Is Russia being misrepresented as a threatening power? This was suggested by Eric Zemmour, Sunday January 23, in “C in the air”. Asked about his plan to get France out of the integrated command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the far-right candidate said that, like Poland in 1999, the countries of the East joined NATO to benefit from the protection of the United States in the event of a Russian invasion. A threat that he considers chimerical:
“Do you believe in an invasion of Poland by Russia? I do not believe it. First, in history, the Russians have not often attacked, you will not have missed that. When they took over the Eastern countries, it was because they were attacked by Germany. »
Why is it more complicated
- A country more often attacked
Historians interviewed by The world confirm it: even if he appropriates elements of Moscow language, Eric Zemmour is not entirely wrong. In its history, Russia has often been in the position of a power forced to retaliate. The “Patriotic War of 1812”, which opposes it to the French Empire, is a counter-offensive responding to the Napoleonic invasion. In 1914, Germany declared war on Tsarist Russia. In 1941, Moscow was drawn into the conflict by Hitler’s vast eastern offensive, which sent its panzers to the USSR in violation of the German-Soviet pact of 1939.
“In the Russians’ self-representation, they are never the first to take the military initiative”, summarizes François-Xavier Nérard, lecturer in Russian history at the University of Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne. From this point of view, Eric Zemmour is right to affirm that the Nazi attack was decisive in the strategy of western enlargement: the Warsaw Pact, the communist bloc’s response to the creation of NATO, served as a protective glaze.
Nourished by the trauma of the Napoleonic and Nazi invasions, Russian doctrine is imbued with a feeling of vulnerability which explains Moscow’s desire to surround itself with buffer territories.
- Western annexations before the Nazi attack
However, contrary to what the polemicist asserts, the Russian offensives in Eastern Europe cannot be reduced to a consequence of Operation Barbarossa of 1941, since some had already begun before.
Indeed, the German-Soviet non-aggression pact signed in 1939 was already planning the annexation of part of Poland. Without even declaring war on Warsaw, the Red Army launched an offensive on September 17, 1939 and invaded the eastern half of the country. The USSR was also at the origin of the Winter War in 1939-1940, violating the non-aggression pact with Finland, then of the annexation of the Baltic countries in 1940, with the blessing of Nazi Germany. .
After the Second World War, the USSR continued to intervene militarily in the countries of the East to crush popular revolts, as in Budapest in 1956 or in Prague in 1968. Although vassals of the Kremlin, these were nevertheless countries foreigners, who in no case had attacked Russia.
More recently, with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 – and then providing military support to separatists in Donbass – Russia has further expanded its territory manu militari. So many counter-examples to the assertion that ” Russians (…) have not often attacked”.
- An expansionist tradition
Over the long term, Russia actually has a history marked by expansionism, as summed it up in 2015 by military historian Claude Franc : “The policy constantly pursued by Russia has consisted, first of all, in reaching the seas from Moscow, then in securing outlets to seas free of ice throughout the year. This resulted in expansion south and east along four axes: Finland, Black Sea, Central Asia and the Far East. Russian history is similar to that of continuous colonization. »
In Central Asia, Russia has expanded without ever encountering strong opposition. “The great Russian argument is to say that it is not a colonial expansion, but natural, because these territories are part of a geographical continuity with European Russia”, explains Pierre Gonneau, university professor at the Sorbonne and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes.
On its western part, Russia considers that it does not attack, but unites. “The Russian Empire was formed by conquest, like all the others, recalls Pierre Gonneau. But, on several occasions, the sovereigns of Moscow and Petersburg affirmed that they were only “taking back” what was theirs, that is to say the territories of the former Kievan Rus’. » In the past, this doctrine has repeatedly justified the absorption of Ukraine, heiress of the Rus of Kiev, as well as the partition of Poland in 1795.
- An ambiguous foreign policy
In its communication, Moscow justifies its interventions by calling for help from an allied nation. Thus the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when the country had already been ruled since 1978 by a regime supported by the Soviets. “In view of the American and British infiltrations, the decision to intervene has been taken”, contextualizes Taline Ter Minassian, university professor at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations and specialist in the history of the USSR.
This displayed solidarity can also stem from local vassal parties, puppet governments or even Russian-speaking citizens to whom Russian citizenship has been strategically granted, as in Ukraine in the 2010s. As a result, during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, when Ukraine denounced a “invasion”, Moscow presented its soldiers in foreign operations as “local self-defense forces”.
This rhetoric is old and subject to jokes in former Soviet countries. “There is a Czech joke that the Russians intervened [en Tchécoslovaquie en 1968] explaining that they had been called, but that they remained waiting to find out by whom”, relates Pierre Gonneau. Even today, Moscow is distinguished by a foreign policy of “characteristic ambiguity”, believes François-Xavier Nérard.
But, nuance Taline Ter Minassian, Russia is now the largest country in the world: “Why would she want to expand any further?” » At the end of January, as Russian armed forces rush to the Ukrainian border, Vladimir Putin again “denied having offensive intentions” and explained asking for the prohibition of any future enlargement of NATO, including Ukraine, and the withdrawal of countries that became members of the Atlantic Alliance after 1997. A way of demanding the return of the Russian glacis.