“With the limitations of human understanding, it is not possible to look ahead a hundred years, and we cannot, therefore, lay down what our army will have to undertake in the twentieth century; but by analyzing the past and reviewing our present position among the great Powers of the world, it is both possible and essential to estimate the nature of the work that will come before our army in the next few years at least. In the last two centuries Russia’s main work was connected with the expansion of the Empire. _From this it seems that the matter of our frontiers is still the most urgent._ It is, therefore, important to answer the following vital questions: Are we content with our present frontier? If not, where and why are we not? This is a matter which must not be considered only from our own point of view. If we are content with our position, and are not anxious to advance or retire our frontier, it is certainly improbable that we shall undertake any wars of aggression in the twentieth century; but in arriving, by great efforts and the immense sacrifices of 200 years, at a position satisfactory to ourselves, we have, perhaps, so placed our neighbours that it may be their object in the coming century to regain the territory of which they have been deprived. If so, the danger of war will not have been removed; it will have been changed in nature from that of an offensive to a defensive struggle.”
[9] On the north-west, from Varanger Fiord to Pskoff (about 1,350 miles), we marched with our powerful neighbour Sweden, who possessed an army of 100,000 men. At this disturbed period she was mistress of the country round the Baltic coasts and of the present province of St. Petersburg, and possessed in the fortresses of Finland and in the Baltic littoral an enveloping base for a gradual movement on our Pskoff and Novgorod provinces. On the west, from Pskoff to Tchigrin (about 1,000 miles), we marched with Poland, the frontier re-entering like a wedge near Smolensk to a distance of 300 miles from Moscow. Poland, the ally of Sweden and Turkey, was Russia’s natural enemy, for she was in occupation of our soil in White and Little Russia. On the south, from Tchigrin to Azov (about 400 miles), the boundary ran practically undefined, shared with the Tartar hordes subject to Turkey, who then possessed an army of some 500,000 men, and a strong fleet on the Black Sea. From Azov to the Caspian (about 400 miles) our neighbours were Tartars and nomadic Caucasian mountaineers, who were continually raiding our borders. Lastly, in Asia our frontier, which was here also only vaguely defined, marched with that of the Kirghiz tribes and races subordinate to China.