Russia’s imperial ambitions, from Stalin to Putin, reveal a seemingly eternal tension between history and modernity.
In 1924, as snow fell thick and silent over Moscow, mourners lined the streets to bid farewell to Vladimir Lenin, the first leader of a jaded Soviet Union racked by World War, Civil War and famine. Lenin’s death marked the end of the Russian revolutionary era and the beginning of a brutal, internecine struggle for power. Joseph Stalin, then General Secretary of the Communist Party, had already begun consolidating power with a ruthlessness that even Lenin had feared. In Lenin’s final writings, his Testament warned of the dangers of Stalin’s unbridled ambition, urging his comrades to remove him. Yet, within a year, Stalin, mistaken as a ‘grey blur’ by his flashier rivals, had outmanoeuvred all of Lenin’s old comrades-in-arms, chiefly Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and the aloof Leon Trotsky, whilst shaping a totalitarian system that would endure for seven decades.
As a number of Sovietologists like Robert Service and Stephen Kotkin have amply demonstrated, Stalin understood the mechanics of power like few others. He was a man of practical cunning, able to play the long game with the kind of patience and ferocity that would ultimately mould the Soviet Union in his image. His consolidation was not just about advancing ideology but also about navigating a fractured political landscape. The same could be said for Vladimir Putin, engaged in his own struggle for the soul of the nation.
A century after Lenin’s death, Russia’s imperial ambitions have been rekindled by Putin’s campaign in Ukraine. The war, now stretching beyond 1,040 days, has become an existential struggle, not just for Russia’s territorial integrity but for its very identity.
Like Lenin’s death in 1924, the current crisis signals a turning point. Putin, who has ruled for over two decades, now faces internal fractures and an increasingly costly war. While he remains far from imminent collapse, his grip on power is showing cracks. The war in Ukraine, which Putin once expected to be a swift victory, has exposed Russia’s vulnerabilities.
The situation in 1924, while different in specifics, offers a parallel. After the Russo-Polish War, Russia’s borders were unstable, and its resources depleted. Stalin, in his drive for territorial expansion, sought to both reclaim lost lands and assert the ideological superiority of Bolshevism. The Soviet Union’s rhetoric was not merely about reclaiming territory but about reaffirming its place in the world order. Today, Russia finds itself grappling with an identity crisis rooted in its imperial past. Putin, like Stalin, sees the resurgence of a Russian empire as a way to assert national pride and overcome the post-Soviet malaise that followed the collapse of the USSR.
From the outset of the war in Ukraine, Putin’s expectations of a swift victory were high. Three years into the conflict, that belief persists, but it has been repeatedly tested by Ukrainian resilience and Western support. Putin’s refusal to entertain meaningful negotiations stems from his belief in Russia’s ability to outlast its adversaries. He is playing the long game, much like Stalin did during the Winter War of 1939, when he underestimated Finnish resolve, assuming that attrition would secure victory (which it eventually did).
However, this strategy of attrition has its limits in the present scenario. Russia’s willingness to sacrifice vast numbers of troops for marginal gains mirrors Soviet tactics in past wars, but the political and economic costs are beginning to mount. Putin’s reliance on sheer willpower to outlast his enemies is grounded in a belief that time is on his side. The war has certainly put a heavy toll on Russia’s resources, and its people’s tolerance for sacrifice may be reaching its breaking point.
Just as Stalin built his empire on a foundation of paranoia, purges and propaganda, Putin has consolidated power through a blend of authoritarian control, manipulation of state narratives and suppression of dissent. But as Robert Service shows in his acclaimed biographies of Lenin and Stalin, Stalin’s success in the 1920s was not solely due to his ruthlessness but also because he understood how to play his opponents against each other, capitalizing on the divisions within the Bolshevik leadership. In much the same way, Putin has skilfully navigated Russia’s fractured political landscape to trump his rivals.
However, his reliance on allies like North Korea and Iran, while providing short-term military and economic support, also signals a narrowing of Russia’s diplomatic options. In the same way as Stalin’s paranoid alliances during and after the Second World War – first with Hitler and thence with the capitalist democracies - restricted Soviet flexibility, Putin’s current alliances may limit Russia’s global reach.
As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth year, the West, too, will have to recalibrate its approach. Increasing military support for Ukraine, particularly with advanced air defence systems and long-range missiles and an escalation of sanctions, could force Putin to reconsider his strategy, making it clear that Putin’s vision of a prolonged war of attrition is untenable.
Ultimately, Putin, like Stalin before him, is caught in a historical cycle—a cycle in which Russia’s imperial ambitions clash with the realities of a weakened state. For Putin, as for Stalin, the question will remain whether Russia can transcend its internal crises or whether these crises will ultimately be its undoing.
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