I mean there is definitely a lot of nationalism there. I have family in Russia and acquaintances fighting in the Donbas, so I'm no stranger to the strange Russian phenomenon of ostensibly right wing nationalists that aren't anticommunist. It's not really as cut and dry as comfy western leftists make it out to be. When the government bans your language from being taught in schools or used in official business, and neonazi death squads commit acts of terrorism against people of your ethnic group, it's not surprising that nationalism grows. The cultural, historical and material conditions are so different there that viewing the situation from a western lens is pointless. Russian Nationalism in the Donbas is even different than Russian Nationalism in Russia. In Russia it often takes a chauvinistic form, while in the Donbas it's liberatory. For instance, there are majority ethnic Greek villages in the Donbas who have been subjected to hate crimes and terrorism by neonazi Ukrainians. These people are not ethnic Russians but they closely align with the Russian separatists because that's who protects them. It's like the IRA, some of them are socialists and some of them aren't, but they're inherently nationalistic and their cause is just.
No? I mean there are definitely Russian nationalist weirdos who are obsessed with both the USSR and Russian Empire I wouldn't say they're Nazis. The left in the region is absolutely socially conservative though, but that's kinda how it is literally everywhere except the west.
Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics
guy who only upholds Transnistria but just cause of official state soviet aesthetics
Me
Nah. They're off-brand Russias full of nationalist bullshit.
I mean there is definitely a lot of nationalism there. I have family in Russia and acquaintances fighting in the Donbas, so I'm no stranger to the strange Russian phenomenon of ostensibly right wing nationalists that aren't anticommunist. It's not really as cut and dry as comfy western leftists make it out to be. When the government bans your language from being taught in schools or used in official business, and neonazi death squads commit acts of terrorism against people of your ethnic group, it's not surprising that nationalism grows. The cultural, historical and material conditions are so different there that viewing the situation from a western lens is pointless. Russian Nationalism in the Donbas is even different than Russian Nationalism in Russia. In Russia it often takes a chauvinistic form, while in the Donbas it's liberatory. For instance, there are majority ethnic Greek villages in the Donbas who have been subjected to hate crimes and terrorism by neonazi Ukrainians. These people are not ethnic Russians but they closely align with the Russian separatists because that's who protects them. It's like the IRA, some of them are socialists and some of them aren't, but they're inherently nationalistic and their cause is just.
Don't they have a lot of nazis too?
No? I mean there are definitely Russian nationalist weirdos who are obsessed with both the USSR and Russian Empire I wouldn't say they're Nazis. The left in the region is absolutely socially conservative though, but that's kinda how it is literally everywhere except the west.