I started my substack with a text "How Russia got so big and so cold"? History of Russian imperial expansion, teaches some important lessons about Russian big strategy. Media focuses too much on its ideological context and too little - on economic one
Let's look at the map of Muscovite expansion. The rise of Muscovy was a chain of hostile takeovers oriented northward - to control the supply of furs from the North and Siberia (orange line). They would push their representatives into local administrations and then impose control
That's how Moscow secured the supply of the main tradable good it could get, the furs, and cut off its main rival of Novgorod from its supply lines. After Novgorod was isolated from its eastern lands, which supplied it with tradable goods, the fall of this republic was determined
Over the centuries, the main concern of Russian power was:
1. Secure the supply lines of tradable goods (natural resources) 2. Secure their export flows to the West
Export was vital for funding technological import. And technological import was vital for the imperial expansion
Consider the map of Oprichnina - the lands Ivan the Terrible took under his direct rule. We see its economic context. Control the routes to Siberia in order to get the natural resources and control the export lines to Europe to ship them off. So he moved his residence to Vologda
Russian expansion northward was motivated by these trade concerns = supply + export of natural resources. The North which controlled both was the richest region of Russia. Consider the number of taxpaying (= free and rich enough) households in 1682-1683. Only the North had cash
But then Russian communication lines were shifting south. Through the internal waterways Russia reached Okhotsk (red) - the first Pacific base from where the expansion to Alaska started in the 18th c. The real rise of the south started circa 1900 with the Trans-Siberian (grey)
That's why construction of Trans-Siberian was so important. Heir apparent personally oversaw and opened it
Tip: If you wanna know priorities of Russian rulers, check what their kids are doing. Nicholas - railways, Stalin's sons - army. And Putin's daughters? High-tech healthcare
These new communication lines reshaped the country - decline of the north, rise of the south. The old capital and trade hub of Siberia Tobolsk dropped. While Novosibirsk which emerged in 1893 as a construction workers' camp emerged as new capital and third largest city in Russia
Only with completion of the Trans-Siberian Russia gets its current configuration, with population being concentrated along the southern border, Canada-style. That hasn't been the case historically. In fact, this shift to the south continues and will reshape Russia even further
Lessons
Russian imperial expansion is dependent on technological import. And import is funded by the export of natural resources. Hence priorities
1. Secure supply lines for these resources 2. Secure their export lines
In this respect Putinomics is no different from Oprichnina
Furthermore. LOTR style battles played less role in Muscovite expansion than we presume and hostile takeovers - far larger. Main wars were won by expanding Muscovite influence within existing institutions through pressure and blackmail. Army was used later, to finish them off
The biggest point of failure in the entire expansion mechanism is the export flow. No export revenue -> no technological import -> no expansion. That's why Russia is aggressive while the fossil fuels are expensive, and docile when they're cheap. Russia is not self-sufficient
And finally. For the past 400 years, Russia has been continuously moving south. Its centre of gravity shifted from the sub-Arctic to Volga. In the future we should expect it to move even further south to the Russian sunbelt on Krasnodar coast. That's already happening. End of🧵
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Wagner march was incredible, unprecedented to the extent most foreigners simply do not understand. Like, yes, Russia had its military coups in the 18th c. But those were the palace coups, all done by the Guards. Purely praetorian business with zero participation of the army.
Yes, there was a Kornilov affair in 1917, but that happened after the coup in capital. In March they overthrew the Tsar, then there was infighting in the capital, including a Bolshevik revolt in July, and only in September part of the army marches to St Petersburg.
Half a year after the coup. Not the same thing
I think the last time anything like that happened was in 1698, when the Musketeers marched on Moscow from the Western border. And then, next time, only in 2023.
(Army leaves the border/battlefield and marches on the capital without a previous praetorian coup in the capital)
As a person from a post-Soviet country, I could not but find the institutions of People’s Republic of China oddly familiar. For every major institution of the Communist Russia, I could find a direct equivalent in Communist China.
With one major exception:
China had no KGB
For a post-Soviet person, that was a shocking realisation. For us, a gigantic, centralised, all-permeating and all powerful state security system appears to be almost a natural phenomenon. The earth. The sky. Force of gravity. KGB
All basic properties of reality we live in
It was hard to come up with any explanation for why the PRC that evolved in a close cooperation with the USSR, that used to be its client state, that emulated its major institutions, failed to copy this seemingly prerequisite (?) institution of state power
Soviet output of armaments was absolutely gargantuan, massive, unbeatable. “Extraordinary by any standard” , it was impossible for any other country to compete with.
From 1975 to 1988, the Soviets produced four times as many ICBMs and SLBMs, twice as many nuclear submarines, five times as many bombers, six times as many SAMs, three times as many tanks and six times as many artillery pieces as the United States.
Impossible to compete with.
Which raises a question:
How could the USSR produce so much?
It is not only that the USSR invested every dime into the military production. It is also that the Soviet industry was designed for the very large volumes of output, and worked the best under these very large volumes
We are releasing our investigation on Roscosmos, covering a nearly exhaustive sample of Russian ICBM producing plants. We have investigated both primary ICBM/SLBM producers in Russia, a major producer of launchers, manufacturers of parts and components.
Each material includes an eclectic collection of sources, ranging from the TV propaganda to public tenders, and from the HR listings to academic dissertations. Combined altogether, they provide a holistic picture of Russian ICBM production base that no single type of source can.
Overall, you can expect tech moguls to have much, much higher level of reasoning abilities compared to the political/administrative class. But this comes at a cost. Their capacities for understanding the Other (masses count as the “Other”) are much poorer.
E.g. Putin is much, much less of an outlier in terms of intelligence compared to Thiel. He is much more average. At the same time, I am positively convinced that Putin understands the masses and works with masses much better.
One problem with that is that too much of the supply chain for drone production is located in China. The thing with drones is that they grew out of toys industry. Cheap plastic & electronic crap that all of a sudden got military significance
That is also the major problem I have with "China supports Russia" argument. China could wreck Ukraine easily, simply obstructing & delaying the drone/drone components shipments. That would be an instant military collapse for Ukraine.
Both Russian and Ukrainian drone industries are totally dependent upon the continuous shipments from China. To a very significant degree, their "production" is assembly from the Chinese components which are non alternative and cannot be substituted with anything else (as cheap).