https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1753515758276243886
great reply here:
it's not an empire by any definition. this is literally, and i mean this, literally nazism. you are online sharing the viewpoints of The NSDAP
So we're watching the deconstruction of colonialism as a specific thing in real time
Fascinating
I think what we're seeing is the liberal sentiment about decolonial movements that was always there emerging. A lot of decolonial movements were supported either by socialists broadly, or by China and the Soviet Union directly. They've always thought that this was a cold war tactic of removing western territorial holdings, but did not say it in recent years. By bringing in the collapse or the soviet union into the same framework, they can essentially say it without ever having to explicitly ignore the humanity and agency of peoples in former western colonies.
Every liberal I've interacted with who believes in imperialism as a concept believes imperialism/colonialism is when Governments Do Things in other countries than their own
mexico done colonized my passport by stamping it when i went to cancun
nah we passed that point centuries ago
words never meant anything
The destruction of the U.S.S.R. didn’t ‘decolonize’ anybody. In fact, the USAID and other anticommunists neocolonized the former U.S.S.R., and millions of civilians died as a result.
Soviet Russia’s relations with its sister republics was not colonial, certainly not if we define colonialism as a parasitic relationship. One brief example:
the relatively backward areas share, in terms of formal equality, in the social service benefits of the USSR as a whole, and the financial burden appears to fall disproportionately on the more ‘advanced’ Russians, Ukrainians, etc.24
(Source and click here for more examples.)
There was no long term plan to replace the natives (as in occupied Palestine) or keep them in a perpetual state of servitude (as in Puerto Rico). Russians did visit other republics to assist them in modernization and they did promote bilingualism to accommodate them, but colonialism and imperialism aren’t simply about ‘doing stuff’ in somebody else’s country. It helps to think of them more in terms of a parasitic relationship, where the weak must benefit the strong but not the other way around.
If this anticommunist seriously thinks that the U.S.S.R. was the ‘worst colonial empire’, that is only evidence that he hasn’t read much history. Not many anticommunists have, really.
Even if you consider absolutely every part of the USSR not part of modern day Russia a former colony, that’s still an absolutely tiny fraction of the colonizing Spain, France, England, etc did.
I bet those goobers would ask if I’m talking about Star Trek if I asked them how the USSR was to blame for what the tzar did to the Circassians
Russia's colonialism in land amount is comparable to France/England. Anything East of the Urals was never Russia before the 1600s
of course all of this happened before the USSR and has nothing to do with it, the twitter guy is a moron
And it's also undebatable that Siberian Natives were treated better than American ones. Although you can also chalk this up to them having better weapons and disease resistance
Siberian Natives were hit pretty hard by smallpox, but they recovered, because Russian policy was "pay taxes and we'll fuck off", not "we'll kill you all and settle your land".
Part of the massive rewrite of soviet history that has happened in my lifetime is that all of the peoples of the non-Russian republics did not experience genuine class conflict and mass uprisings that led them to be part of the USSR. Nobody actually wanted rapidly developed, shared prosperity. The forces that overthrew the reactionary elites of Central Asia and Eastern Europe didn't actually exist, or they all came from Russia. It's just Jim Crow "outside agitator" rhetoric filtered through the last bit of acceptable liberal racism.
The scope of acceptable racism will soon start expand rapidly. We're gonna need a lot of hated outsiders to blame the next capitalist crises on. Get ready, Ireland.
I read this guy's blog. It's amazing how he has a a fully materialist viewpoint focused on the way governments treat the common laborer, until the US is founded, after which his views switch to pure idealistic drivel.
Empire is when big country, and the more big it is, the more empireing it does. This is basic stuff, not that I would expect a tankie to be able to keep up
oh yeah, bret devereaux. take a lot at his twitter bio lmfao, emphasis mine:
Ancient & military historian specializing in the Roman economy and military. PhD @UNChistory. More impressive credential is that I have beaten Dark Souls.
when? 'I beat le heckin DARK SOULS!'The Soviets hurt the FOREST BROTHERS and BANDERITES and youre laughing!?!?!?!?
Lol I remember reading this guy's blog (focusing mostly on ancient history) and occasionally just stumbling onto hilarious anti-communism like this. One of my favorites was when he decided to do an article on guerilla warfare and spent like 3 paragraphs saying "Mao was an awful person, perhaps the worst to ever exist, and I disavow everything he ever said or did. That said, he is also one of the main sources for modern guerilla tactics and his theory of positional warfare was partially correct."
I'm a big fan of how the USSR decolonized North Eastern China tbf.
