Sarah Paine — How Russia sabotaged China's rise

(instrumental music plays) Stalin's plan, his script for the Chinese works beautifully, because when the nationalists unite with the communists to fight the Japanese, they think he's also gonna provide soldiers. They don't get it. Once they're in, Russia is out of this thing. Chiang Kai-shek goes roaring up China. He reaches his home base in Shanghai, pause, and he turns his guns on the communists and just massacres them in droves. If you add up all the territory that the Russians took from the Chinese sphere of influence, it's greater than all U.S. territory east of the Mississippi. Russia has posed existential threat to its neighbors forever. There are so many neighbors you have never heard of because they've disappeared from the pages of history courtesy of the Russians. People are worried about whether there's gonna be an enduring relationship with, uh, China and Russia. And if you look at this picture, uh, the relations look more glacial than cordial and the little one's hauling on the arm of the big one. And, uh, one wonders about that. So, um, it turns out my expertise is on Russo-Chinese relations. In- that's what I studied in graduate school. My dissertation was a history of their border from the Opium Wars, the mid-19th century, until Outer Mongolia was, uh, snatched from the Chinese sphere of influence and parked in the Russian sphere, uh, uh, in the 1920s. So it- it's fun to talk about this particular topic. Before I get going, I'm gonna do some terminology. I'm gonna use the word Russia to refer to the Czarist, Soviet, and modern periods the same way that you use France to describe its many monarchies and many republics. The Bolsheviks thought they were special, so they came up with special words for special people. Soviet. Soviet Union. But it turns out they were temporary and Russia is the enduring thing. So that's it on terminology. Before I speculate on what the future is going to look like, our only database that we have is whatever happened from this second backwards, what people call history, but it's just whatever is in the past. That's it. That's our database. And so I'm gonna look at when Russia was strong and China was weak from the mid-19th century to the mid, uh, 20th century, then the reversal of the power balance, and then in the recent period when China has been strong and Russia weak. China and Russia actually discovered each other late in their histories. It was the early part of their last dynasties when the Russians were after fur, very lucrative in those days, and that brings them out to the Pacific. But their relations were only episodic until we get to the mid-19th century where s- which is where my story is gonna begin. So in the 18th century, China was strong, Russia was weak. But that one doesn't last very long, and both empires followed the rules for continental empire, and if you wanna survive in a continental world, both... that's what both of them historically have been, you don't wanna have two front wars because you have multiple neighbors, any one of them that can come in at any time. And if they gang up on you, that's trouble. So you take on one at a time. Also, you don't want any great powers on the borders. This is the fundamental problem with their relationship, is because today's friend can be tomorrow's foe, and that is truly... that's problematic. So what do you do to solve that problem? Well, you take on your neighbors sequentially, you set them up to fail, you destabilize the rising and just the, uh, failing, and you set up buffer zones in between, and you wait the opportune moment to pounce and absorb. And of that is Vladimir Putin's game. But if you play this game, you're surrounding yourself by failing states because you're either busy destabilizing them or ingesting them. So the curious might ask how do Russia... are Russia and China unlucky with all the very dysfunctional pla- places that surround them or are they complicit? Also, there are no enduring alliances in this world because the neighbors figure it out that the hegemonic power offers nothing but trouble in the long term, and there's also no counsel on when to stop expanding. So both Russia and China are known for overextending, overdoing it, and then that may help explain some of their periodic implosions over their long and bloody histories. Very high mortality rates before, before you dismiss this paradigm. You've seen it operating in real time in Syria and Ukraine. There are people who do this, uh, and, and it also explains why all those ancient ruins are ruins. This sort of warfare is ruinous. But anyway, it lies at the basis of many of the great civilizations of Eurasia. This is how they did things. All right. So I'm gonna start my story in the mid-19th century when the Chinese were beset by a whole series of rebellions that just about wrecked them, and the Russians take advantage of all of this. Remember the second rule of continental empires, no great power neighbors. And the Russians repeatedly derail the rise of China by scripting the Chinese to do things that are remarkably detrimental to Chinese interests but pretty good for Russian interests, and it takes the Chinese a long time to figure it out. Uh, they have g- governments coming and going in this period. Uh, it's a difficult period, but they eventually figure it out by the time Mao reunifies China in 1949. So I'm gonna go through each of those examples in turn starting with a really big one which are the Opium Wars. This is when Britain and France are coming at China in order to force China to trade on their terms, and this corresponds with the two biggest rebellions of China's period of rebellions, the Taiping and the Nian rebellion. So here's a big chart that's a simplified chart. The rebellions actually start in the late 18th centuries. The rebellion's a misnomer. These are civil wars. Either people are like minority peoples who want out of empire, they wanna secede. Other people who wanna overthrow the government in Beijing. The peak period is in red. The really big ones are in white. So China has got the two front war problem, right? It's got Europeans coming at them plus all of this. In fact, the Chinese have so many fronts they don't know how to deal with it. So the Russians come on in to the Chinese and say, "Hey, we can deal with the..."... uh, British and French for you, and solve that problem, then you can deal with all the internal stuff. However, we need to have you sign a couple pieces of paper for us." The Treaty of Aigun of 1858 and the Treaty of Peking of 1860, what do they do? They cede to Russia large swaths of territory in Central Asia and the Pacific coastline. And the Qing, uh, dynasty, they were vague on geography. They're beset by these other things. They don't understand that Europeans think these pieces of paper are permanent things, and they figure that once they put their house back in order, they're gonna come back and get the territory later. Okay, the second example of ruinous Russian mediation that is going to, uh, keep China, uh, in turmoil. So in the first Sino-Japanese War, Japan trounces China, boots them from their tributary in Korea, and then the Japanese also want some territory on the Liaodong Peninsula that isn't labeled very well there. But anyhow, um, what the Chinese do is they go to the Russians to help them counterbalance Japan so that Japan doesn't take this territory, uh, Chinese territory in the Asian mainland. Russia gets its buddies, France and Germany, the so-called Triple Int- Intervention, to gang up on Japan. And Japan looks at it, three great powers, "I don't think so," so they, they bail. So th- for the, from the Chinese point of view, so far so good, except what the Russians promptly do is take for themselves the very territory that had just been denied to Japan. And the story gets worse, because all the European powers, or many of them, plus Japan come in and they carve out big concession areas throughout China so that China's not gonna have full sovereignty over its territory for several generations, right? So instead of one relatively small Japanese concession area, they get foreigners everywhere. And so think about second rule continental, uh, empire. No great, uh, power neighbors, not happening while this is going on. Well, the Bolsheviks come to power and then they're gonna apply these rules as well. When they do come to power, they're very weak because Russia's been devastated by World War I, and then the Bolsheviks don't win their own bitter civil war until 1922. And so then as now, they relied on a really cheap but incredibly effective strategy of strategic communication. The Russians really understand, uh, other people's emotional life and what sets them at odds with each other, and they know just how to, uh, to serve out the propaganda that sets people at each other's throats. And they're gonna, their propaganda is gonna help the Chinese really despise the Japanese and the, uh, Europeans, while Russia's even greater predations, the ones you've already seen, go unnoticed. So here's Lev Karakhan. He was a deputy foreign minister. In 1919, he sends, um, a missive, uh, his Karakhan Manifesto, to the Chinese foreign ministry and he says, "Hey, we're not imperialists. We're Bolsheviks. We're gonna return all the, the lands from those unequal treaties and be your friend from evermore. Unlike all the other evil imperialist powers, we're not like that anymore." And so the Chinese are looking at this and thinking, "Wow, here are the Bolsheviks who've gotten rid of their imperialistic government. They're, uh, putting together their shattered land." And so this offers hope to the Chinese that they can do likewise and it's a model potentially to follow and a mentor who might help them. Uh, except here's the detail. When the Bolsheviks started doing better in their civil war, they really dialed back what their offer was. The original offer was, "Tear up treaties, China gets all territory back, no payments necessary." Under the new version of the Karakhan Manifesto, which the Russian foreign ministry goes and, and, uh, telegraphs to the Chinese foreign ministry. I've seen the document, or at least a certain copy of it in the archives in Taiwan. They, they send it back and say, "We- we're willing to talk about these things. We're gonna hold some negotiations." Well, the facts are they didn't return these concessionaries to the mid-20th century, the 1950s, after the Westerners had returned almost all of their concession areas. And this is not trivial. And when we think of concessionaries in the age of imperialism in China, you think of British ones, right? Hong Kong. Well, Hong Kong isn't actually very big. The reason you know about Hong Kong is it makes lots of money, or at least it used to. And the Russian ar- concessionaries were huge, didn't make money. Nothing s- what else is new? But the Russians had by far the largest concession area of any other country. But from the Karakhan Manifesto is the origin of the myth of Sino-Soviet friendship, that the Russians somehow treated the Chinese nicely. And the foreign ministry officials who have known better, their government is overthrown within the decade, and presumably these documents just gather dust in the archives. All right, my fourth example of derailing China's rise concerns the first united front between the Chinese nationalists and Chinese Communist Party. Here's the leader of the Nationalist Party and also leader of its ar- armies, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Well, he led the northern expedition reunifying China, at least nominally, by either defeating or co-opting all those warlords there. You can see the different colors of the ma- where the major warlords were. And previous South China attempts to do this or e- or to secede from China, one or the other, had failed for lack of a proficient military. But Russia changes that. It provides aid, arms, and expertise and structures and things to found the Whampoa Military Academy, which is in Canton or Guangzhou. And that, uh, institution is going to, uh-... educate the officers, both communist and nationalist who would lead, uh, not only this but some of their civil, uh, civil war area officers that make this reunification of China possible. But the Russians had a price. Give them, uh, give the nationalists the aid, but the nationalists then have to let the communists into the nationalist party. That's what the United Front is. So, this all, uh, coincides with a bitter succession struggle in Russia. This is the problem with dictatorships. They really don't do succession well. It's why elections are so convenient. Uh, instead, you have Stalin and Trotsky going at it of which one was gonna be the big cheese. Stalin is all about socialism in one country. He thinks that Russia oughta fu- focus on its own internal development. Whereas Trotsky says, "Nonsense, we need to focus on world revolution because only if there are sister revolutions abroad can ours survive." So while this is all going on, um, the Chinese communists really want to get out of that united front. Why? Because it puts them in close proximity to the army which is controlled by the nationalists and they're getting worried whether they're about to get killed. And the Russians say, "No, no, no, no, no. It's go- good, good, good. You stay in that united front." So they do. Chiang Kai-shek goes roaring up China. I've shown you the map. He reaches his pretty home base in Shanghai, pause, and he turns his guns on the communists and just massacres them in droves. And this is when Mao has to think of a rural strategy to power because the urban pa- strategy is no longer feasible. Well, once this happens, Stalin can use it to just trounce Trotsky in the internal power struggle 'cause its, "Look, see? Revolution in one country doesn't work abroad." And a lot of Chinese died proving Stalin's point. All right. Another example where Russia literally derails the rise of China. There's a railway system there. We're gonna talk rails. Uh, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905, Japan wins it and gets from Russia, which built all these things in, uh, Chinese territory, the southern half of that railway net in lieu of an indemnity. Uh, Japan invests massively in railways, infrastructure, and apparently, in local politicians. But the ruling warlord apparently wasn't sufficiently attentive to Japanese needs, so they assassinated him in 1928. So this is his son, Zhang Xueliang, who the following year, 1929, decides he wants his railways back from Russia. What does Russia do? It's not either version of the Karakhan Manifesto. The Russians deploy over 100,000 troops, tanks, airplanes, the works, and just pound this man, and so they k- the Russians keep their railways. So, um, if you wanna delay, uh, the rise of China, that sort of thing delays the rise of China. Um, but now for the first rule of continental empire, no two-front wars. You have to, you go, move fast forward to the 1930s and Stalin thinks he may very well face a two-front war with Germans in the West and Japanese in the East. Why would he think such thoughts? This thing. The Anti-Comintern Pact. Comintern is short for Communist International, it is the Soviet outreach program, and it's signed in 1936 between the Japanese and the Germans. And Stalin goes, "Uh-oh. They're after me." And so he plays every one of his China cards and he holds lots of them 'cause then this is also part, if you want to disintegrate the neighbors in order to delay their rise, well then you fund all si- sides of their, uh, uh, civil wars and any side in between 'cause you just want them to go at it. So he plays every card he's got. And what he wants are the nationalists to stop fighting the communists, vice versa, and unite to fight the Japanese. And they're willing to do this provided Stalin provides conventional aid, which he does. But they think he's also gonna provide soldiers. They don't get it. Once they're in, Russia is outta this thing. And Stalin's plan, his script for the Chinese and Japanese works beautifully because when the nationalists unite in the second united front with the communists going back to the dark side, the Japanese are apoplectic and this is when they do the massive escalation in 1937. And they are off to overextension into parts due south of Russia. So this two-front Japanese-German war never materialized. Stalin very successful, Chinese less so because, uh, the Chinese are fighting the Japanese so the Russians don't have to and that comes at the price of millions of deaths, millions of refugees. It, that does indeed derail China's rise yet again. Next example, per the Yalta agreement, Russia finally gets in the war in Asia. About time. And at the v- in the very final weeks, in, uh, this August storm when the Russians deploy, like, 1.5 million soldiers, it's one of the largest military operations of World War II, and then they rapidly take Manchuria and they also do some... That, that would be the normal thing but here's the abnormal thing. Um, they also take away Manchuria's industrial base. That would not normally b- be what you do to someone. They take 83% of the electrical power equipment, take it home to Russia. You're not turning lights on in Manchuria. 86% of mining, 82% of cement-making, 80% of metalworking equipment. Plus, they take 640,000 Japanese POWs to be slave labor for decades if they ever get home at all. And they also take the northern islands which are still under dispute to today. But if you think about it, if you're gonna do indemnities or reparations or whatever this is, China had been fighting Japan in one form or another for 15 long years. Russia comes in at the cameo performance at the very end.So if there are indemnities to be paid for whatever Japan did, uh, in this war, surely China, not Russia, should have been the recipient for all this stuff. Uh, in addition, another example, so, uh, not only does Stalin walk away with the industrial base, but he walks away with Mongolia as well. How does that work? The Yalta Agreement also stipulates that the status quo shall be maintained in Mongolia. So then you have to look at, well, what was the status quo? It was called Russian sphere of influence in the north, uh, Chinese continuing control in the south. Um, that Mongolia, which had always been both those places, uh, had been part of the Qing Empire, never been part of the Russian Empire. And moreover, Stalin had already taken Tannu Tuva in 1944, and it looks small on this map but it's bigger than England, had lots of gold, which the Soviets had monetized long ago. So if you add up all the territory that the Russians took from the Chinese sphere of influence from the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and 1860 Treaty of Peking, fast-forward to detaching out of Mongolia from the Chinese sphere of influence, here's what it really is. It's greater than all US territory east of the Mississippi. This is not your normal land grab. So talk about derailing somebody, that would do it. Um, to be fair to the Russians, they did, albeit slowly, turn over all this Japanese stockpile of military equipment in Manchuria, turned it over to the communists. And they also, albeit belatedly, they trained them how to use the equipment and also how to run the Manchurian railway system. And the Chinese communists, as a rural, uh, peasant movement, how would they know how to do these things? They wouldn't. And it allows, uh, this conventional aid and logistics of being able to move people around, it transforms the communists from a lightly, uh, armed guerrilla movement to a very heavily armed conventional forces capable for the showdown phase of the Chinese Civil War. So like the Whampoa Military Academy, this is essential aid for the communist victory. So it's in... the com... neither the communists or the nationalists compa- complain about the de-industrialization of Manchuria. And the communists probably traded that industry for all the conventional aid that they got, and the nationalists are trading that and also, uh, outer Mongolian independence for a promise from Stalin not to aid the communists, which is a promise that he promptly breaks. So Mao starts to figure out that something is up here. So when he's on a roll in his offensives in the civil war, there's really bitter fighting, and the real movement in the last phase, the post-1940 phase of the Chinese Civil War is in 1948. That year, Mao just moves, and he is roaring down south and he's about to get the Yangzi River. And Stalin's like, "Hey, buddy, take a break at the Yangzi. Don't exhaust yourself," uh, and Mao ignores it. Because whereas Stalin might have wanted to keep, um, nationalist rump states south of the Yangzi River, uh, yielding a, a, a d- divided China and keeping with weakening your neighbor, uh, Mao is not remotely interested in that. And here's my tenth example, which is the Korean War. If you look at the Korean War, the first year is a war of movement. There's up and down, up and down the peninsula. It's, it's unbelievable how much movement there is. But then it stalemates for the last two years. And you think, "Well, what's going on? Why do... why don't they settle the war sooner? W- Because both sides are, are taking incredible losses." Well, here's how it goes. Once China intervenes in the Korean War, and once they halt various offensives to, um, start peace talks, the Chinese do incredible tunnel work, and probably the North Koreans as well, and build an incredible tunnel system. So it means the South Koreans and the UN forces are never gonna get anywhere near the Soviet border ever again. And from that moment on, Stalin thinks he's got a low-risk, high-reward strategy, where he's going to weaken the United States and delay the rise of China. So what's not to love about fighting to the last Chinese in Korea? Stalin thinks this is great and it's gonna retard Chinese development. Um, it's also because China is so isolated, uh, by this war, it has no international friends but Russia, it's gonna tie China to, uh, Russia ever more firmly and give Russia a breathing space to rebuild after World War II while its Western enemies are wasting time in Korea. So, um, if you put it all together, Chinese Civil War, Korean War, uh, Russia's on-and-off aid... on-and-off-again aid to the R- uh, to, uh, different sides in the civil war, his double-dealing with Bandung, and what happened with Outer Mongol- Mongolia and the Manchurian industrial base, Stalin's advice to Mao to halt at the Yangzi, and then he's fighting to the last Chinese in Korea, this is all consistent with the second rule of continental empire, no, no great power, uh, neighbors. All right, once Stalin dies, finest day of his life, um, he... there's never as strong a leader in Russia again. And by this time, Mao has figured out that the Russians don't want a strong China. Uh, he has to bide his time for a while, but he understands what is going on. And Mao has a growing list of gripes. It's not only he didn't like Stalin's tributary treatment, but also, uh, Mao thinks, with his resume, that he should become, uh, the leader of international communism and Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev is like, "No way." I mean, Khrushchev hasn't, uh, does not have remotely Mao's, uh, resume. Rao- uh, Mao has just put together a continent, uh, by reunifying China. That's not remotely what Khrushchev's ever been able to do. And Mao also can't stand...... either Khrushchev's domestic or foreign policy. Domestically, Khrushchev is all about de-Stalinization. Well, Mao doesn't like that. He's got a cult of personality. He doesn't wanna do things like that. And then Khrushchev is interested in peaceful coexistence with the West, or at least nominally, whereas Mao is in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, which is based on a virulently anti-Western foreign policy. And then they're forever squabbling about who's aiding Vietnam in the... North Vietnam in the Vietnam War and who's gonna get credit for it. So all of that's going on. Now, Khrushchev has his own gripes about the Chinese. He looks around at the United States. The United States has got basing all over the world. Its allies allow the United States to have bases. And China has hardly any Russian bases, these leftover concession areas, and China wants them back. And Tru- Khrushchev can't understand this. And then what he really can't understand are the two Taiwan Strait Crises of 1954 and 1958, where Mao starts lobbing ordinance on nationalist islands that are very close to mainland shores. And Khrushchev is apoplectic 'cause Mao hasn't given him any advance warning. And by the way, this sort of thing could trigger some of the security cla- clauses of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty with, uh, nuclear follow-on effects. And then when Stu- and while this is going on, when, uh, Khrushchev wants to have a combined sub fleet base, if we're gonna take all these risks we need to have subs in different places, uh, Mao says, "No way." And then Khrushchev is fed up and said, "Well, you're not gonna get the plans for the atomic bomb." Okay. And the whole thing becomes public in 1960 with, uh, anger all around. And the two, Russia and China, uh, squabbled incessantly over the Vietnam War. And the North Vietnamese were interested in getting maximum aid for both, from both, which it did. And they begged the Chinese to allow the Russians to ship things overland through China, so the Chinese felt obliged to do it. Um, but, uh, the terms of that overland trade were just, uh, uh, a food for all kinds of squabbling. It just didn't add. So, the story of the reversal in the balance of power between Russia and China arose from multiple factors. Doesn't happen all, uh, at once. It is both a story of China's rise and of Russia's decline. And step one for China is getting its own atomic weapon, which it does in 1964 so that it can get itself free of Soviet bondage. And so this is in 1964, after they've detonated that bomb, where Mao goes, "Okay, there are too many places occupied by the Soviet Union. The Russians took everything they could. We have not yet presented an account, uh, for this list of stolen territory, all the territory I've shown you. Uh, we want it back." (laughs) And the Russian's jaw drops, panic. And th- the Chinese, then, are much more aggressive about what they consider to be their territorial rights. Uh, and there is a f- a border war over territories and, in particular, this one island, Zhenbao or Damansky Island in the Amur River. All right, here's how riverine borders work, international ones. Uh, under international law, the border is the thalweg, which is the center of the main channel of whatever the river is. And Russia had followed that with its European borders. Not with China. It claimed both banks of the Amur. Well, the Chinese are fed up, uh, with that and they take Zhenbao, uh, Island. And, uh, the Russians are furious and they come to the United States and they say, "Would it be okay if we nuke these people?" (laughs) And we're like, "No." (laughs) So then the Russians scratch their head and they come back and they go, "Okay, would it be okay if we use conventional weapons to blow up their nuclear stuff?" And we go, "No, still not okay." And Mao gets it. The one that wants to nuke you is your primary adversary. So there's a reshuffling of the primary adversaries so that... Formerly, the United States was a primary adversary of both China and Russia, so that would be a reason for them to cooperate. Well, now they're primary adversaries for each other, and the United States can play the swing thing with all of this. And for Russia, um, it's really devastating having China as an enemy because it's gonna have to deploy mechanized nuclear armed troops all along its really long Chinese border, Central Asia, the works. And it's already doing this with its European borders and occupying Eastern Europe, which garrison costs are significant. Imagine if this country had to put those kinds of forces on our long Canadian and Mexican borders. It'd be bankrupting and their economy was, and remains, a fraction of ours. But, um, this breaking up of the, the earlier version of the bromance, uh, uh, allows the United States to play the swing role and then we cooperate. Both Nixon and Mao think ganging up on Russia would be a good thing and overextending Russia financially by overextending it militarily with all this, these armaments and things. So, in addition, what's going as part of the China's rise are internal reforms under Deng Xiaoping, when he abandons certain communist principles of economic management and gets much more productive agricultural s- sector in industry and commerce. And so China's running double-digit growth rates for about 20 years with significant compounding effects. Okay, that's the story of China's rise. Now for this dystopian alternate universe of Russian decline. You have pictured here on the left is Leonid Brezhnev, who apparently had a really, uh, a, a stroke in 1976 that permanently impaired his thinking and which his death in 1982 finished off. And then, um, he was replaced by an... uh, Yuri And- uh, Andropov, whose own health was, uh, pretty parlous and he dies within two years. And then Konstantin Chernenko, uh, barely makes it a year before he's dead. I mean, it sorta sounds like us. But anyway, uh-... (laughs) it doesn't work well. So if you look at Soviet growth statistics, they're really good right after the end of World War II. They're busy rebuilding. But then, when you get to the mid-'70s, they're going into terminal decline. So when Gorbachev comes to power in 1985, Soviet growth rates have been either 1% to 2% less than US growth rates for the preceding decade, and the compounding effects of that are pretty horrendous. In addition, other problems, Leonid Brezhnev was in power for 18 long years. And not only did he collect cars, that was apparently the, the, the go-to gift for him, but in addition, he was collecting a bunch of non-performing piles across the Third World because this is manifesting Russian power, but it's expensive and he doesn't have much of an economy to pay for it. And if you look at oil prices, they're very much associated with the decline of the Soviet Union, rise of Vladimir Putin. And it's because in the Soviet era, uh, government budgets, uh, relied as much as 55% on oil or energy revenues, and so, um, piggy banks are going to shrink if oi- oil prices aren't doing very well. And so Gorbachev repeatedly said, you know, "We can't live this way anymore." And so he wanted, and he did, initiate political and economic reforms to try to save communism, except he really, um, ruined the sclerotic patient doing what he did. And there are massive territorial implications for what he did, and, uh, it's the loss of empire in Eastern Europe and also the loss of the ethnically based constituent republics of the Soviet Union. So I'm gonna show you this, um, territorial, Russia's territorial odyssey in maps. So this is '38. It is before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi-Soviet pact, where they're dividing up Poland and parts of, of Eastern Europe, Nazis and Soviets, so what they want. This is before then. But by the time you get to the end of the war, Russia's got the Baltic states, it's got Kaliningrad, it's got all of Belarus, all of Ukraine, and then of course, it gets Eastern Europe. Well, with Gorbachev, after he works his magic, you're down to Kaliningrad. Okay, that's where Russians stage a lot of weapons nowadays and apparently dump a lot of toxic waste, uh, so that's what Kaliningrad's all about. Uh, so it was significant so that at the end of, uh, 1991 when Russia's lost everything, they're down to a, a much diminished rump state and then, uh, followed by years of, uh, instability in Russia.