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Eight Hundred Years of Russian Despotism

Quillette Podcast

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The Expansion of Russia

Between 1500 and 1917, Russia expanded the territory controlled at a rate of 1300 square kilometers per day. It's arguably geographically the biggest takeover of indigenous land holdings in human history. The terrain of Siberia would be very similar to the terrain of much of Canada. And that explains the ease with which a sort of gunpowder army of Cossacks and then state armies came behind them.

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