Introduction
Empires are built not only by armies and statesmen but by the countless millions who carry the burdens of production, labor, and survival under conditions set by elites. For the longest time in imperial history exploitation was not simply a choice motivated by greed and a narcissistic sense of entitlement. It also cannot be explained through the gimmick of a Marxist theoretical framework.
Empires were fragile constructs that competed with one another and desperately needed cahsflow to function. A single battle fought on land or at sea had serious repercussions as it could decide access to lucrative sugar plantations in the Carribean, sources of cotton or simply access to customers. This, in turn, would influence the resources that were available for the next battles.
The British Empire, which at its height spanned a quarter of the globe, relied on poor workers at home, enslaved Africans in its Carribean sugarcane colonies, and subjected populations in Asia and Africa. What would have been the result if Britain had avoided the harshest forms of exploitations? Most likely its competitors France, Spain and Portugal could have taken over British held territories and ultimately conquered Britain. From then on Brits would have been subjected to harsh exploitation and “re-education” measures. Try any form of refusal or protest in this situation and you might well get stripped of your minuscule rights and end up a full slave or indentured worker.
Today’s historians and political ideologists usually lament that the empires simply could have behaved better without explaining the consequences for security and survival. The easiest gimmick is the Marxist one: Assume private property was the root cause of evil (especially the wars) and propose that making substantial private property illegal is the answer to everything. For many hundreds of years the concentration of assets in the hands of the few unfortunately had no realistic alternative. The moment you allowed workers and farmers to experiment with socialist communes would have been the moment eveything fell apart. A full blown socialist revolution would inevitably create yet another traditional empire dressed up in socialist claptrap, as evidenced by Soviet Russia. The need to compete with regular empires was overwhelming.
Even Napoleon, who entertained enlightenment ideas in his earlier days, had to be a dictator and reestablished slavery in the French empire. In the early 1800s Britain formally ended slavery, yet converted many former slaves into soldiers and indentured workers (called apprenticeship). Barings Bank, which used to make profits from slavery, hesitated to loan the British government 20 million pounds to reemburse former slaveholders. The Rothschild bank ultimately secured that deal and assumed that the empire would never default on its payments. The upper class had already reinvested money from sugarcane plantations into other endeavors which meant that “regular” people could never really compete in the business world. Britain kept buying large quantities of slave-harvested cotton from the US and then later switched to suppliers from other parts of the world with cheap labor. The general British population had to endure with cheap fun, empty promises and many sacrifices. We tend to forget how difficult it was to create and maintain a lasting empire though. The normal route was failure, fracturing and losing to a better organized enemy. If you roam around London today you see the many memorials not just for kings and queens, but also for naval officers like Horatio Nelson. Britain cultivated an uper class of people with close family relations and a demand for almost absolute loyalty, regularly checked through constant espionage. When the British population saw the multicultural migration and felt the impacts of globalized capitalism, the controlled conservative political sphere was working the voters without admitting that this new reality was a professionalization of the old Roman model. The left obviously proclaimed the controlled enlightenment and capitalism as rigged and elitist. To circumvent government censorship leftists resorted to a modernized new version of antisemitism: Greed and exploitation were labeled as quintessentially jewish. The British elites unfortunately seized the opportunity to join in on the scapegoating with a variety of conspiracy books containing blatant lies about little clans such as the Rothschilds stealing from the mighty House of Hessen and ripping off the London stock exchange.
The Germans could not compete in naval warfare, thus had no lucrative sugar plantations of African colonies which resulted in a massive disadvantage during WWI when Britain used its international capitalist system and bond markets to finance its victory. Had Germany been in a position to cultivate colonies with slave labor, it most likely would have done so in order to compete. Ergo, baseline moral indignation in hindsight is amateurish. Any moral choice of significance could not result in moral conditions for the masses.
Technology changed a lot by replacing exploitation with scientific exploration as the center of gravity. But over the centuries, leadership has become too psychopathic and narcissistic. It makes no sense whatsoever for the average people in the West to support Russia in order to improve their living conditions. You would be swapping a modern empire with one that is stuck in the structures of the old British one. Exploitation is guaranteed.
In the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin the vast majority of people occupy positions of precarity, excluded from true mobility, subject to harsh justice, and living in the shadow of elites who see them as expendable resources.
I. The British Empire: Exploitation at Home and Abroad
The Domestic Poor of Britain
Britain’s rise to imperial supremacy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was powered by industrialization. Yet the workers who built this system lived lives of extraordinary hardship. In the new industrial cities—Manchester, Birmingham, London’s East End—families were crowded into slums with little sanitation. Epidemics of cholera and typhus swept through these neighborhoods with devastating regularity. Children as young as five were sent into factories, mines, and textile mills, their bodies stunted by malnutrition and repetitive labor.
The justice system reinforced this order. Petty crimes such as stealing a loaf of bread could lead to severe punishment. Debtors unable to pay modest sums were imprisoned. Courts, run by and for the elites, treated poverty itself as a moral failing. Prisons, often privately administered, became laboratories of cruelty: treadmills forced inmates into pointless exertion, while rope-picking tasks broke both spirit and body. Such institutions were not intended for rehabilitation but for deterrence and subjugation.
Upward mobility for the poor was largely a myth. Britain’s aristocracy monopolized access to land, education, and political office. A poor man might become a soldier, a sailor, or a factory overseer, but the gates to real power remained closed. Even in the age of supposed liberal reform, the franchise was extended slowly and reluctantly, always hedged by property qualifications that excluded the majority.
Slavery and Colonial Labor
If the domestic poor suffered, those under colonial rule endured even worse. In the Caribbean, enslaved Africans lived under regimes of terror. Mortality rates were so high that slave populations had to be constantly replenished with new captives. Life expectancy on plantations was measured in years, not decades. Resistance was met with whipping, mutilation, or death. Slaves were legally property, and the system’s profitability depended on their disposability.
In India, British rule dismantled once-thriving industries. The subcontinent had commanded nearly a quarter of global goods production in 1700. By the mid-1800s, after decades of British economic manipulation, its share had collapsed to a fraction of that. Famines became endemic. Grain was exported even as millions starved, because imperial policy valued London’s markets over Indian lives. The East India Company operated as both a trading firm and an intelligence apparatus, enlisting local men as sepoys, administrators, and spies to extend British influence at minimal cost.
The empire presented itself as a civilizing force, claiming to bring law, science, and Christianity. Yet beneath this rhetoric lay systematic exploitation. Colonies were managed as revenue streams. The labor of millions was harnessed to enrich a small class of elites in Britain and their local collaborators. For both slaves and colonial workers, as for the poor in Britain itself, the promise of advancement was virtually nonexistent.
Aristocratic Intelligence and Control
The empire’s success depended not only on military power but on intricate intelligence networks. Aristocratic families, bound together in dynastic webs stretching back centuries, organized the flow of information and patronage. The Royal Society advanced science in ways useful for commerce and war. Freemasonic lodges and other fraternities served as cover for political coordination. These were not institutions of broad public participation but instruments of elite governance. The empire was held together by secrecy and manipulation as much as by armies and fleets.
Thus, the British Empire exemplified the pattern of exploitation: domestic workers kept in poverty by industrial capitalism, colonial subjects enslaved or impoverished by imperial policy, and all under the surveillance and control of aristocratic intelligence. The myth of British liberty and progress concealed the chains borne by millions.
II. Russia After 1991: Empire in Disguise
The Illusion of Collapse
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, many in the West believed communism had been defeated and democracy was on the rise. In reality, the structures of power were reconfigured rather than dismantled. The KGB and related networks staged their own metamorphosis. A veneer of capitalism, democracy, and pluralism was presented, but behind it, the same cadres of intelligence operatives maintained control. Russia’s so-called transition was less a revolution than a managed transformation designed to preserve elite dominance.
Vladimir Putin embodies this continuity. A mid-level KGB officer elevated to the presidency, he presents himself as a restorer of Russian strength and tradition. In practice, he presides over a kleptocratic oligarchy, where loyalty to the security apparatus determines access to wealth and influence. Russia today is a hybrid system: tsarist in its ceremonial nationalism, Soviet in its intelligence dominance, and capitalist in its oligarchic plunder.
Poverty Amid Resource Wealth
Russia is a land rich in resources—oil, gas, minerals, and fertile land. Yet this wealth has not translated into prosperity for the majority. A small circle of oligarchs, many with roots in the security services, controls the commanding heights of the economy. Their fortunes, measured in billions, are shielded in offshore accounts and Western properties, even as ordinary Russians struggle with low wages, inflation, and collapsing infrastructure.
In provincial towns, known as monotowns, entire communities depend on a single factory or mine. When these enterprises falter, unemployment and despair spread. Healthcare is underfunded; life expectancy lags behind Western standards by years. Pensions are meager, forcing the elderly into poverty. The rural population faces depopulation and neglect. For the majority of Russians, the empire’s promise of resurgence means little in material terms.
Justice and Prisons
The Russian justice system is an instrument of political control. Courts follow the dictates of the regime, convicting opponents on fabricated charges. The cases of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, and Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader, illustrate how law is bent to eliminate threats. Corruption is systemic; bribery is often the only way to secure fair treatment.
Prisons and penal colonies perpetuate the gulag tradition. Conditions are brutal: overcrowding, forced labor, physical abuse. Prisoners serve as examples to the wider population of what awaits dissenters. The penal system is less about justice than about intimidation, ensuring that citizens remain compliant.
Rigid Social Structures
Social mobility in Russia is limited. Advancement depends on connections within the security elite, not merit. The siloviki, veterans of the intelligence services, dominate politics, business, and media. Independent entrepreneurs risk expropriation if they challenge the oligarchic order. Civil society organizations face harassment, closure, or designation as “foreign agents.”
For the Russian lower classes, opportunities to rise are almost nonexistent. Just as Britain’s aristocracy closed off mobility to workers and colonials, Russia’s security elite monopolizes the pathways to power. The ordinary citizen remains a subject, not a participant, in the political system.
III. Parallels of Oppression
Despite differences in ideology and historical context, the British Empire and modern Russia share structural similarities in their treatment of the lower classes.
- Justice Systems: In both, law is a tool for maintaining order, not delivering fairness. Britain punished poverty with transportation and execution; Russia punishes dissent with prison and exile.
- Prisons: Britain’s debtors’ prisons and workhouses mirror Russia’s penal colonies in their use of forced labor and degradation. Both systems discipline the poor through suffering.
- Wealth Disparities: The British aristocracy and Russian oligarchy alike concentrate wealth at the top, leaving the majority in hardship.
- Mobility: Both empires erect barriers to social advancement, ensuring that elites remain secure.
- Ideological Justifications: Britain cloaked its exploitation in the rhetoric of civilization and Christianity; Russia uses nationalism, Orthodoxy, and anti-Western propaganda. Both mask oppression with lofty ideals.
IV. Case Studies of Exploitation
The Bengal Famine of 1770
In Bengal, British policies demanded tax revenues even during crop failures. Grain continued to be exported as millions starved. Estimates suggest a third of the population perished. The famine was not merely a natural disaster but a consequence of imperial priorities. Profit was valued above life.
Caribbean Plantations
On sugar plantations in Jamaica and Barbados, slaves endured punishing labor from dawn to dusk. Malnutrition, disease, and brutality kept mortality high. Rebellions were crushed with ruthless violence. These plantations enriched Britain but destroyed generations of human lives.
Russia’s 1990s Collapse
The transition from Soviet to capitalist structures in the 1990s plunged millions into poverty. Factories closed, savings evaporated, and life expectancy fell. While oligarchs seized control of resources, ordinary Russians endured economic chaos. The trauma of this period still shapes Russia’s political psychology, fostering a preference for authoritarian stability over uncertain liberty.
Navalny and Modern Dissidents
Alexei Navalny’s persecution illustrates the selective justice of Russia. After surviving a poisoning attempt, he returned to Russia only to be arrested on dubious charges. His imprisonment sends a clear message: dissenters will be crushed. Ordinary Russians see that the law offers no protection against state power.
Ukraine War Conscription
The invasion of Ukraine in 2022 revealed the weakness of Russia’s military and the expendability of its soldiers. Poor men from rural areas were conscripted in disproportionate numbers. Equipment was outdated, training inadequate. Thousands died for a war fought not for their interests but for the preservation of elite power. As in the British Empire’s colonial wars, the burdens fell on those with the least.
V. The Continuity of Aristocratic Intelligence
Empires endure through intelligence. The British maintained global control with only small numbers of administrators by cultivating networks of spies, collaborators, and informants. Aristocratic families orchestrated this system, ensuring continuity of power across generations.
Russia follows the same pattern. The KGB’s transformation into the FSB preserved the intelligence state. Surveillance, infiltration, and manipulation are used to control society. Just as Britain masked its networks behind noble societies and fraternal orders, Russia masks its intelligence dominance behind nationalism and Orthodox revival. Both systems demonstrate how empires survive not merely by force but by secrecy and psychological control.
VI. Why Russian Domination Cannot Bring Liberation
Some in the West, disillusioned with their own governments, imagine that Russia offers an alternative. This is a dangerous illusion. Russia is not a liberator. It is an empire that replicates the worst practices of past powers.
First, Russian governance offers no path to prosperity. Wealth is hoarded by elites; ordinary people languish. Second, Russia is riddled with corruption and weakness. Its military failures in Ukraine demonstrate the rot of its institutions. Third, its hierarchical structure ensures that ordinary people remain subjects, not citizens. Finally, compared to the West—despite all its flaws—Russia provides fewer freedoms, lower standards of living, and harsher repression.
The West at its worst may disappoint, but Russia offers only tyranny without even the compensations of progress. To imagine a better life under Russian control is to mistake chains for freedom.
Conclusion
The British Empire and modern Russia, though separated by centuries and ideologies, share deep continuities in how they treat their lower classes. Both build power on the backs of the poor, both enforce order through harsh justice and prison systems, both perpetuate wealth disparities, and both block genuine social mobility.
For the British poor and colonial slaves, life meant toil without hope. For the Russian lower classes today, life means poverty under oligarchic rule, with dissent punished and opportunity denied. Empires do not liberate; they extract and control.
To those in America or Europe who dream of Russian protection or governance, the lesson is clear: life under Russia would not be better. It would be a return to the worst forms of imperial exploitation, chains reforged in the 21st century. Better to face the challenges of flawed democracies than to embrace the false promises of a neo-imperial despotism.
