Most countries are much much smaller due to conflicting groups and ethnicities vying over the same piece of land. Russia spans from the edge of Europe, borders part of the Mid-East, touches China and Mongolia, and ends at the water’s edge of the Pacific with Korea, Japan, and the tip of Alaska which they used to own. Its been around for a while, way before there was reliable and fast transportation and communications from one end of its empire to the other.
Why hasn’t Russia been carved up into smaller, more defensible pieces? Why haven’t European powers claimed parts of its Eastern territories? Why didn’t Arabic forces take over its southwestern borders, or the Asian countries made inroads into the far eastern borders, away from Moscow?
I know that of course there’s a long history of powers trying to take over all or parts of Russia, but it seems odd that they remained so large where other countries, despite their military might, have been unable or unwilling to take a piece of Russia, or internal conflicts split them up (besides the exodus after the fall of communism). The Roman empire at its height didn’t control nearly the last mass that Russia has, yet they were broken up into dozens of countries and could not hold the territories they conquered. Didn’t barbarians from the north finally do them in? So it shows that it didn’t even require a massed army from a militarized country to crush pieces of a crumbling empire, yet nothing so dramatic happened to Russia, why not?
Alaska was deemed “Seward’s Folly” at 2 cents an acre. Advances in industry, transportation, and resource extraction made it valuable later on. It was similar for much of Russia. Whether it’s timber, grain, coal, or oil there really wasn’t much going on until late in its history.
And presumably the rulers at the time were able to keep everyone together, paying taxes, joining the army etc.
If my ruler is taking care of my basic needs I have to reason to split off and form a new country, especially is my current ruler would crush me in the process.
Parts of the Russian Empire in Central Asia and on the Pacific coast were definitely of interest to various regional powers, but by the time Russia started expanding into them they simply weren’t in a position to put up and serious military opposition. Countries like Persia, China, and the Ottoman Empire which would have been the natural rivals to Russian territorial ambitions were all having serious internal problems which were exacerbated by the meddling of other European imperial powers.
There’s Siberia, which was basically uninhabitable (by most standards). Russia pushed east to claim it over time, eventually reaching the Pacific. Nobody else felt the need or urge to dispute that claim - there wasn’t much there.
Mongolia was mostly herders in the bare uplands, so moving north into an extreme climate covered with tiny trees did not make much sense for their people. China had other issues, and Japan was after Korea and China which were more worth-while conquests. Other European countries would have had to go all the way around to the Pacific or march through mainland Russia… for what? Colonies were for resources, and there were much better colonial prospects elsewhere.
Note that Russia did conquer the inland empires of central Asia - and when the USSR fell apart, those “voluntary” members of the Union decided to depart into their own independednt countries. Russia conquered up to the Himalayan mountains, so presumably what stopped Russia going south (especially Afghanistan) also stopped competition going north.
During the 1700s and 1800s they had the advantage of western firepower, which probably also restrained any incursions from Persia (Iran) or Turkey. The area between Turkey and Russia was constantly in play, the Armenians apparently were happy to accept Russian protection given the type of treatment evidenced by the Armenian non-genocide (depending whose side you believe about the slaughter of a substantial number of their population).
SO basically technology, geographic obstacles, and location, location, location.
In C Asia, the powers which could have opposed them, the Persians, the Ottomens, the Mughals, were weak and collapsing. Siberia? Who the hell wants that.
Robert K. Massie pointed out that Siberia can actually be pleasant in the Spring and Summer, but the Winter certainly sucked. A Tsar sent ceremonial virgins to some country for some reason, traveling through Siberia by sleigh with an escort of Cossacks. 75% of them arrived with children.
Well they did try that twice. Once in 1811 by Napoleon by and again in 1941 by Hitler. Although they both tried to swallow too much at one time, rather than claiming the Eastern sections alone.
General Winter, took a major role in the defeat of both. Interesting how both the French and Germans miss calculated on that factor.
Does the barrenness of Siberia and the frozen northern regions also explain why Canada is so large? Both have tons of land that is icy most of the year.
Follow up question: Is the aversion to coldness also the same reason why no empire ever staked a claim to the whole of Antarctica?
The usual claim is that 90% of Canadians live with 50 miles of the U.S. border. Whether that’s strictly true, it gives an important truth: most of Canada lacks easily arable lands. There was never a good reason to spend huge amounts of money establishing colonies. Borders just went north from the American colonies and nobody else cared.
Same for Antarctica, only more so. If everything has to be imported in, then the area’s a money loser. Chile has the only "town"there but that means a population of about 100.
Russia claimed Siberia simply by claiming it, and no power ever seriously tried to dispute Russia’s claim to Siberia because it was seen as worthless. Russia did lose the North American part of its eastern empire when Alaska was bought by the US.
The Vladivostok region was only acquired by Russia from China in 1860, and at that time it was barely inhabited. Just like the harbor at Hong Kong the natural harbor wasn’t considered valuable by the Chinese, there was no city there until the Russians built it. And north of that the rest of the Russian Far East is lightly inhabited. Until modern times it didn’t matter how many minerals might lie under the ground, there was no way to discover them or exploit them without a source of labor.
Also note that Russia tried to take control of parts of what is now northern China, but failed to hold onto them in the face of alternating Japanese and Chinese pressure. So it really is true that the Russians only managed to claim areas where there was no serious contender for control.
The same way that America, Brazil, Canada, and China became large countries. You had an advanced civilization which had a frontier occupied by less advanced people (and I’m talking in economic terms). So the advanced civilization was able to push its frontier forward and take the land that had belonged to the less advanced people.
Less known is that the Tsar had divided the ceremonial virgins into four groups, one corresponding to each season. The Spring, Summer, and Autumn virgins were all pleasant and they were the 75% who arrived with children. The other 25% were the Winter virgins - and they were the ones that sucked.
And importantly, other advanced powers either did not or could not successfully dispute the land claims of the expansionist power. The United States might or might not have been able to conquer Canada from the British Empire, but after 1812 we never seriously tried again. Subsequent border disputes between British Canada and the USA were settled more or less peacefully.
So space-filling empires occur when territories accumulate faster than they decrease. And the most likely reason for this to happen is when there is a vast underpopulated territory in proximity to an expansionist power and no other powers who are able to dispute the claim to that territory.
Yep. The northern parts of Canada are pretty much equivalent to Siberia: sparsely populated, with vast tracts of Absolutely Nothing[sup]TM[/sup], and the winter sucks too much to be attractive to, well, pretty much anyone. (Yes, there are Inuit, but the entirely of the Nunavut Territory only has about 30,000 people, covering an area over 800,000 mi[sup]2[/sup]), so really you have to conclude that the region is just barely on the edge of habitability.
Too late to edit. According to Wikipedia, the Northwest Territory has about 40,000 people, but only about half of them are Native American or Inuit. The capitol, Yellowknife, has about 19,000 of those people. So again, pretty sparsely populated.
