They had an insane monarchy that delayed industrialization, missed out on the middle class development and went through a scorched earth total war and communist regime.
It’s a nation of contrast and paradox. Russia is a lot like the US in many ways.
I mean yea, you can discount anything by comparing things that are not alike.
One thing to note about Russia is it is not defensible in standard sense of it's hard to cross this river or mountain. This lead to Russia making distance it's defense. You go and capture a bunch of different peoples with no relations to each other and use them as a meat shield if anyone attacks. Meanwhile you want for the harsh winter to wear them out. But this also comes as a cost, you cannot allow any of these outlying territories to gain too much power or they could become a threat to Moscow, hence you tend to see a massive amount of Russia under developed and depopulated.
Russia is very typical Asian country, or to be more strict, typical country of Central Asia, not European, for example, South-Eastern Asia is very different.
And Russian behavior is very typical for Central Asia. Absolutely nothing extraordinary.
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