"since everyone spoke Russian"
Especially since Russia worked hard for "russification" of non-Russian countries it annexed - through deporting locals, favoring Russian immigration - especially in the better areas, forcing the use of Russian language and alphabet, and Russian culture in schools.
Countries like the Baltic Republics and Moldova returned quickly to their languages as soon as they became independent. In Ukraine there has been a resurgence of the use of Ukrainian.
Anyway there are German speaking areas in Italy (which Mussolini tried hard to force to use Italian...), there are Italian speaking people in Switzerland and in the Balkans (those who survived the ethnic purges there as well...), France should ask to get Quebec, and so on. If we start to justify invasions because of languages, it could become a quite dangerous world...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
