Beg pardon? 👂
Posted on 08/11/2023 10:09:13 PM PDT by Cronos
To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”
The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.
Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.
...Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.”
...Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”
Russia with 140 million people occupying the largest land mass in the world — rich with natural resources.
With its 11 local times, Russia is one of the countries with the most time zones worldwide.
You keep posting this. No one gives a s***.
Beg pardon? 👂
Is there one thing you can say you like about America? Even I, an outsider can say more positive things about it than you guys can.
Who should feel sorry for whom?
Clueless Canuck.
Why not leave then? Why come here? Go away.
You don’t know anything about Americans.
Go help your leader shave his eyebrows.
From a post in another thread by “Dat”:
“I am actually beginning to think that having leftists in charge is the lesser of two evils”
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4174137/posts?page=60#60
Given those statistics, it should have been able to accomplish a lot more over the last 30 years of post-Soviet independence. Those aren’t accomplishments in and of themselves, or if they are, then they are the result of conquests mostly made up to the 1700s. The Russia as the Soviet Union had roughly 90 million more people and 40% more land. It has been 30 years of decline.
I hate trolls. Especially foreign ones. :-)
“I am actually beginning to think that having leftists in charge is the lesser of two evils”
Good grief. That guy has no business being on FR with that kind of crap. I’ve noticed a lot of the FRUkrainians are left-leaning. I wonder why they don’t hang around on DU? They’d be a lot more welcome there.
Seriously, if you’re going to write a post like this, then why are you even on Free Republic ?
Much more fun to be disruptors on anti-leftist websites such as ours. But as long as management lets them run wild when we’re badly in need of a clean-up...
As a Canadian...
I hate our Prime Minister, I hate every single Member of Parliament, I hate our Senators, I hate our Governor General, I hate every Quebecer (except one), I hate every Liberal, Progressive Conservative, NDP, Green, Bloq, I hate all the stupid women in this country, I hate the entitled Indians, I hate the mass immigration minorities, I hate the French, and I hate the propagandized Boomers, X, Millennials, Y, Z, I hate the Lugenpresse CBC.
I basically hate everyone except Maxime Bernier, and Don Cherry.
Canada has turned into a country with absolutely no redeeming qualities.
Nothing is ever learned, nothing ever improves. An argument that is bad when a leftist makes it, is suddenly good if someone uses the exact same argument to support Trump or Russia. Leftists are bad when they say something racist against whites, but there are numerous comments here about black people that are just plain racist in the old, pre-woke definition of the word.
A stupid person can be dealt with using education, or can be manipulated into not causing harm. A person with malice just doesn't care. Malice is the definition of evil. It is causing suffering in others to derive personal pleasure. I know the internet doesn't bring out the best in people, but this has become ridiculous. It is no longer an issue of convincing people. It is just hoping that they never get power so they don't go on some crazy, murderous bender.
Explains a lot about these Russian barbarians.
Wonder if his socks have lace on them?
Who is the new Yorker we worship?
Have you ever seen the Exorcist?
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