Russia #

Famously, Winston Churchill defined Russia as:

“a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,”

There appears a Western sense of Moscow as the “other”. We do appear threatened.

There are several reasons why Russia differs from the west. The rise of the bourgeois did not eventuate. The reformation failed to penetrate, Industrialism was delayed by almost 200 years.

From about the tenth century, Russia began its expansion east and south. Each of the Romanov Czars prided themselves in growing the empire. Ivan the Terrible conquered much ot the north and east to Siberia and Vladivostok. Peter the Great secured vast areas of the Ukraine. Catherine the Great forced the retreat of the Ottoman Turks from Crimea and along the Black Sea and took Alaska. Later Alexander II sold Alaska to the Americans for 7 million dollars to pay for the Crimean War.

Map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjDjnhOzqIU

More on Czars: https://www.thoughtco.com/most-important-russian-tsars-4145077

By the 1900’s Russia was the largest country in the world stretching from the Baltic sea 6000 miles to the Pacific crossing 11 time zones, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Caspian Sea.

Russian history appears to have a cyclical continuum; every hundred years a new brutal tyrant emerges: Ivan the Terrible (1533), Nicholas I (1825), Stalin, (1924) Putin. (2022)

Another recurring motif is the expansion and tactical contraction of its empire. When times are tough, they give up part of their territory, only to expand again in good times.

Rise of Moscow “In Russia, the Mongols of the Golden Horde ruled Kievan Rus through local princes who paid tribute to them. By assisting the Mongols in collecting these tributes, the insignificant trading outpost of Moscow began to flourish around the turn of the 14th century, becoming a relatively safe place to live, and attracting more wealth and people as a result. The city’s importance was put beyond doubt when the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church transferred there from the town of Vladimir, making it the spiritual capital of Russia.