:zizek: I LOVE COLLEGE :zizek:

edit: thirty years old, post-soviet country origins, used lived experience when I pressed the point :zizek-preference:

  • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The USSR doesn't have a spotless record here -- virtually no one does -- but it did a number of things that are almost unparalleled in terms of decolinization:

    1. Let some former Russian territories peacefully spin off as independent states (based on this; see Finland for an example).
    2. Gave political subdivisions of the new USSR (the constitituent SSRs) objectively more sovereignty than U.S. states or any comparable subdivision in a former empire. The SSRs had (mostly? entirely?) ethnic bases and had a constitutional right to secede.
    3. This right to secede was used (albeit tragically) in the breakup of the USSR, so it wasn't illusory. It didn't require some high-ranking official in the larger political structure to sign off (as the Good Friday Agreement's reunification referendum does) and it didn't result in mass violence (like the U.S. Civil War).

    What other decolinization process has accomplished so much, so peacefully?

    • geikei [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The SSRs had (mostly? entirely?) ethnic bases

      some were designed to have ethnicaly based political self determination and (X ethnicity republic) with actual comprehensive ethnic character on those level even in chases that the ethnicity was a minority in the territories. Which is unprecedented

      Post-1920, Bashkirs of the Bashkir Autonomous SSR were never a majority. In ’59, Bashkirs were 737,744 (22.1%), Russians 1,418,147 (40.6%) & the rest 1,185,718. (32.3%), yet the Bashkirs kept autonomy

      in the Kazakh SSR in 1959, Kazakhs were only 2.79 million (30%), Russians 3.97 million (42.7%) and Ukrainians 762,131 (8.2%). Did the Russians/Ukranians claim the Kazakh SSR as “Orthodox land” b/c they were the +50% majority? No! They respected Kazakh autonom

    • jkfjfhkdfgdfb [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      This right to secede was used (albeit tragically) in the breakup of the USSR,

      this is why it was fucking stupid