Sarah Paine

Well, with Gorbachev, however, he works his magic.

You're down to Kaliningrad,

OK, that's where Russians stage a lot of weapons nowadays, apparently dump a lot of toxic waste.

So that's what Kaliningrad is all about.

So it was significant so that at the end of 1991, when Russia's lost everything, they're down to a much diminished rump state and then followed by years of instability in Russia.

When Russians measure, well, they agree on that their country always has been, always should be, always will be a great power.

But they don't measure it in wealth because their wealth has always been much less than their Western neighbors, although they often confiscate the wealth of other people.

So what they measure, their strength, greatness, is in vast territorial extent and the ability to run roughshod over others and make them do whatever it is Russia wants.

And also, when they look at their security, they also look at it this way, is that we need this vast territorial extent to be secure.

But they never turn it around, so they're always worried about other people invading them, to think, well...

Do you suppose we pose a threat to anybody else?

They never turn it around that way.

Except 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.

Let's go to the medieval period where Russia starts out as the princely state of Muscovy, Moscow.

Well, it wipes out the other princely states.

There was Novgorod the Great.

It was the more progressive place.

They wiped that place out.

Upskov, Rostov-Chir, there are a lot of other places.