Can Russia ever live together with the West?

When you watch Vladimir Putin's covert face on TV and hear his increasingly vulnerable rhetoric, it is tempting to assume that the current conflict in Ukraine has only to do with it.

His actions and threats are turning Europe back not only in the 1930s, or even in the 1860s to <x0th) Wars” cold-blooded bloodbaths running into Bismark, or even in the 1740s when the Great Frederick openly annexed the Polish region of Silesia and set Europe on fire.

By attacking a sovereign and peaceful country, Putin has returned to a behavior that dates back long before the adoption of the United Nations Charter, even before 1815, when war - weary states that defeated Napoleon Bonaparte created the so-called “Concert of Europe” to maintain peace with Russia, who was one of the guarantors of the pact.

Moderate people hope for Putin's possible removal from power, and in this way our problems will be solved. Maybe. But the real problem may be Russia itself. I don't mean Russians. I'm not suggesting we're facing a dark national psychic.

Rather, Russia as a political and geographical entity is an unstable mix of strength and weakness. Because of its size and population, it has intimidated its neighbors for centuries. But because of its huge setback compared to the West, a relative setback that remains constant, its autocrats are constantly afraid of their vulnerability and obsessed with prestige.

The result is threatening rhetoric and frequent aggression against states on the border with it. The weakness of the Russians is as political as the military as you must be as mad as Napoleon or Hitler to dare to conquer this country with such a long latitude.

It's dictatorship, what makes Russia dangerous for neighbours but also for herself.

Aggression is a matter of historical record. All powerful nations sometimes use force. Britain and America are no exception.

However, Russia's history of the last three centuries of continuing conflicts at its borders is surprising. Against Sweden and Turkey in the X Centuries V III-XIX. Against Poland repeatedly for over 300 years. Against Germany, which must be admitted to being equally guilty.

And closer to Finland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Chechnya, Syria and now Ukraine. One factor that explains this brings is Russia's uncertainty of how strong or weak it really is. An uncertainty that exists among both its rulers and its neighbors of Russia.

Russia's seemingly overwhelming power has repeatedly fallen when seriously tested. This is the pattern of the last two centuries. Russian armies arrived in Paris in 1814, their greatest advance ever marked. The world was impressed by the new giant. But what followed was an inordinate amount of faith.

Russia faced France and Britain in 1853 and lost. The large number of Russian troops was of no use at all, as some of them failed to reach the front line before the war ended. Fifty years later came humiliation in front of the Japanese.

In 1914, the Russian <x0rul” was supposed to print everything facing it, but it was banned by the Germans within weeks. The Polish hit the Communists hard in 1920, and the Finnishs almost did this thing in 1940.

We grew up with the legend of the invincible Red Army that crushed Wehrmacht-ingerman. But its triumph depended on Britain and America, which kept it supplied, forcing the Germans to engage in the West most of their resources.

Today, the same problems are being repeated - distance, logistics failed, technological setbacks, a high number of victims, and a weak motivation stemming from a brutal military system that serves severe autocratic regimes. The war brought the threat of the revolution explosion in 1820, 1850, 1905, 1917, 1989.

What about 2022? Still, hopes of freedom were destroyed without mercy. This is also the reason for Russia's other problem, both in relation to its neighbours and themselves: the inability to create a liberal democracy.

Russia has had a culturally sophisticated elite for centuries. Many of the latter have adopted Western behavior. But the elite was small in number, and there was a lot to lose: the gap between the rich and the poor in Russia has always been large, even under Communism, when nominal equality masked the major privileges of the governing register.

Russian authorities have repeatedly turned measures against liberals, who are accused of excessive love for foreign countries. Thus, the cultivated Russians were frightened by both their rulers and the inferiors, who until 1861 were farmers and who were never free until the 1980s.

It is argued that Russia was different: it was so large and so varied that it needed a dictatorship. But in the final analysis of the dictatorship, it's what makes Russia dangerous for its neighbours, but also for themselves.

Only dictatorships can maintain a large military budget in a relatively poor country, as they have for centuries. The upper “Volta with rocket” was the Battuta often said for the Soviet Union.

Only a truly democratic Russia can be a good neighbour, and it's in our vital interest as it is during the Soviet era to support the Russian Democrats (and no longer a small elite), and to make sure that all Russians know that we want the best. Putin wants Ukraine back to Russia. The world needs Russia to become Ukraine.

Note: Robert Tombs, professor of history at Cambridge University, Great Britain.

“Spectator” World.al