The impact of Soviet rule upon the lands east of Vienna was thus in certain respects even more marked than it had been upon Russia itself. The Russian Empire, after all, had only ever been part-European; and the European identity of post-Petrine Russia was itself much contested in the course of the century preceding Lenin’s coup. In brutally cutting the Soviet Union adrift from its ties to European history and culture the Bolsheviks did great and lasting violence to Russia.
