On November 30, 1917, Foreign Minister Richard Von Kuhlmann stood before the German Reichstag government to deliver a speech applauding the recent rise to power in Russia of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his radical socialist Bolshevik Party.

   Soon after November 7, 1917, when the Bolsheviks (Communists) seized control in Petrograd from the provisional government–in place since the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in March–Lenin moved to secure an immediate armistice with the Central Powers in the First World War. This was greeted with open arms from the Central Powers, but with despair from the Allies, as the Russians had been holding off at least another half a million German troops which Germany would love to swing around to use on the Western Front.

   Soon, the Bolsheviks had Russia negotiating with the Central Powers terms for peace. The Central powers accepted quite quickly, ending the war on the Eastern Front. While the Central Powers rejoiced at the turn of events in Petrograd, the Allies were filled with a sense of dread. With Russia out of the war, Germany would be free to transfer more manpower to the Western Front; to the south, Austria-Hungary seemed close to overpowering Italy. Although the United States had entered the war on the side of the Allies in April 1917, it was not expected to deliver troops in significant numbers until the following summer. By the end of 1917, with casualties mounting on the Western Front, the Allies looked ahead with trepidation as the possibility of victory seemed to recede ever further into the distance.

Russian Invasion Of Finland

    On this day in 1939, the citizens of Helsinki, Finland,  woke to perhaps the worst thing they’d want to hear: Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union, which loomed more ominously than the Germans in their eyes, had invaded their country and they’d better be prepared.  The news would have more immediate effects to those citizens that very same day, as Helsinki was ravaged by ruthless bombings by Soviet aircraft, who outnumbered the Finnish Aircraft 30 to 1. The “Winter War”, as it would be known, lasted from this day 78 years ago until March 12, 1940.

   The Soviets, at first, failed to get any effective attack against the Finns, who utilized the gnarliest winter gear including skis and white uniforms. Even though they outnumbered the Finns 3 to 1 in men, 5 to 1 in artillery, and 100 to 1 in tanks, the harsh Finnish winter proved to be more than a match for Soviet numbers, at least for a few months. But when Josef Stalin got tired of waiting and launched a concerted attack in February, the Finns were just worn out, both physically and resource-wise, and they sued for peace soon thereafter.

   The conflict may seem minor to modern readers, but the initial Soviet failures “proved” to a supremely confident Adolf Hitler that the Soviets were militarily incompetent and they could be brushed aside in possibly year as long as they put their proverbial backs into it. This was just another reason, in Hitler’s view, that invading the Soviet Union was a splendid idea, and he would do just that on June 22, 1941. Of course, the invasion proved to be an utter debacle, as the Soviets proved that they weren’t militarily incompetent, but that is for another day in history.

Cold War INF Treaties

    On this day in 1981, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union open talks to reduce their intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe. The talks lasted until December 17, but ended inconclusively. This left unresolved the issue of the growing number of non-strategic weapons-the so-called intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe.

   By 1976, the Soviets began to update their INF systems with better SS-20 missiles. America’s NATO allies called for a U.S. response, and the United States threatened to deploy cruise and Pershing II missiles by 1983 if no agreement could be reached with the Soviets concerning INFs. However, by 1981, the situation changed. Anti-nuclear forces were gaining strength in western Europe and there was a growing fear that President Ronald Reagan’s heated Cold War rhetoric would lead to a nuclear showdown with Europe as the battlefield. The United States and U.S.S.R. agreed to open talks on INFs in November 1981.

   Prior to the talks, President Reagan announced the so-called “zero option” as the basis for the U.S. position at the negotiations. In this plan, the United States would cancel deployment of its new missiles in western Europe if the Soviets dismantled their INFs in eastern Europe. The proposal was greeted with some skepticism, and would be completely unacceptable to the Soviets. The Soviets responded with a detailed proposal that essentially eliminated all of the INFs from Europe. Of course, such a plan would also leave west Europe subject to the Soviets’ superior conventional forces. Neither proposal seemed particularly realistic, and despite efforts by some of the U.S. and Soviet negotiators, no compromise could be reached. Unfortunately, an INF treaty would not be signed until December 1987.

Modern Russia Analysis

   With all of this Russian history: the revolutions, the invasions, and the near-nuclear war with the U.S, it is interesting to look at the changing Russian role in the international geopolitical scene. Just 100 years ago, the Russian Empire was in complete disarray, caught in a brewing civil war between passionate Bolsheviks and, well, everyone else. But then, after a long and bloody war, a ruthless communist dictatorship imposed itself upon the world, and was one of the leading powers of the world. A victory against the Finns that was longer than most would’ve predicted “proved” to the world that it only took determination and lots of men to beat the Soviets, who looked very mortal.
   The German invasion of the Soviet Union changed that. Proving to the world that, yeah, they can sit at the adult’s table, they put Eastern Europe under their iron grip. Continuing to build up their nuclear arsenal, and nearly getting in a nuclear war, with the US, made it clear that the Soviets meant business. Even when they were signing nuclear reduction treaties, like in 1981, they still stood just as tall as the burgeoning Americans. That iron grip would slip in the 1980s, when the socialist republic’s under Soviet control began to rise up from. By 1992, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist, and the new Russian republic looked politically marginalized. But some rebuilding by Putin both of Russia’s military power and political confidence placed Russia back on the radar.

   Now, the news goes insane over what the Russians did here or Putin did there. But are they actually a threat to world power? The old Soviet Union certainly had its up and downs, but even when it was up it never really looked to upset the world apple cart, and peace was always prefered when it came to Soviet diplomacy. But then again, Vladimir Putin appears to be an entirely new animal, and seems to have no intentions to follow the old Soviet example, and is dipping his foot further and further into the water, with the possible (some might say probable) state-sponsored Russian hacking of the US 2016 Elections serving as the best example. Politics are a dangerous game, but Putin seems to want dive right in. If history doesn’t lie, Putin wouldn’t attempt to jeopardize world peace with a risky conflict that would be disastrous for everyone including himself, but sometimes history laughs in our faces and proves, even to itself, that sometimes the world is unpredictable.