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Not 70 years, not oppression. Oppressed Ukraine had cossacks who even managed to make their own short-lived state in the middle ages. Oppressed Baltics joined EU after the USSR fell. The problem is, russian nation never had a (stable) democracy since the fall of Novgorod (~1500). It always quickly turned into an imperial autocracy where the russians were the titular nation who receives all the benefits.

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Again (as elsewhere in this discussion) saiya-jin nails what Russia was, and is.

Communist Russia - the 'glorious' Soviet Union - was the epitomy of oppression for seven decades. It created the stereotype for the idea of 'dystopia' that embedded itself in popular cultures around the world.

That's a staggering achievement - built on human misery and lies. Don't belittle that.

And only now, while the Russian Federation is burning itself up in Ukraine, is this truth trickling through into the Russian consciousness. If Russia can be comprehensively defeated (as it must be), I hope that the full truth utterly guts the population for generations to come, as it did with the descendants of Nazi Germany.

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