I wonder why Russia gets a pass from the left and right on being pretty brutal colonial empire. Even in present day borders Russia is composed of literally hundreds of colonised nations that get exploited and brutalised for the benefit of Moscow.
Can you give some examples of what you are talking about here, and in what countries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russi...
Are you talking about the left and the right in the USA?
Who aside from modern US Republicans is giving them a pass?
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-corbyn-interview-russia-ceas...
Until recently, both Dems and Reps were happy to fund and expand NATO, which is basically and anti-russian expansion org. Now Republicans seem to have an issue with that though.
I just don't understand what you mean by "Russia has gotten a pass?"
The goal of NATO is to defend members against invasion. Who tends to invade those nations? Russia. BTW, I am fully in support in NATO.
I think it's fair to say that NATO is an anti-Russian imperialist organization.
I see lots of such posts by my lefty friends with nary a mention of Russian culpability.
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/its-not-okay-for-gro... https://www.afr.com/world/europe/chomsky-we-re-approaching-t...
Seeing people draw this parallel was surprising to me, as I associate colonialism with the European conquerors of the world: Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, The Netherlands and Germany.
Indeed I’ve gotten this list from a GEO Magazine special issue dedicated to colonialism, showing on a map where each of those countries had their colonies between ~1400 and 1915. OTOH Belgium isn’t directly mentioned, so perhaps the list is not exhaustive.
Is this even a debate? Do you need an analysis also showing that the UK was a colonial empire? The second bit is trivial, it was called the Russian Empire. The first bit is also trivial, they had colonies in North America, for example.
> I associate colonialism with the European conquerors of the world
Russia is (historically) a European country. It only has land in Asia because of imperialism and colonisation.
If you look at e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism there’s a really long list of countries under British colonialism. Russia has such a short list, it’s no wonder it’s not considered a (former) colonial power.
Indigenous peoples living in Russia like Mansis are simply not known about, while everyone has heard of Incas, Apaches and Comanches and their fate. The actual Russian-Russia is pretty small and borders Eastern Europe. Most of the territory you see on maps has historically belonged to indigenous peoples and is still dominated by them in many regions outside of major cities, wouldn't surprise me if the majority of land area of Russia to this day had ethnic majority of non-Russians. Their culture and language has been suppressed for a long time to turn them into loyal Russians, the same way US and Canadian and many other governments destroyed traditional lifestyle, forced resettlement, forced indigenous children into state schools and so forth. The difference from historic colonialism is that it's still happening in present day, and on a scale that has not been seen elsewhere in a long time - by that, I mean the war in Ukraine, also colonial in nature in what motivates Russia, and how they disproportionally conscript ethnic minorities to fight and die for Russia.
Anglo-american histography is fairly self-centered on these topics, lots of focus on American slave trade and colonialism by Western Europe, but very little on what happened in the rest of the world. This feeds into perception that the colonial history of the Americas is unique, that only blacks have been slaves, that only western countries have been colonial, etc while we have a large country in Europe even in 2023 that wants to establish politic and economic control over a nation of 40 million people, exploit them in every way, and impose foreign language and culture on them. And it's been like this for centuries.
If you want to get started somewhere, then I'd avoid publications that explicitly set to prove or disprove colonialism. Instead, read a balanced history of Eastern Europe and Russia, especially from the perspective of smaller nations if you can, and make up your own mind. You may discover that the life of farmers in Latvia in early 19th century wasn't that much different from Antebellum South. Same overall story, different setting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russi...
While the Right as a whole is leaning stronger and stronger in at least silent support of people like Putin (Christian defender of the white race and all that), the Left does not have this problem. There is a small crew of commies and tankies that drool over Putin, but us left-leaning folk laugh at them as much as anyone.
Right now the world is in a process of reevaluation, and academia is a huge part of this. Educational institutions have realized they have been teaching Russian history all wrong, and it SHOULD be taught through the prism of imperialism. It's kind of amazing, considering that even looking at the last 100 years, Russia has been on a rampage of conquering and subjugating nations from East to West.
Before anyone tries, please do not compare this to ill-fated American adventures. Last I checked, Vietnam and Iraq are still not part of the United States.
What a lazy answer! for sure, it is colonial. During the imperial time, during soviet time and now in the east of Ukraine. In all periods, Russia tried to destroy the local population/settlements and tried to build Cossak/Russian defense lines.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_imperialism
You don’t have to look that hard to find actual displaced peoples—the way the Russian Empire burned down all of Ossetia, the way Stalin ejected most of the population of Chechnya after that, the way Crimean Tatars constituted the bulk of the population in the Crimean peninsula and then suddenly Russians and Ukrainians did for some reason—there’s plenty. (If you really want to get into the history, care to find some speakers of the North Slavic languages for me?) It’s that the example does not seem to be a good one.
The last part is so much bullshit thst it isn’t even really worth considering. (Every sentence in the whole of official Soviet history that includes the word kulak is bullshit.)