Thread by @TomJLines

Russians in general have a muddled and dangerous view of their own history, in particular the origin of their nation and state. Until very recently, this view was generally accepted in Britain and almost everywhere. It was unquestioned when I was learning Russian 50 years ago.
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This view elides Russia’s history with that of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was founded by Grand Prince Volodymyr the Great in Kyivan Rus 1,000 years ago. When Kyiv declined, to fall under Lithuanian and Polish rule, Russian Orthodoxy’s HQ moved to Vladimir and then Moscow.

Moscow itself was founded in mid-C12, 150 years after Russian Orthodoxy. At that time there was still a single “Rus” people, based in numerous city states – most importantly, Kyiv in the south and Novgorod in the north. By mediaeval standards, both were rather liberal and open.

But in the 13th century the Mongols arrived (called Tartars in Russia), their “Golden Horde” subjugating what is now central Russia to two centuries of harsh colonial rule from their capital in Kazan on the River Volga. Kyivan Rus escaped this but fell to rulers further west.

The modern Russian state started in Moscow, as “Muscovy.” The Church moved there but Moscow did not inherit much else from Kyiv. Even the language divided, to become Ukrainian in the west (around Kyiv) and Russian in the east (around Moscow).

The peasant people of “Ruthenia” (roughly speaking, modern Ukraine) lived under different conditions, on fertile land and under Roman Catholic rulers. Life in Muscovy’s domain was cold and harsh, and its foreign rulers were singularly oppressive.

There was obviously a major divergence of language, culture and, above all, political tradition. But the conventional view of Russian history sees a straight line from Prince Volodymyr (“Vladimir” in Russian) in Kyiv through Muscovy to the present day. That is very misleading.

The Ukrainians developed as a largely peasant people, subordinate to successive foreign rulers over many centuries after the end of Kyivan Rus. They obviously form a nation but this subordination means that awareness of their history is not highly developed, unlike Russia’s.

As Muscovy grew under Tartar rule, it became the chief agent and collector of taxes and tributes among the Russian city states that were subject to the Golden Horde. It steadily acquired a political and military tradition, learning from both the Mongol and the Byzantine Empires.

That essentially mediaeval tradition has remained in place ever since. It is quite distinct from the rest of Europe as Muscovy (which in the late 16th century assumed the name of Russia) did not go through the Renaissance, the Reformation or the 18th-century Enlightenment.

In reading Russian history, one finds extraordinarily close parallels between modern events and, above all, views of Russia’s place in the world and those of centuries ago. Thus, Putin’s ideas about the Ukraine may seem crazy to outsiders but they replicate those of C15 Muscovy.

A central conception is that the Ukrainians are not a separate nation and have no right to separate statehood from Russia. Many Russians find it difficult to accept even that Ukrainian is a different language from Russian, although the two have limited mutual intelligibility.

Unlike the history of Ukrainian subordination, Muscovy went on to create a huge empire of its own – mainly to the east and south of Moscow, as it was not able to defeat Poland, Lithuania or Sweden to the west. It has been described *by Russians* as a Christian Tartar kingdom.

Russian politics became highly centralised and militaristic, with routine aggression and expansionism, and the most brutal military habits. It still rules one of the largest imperial domains ever, and both Soviet and Putin‘s thinking and military practice sustain this model.

Eventually the archaic Russian Empire collapsed under the pressure of war in early 1917. It immediately fell apart. For example, an independent “Rada” (or parliament) was created in Kyiv separately from the “Duma” in Petrograd as early as March 1917.

The German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires had also disappeared by 1920, while Western Europe’s global maritime empires were dissolved between 1945 and 1975. But later in 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd, and they then set about reconquering Russia’s lands.

Thus, the great empires which dominated the world before 1914 all disappeared except the Russian one, which was *reconstituted* in a different form. Symbolically, even the capital was moved back from Petrograd (Leningrad) to Moscow. Repressive rule from the centre continued.

But this was hidden by calling the Bolsheviks’ war of 1918-21 a Russian Civil War. Here again, the world followed Russian rulers’ own definition of what they were doing. From the point of view of non-Russian parts of the USSR, a Russian War of Reconquest might be a better name.

Now in 2022, the Russian state is again bent on reconquering lands and peoples which first the Russian Empire and then the USSR had ruled. Putin himself is often described as a modern Tsar, and in essence little has changed since Tsar Ivan III set out on the imperial path in C15.

Ukrainians know all this in their blood, even if it is not spelt out in this way. That is why, 30 years after finally achieving control of their territory, they are so determined to hold on to it. They know that if Russia is not vanquished, it will soon come back and try again.

It is not for me, a West European, to say that their reading of this is incorrect. What is most striking is the extraordinary continuity of 850 years of Muscovite history. Its military, imperial reflexes will only end if and when the empire-sized Russian state finally breaks up.