Sadly, the way high school curricula are set up in many countries doesn't leave much time for 20th century history, so only a rough outline of post-war events is taught. As for more recent history, there has been almost no research (or even awareness) of Russian imperialism in Western academia until now (gee, wonder why)...
Russian imperialism goes much further back too, e.g. Partitions of Poland, colonization of Caucasus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland
Sadly, the way high school curricula are set up in many countries doesn't leave much time for 20th century history, so only a rough outline of post-war events is taught. As for more recent history, there has been almost no research (or even awareness) of Russian imperialism in Western academia until now (gee, wonder why)...