just a friendly reminder to stop insisting that "the soviet union was anti-imperialist." that claim is nonsense and won't make you more interesting.
the soviet union wasnât some radical departure from the russian empire. it was simply the same empire in a new uniform. red flags and marxist rhetoric instead orthodox crosses or symbols of tasrdom. the core goal always stayed the same: control the non-russian peoples by any means necessary.
on paper, the ussr was a âfriendship of nations,â a voluntary union of 15 republics. in reality, it was a centralized empire run out of moscow. the republics had no real say in foreign policy, trade, or even their own leadership. step out of line? youâd face censorship, arrests, or worse. this is well documented and it's gross that people try to downplay this because it challenges the theory they've consumed.
the soviet regime cracked down on local languages, histories, and identities. flags were banned. historians and artists were persecuted. even alphabets were changed with non-russian scripts rewritten in cyrillic to sever cultural memory. it was pure russification.
ethnic cleansing was policy. in the 1940s, stalin deported entire nationalities: chechens, crimean tatars, kalmyks, and others. shoved into cattle cars, sent to siberia or central asia and many never made it. half of the deported crimean tatars died. scholars now call these acts what they were: crimes against humanity, even genocide. ukraineâs holodomor (1932â33) was another brutal example. millions died of famine caused by soviet grain policies, right as the regime was wiping out ukrainian culture and religious life.
the baltics suffered too. in 1941 and 1949, tens of thousands of estonians, latvians, and lithuanians were deported, targeting everyone from political leaders to schoolteachers. all while moscow insisted it was promoting âfriendship.â and after wwii, the ussr exported this "model "friendship" to central eastern europe. poland, hungary, czechoslovakia, east germany, and others swapped nazi rule for soviet occupation. local revolts were crushed (hungary in â56, czechoslovakia in â68). sovereignty was tolerated only when it served moscow.
even economically, the ussr followed the imperial playbook. resources flowed to the center; local populations got pollution and poverty. ukraine powered soviet industry with coal and grain but saw little investment or infrastructural support. the baltic states were productive yet politically silenced.
kazakhstan? used for 456 nuclear tests without consent, leaving over a million exposed to radiation. uzbekistan and turkmenistan were turned into cotton monocultures, poisoning land and water for moscowâs benefit. sound familiar? itâs the same exploitative dynamic seen in british india or the congo.
and the legacy lives on. russiaâs invasions of georgia (2008), crimea (2014), and ukraine (2022) arenât accidents. theyâre rooted in an old imperial belief that former soviet republics canât exist without moscowâs blessing. the kremlin still pushes ârusskiy mirâ, this insane idea that russia has the right to âprotectâ russian speakers wherever they are. but this protection has meant war, occupation, and death, especially for russian-speaking ukrainians.
ukraineâs refusal to bow to this narrative is exactly why itâs under attack. the empire mightâve changed flags, but its logic never died. and the fight for true decolonization is far from over.
so please. speak to people who lived or whose families lived under this empire. stop romanticizing something because you think it makes you edgy or "not like the other leftists." it's embarrassing.
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