”. In his acclaimed 1904 thesis “Geographical Pivot of History”, Mackinder postulated that the immense natural resources of Central Asia ~ the ‘Great Pivot’ ~ could be the most powerful geostrategic instrument to propel any state that controls them to become virtually the “Empire of the World’. The Heartland comprised Russia and the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, with the latter constituting core of the Pivot, and hence pivotal to the geopolitical strategy of Russia, the undisputed hegemon of the Heartland through history. Surrounded by mountains and deserts, the Heartland was also impregnable to invasion except through Eastern Europe ~ the only gateway to penetrate it. Russia therefore needed to control East Europe for its security, which is did with ruthless domination during the Soviet era. All the Warsaw Pact countries, save Russia, have since joined NATO. This is what repression does, and Putin should take this important lesson from history.

Heartland was safe but isolated, and isolation also deprived Russia from access to international trade, communication and alliances, whereas the countries surrounding the Heartland, in what the American theorist Nicolas Spykman called the “Rimland”, were located along the coastlines in Europe and Middle- East and Southeast Asia, whose access to the sea had made them develop as great naval and economic powers through trade. They also became challengers to the Heartland. The Rimland area of the EU today is one of the strongest alliances in the world. Of course, much of the drawbacks in commination and transportation that Russia had faced earlier could be overcome in the present century, but some still remain, and one of this is the absence of strong and dependable allies.

As Czar Alexander III had said, “Russia has only two allies, its army, and its navy.” Even the navy is constrained due to the absence of warm water ports, as the Arctic to which it has free access remains frozen for most of the year. That is why it is now increasingly turning towards China – another country with an atrocious record of repression of its own people. The two countries are converging on an increasingly deepening symbiotic relationship ~ China is using Russia to fill gaps in its military and technological capabilities, while Russia sells sophisticated weaponry to China and uses China to mitigate the effects of US sanctions. Together the two are challenging the global US dominance. Both have few allies and both lack the trust of all their people.

Trust is at the heart of all alliances, whether at home or abroad, to build which it needs a big heart, the ability to take criticism and strengthening, not decimating, institutions which alone make a country powerful, rather than military power. As he loses support, Vladimir Putin is growing ever more repressive in order to survive, stifling all opposing voices, which as history teaches, is the surest way to doom. Maybe some in our own country need to learn that lesson too.

(Concluded)