Propagandist Sasha Meets Russia and the Russian imperialism!

June 6, 2024
Russian imperialism includes the policy and ideology of power exerted by Russia, as well as its antecedent states, over other countries and external territories. This includes the conquests of the Russian Empire, the imperial actions of the Soviet Union (as Russia is considered its main successor state), as well as those of the modern Russian Federation.

Russian imperialism has been argued to be different from other European colonial empires due to its empire being overland rather than overseas, which meant that rebellions could be more easily put down, with some lands being reconquered soon after they were lost.

The Russian colonization of Siberia and conquest of its indigenous peoples has been compared to European colonization of the Americas and its natives, with similar negative impacts on the natives and the appropriation of their land.

According to historian Alexander Morrison, "Russia's expansion southwards across the Kazakh steppe into the riverine oases of Turkestan was one of the nineteenth century's most rapid and dramatic examples of imperial conquest."

Following the Swedish defeat in the Finnish War of 1808–1809 and the signing of the Treaty of Fredrikshamn on 17 September 1809, the eastern half of Sweden, the area that then became Finland, was incorporated into the Russian Empire as an autonomous grand duchy. In the late 19th century, the policy of Russification of Finland aimed to limit the special status of the Grand Duchy of Finland and possibly ending its political autonomy and culturally assimilating it. Russification policies were also pursued in Ukraine and Belarus.

Eastwards expansion was followed by the Russian colonization of North America across the Pacific Ocean. Russian promyshlenniki (trappers and hunters) quickly developed the maritime fur trade, which instigated several conflicts between the Aleuts and Russians in the 1760s. By the late 1780s, trade relations had opened with the Tlingits, and in 1799 the Russian-American Company (RAC) was formed in order to monopolize the fur trade, also serving as an imperialist vehicle for the Russification of Alaska Natives.

The Russian Empire also acquired the island of Sakhalin which was turned into one of history's largest prison colonies.

The furthest Russian colonies were in Fort Elizavety and Fort Alexander, Russian forts on the Hawaiian Islands, built in the early 19th century by the Russian-American Company as the result of an alliance with High Chief Kaumualiʻi, as well as in Sagallo, a short-lived Russian settlement established in 1889 on the Gulf of Tadjoura in French Somaliland (modern-day Djibouti). The southernmost settlement established in North America was at Fort Ross, California.

The Soviets pursued internal colonialism in Central Asia. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Joseph Stalin ordered population transfers in the Soviet Union, deporting people (often entire nationalities) to underpopulated remote areas. Transfers from the Caucasus to Central Asia included the Deportation of the Balkars, Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, Deportation of the Crimean Tatars, the Deportation of the Karachays, and the Deportation of the Meskhetian Turks. Many European Soviet citizens and much of Russia's industry were relocated to Kazakhstan during World War II.

In 1939, the USSR entered into the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany that contained a secret protocol that divided Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence. Lithuania was added in a second secret protocol in September 1939.

Contemporary Russian-occupied territories include Transnistria (taken from Moldova); Abkhazia and South Ossetia (taken from Georgia); and some part of the territory of Ukraine. Additionally, the four southernmost Kuril Islands are considered by Japan and several other countries to be occupied by Russia

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