7 July, 22:07
In public discourse, Russia is often portrayed as a self-sufficient, civilizational model — a “third way” between East and West. However, this narrative conflicts with empirical observations of Russia’s political, economic, and foreign policy trajectory over the last three centuries.
This article reconstructs Russia’s geopolitical trajectory through the lens of cryptocolonialism — a condition in which a state retains formal sovereignty but, in practice, serves the strategic and economic functions of a dominant external power. We trace this arc from Britain’s informal empire to the post-war Pax Americana, avoiding conspiracy theories and instead presenting a slow-building, evidence-based narrative that allows the reader to reach their own conclusions.
The Russian Empire and Britain: Orchestrated Foreign Policy
1. Financial and Logistical Integration
By the late 19th century, the Russian Empire became increasingly dependent on Western European capital. London, alongside Paris, was a primary source of sovereign loans. According to M. Anderson’s study, “Public Debt and the Russian Empire, 1850–1914” (1994), by 1914, over 40% of Russia’s external debt was held by British or British-affiliated banks.
Insurance, shipping, and telegraphy were similarly dominated by British firms, effectively placing Russia’s external trade under the operational umbrella of the City of London. Foreign policy decisions — particularly around trade, tariffs, and military logistics — were thus shaped by British financial interests.
2. The Great Game: Russia as Britain’s Frontier Contractor
Traditional historiography casts the “Great Game” as a duel between two empires. But revisionist historians, such as Peter Hopkirk in “The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia” (1990), note that Russia often expanded into Central Asia precisely where Britain could not go without diplomatic scandal. Russia subdued the Khanates of Bukhara, Khiva, and Kokand, absorbing populations and territories that indirectly benefitted Britain by stabilizing the region under an unofficial subcontractor.
Russian expansion helped Britain justify its grip on India and Persia. Each Russian move was met not with confrontation but with renewed British influence in adjoining spheres.
3. Britain’s Doctrine of Non-Intervention as Delegated Control
Britain’s famed “non-interventionism” toward Russia in the 19th century is better understood as a colonial indulgence: Moscow’s self-managed empire-building aligned well enough with London’s interests that micromanagement wasn’t needed. Russia performed its functions — absorbing unrest, buffering Islamic movements, and enabling British trade dominance — without overt supervision.
This is classic cryptocolonialism: a formally sovereign power that performs the systemic functions of a subordinate one.
The USSR and the United States: Dependency in a Bipolar World
1. Industrialization as a Joint Project
During the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet industrialization relied heavily on American engineers and consultants. The most well-known example is Albert Kahn, who designed factories across the USSR, including the Gorky Automobile Plant. Archival material from this period, discussed in Stephen Kotkin’s “Magnetic Mountain” (1995), shows extensive American involvement in Soviet manufacturing, architecture, and logistics.
This wasn’t just technological transfer — it was a deep industrial implantation. The USSR’s capacity for heavy industry, electrification, and logistics was shaped by Fordist models developed in the U.S.
2. The Cold War as a Mutually Beneficial Simulation
Popular narrative depicts the Cold War as a zero-sum global confrontation. But from a political economy standpoint, it functioned as a justification for massive American military spending, expansion of NATO, and internal cohesion through the external threat of Communism.
As President Truman remarked in 1951: “Without Korea, we could never have secured congressional support for military programs of this scale.”
The USSR, intentionally or not, played the antagonist role that fueled Western investment, innovation, and control over global institutions.
3. Energy Integration and the Dollar Loop
By the 1970s, the USSR became a major gas exporter to Europe, building pipelines like Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod with the help of Western credits and technology. Despite Cold War rhetoric, the U.S. never demanded a full energy embargo. Instead, the Soviet Union was integrated into the global economy as a raw-material appendage, reinforcing its semi-colonial function.
Even at the Cold War’s peak, American strategists quietly tolerated energy interdependence as a geopolitical safety valve.
4. Post-Soviet Collapse and Elite Migration
Following 1991, the majority of Soviet elites either relocated to the West or transferred assets into Western banks. The children of Politburo members studied at Ivy League universities; oligarchs stored capital in dollars; Western advisors guided privatization under the Washington Consensus framework.
This was less a surrender than a conversion to client-statehood, with the Russian Federation preserving the spectacle of independence while adopting the institutional logic of U.S.-led capitalism.
Conclusion
Across two centuries, Russia has repeatedly displayed the traits of a classic cryptocolony: externally independent but internally aligned with the strategic and economic interests of dominant powers — first Britain, then the United States.
Avoiding full integration into global democratic governance, Russia instead gravitated toward semi-peripheral roles: with an imperial façade and colonial functionality. This explains its continuous reliance on militarism, myth-making, and symbolic confrontations.
In cryptocolonial regimes, sovereignty exists not as political autonomy, but as a carefully curated performance.