Deciding whether or not to be imperialist isn’t a question of ‘good naturedness’, but of cold economic calculation. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever argued that it would have been in Russia’s economic interests to invade France, Spain or the UK, and, to the best of my knowledge, no serious plans to do so have been unveiled post ‘91.

Remember that the invasion of Afganistan (which should probably be seen as an ‘outlier’ rather than evidence for some grand imperial plan) did in fact cause the USSR to topple into economic bankruptcy.

Er….yeah. It would be more accurate to state that the post-Stalin leadership consisted mainly of people who had narrowly avoided being killed by Stalin.

I was relatively clear to stress the discontinuities between Soviet foreign policy pre and post Stalin. There’s no doubt that Stalin was a Very Bad Man, and probably did have imperialist designs on Eastern Europe. Whether this was continued after his death is very much more doubtful, and, as I said, the withdrawal from Austria would seem to indicate the contrary. Russian actions in ‘56 and ‘68 were horrendous, but were all about holding onto territory that the USSR already held, which is rather different from openly going out to try and conquer new territory. Afghanistan would seem to be the exception that proves the rule.*

*pedants corner: I’m using that phrase in the way it’s actually used nowadays, not in the way that derives from the original use of the word ‘proves’.

Which presumably means “done through fear of another invasion from the west rather than for economic gain” – this rather ignores things like the dismantling of large amounts of German industry and its shipping east into Russia, and the degree to which the USSR exerted influence over the economies of the rest of COMECON.

Note – when your country is invaded and devastated as the USSR was in WWII, your definition of ‘defensive’ changes.