Putin is justifying his brutal unprovoked attack on the people of Ukraine by appealing to history. In his case it looks like he wants to be remembered as the creator of a new Russian Empire. The sort of history that has usually been written since the invention of writing concentrates on rulers and nations, and rulers that conquer territory get the most attention. William the Duke of Normandy steals the English crown by force, and gets named William the Conqueror instead of William the Thief. Julius Caeser uses force to steal Gaul and history says he was a great conqueror. Putin thinks if he conquers Ukraine, and maybe later the Baltic states or Georgia, history will consider him a great imperial ruler who made Russia a great empire again.
Conventional history has always concentrated on those at the top, partly because they are much better documented. But there are some who try to figure out how the average person was living and what changes happened to their lives. The best history is the history that examines what happened to all the people, not just the rulers. Sometimes it might have not made much difference to the lives of most people when the ruler changed. Did the average English peasant in 1066 see much difference between Harold and William? Sometimes it made a big difference, as the lands the Spanish conquered in the Western Hemisphere had their religion and whole way of life disrupted and changed. In other places it was even worse, as mass migration drove out the original inhabitants. This is what happened in most of North America. In the short period of 5000 years that we have written history for, such conquests, migrations, ethnic cleansings, wars, exploitations, and oppressions fill the pages of history for the whole world.
Putin’s actions are catastrophic to the people of Ukraine. But for the people of Russia Putin’s rule has always been bad and getting worse. Freedom removed, any independent civil society slowly squeezed out, an economy that is dependent on fossil fuel exports that leaves the average Russian behind. Maybe for a while many Russians were ok with this after the chaos that followed the fall of the Soviet regime. But now, Putin’s ego driven military adventures have exposed the problem with autocratic power. Any ruler who has such unchallenged power for that long of a time begins to believe he can do anything he wants. This leaves the average Russian much worse off. Is an expensive and temporary imperial ego boost worth the heavy costs?
Our country has not been immune from the lure of imperial power. Such impulses have had costs and never made life any better for Americans. In the first half of the 20th century, Germany and Japan both were seduced by imperial dreams, or at least by leaders who had such dreams. The result was disaster for both countries. Ironically, both Germany and Japan both achieved great economic prosperity after World War II, with military power and conquest playing no role. Maybe that should be the lesson for the world. Empire is not worth it for anybody, except maybe for the some would be conqueror’s ego. Such a person should be excluded from political power by any sane society.