1. “Expansion was the overwhelming fact of Russian history. For over six hundred years, almost every generation saw a substantial growth of the lands under the sway of Moscow …. Hugeness legitimated the political order, and the political elite acquired a material interest, as the people acquired a psychological stake, in the empire and its growth. Russians became accustomed to the idea that border states should bow to them and that the frontiers were movable. Aggrandizement fed on itself.” R. G. Wesson, The Russian dilemma: a political and geopolitical view (New Brunswick, New Jersey 1974) 12. In a similar spirit, Professor Pipes observed that the tsars “tended to identify [their] political power with the growth of territory, and the growth of territory with absolute, domainial authority.” R. Pipes, Russia under the old regime (New York 1974) 84. For a critique of this “Klischeevorstellung vom ungehemmten Ausdehnungs- und Weltherrschaftsstreben der Russen” see
2. Der russische Imperialismus. Studien über den Zusammenhang von innerer und auswärtiger Politik 1860–1914;Geyer;Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft,1977
3. Russian expansion to the east through the 18th century;Foust;Journal of Economic History,1961
4. Nicholas Murav'yev, governor-general of Eastern Siberia and the architect of this annexation, advocated it to the Tsar in 1853 in the following terms: “… it is entirely natural for Russia, if not to control all of East Asia, then [at least] to rule over (gospodstvovat') the entire Asiatic coast of the Pacific Ocean”. Quoted in B. V. Struve, Vospominanii o Sibiri 1848–1854 gg. (St. Petersburg 1889) 154–156. For detailed treatment of Russian views of the Far East in the 19th century, see
5. The Russian Geographical Society, the ‘Amur epoch’, and the Great Siberian Expedition 1855–1863;Bassin;Annals of the Association of American Geographers,1983