In my work as a professional explainer of Russia, I routinely have to lay out how Moscow sees itself and the world around it to audiences at higher military educational establishments, like for instance NATO Defense College or the UK’s own Joint Services Command and Staff College. For almost a decade I’ve been using in those lectures a slide showing simply an image of a children’s wall map of Russia that’s on sale in Moscow. The map is called Karta nashey Rodiny – “Map of Our Motherland“. And the striking thing about it – and the reason why it is such a useful teaching point – is that it is completely unrecognisable from the political map of Russia that we have taken for granted for the 30 years since the end of the USSR. Instead of showing the borders of Russia as we know it today, it shows the “motherland” extending to the boundaries of the former Russian Empire, and including not only the other countries of the so-called Slavic triune – Ukraine and Belarus – but also Moscow’s former dominions in Central Asia and the Baltic states.
That a map like that is on sale at all – and remains so, indicating that at least somebody is buying it – speaks of a mental geography in Russia that is markedly different from what is often assumed outside the country. For many Russians, including the youngest generation who have been brought up on propaganda devices like this map, the current official borders of Russia are incorrect and unnatural. Instead, it is Russia’s normal and rightful role to exert power over a far wider domain.
Photo: Kusurija / Wikimedia Commons
It’s that attitude that leads to Russians abroad in states that once were part of the Soviet Union adopting a colonialist attitude, to the bemusement and disgust of locals who have been independent for three decades. And, tragically, it is the assumptions that lie behind it that led to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In justifying and explaining the reasons for the invasion, President Putin referred specifically to decisions by the Bolsheviks in the earliest days of the USSR. The establishment of the constituent republics of the union, broadly along ethnic lines, was, Putin holds, a mistake – and one that led to the entirely unnatural creation of the sovereign states that now surround Russia. The war on Ukraine is an attempt to correct that historical mistake, and bring at least one of those wayward nations and peoples back under Moscow’s rule.
Of course, historical “corrections” like that are only a one-way process. Many in Russia would laugh scornfully if they heard a suggestion that the same principle could be applied to revise the status of Karelia or Kaliningrad, or – further back in history – the territories of the Russian Far East. And the assumption of Russian privilege over its neighbours is prevalent even among educated, internationalised Russians. There is a maxim among students of Russian society and politics that a Russian liberal’s views are only liberal as far as the borders of Ukraine. Even Russians who might be opposed to Putin, and inclined towards democratic ideals, do not as a result necessarily sympathise with the idea that Ukraine can possibly be a sovereign independent nation that can determine its own future.
In fact, borders are an enduring security preoccupation for Moscow, and a component of a self-perpetuating cycle driving Russia to attack its neighbours. The old Russian joke goes that the only secure border is one with a Russian soldier standing on both sides of it. And that principle has found practical application throughout Russia’s history of expansion, dealing with the hostility that Russia’s aggressive expansion causes by expanding still further, in order to control as much territory as possible and neutralise threats by pushing them further away.
Ironically, today Russia’s claimed “security concerns” would be resolved by the country remaining within its internationally recognised 1991 borders. Neighbours have always respected these borders; it is only Russia that has not.
Nevertheless Russia still believes that the small states around its periphery should by rights be governed from Moscow. Since Western states believe instead that they are countries in their own right, and entitled to determine their own foreign and security policy and their own future, this leads to a fundamental clash of world views that lies at the root of the long-term confrontation between Russia and the West. Ukraine is the tragic victim of this confrontation finally coming to a head.
Photo: Petras Malukas / AFP / Lehtikuva
The unfortunate conclusion from long-term observation of Russia is that this attitude towards Russia’s borders will persist for as long as its assumption of entitlement to Empire does. And that, it has long been clear, will persist unless and until Russia some suffers some kind of strategic reverse – a clear, unambiguous and undeniable defeat that sets the limits of Russian power. A defeat of this kind has been an essential ingredient in the historical path of all former empires – including the British, the French, the Portuguese, the Dutch and more. In each case, it was only strategic shock that led to a national re-appraisal of the country’s status and role in the world.
What this means is that there is yet another imperative for supporting Ukraine to the maximum extent possible to eject its Russian invaders. By doing so, Kyiv and its coalition of western backers will not only preserve Ukraine, but also start the long, hard process of change for Russia itself – and thus lay the foundations for an eventual future Europe which is greatly more secure, because its one and only hard security threat has been finally resolved.
Writer
Keir Giles is a Senior Consulting Fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Programme of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London. He is also a director of the Conflict Studies Research Centre, a group of subject matter experts in Eurasian security, based in Northamptonshire, UK. Giles is the author of ”Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West” (Brookings, January 2019), an examination of the persistent factors causing relations with Russia to fall into crisis. His latest book, ”Russia’s War on Everybody” (Bloomsbury, 2022) examines the human impact of Russia’s covert warfare waged against the West.
