Putin, in the footsteps of Potemkin, is trying to recreate the Russian Empire

In May 2016, Vladimir Putin announced that he was seizing personal control of the Russian State Archive (RosArkhiv), formally known as the Federal Archival Agency of the Russian Federation. He removed the archive from the Ministry of Culture, where it had been housed, and placed it in the presidential office. The archive is the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world, with some seven million items in storage. Its main focus, and clearly the reason for Putin’s reorganization, is the history of the Russian Empire.

Putin asserted that he had ordered the move because of the “special value” of the archives. A Ukrainian outlet opined at the time that the decision reflected Putin’s fear that embarrassing documents contained in the archive could leak to an unhappy public.

But perhaps Putin was not trying to cover up the past, but instead seeking to recreate it. A former Finnish ambassador to Moscow, recalling Putin’s transfer of the archive, pointed out to me that ever since it came under his direct control, Putin had peppered the archivists with demands for specifics regarding Russia’s imperial past. The Russian invasion of Ukraine that commenced on February 24, 2022, certainly indicates that he was acting on those specifics.

A significant portion of the territory that is now Ukraine, and particularly the Crimea, and Russian advances along the Black Sea littoral, actually are the 21st-century version of Prince Grigory Potemkin’s seizure of these lands during the reign of Catherine the Great. It was Potemkin, Catherine’s lover and in essence co-ruler, who founded many of the Ukrainian cities whose names now appear regularly in the media. In 1784, a year after he had successfully managed the annexation of what had been the Crimean Khanate, Potemkin fortified and populated a recently opened port that he renamed Sevastopol. He accurately envisaged the town as one of Russia’s key strongholds on the Black Sea.

Ten years later, after Turkey’s disastrous attempt to reclaim its lost lands in Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1792, Potemkin expanded Russia’s presence on the Black Sea littoral. He founded and named the port of Odessa and created, designed and populated other cities and towns as well, notably Kherson and Mykolaiv. The latter town had been known as Nikolaev (much as Kyiv had been Kiev) until Ukrainian independence. Russia has since restored the town’s original name to those parts of the Mykolaiv oblast that have fallen to its forces.

It is noteworthy that these cities were originally dismissed as “Potemkin villages,” or ghost towns — a term now used to describe a phony facade. In fact, these were very real cities that Potemkin, with Catherine’s support, established as a network for Russia’s expanding presence on the Black Sea. And it was Potemkin as well who created the Black Sea Fleet, which seemed to be a powerful force until Ukraine’s successful missile and drone strikes decimated its numbers.

The history of Potemkin’s 18th-century conquests, which were likely the subject of many of Putin’s enquiries to his office of archives, explains why the control of Crimea and its port of Sevastopol are so important. It also explains why Putin has pushed his forces to fight so fiercely for control of Kherson and Mykolaiv, and to press on for Russia’s ultimate goal of capturing Odessa.

In this regard, it is noteworthy that in his election victory speech on March 18, Putin stated that he wished “to especially express … gratitude to the military people who are on the front line … risking their life and their health by fulfilling this mission of defending our country and defending historical territories of Russia.” Indeed, Putin celebrated the night of his reelection as president by attending a concert that marked the “tenth anniversary of Crimea and Sevastopol’s reunification with Russia”

Putin has at times been derided as a transactional leader rather than as a strategist. Yet his efforts to recreate Imperial Russia’s southern border reflect nothing less than Potemkin’s original strategy. It took Potemkin more than a decade both to establish Russian hegemony over the northern Black Sea and to field the wherewithal to intimidate a weakened Ottoman Empire that still controlled the sea’s southern littoral. Potemkin did so in piecemeal fashion; Putin has been following Potemkin’s playbook virtually step by step. With his reelection to another six-year term, he will certainly attempt to continue to do so.

Potemkin did not restrict himself to expanding Russian control along the Black Sea littoral. He also established a Russian protectorate over the Kingdom of Georgia, predecessor to the modern-day independent republic of that name. Here too, Putin is likely to follow Potemkin’s lead. Having already sliced off South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Russia’s 2008 attack on Georgia, he may well attempt to seize the rest of Georgia if and when he has realized his Black Sea plans.

Although he has threatened NATO with nuclear retaliation, Putin recognizes that he will encounter far more difficulty attacking NATO’s northern flank than in seizing territory from non-NATO states. Perhaps at some point he may feel sufficiently emboldened to challenge NATO, but at present it is not Peter the Great but Catherine the Great whose expansion he seeks to recreate.

It is only Ukrainian resilience and true fighting grit that has stood in the way of Putin’s efforts to dominate the lands between his country and the Black Sea. For that reason, the West, and especially the United States and the Congress, must continue to meet Kyiv’s urgent military needs, as it has done until now. Otherwise, Putin will not cease his effort to restore the legacy of conquest that rewarded Catherine with the epithet “the Great” and Prince Grigory Potemkin with a semi-independent empire within his sovereign’s vast domains.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.