Around 160 million people remain under Moscow’s control. In China, nearly ten times that number currently live, and new satellites are being added. It hardly needs to be explained what kind of threat this poses to a war-torn Russia, writes editor Tomasz Sakiewicz in the monthly Niezależna Gazeta Polska – Nowe Państwo.
I remember an anti-communist song sung at various gatherings to the melody of “Hey, Sokoly…” – it was a way of coping with Poland’s real situation after martial law, when even people who did not at all understand reality came to realise that we were an occupied country. The dynamic growth of China’s population and the beginnings of its strong economic rise inspired hopes of destroying the Soviet Union thanks to the growing power of the Middle Kingdom.
Of course, Poles loved Ronald Reagan, who had decided to crush the “evil empire,” but at the same time, there was fear that open confrontation with the United States would lead to nuclear annihilation. Ultimately, however, Reagan left the Soviets stripped to their socks. The Soviet Union imploded, breaking apart into a dozen or so states, while the non-Soviet and even some Soviet countries of the Warsaw Pact ended up in NATO.
Viewed globally, there is no single dividing line marking the end of the Soviet empire’s history. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Kremlin, announced a reform program called Perestroika, and at the same time met with Ronald Reagan for the first time. The changes were forced by the Soviet Union’s catastrophic economic situation. This ended the period of aggressive conquests outside the Warsaw Pact. At that time, under the Kremlin’s rule or strong influence lay one-quarter of the world’s landmass, about 32 million square kilometres, and 12 percent of the global population, a little over half a billion people. This extended across Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America.
China at that time had around one billion inhabitants and just over nine million square kilometres. The disparity between the two empires was already evident. A country that covered less than 30 percent of the area controlled by the Kremlin had twice the population of all 25 countries dominated by the USSR, including the Soviets themselves. Moreover, the two states competed for influence in the communist world, had border conflicts, and harboured imperial ambitions. Imperial ambitions were a constant feature of the Kremlin, but under communism, China for the first time truly “stepped beyond the wall.”
The clash with China and the U.S. ended disastrously for the USSR. In 1989, the territorial disintegration began of the largest empire since the days of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan (Alexander dominated countries covering six million square kilometres, Genghis Khan about fourteen million, but this was before the discovery of the Americas and Australia, so it constituted a significantly larger share of the known world).
Since 1989, Moscow has been fighting solely to retain even fragments of its empire. It lost the most populous and developed Warsaw Pact countries, with a population of 110 million; it lost parts of the USSR, such as the Baltics, and control over most non-Soviet states. The most painful losses after the USSR’s collapse included Iraq, Syria, Vietnam, and so forth. Many of these began to drift into China’s sphere of influence, for instance, North Korea and, to some extent, Mongolia. Many countries once dependent on the USSR started pursuing a balancing policy between China, the U.S., and a weakening Russia, including Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Recently, the U.S. has significantly increased its influence in Azerbaijan and Armenia. Yet here, another regional player is already evident: a strengthening Turkey. In reality, under actual Kremlin control remain: Belarus, the occupied territories of Ukraine and Georgia, and Transnistria. Moscow tries to destabilise these countries through partial occupation and then subdue them. This tactic seemed effective until the war in Ukraine. Russia has devastated and depopulated Ukraine significantly, but it has not subdued it. Viewed globally, a country that forty years ago controlled an area of 32 million square kilometres now occupies and holds just under 18 million, most of which is the uninhabited expanse of Siberia. Around 160 million people are under Moscow’s control. In China today, nearly ten times that number live, with new satellites being added. It hardly needs to be explained what kind of threat this poses to war-torn Russia.