Nastavak:
Russia’s imperialistic ambitions
The most important idea for Russians from the fall of Byzantium until today is the idea of empire and they think they are an imperial nation with a holy mission to realize. Russian history is an unbroken chain of endless territorial expansion, bloody annexation, suffering and tragedies of conquered ethnic groups. The idea of empire has been always one of the most precious ones in Russian ideological lore and it is this that Russians proudly proclaim to other nations, especially their European and Caucasian neighbors, who had suffered for a long time under the Kremlin’s totalitarian rule.
The history of Russian imperialism began in the sixteenth century. From its very beginning, Russian expansion was steeped in the religious doctrine of the “Third Rome,” which was borrowed from the Byzantine tradition. However, the holy mission to “liberate” Constantinople, the Dardanelles, and the Balkans had to be postponed for the future. All of the Russian state’s aggressive wars of invasion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were against its numerous neighbors – the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, Livonia, the Khanates of Crimea, Kazan, Astrakhan, and the nomadic tribes of Siberia.
The territories which Russia acquired through her imperialistic wars from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century (and during the Soviet period), such as Poland, Baltic States, Central Asia, Caucasus, Crimea and Finland, had no common aspects with the rest of Russian territory. These conquered regions were so different from the Russian authoritarian state in all conceivable aspects such as nationality, culture, traditions, and religion. For that reason, several cases of enforced Russification took place in most of the occupied areas, including the Eastern-Central European ones at the same time as the fact that tribes such as the Uralic and Volga-Finnic peoples were completely assimilated and their cultures disappeared.
It also has to be mentioned that the control of the Polish and Lithuanian lands by the Tsarist Russia (and later by the USSR) always threatened the fragile European balance of power and it proved disastrous for the West on several occasions since the nineteenth century. Poland, the heart of Europe, was not called Antemurale Christianitatis (Bulwark of Christendom) without a reason. The Poles did not only defend the values of the Western civilization from the Ottomans, but also from the Russian Empire’s anti-western holy divine mission (or the USSR’s anti-western mission of global Communist revolution) to expand itself against the Latin heretics and pluralism of the West.
The most important characteristic of the Russian and Soviet imperialism has always been the maximization of territorial expansion for the realization of economic, cultural and political interests as it has been one of the important principles of state policy. Moreover, it is not an exaggeration to say that the despotic states of Tsarist Russia and the USSR were built on the corpses of the non-Russian conquered peoples, who suffered for centuries under the yoke of the Kremlin’s imperialistic domination.
Russian paranoid mentality
Apart from the Russian expansionist agenda, a paranoid “besieged by the West” mentality has characterized the foreign policy and strategic thinking of the Kremlin for centuries. This anti-western dimension of Russia has a deeper layer. We have to keep in mind that Russia’s national identity has historically been shaped in opposition to its traditional military enemies – its European neighbors. The specific root of this phenomenon is linked to Catholicism that was historically perceived by the Russians as an obstacle to their Orthodox Messianic mission.
However, Russia did not only invade, but also was invaded a few times. The Russians saw all foreign invaders – Polish and Lithuanian forces, Napoleon – as hateful symbols of Western civilization that tried to destroy the last bastion of Orthodoxy. The Kremlin’s manipulation efforts of public opinion always try to emphasize those invasions, repeating ad nauseam for decades that the West is plotting to encircle Russia and invade and destroy the Russian “exceptional soul.”
So what is the main objective of Russian deceptive propaganda? It is the method of the aggressor playing the victim by using the classic “the West wants to dismember Russia and control her resources” motto. And such methods are enough to turn the tables by turning the invaders into victims in the eyes of the public. This kind of rhetoric enables effectively the Russian elites to officially justify their aggressive foreign policy by presenting it as defense-through-attack.
Another problem for the West is that Russia has established an image of being a champion of conservative values. Since the West is in decline, where political correctness, ultra-progressivism, unlimited materialism and globalization threaten the moral and traditional values of the Western civilization, Russia follows the steps of militant Islam by taking advantage of the West’s moral decay. To achieve its purposes, Russia seeks to be a great ally for European conservatives and right-wing political parties on issues like defending the values of family and religion against a tide of liberal “pro-gay” progressive way of life without limits.
Clearly, the Kremlin’s ambitious – but unrealistic – aim is to control several European countries, marking an end to American hegemony over Europe and also the end of the dominant power of the Free World. Nevertheless, Russia’s target audience is not only the right-wing fringes of western politics but also people in what was once called the Soviet sphere of influence in the ex-Eastern Bloc, the Middle East and even Africa. Russian academics, diplomats and journalists with the assistance of several dangerous European apologists or fifth columnists have taken an active role, building a powerful coalition of pro-Russian conservative circles. No need to analyze further why these Moscow’s European influential “agents” (who can be found in Central European countries as well) are the Russia’s Trojan Horse into the West.
Ultra-conservative values, international diplomacy, effective propaganda and “information aggression” by Moscow’s great-in-size trolling armies and western fifth columnists with a political or academic voice are apparently the main fields where the Kremlin is exercising its international influence.
Conclusion
Unfortunately for the Free World, Russia is decisively back as a dangerous major global player, glorifying nationalism and militarism that once again threaten peace and stability in Europe. No matter how hard the European apologists of Kremlin try to excuse Russia’s imperialistic foreign policy, History is not on their side; for History tells us that since the sixteenth century, the Tsarist Russia, the USSR and post-Soviet Russia, traditional enemies of the values of democracy and freedom have been responsible for nearly sixty wars of aggression against its neighbors.
In its nature, Russian civilization is anti-western and it is based on antagonism towards foreign civilizations and especially towards values such as democracy, civil liberties, individualism, and humanism. Undoubtedly, Russian identity belongs to a non-western civilization “code” as a successor of the Byzantine Empire. Russia will only be able to move forward and become a successful member of the new world of the twenty-first century by embracing completely western values, thus abandoning Byzantine-Asiatic totalitarianism and the “Third Rome” expansionist ideology. But what price Europe will have to pay for that almost impossible transformation is entirely another matter.
Miltiades Varvounis is a prominent Greek-Polish historian and freelance writer, with a thorough knowledge of the history of Central Europe. He has written several books in Greek and English, including “Jan Sobieski: The King Who Saved Europe.”
Miltiades Varvounis
Gledaju svoje doope, a ne loze se na kojekakve unije, braCtva i ''trece Rimove''.... 
