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Soviet Russia always was a country with an unpredictable past.

The United Kingdom had a glorious past and no future.
The Soviet Union had a glorious future and no past.

The waters of oblivion covered the USSR like some kind of Atlantis.

History - 862-2014 - Putin's Version

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that Russia is great and that Ukraine is led by Russia. Putin also believes that Russia is surrounded by enemies, and that Ukraine's attempts to move closer to the United States and Europe are part of a conspiracy by the West. According to a 27 February 2024 article, Putin's version of Russian history is based on the ideas of Russian historian and philosopher Ivan Ilyin about the nations that lead and nations that are led, Putin assigns Ukraine the latter status. Why? Because such an order of things aligns with his personal view of Russia's greatness. Finally, his belief that Russia is encircled by enemies is emboldened due to Ukraine's willingness to escape Russia's influence and move closer to Europe and United States, which Putin sees as a conspiracy crafted by the insidious West.

Vladimir Putin has revised Russian history with the September 2023 release of a new series of high school textbooks. A new textbook — churned out in just four months and touted as the first state effort to unify teaching of the subject since the Soviet era — echoes Kremlin propaganda justifying the war in Ukraine, the latest stage of a drive to shape the worldview of a new generation. The Kremlin sought to weaponize history and cultivate national pride to rally the public. The new textbooks extol the Soviet Union, even under Joseph Stalin — whose image as a brutal dictator has been rehabilitated under Putin — and paint its collapse as a great tragedy, just as Putin does. This has nothing to do with history. It’s hardcore propaganda, Soviet-era style, a Stalinesque version of history.

Putin's historical views aren't unique to him. They have deep roots in the Russian Empire's historical narrative that predates the 1917 Russian Revolution. Russia has been a centralized authoritarian state for most of its 1,000-year history. Putin created his own version of history, combining Soviet myths (minus some of their Communist baggage) with stories from the Russian Empire. In the 1990s, Russia was a proto-democracy, but has since moved back towards authoritarianism. In 2020, the Russian Constitution was amended to allow Putin to run for president again in 2024 and 2030, which would allow him to remain in office until 2036. In Tucker Carlson's interview, Putin's core message was chillingly simple: Ukraine has no right to exist and he is fully justified in waging a war of aggression to reclaim it.

Putin sat down in the Kremlin 9 February 2024 for a two-hour one-on-one interview with former Fox News host-turned Tucker Carlson in his Western media conversation since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began two years ago. Putin provided a selective view of history and information to argue Russia’s case for its invasion of Ukraine, lightly edited for readability. "The Russian state became a centralized one, this is considered the year of the creation of the Russian state in the year of 862, when the Novgorodians - there is a city of Novgorod in the north-west of the country - invited Prince Rurik from Scandinavia, from the Varangians, to reign. In 1862, Russia celebrated the 1000th anniversary of its statehood, and in Novgorod there is a monument dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of the country. In 882, Rurik’s successor, Prince Oleg, who essentially served as a regent for Rurik’s young son, and Rurik had died by this time, came to Kyiv. He removed from power two brothers who, apparently, were once members of Rurik’s squad, and thus Russia began to develop, having two centers: in Kyiv and Novgorod.

The next, very significant date in the history of Russia is 988. This is the Baptism of Rus', when Prince Vladimir, the great-grandson of Rurik, baptized Rus' and accepted Orthodoxy - Eastern Christianity. From that time on, the centralized Russian state began to strengthen. Why? A single territory, single economic ties, one language, and after the baptism of Rus' - one faith and the power of the prince. A centralized Russian state began to take shape.

But Sergey Radchenko, a historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says the president's claim is "a complete falsehood". "Vladimir Putin is trying to construct a narrative backwards, saying Russia as a state began its development in the 9th Century. You could equally say that Ukraine as a state began its development in the 9th Century, exactly with the same kind of evidence and documents.

Ronald Suny, a professor at the University of Michigan, says the Rus was made up of "a bunch of bandits, who burned their own capital repeatedly". He adds that Mr Putin is repeating an "established mythology made up at certain points in the past by Muscovite tsars who trace their lineage back to Rurik."

Accoring to Putin, back in the Middle Ages, Prince Yaroslav the Wise introduced the order of succession to the throne, but after he passed away, it became complicated for various reasons. The throne was passed not directly from father to eldest son, but from the prince who had passed away to his brother, then to his sons in different lines. All this led to the fragmentation and the end of Rus as a single state. There was nothing special about it, the same was happening then in Europe. But the fragmented Russian state became an easy prey to the empire created earlier by Genghis Khan. His successors, namely, Batu Khan, came to Rus, plundered and ruined nearly all the cities. The southern part, including Kiev, by the way, and some other cities, simply lost independence, while northern cities preserved some of their sovereignty. They had to pay tribute to the Horde, but they managed to preserve some part of their sovereignty. And then a unified Russian state began to take shape with its centre in Moscow.

The southern part of the Russian lands, including Kyiv, began to gradually gravitate towards another “magnet” - towards the center that was taking shape in Europe. This was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was even called Lithuanian-Russian, because Russians made up a significant part of this state. They spoke Old Russian and were Orthodox. But then a unification occurred - the union of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. A few years later, another union was signed in the spiritual sphere, and some Orthodox priests submitted to the authority of the Pope. Thus, these lands became part of the Polish-Lithuanian state.

But for decades, the Poles have been engaged in the Polonization of this part of the population: they introduced their language there, they began to introduce the idea that these are not entirely Russians, that since they live on the edge, they are Ukrainians. Initially, the word “Ukrainian” meant that a person lives on the outskirts of the state, “at the edge,” or is engaged in border service, in fact. It did not mean any particular ethnic group. So the Poles did everything they could to polish and, in principle, treated this part of the Russian lands quite harshly, if not cruelly. All this led to the fact that this part of the Russian lands began to fight for their rights. And they wrote letters to Warsaw, demanding that their rights be respected, so that people would be sent here, including to Kyiv.

And in 1654, even a bit earlier, the people who were in control of the authority over that part of the Russian lands, addressed Warsaw, I repeat, demanding their rights be observed that they send to them rulers of Russian origin and Orthodox faith. When Warsaw did not answer them and in fact rejected their demands, they turned to Moscow so that Moscow took them away.... Bogdan Khmelnitsky, the man who then controlled the power in this part of the Russian lands that is now called Ukraine. He wrote to Warsaw demanding that their rights be upheld, and after being refused, he began to write letters to Moscow asking to take them under the strong hand of the Moscow Tsar....

Russia would not agree to admit them straight away, assuming this would trigger a war with Poland. Nevertheless, in 1654, the Zemsky Sobor, which was a representative body of power of the Old Russian state, made the decision: those Old Russian lands became part of the Tsardom of Muscovy. As expected, the war with Poland began. It lasted 13 years, and then a truce was concluded. In all, after that act of 1654, 32 years later, a peace treaty with Poland was concluded, “the eternal peace,” as it said. And those lands, the whole left bank of the Dnieper, including Kiev, reverted to Russia, while the entire right bank of the Dnieper remained in possession of Poland.

Under the rule of Catherine the Great, Russia reclaimed all of its historical lands, including in the south and west. This all lasted until the Revolution. Before World War I, Austrian General Staff relied on the ideas of Ukrainianization and started actively promoting the ideas of Ukraine and the Ukrainianization. Their motive was obvious. Just before World War I they wanted to weaken the potential enemy and secure themselves favourable conditions in the border area. So the idea which had emerged in Poland that people residing in that territory were allegedly not really Russians, but rather belonged to a special ethnic group, Ukrainians, started being propagated by the Austrian General Staff.

As far back as the 19th century, theorists calling for Ukrainian independence appeared. All those, however, claimed that Ukraine should have a very good relationship with Russia. They insisted on that. After the 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks sought to restore the statehood, and the Civil War began, including the hostilities with Poland. In 1921, peace with Poland was proclaimed, and under that treaty, the right bank of the Dnieper River once again was given back to Poland.

In 1939, after Poland cooperated with Hitler — it did collaborate with Hitler, you know —Hitler offered Poland peace and a treaty of friendship and alliance - we have all the relevant documents in the archives, demanding in return that Poland give back to Germany the so-called Danzig Corridor, which connected the bulk of Germany with East Prussia and Konigsberg. After World War I this territory was transferred to Poland, and instead of Danzig, a city of Gdansk emerged. Hitler asked them to give it amicably, but they refused. Still they collaborated with Hitler and engaged together in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia.

So before World War II, Poland collaborated with Hitler and although it did not yield to Hitler’s demands, it still participated in the partitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler. As the Poles had not given the Danzig Corridor to Germany, and went too far, pushing Hitler to start World War II by attacking them. Why was it Poland against whom the war started on 1 September 1939? Poland turned out to be uncompromising, and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland.

By the way, the USSR behaved very honestly. It asked Poland’s permission to transit its troops through the Polish territory to help Czechoslovakia. But the then Polish foreign minister said that if the Soviet planes flew over Poland, they would be downed over the territory of Poland. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that the war began, and Poland fell prey to the policies it had pursued against Czechoslovakia, as under the well-known Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, part of that territory, including western Ukraine, was to be given to Russia. Thus Russia, which was then named the USSR, regained its historical lands.

After the victory in the Great Patriotic War - World War II - all those territories were ultimately enshrined as belonging to Russia, to the USSR. As for Poland, it received, apparently in compensation, western, originally German, territories - the eastern part of Germany, part of the lands, these are the western regions of Poland today. Of course, Poland regained access to the Baltic sea, and Danzig, which was once again given its Polish name. So this was how this situation developed.

In 1922, when the USSR was being established, the Bolsheviks started building the USSR and established the Soviet Ukraine, which had never existed before. Stalin insisted that those republics be included in the USSR as autonomous entities. For some inexplicable reason, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, insisted that they be entitled to withdraw from the USSR. And, again for some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine some of the lands together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine; and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Those lands included the Black Sea region, which was received under Catherine the Great and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever.

Even as far back as 1654, when these lands returned to the Russian Empire, that territory was the size of three to four regions of modern Ukraine, with no Black Sea region. That was completely out of the question. The Soviet Ukraine was given a great deal of territory that had never belonged to it, including the Black Sea region. At some point, when Russia received them as an outcome of the Russo-Turkish wars, they were called “New Russia” or Novorossiya. But that does not matter. What matters is that Lenin, the founder of the Soviet State, established Ukraine that way. For decades, the Ukrainian Soviet Republic developed as part of the USSR, and for unknown reasons again, the Bolsheviks were engaged in Ukrainianization. It was not merely because the Soviet leadership was composed to a great extent of those originating from Ukraine. Rather, it was explained by the general policy of indigenization pursued by the Soviet Union. Same things were done in other Soviet republics. This involved promoting national languages and national cultures, which is not bad in principle. That is how the Soviet Ukraine was created.

Sergey Radchenko, at Johns Hopkins, denied Putin's claims that Ukraine is not a real country because it was formed in its modern form in the 20th Century. "Any country is a fake country, in the sense that countries are created as a result of a historical process." "Russia was created as a result of decisions taken by the Russian tsars, such as the colonisation of Siberia, which came at the considerable expense of the local population."

After World War II, Ukraine received, in addition to the lands that had belonged to Poland before the war, part of the lands that had previously belonged to Hungary and Romania , - today Western Ukraine. So Romania and Hungary had some of their lands taken away and given to the Ukraine and they still remain part of Ukraine. So in this sense, we have every reason to affirm that Ukraine is an artificial state that was shaped at Stalin’s will....

Then there was 1991 - the collapse of the Soviet Union. And everything that Ukraine received as a gift from Russia, “from the master’s shoulder,” she took with her.... the Russian leadership proceeded from the fundamental principles of relations between Russia and Ukraine: a common language — more than 90 percent of the population there spoke Russian; family ties — every third person there had some kind of family or friendship ties; common culture; common history; finally, common faith; co-existence within a single state for centuries; and deeply interconnected economies. All of these were so fundamental. All these elements together make our good relations inevitable....

The former Russian leadership assumed that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and therefore there were no longer any ideological dividing lines. Russia even agreed, voluntarily and proactively, to the collapse of the Soviet Union and believed that this would be understood by the so-called in scare quotes ”civilized West“ as an invitation for cooperation and associateship. That is what Russia was expecting both from the United States and the so-called collective West as a whole....

After 1991, when Russia expected to be taken into the fraternal family of “civilized peoples,” nothing like that happened.... the United States promised that there would be no NATO expansion to the east, but this happened five times, five waves of expansion. [Russia] endured everything, persuaded everything, said: no need, we are now our own, as they say, bourgeois, we have a market economy, there is no power of the Communist Party, let's come to an agreement.

Yeltsin was lavished with praise, as soon as the developments in Yugoslavia started, he raised his voice in support of Serbs, and we couldn't but raise our voices for Serbs in their defense. I understand that there were complex processes underway there, I do. But Russia could not help raising its voice in support of Serbs, because Serbs are also a special and close to us nation, with Orthodox culture and so on. It's a nation that has suffered so much for generations. Well, regardless, what is important is that Yeltsin expressed his support. What did the United States do? In violation of international law and the UN Charter it started bombing Belgrade.

It was the United States that let the genie out of the bottle. Moreover, when Russia protested and expressed its resentment, what was said? The UN Charter and international law have become obsolete. Now everyone invokes international law, but at that time they started saying that everything was outdated, everything had to be changed. Indeed, some things need to be changed as the balance of power has changed, it's true, but not in this manner. Yeltsin was immediately dragged through the mud, accused of alcoholism, of understanding nothing, of knowing nothing.

Putin said "I became President in 2000. I thought: okay, the Yugoslav issue is over, but we should try to restore relations. Let's reopen the door that Russia had tried to go through. And moreover, I've said it publicly, I can reiterate. At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here in the next room, I said to him, I asked him, ” Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?“ Suddenly he said: ”You know, it's interesting, I think so.“ But in the evening, when we had dinner, he said, ”You know, I've talked to my team, no-no, it's not possible now.“ You can ask him, I think he will watch our interview, he'll confirm it. I wouldn't have said anything like that if it hadn't happened. Okay, well, it's impossible now."

Vladimir Putin: "You said I was bitter about the answer. No, it's not bitterness, it's just a statement of fact. We're not the bride and groom, bitterness, resentment, it's not about those kinds of matters in such circumstances. We just realised we weren't welcome there, that's all. Okay, fine. But let's build relations in another manner, let's look for common ground elsewhere. Why we received such a negative response, you should ask your leader. I can only guess why: too big a country, with its own opinion and so on. And the United States – I have seen how issues are being resolved in NATO.

"The third moment, a very important one, is the moment when the US missile defense ABM system was created. The beginning. We spent a long time trying to persuade the United States not to do this. Moreover, after I was invited by Bush Jr.'s father, Bush Sr. to visit his place on the ocean, I had a very serious conversation with President Bush and his team. I proposed that the United States, Russia and Europe jointly create a missile defense system that, we believe, if created unilaterally, threatens our security, despite the fact that the United States officially said that it was being created against missile threats from Iran. That was the justification for the deployment of the missile defense system. I suggested working together – Russia, the United States, and Europe. They said it was very interesting. They asked me, ”Are you serious?“ I said, “Absolutely”.

Then Secretary of Defense Gates, former director of the CIA, and Secretary of State Rice came here to this office where we are now talking. Here, at this table, on the contrary, you see this table, they sat on this side. Me, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defense of Russia are from the other side. They said to me, ”Yes, we have thought about it, we agree.“ I said, ”Thank God, great.“ – ”But with some exceptions.“ In the end they just told us to get lost. It was right then when I said: ”Look, but then we will be forced to take counter measures. We will create such strike systems that will certainly overcome missile defense systems.“ The answer was: ”We are not doing this against you, and you do what you want, assuming that it is not against us, not against the United States“. I said, ”Okay.“ Very well, that’s the way it went. And we created hypersonic systems, with intercontinental range, and we continue to develop them. We are now ahead of everyone – the United States and other countries – in terms of the development of hypersonic strike systems, and we are improving them every day.

We were promised, no NATO to the East, not an inch to the East, as we were told. And then what? They said, ”Well, it's not enshrined on paper, so we'll expand.“ So there were five waves of expansion, the Baltic States, the whole of Eastern Europe, and so on. And now I come to the main thing: they have come to Ukraine ultimately. In 2008 at the summit in Bucharest they declared that the doors for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO were open.

Now about how decisions are made there. Germany, France seemed to be against it as well as some other European countries. But then, as it turned out later, President Bush, and he is such a tough guy, a tough politician, as I was told later, ”He exerted pressure on us and we had to agree.“ It's ridiculous, it's like kindergarten. Where are the guarantees? What kindergarten is this, what kind of people are these, who are they? You see, they were pressed, they agreed. And then they say, ”Ukraine won't be in NATO, you know.“ I say, ”I don't know, I know you agreed in 2008, why won't you agree in the future?“ Well, it's nonsensical. Who's there to talk to, I just don't understand. We're ready to talk. But with whom? Where are the guarantees? None.