Russia: The Once And Future Empire Form Pre-History To Putin, by Philip Longworth

This book was published in 2005, and reading it nearly 20 years later is a somewhat strange experience, not least because the book is an unapologetic attempt to whitewash Russia for most of the “black legend” of the past that seek to attack Russia’s leaders over the centuries for their cruelty towards their people. While some aspects of the author’s reasoning appear prescient, at least in part because of the author’s pro-Russian perspective, such as their continued status as a world power in the Putin age, especially with regards to Georgia and its separatist regions, the absolute cruelty that Russia has shown in Ukraine has demonstrated the worst of Russia’s nature as a bully of peoples it considers part of its Near Abroad. The sort of work that the author did in seeking to present the friendly face of Russian Imperialism and trying to explain away the Holodomor and other problems of the past simply do not work when we can see Russia’s behavior with our own eyes against a nation whose only offense is wanting to be free to choose its own path. To the extent that this book is worthwhile, it is in seeing the fundamental factors that have made Russia powerful throughout history, and viewing them as still being in effect even in a period of relative Russian weakness. But make no mistake, any region or people that can be free of Russia’s domination and wants to be deserves to be helped, for the good of the world as a whole. That the author sees Russia’s rule as generally benign and ignores the general negativity of Russian anti-Semitism and Russian cruelty that has existed now for hundreds of years, explaining it away as a problem of Russian geography, suggests a deep moral blindness as well.

This book is between 300 and 350 pages in length, and it begins with illustrations, acknowledgements, and some maps showing Russia’s empire at various points throughout its history. The book begins with a short introduction and then a chapter that discusses the identity of the Russians before their first appearance in history (1). This is followed by a look at the first Russian state of the Kievan Rus (2). After a discussion of how internal weakness in its government led to its fall, there is a discussion of its reincarnation (3) based on its own native strength as well as some unintentional help by the Mongols, which led to the foundation of the Empire of Muscovy under the later Rurikids (4). This is followed by chapters on the first imperial expansion of Muscovy under Ivan IV (5) as well as the crash which followed the disastrous Deluge that followed the extinction of the Rurikid main line (6). This is followed by a discussion of the recovery of Russian strength (7), as well as the breakthrough to the West that Peter the Great made (8). Chapters follow on the glorious expansion of Russia (9) into Siberia, Ukraine, and other places, the Romantic age of empire in the 19th century (10), and the descent to destruction of the Romanov state under the weak rule of Nicholas II (11). This is followed by a discussion of the construction of the juggernaut of the Soviet empire (12), the high tide of Soviet imperialism in the period after World War II (13), an autopsy on the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union (14), and its reinvention under Putin (15), which has sought to bring about a recovery from its post-Cold War nadir. The book ends with a short conclusion, chronology, notes, bibliography, and index.

When one strips away the pro-Russian bias of the author, what remains of this book is still interesting in its subject matter as the author talks about the four times within the last 1200 years or so that Russia has made itself into an empire on fundamentally the same grounds and in largely the same territorial core, suggesting that Russia itself has the demographic strength to be a relatively permanent power on the level of a Germany, a Persia, or a China, or at least as being deserving of being in that sort of conversation, despite periods of weakness and division. The crossroads position of Russia, Russian strengths in its own national character, and its demographic strength even now, when ruled by an effective central government, tends to be a massively powerful imperial core that for various reasons, including security and paranoia, tends to expand to imperial levels readily. From the very beginning of Russia as a state, it already had the strength to make itself recognized among its imperial neighbors, and has always done a good job of seeking to work hard on its reputation with other nations and on its intelligence about those around it, seeking to absorb what makes it stronger. Yet at the same time, the demands on Russia make it an extremely difficult nation to hold together in times of crisis, as there are fissures and cracks and serious economic issues that can readily bring the nation to ruin given its long-term poverty and corruption, to say nothing of its tendency towards rivalries over power among its elite that has occasionally allowed its neighbors and those further afield to take advantage of its moments of weakness. Generally speaking, though, the world is probably a better place when Russia itself is weaker, even if such times have seldom lasted a long time in history thus far.