Here is an excerpt from a memorandum (1900) written by the Russian War Minister General Kuropatkin to Emperor Nicholas II:

Your Imperial Majesty! Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Russia spent 128 years at war… Of those, only 5 were defensive wars; all the rest—aggressive campaigns… The foreign wars lasted more than 67 years of continuous fighting; the defensive wars lasted 2 years and 1 month. The rest, 121 military operations, were waged beyond the borders of the empire.

The Soviet regime became the direct heir of tsarist power, though far bloodier and more aggressive. After the Bolsheviks’ coup of 1917, the Soviet-Russian policy ignited World War II, causing tens of millions of deaths and reshaping the world. But that horrific war was far from the only one. During the USSR’s 73 years of existence, the list of wars it waged is enormous—a total of 25, including conflicts in the Caucasus, the Baltic states, Finland, Poland, Germany, Japan, Afghanistan, Spain, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.

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Image by ChatGPT.

The Soviet ambition to recreate the Russian Empire under the red banner and expand it across the globe was only partially successful. Stalin’s plan to conquer Europe with Hitler’s help, after which he’d enslave Germany, failed. In Stalin’s eyes, the victory that followed WWII was a meager one—instead of the whole world, he found only Eastern Europe under his boot. So, a few years after that victory, once he had acquired nuclear weapons, he redirected the country toward World War III.

After the collapse of the........

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