Throughout its history, what would become Europe went through a series of developmental stages. There were no sudden jerks forward but a gradual change over a long period of time.
When hunting and gathering gave way to agriculture and animal husbandry, the subsistence nature of the former system that relied on members of the independent family groups hunting for food to satisfy the unit with no need for community. With agricultural, this gave way to interdependence and a division of labor and distribution of goods. Good hunters hunted, those best at agriculture grew things, and those with other talents provided other products tom the community according to their talents and abilities.
This resulted in communities needing leadership to have it work for the benefit of all and establishing community territory for the sake of it. This eventually became countries as the leadership went from those who were chosen by those they were to lead to a system of inherited leadership that more often than not benefited those closest to the leader and established a society run by those who benefited by the structure and did what they could to ensure they kept that advantage.
Hereditary Monarchies ensured power stayed with the powerful.
Europe went through empires, the feudal system, the Industrial Revolution, governmental structure remodels, and all sorts of social changes that made that Europe from hunters and gatherers to modern society.
It was a gradual process.
By the beginning of the 20th Century this pimple popped. World War I broke out because those who rose to the top of the rulers’ hill in the traditional systems had huge family differences among themselves as most of Europe’s royalty seemed interrelated, and, like in the corporate world, there were attempts at hostile take-overs that resulted in the old forms of government in many place imploding after a war broke out that was mainly a corporate family disputes with hostile take-overs of each other’s companies and holdings.
After WWI, a war that was actually not resolved, monarchies no longer existed as they once had by the “nobility” losing many heirs during the conflict and border changes resulting from it, and people wanted more control of the countries they had fought for.
It was as if a continent had decided the spoiled kids in the cafeteria were not in charge of the school anymore.
It was as if the old system had finally run it’ course and like an adolescent’s pimple, popped.
Unfortunately, because of how the first war ended, it wasn’t resolved finally until a second one, and in the process for Europe the old ways died.
The thing is, Europe had the opportunity to go from the Dark Ages to the Middle Ages, and through a Renaissance, an enlightenment, and an industrial revolution to the modern age in a series of progressive states to which it could adjust as they came.
Russia, who really wanted to be like the Europe and had its ruling class connected to all the other European rulers because of family ties and inbreeding, did not have the opportunity that Europe had.
In 1917, Russia went from a Feudal, a mostly peasant reliant agrarian society with a disconnected ruling class to a country entering the modern age in one quick revolution that was more 9dea than actual.
The country then established what it considered the best form of government having never had any experience with any other, their own replaced a system based on the European model that did not take into account the realities that separated Russia from Europe, with the expectation of going smoothly into a whole new age seamlessly.
Every upheaval and change in Europe had been followed by some period of adjustment that were sometime quiet and slow, or painful with lots of bloodshed and re-shifting, until settling into a relatively good situation.
France alone had gone through a Revolution to rid itself of a system that had sunk far below what had established the Monarchy, following that with a number of years chaos, governmental musical chairs, and quiet times of economic growth to establish itself into what we now think of as France. Certain aspects of France’s growth were later taken up by other European Countries in the aftermath of the war and we now have the European Union that did not come about overnight, but when the time came and the people were ready.
While that growth was going on, Russia’s plunge into modernity took place when the rest of the world was looking at Europe, and entered the post war years needing to establish its credentials as a legitimate country and at least appear to be as powerful as all those other countries with which it identified had shown themselves to be during the War to End All Wars in spite of a revolution that had other heads of states fearing, if successful, could be in their future.
By the end of WWI there were fewer countries with monarchs, so the remaining ones and those who benefited from the system were watchful for a potential spread of Revolution.
Russia had yet to go through any type of Renaissance, Age of Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, or any of the big and minor changes European countries had gone through before plunging in among them, and this has it stuck in time.
While Europe and countries influenced by it have moved away from how things were when it comes to leadership, goals, and war, Russia hasn’t.
Russia is playing catch up.
The war in Ukraine, and let me not trigger anyone because I am about to say something in relation to a specific item of current events which does not mean I am unaware of others, but have merely chosen one for my present purpose, is a war of the past, the type of war and the reasons for it that Europe has left behind. This whole invading a country, bullying them into giving you everything you want and then some, scaring everyone else into accepting you as the bully thing is how it used to be, but in Russia’s much interrupted passage through growth stages, it’s still what is done.
Putin is that middle school kid who wants to be with the cool kids and does everything he can to be welcomed among them and by them, and when he thinks the time is right to step into the light dresses the part, has practiced the lingo only to find out that little fashion thing has been given up and the secret password and handshake were recently given up as being to childish.
Someone’s cat is about to get kicked.
Based on this rambling rationalization, I feel that when the present war in Ukraine ends and the Russian political dust settles, this will be the last time a war such as this will happen in that part of the world.
It will still be okay to foment wars in other places, just not up in the Europe/Russia area, assuming China has noticed the old days of Empires is long gone and in the present day, history shows these attempts do not end well.
The world is moving from the Space Age, through the computer age and whatever comes after that.
If this is Russia’s pimple popping, perhaps, they will join the other countries that have long left invading countries and playing tough in the past.
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