Geography is destiny

Why has Russia never been able to create a stable Western-style democracy? No idea, but here are some marginal notes on the topic. Often, the dreaded "Tartars" (Mongols) are blamed for Russia´s authoritarian woes, but that´s hardly accurate, since the Mongol overlords didn´t even have a state, but a quite literal horde. The Golden Horde may have been bad for Russian peasants, who knows, but it wasn´t a centralized autocracy of the Czarist type! 

Nah, of course it´s the Byzantine Empire. And before we call that "Asiatic", please note that the Byzantines were White and spoke a European language. (Or is it the Persian Empire? Well, the Persians certainly spoke an Indo-European language! As for the Ottomans, they were simply mimicking the Byzantines and the Persians, with some exotic foibles all their own.) Czarism is, I think, at bottom a very "modern" European phenomenon: the absolutist early modern state transplanted onto Russian soil. But why has it remained strong for so long? Why the absurd oscillations between autocracy and "a time of troubles", with no real Western democracy, except as a temporary form of the latter?

One reason could be the way Russian colonialism developed. It took the form of direct conquests at the Russian periphery, which was then forcibly incorporated into the empire. For millennia, the interior of Eurasia was in the hands of various nomadic peoples. The only way to defeat and control the steppe nomads was through a highly centralized modern state. The state then made itself indispensable for other reasons, too. Add to this the entire sea power - land power problematique, the weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie, etc. It´s also interesting to reflect on the role of Communism. It´s often seen as a resurrection of Czarism and an "Asiatic" mode of production, but the differences are equally striking, for instance that Communism was ultimately dependent on capitalism for its survival, the "economic miracle" of the 1930´s being possible only because of massive American and German investments and aid. The bureaucratic mode of production "worked" for political reasons, not economic ones, in contrast to the classical Asiatic mode of production, which worked for real for millennia. That being said, it´s nevertheless telling that even revolutionary Russia ended up creating an imitation version of the Third Rome...

What´s the solution to this? Maybe there isn´t any, except a return to the "democracy" of the steppes. Russia *is* encircled by the rest of the world, and will forever remain so, due to its geographical location. The only way for Russia to become powerful is to expand towards the oceans. In medieval times, that would have been the White, Black and Baltic seas. Today? The Pacific and the Atlantic. Tomorrow? The Indian Ocean? The problem, of course, is that somebody is standing in the way of Mordor´s Eurasian-cum-global expansion. That somebody being...us. 

I wouldn´t be too surprised if Russians and everyone else will still be fighting each other 1,000 years from now.   

Maybe geography is destiny, after all.