Academic says studying European history will provide greater understanding of ‘Russian imperalism’

An academic says studying European history would provide greater understanding into the motives of Vladimir Putin and the Russian state.

Senior research fellow at the Institute for Religion & Critical Inquiry at the Australian Catholic University, Miles Pattenden, said his specialty of Medieval studies provides him insight into the conflict.

“Russia as a state has existed well before the communists turned up,” he told Tom Elliott on 3AW Drive.

“And even in that earlier Tsarist period, it was always too big to be fully absorbed into the European system, but also so big that it also threatened it’s neighbours and it overrun them, in the way that Putin is doing now.

“The closest parallel in some ways the series of partitions the Russians and the Germans performed over Poland when they extinguished it as a state between the 1770s and the 1790s.

“But if we look at Russian history in that longer trajectory we can see this is part of a repeating cycle, which has happened over maybe as many as 500 years.”

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Photo by Kremlin Press Service/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images