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Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) for the firsttime as independent states and the restoration after overa hundred years of an independent Poland barred theSoviet Union from the West, except for the iceboundloophole of Leningrad, much as Russia in the seventeenthcentury; while to the south-west Bessarabia, underRussian rule since 1812, remained in the hands of theRoumanians and barred access to the Danube. TheSecond World War gave Moscow its chance to winBessarabia, eastern Poland, the Baltic states, and asmall portion of Finland (1939-40). Save for the restof Finland, which had been in Russian hands from 1809,and the central Polish regions, which first came to Russiain 1815, Soviet Russia thereby regained all that Peterthe Great, Catherine the Great, and Alexander I hadacquired on the west (1700-1812), and in addition, forthe first time, she extended to the Carpathians in easternGalicia.Apart from these western lands, the inheritance of theRomanov empire meant the inheritance of three centuriesand more of Russian expansion (see maps 1 and 2):—Central Asia, now the Soviet republics of Kazakhstan,Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, and Tadzhikstan,the last four conquered latest of all, between 1864 and1885, the first engulfed during the previous hundredyears; Transcaucasia, now the Soviet republics ofGeorgia, Armenia, and Azerbaidzhan, conquered, in partceded, between 1801 and 1829; the Ukraine, colonized,conquered, or seized between 1650 and 1793; WhiteRussia, seized in 1772 and 1793. Last, and first, thereremains the hugest of the Soviet republics, stretchingfrom Leningrad to Vladivostok and the Caucasus to theArctic Ocean, embracing three-quarters of the area andtwo-thirds of the population of the Union, the RussianSoviet Federated Socialist Republic, the heir of Muscovyand the Muscovite empire, that expanded since Peter theGreat into the Russian empire.The lands that are included in the Russian S.F.S.R.are made up of the core of Muscovy, stretching from theOka to the northern Dvina, welded into a state by about1500, and of the Muscovite empire, the far-flung con-10