that's pretty much what needs to happen...all of their "territories" need to be given independence, which seems to be the desire of the vast majority of them. With no pool of "ethnic" russians to send off to murder and die in the name of putin, their program of imperialism and coopting their neighbors resources would be unpersuable, and they would have no choice but to seek peace.
The problem is they've exterminated a lot of those ethnic minorities. About 80% of ethnic Russians live in European Russia, west of the Urals and a lot of them have been moved back to European Russia since the USSR. If Russia dissolves it will be along the administrative state lines, or the autonomous republics. Not all nations broke away from Russia, there were a lot more Russians in the far east back then, a lot were exiled there, or their families were. Also, the far eastern republics had little contact with the world except through Russia. However, we all know how good the Chinese are at building railroads in central Asia these days! The east of Russia is only connected by a rail line and highway in many remote places, and they cross many rivers with vulnerable rail bridges. In another year Russia won't have much air lift capability to speak of and could be completely cut off from the east quite easily and with very low tech.
I don’t think the comparison with Rome holds much water for a number of reasons. The big one is that Russia imposed a central culture.
True, lack of communications technology did make it freer than the Russian Empire. The Brits did the same as the Romans in most places, left the local culture and religion alone, they were economic empires mostly concerned with extracting wealth from conquests. The Russians were of a more expansionary nature, like America, displacing more primitive tribal people, true colonization. With countries that had long established civilizations like India, things were much different than in America, there they could make money on trade and native industries.
No. The Roman system was historically unique. Britain does not compare.
All empires of conquest have commonalities and the second British empire operated differently than the first prerevolutionary war one. Rome was not unique in many ways; empires came before it and arose since. One could consider America imperial at certain points of its history, the conquest of natives and settling west of the Mississippi. Then again in the wake of the American Spanish war when it joined the international imperial club. Rome left, infrastructure, a social residue and a social organization as it mutated into a religion. The British also left infrastructure and governments that were organized along modern principles, they also left a lot of liberal democracies during their self-dissolution.
This buries my point, which is not about preceding or following empires. Every one of those was organized quite differently from Rome from ca. 60BC to the reign of Commodus.
That is why they came out on top for the next 3 centuries and longer in various forms, quite different than the republican era. They evolved and learned, so did their enemies and vassals. In the end they tore themselves apart due to a lack of internal political and economic stability, it was the resulting civil wars and military power struggles that really did them in.
afaik - why and how they tore themselves apart is an area of ongoing discovery. Recently I’ve seen intimations that climate change had a big hand in the chain of events.
those darn windows.....they seem to popping up more and more lately.....
www.rageagainstwar.org
They won't last long over Ukraine with the scale of their air defense, and it is getting stronger all the time. I think the big offensive was mostly wishful thinking on Vlad's part, there is no evidence of a buildup, 97% of their army is already there attacking and making no headway while getting slaughtered in huge numbers. The ground appears to be frozen, yet they are mounting light infantry attacks, trying to take ground with no armor and paying a heavy price. Why would the Ukrainians want to attack when they are inflicting such loses on the Russians daily at little cost to themselves? If this keeps up the Russians won't have anything, or anybody left to oppose the Ukrainians in the spring when they begin counter offensive operations with a big fucking blitzkrieg that should go through the Russian lines like shit through a goose. It will be a repeat of early WW2 for Russia with huge forces, cut off or surrounded and surrendering en mass.
Russia’s Defense Ministry plans to launch aerial warfare over Ukraine — Meduza
Russia’s Defense Ministry has made the decision to start extensively using aircraft in the Ukraine war. The Russian outlet iStories reported this, citing a source close to the ministry.meduza.io
russians don't get the flu, they get the flew...out the window.