BACK TO THE DUCHY OF MUSCOVY
Back in the 1990s, I wrote Back to the Duchy of Muscovy, describing how the centuries of Russia’s relentless expansion from the small area around Moscow to a geographical behemoth – see A Short History of Russia – may well work in reverse.
A relentless shrinking would occur, I surmised, with one region after another breaking apart from the Kremlin’s grasp if Russia did not embrace freedom and democracy but continued its authoritarian ways after the extinction of the Soviet Union.
The more I thought about this, the more I became convinced of the likelihood of Chinese Siberia – that the Chicoms would inevitably retake their Maritime Provinces of Outer Manchuria and ultimately all of Siberia east of Baikal from Russia.
The links are preserved in TTP, but alas, my Back to… article is gone with the wind of a quarter-century ago. Then along comes Sergej Sumlenny, a Russian scholar of Russia’s history with its conquered people and neighbors. He’s lived for years all over Eastern Europe and resides in Berlin.
As Putin’s gadfly and enemy of Russian authoritarianism, his Twitter feed @sumlenny has over 100,000 followers, for he is astonishingly well-informed.
His tweet above caught the attention Freddie Sayers, who invited Sergej to be interviewed yesterday (4/11) on his pro-capitalist, pro-Western Civilization site Unherd.
This is a spectacularly informative interview explaining how Russia could soon be on its way back to the Duchy of Muscovy. The one caveat is Sergej is unaware of the huge role China will play in the that drama in eastern Siberia. Enjoy!