Unlike the Western powers that established their colonial empires overseas, Russia created its empire through expansion into adjacent territories.  Beginning  with its annexation of Kazan in 1552, the Tsarist empire expanded gradually, swallowing up lands it bordered until it extended eastward to Russian North America — now Alaska. During the early Soviet era, Moscow retained most of the lands it had taken, often by force, as when it  crushed  independent Ukraine in 1921 and reoccupied  the independent Baltic states in 1940. In the immediate aftermath of World War II the USSR granted nominal independence to the Eastern European states that its forces had occupied during the war. It maintained a major military presence in all of them, however, effectively rendering them puppets. Moreover, although the Soviets did not actually colonize overseas states, they entrenched themselves militarily in several overseas states — notably Cuba, Egypt, Syria, Somalia and Vietnam.…