[WMarshal]

the correct title should be “The Russians Have Not Recovered From The Mongol Invasions Of The 13th Century”.

http://geohistory.today/mongol-empire-effects-russia/

[Cronos]

Good link, WMarshal

[x]

Yes, the Mongol conquests and the "Tatar yoke" that followed were responsible for much of what Russia became in later centuries.

But Peter, Catherine, the later tsars, Lenin, and Stalin were all in their own way trying to "modernize" the country.

There was some ambiguity with those later tsars. They didn't want freedom or democracy. But they didn't reject Western technology when they could get it. And they used Western bureaucratic methods to run their autocracy.

The early Communists also saw themselves as trying to bring Russia into the 20th century, though they also rejected western ideas of freedom and representative government.