How exactly is the situation in Estonia during the Soviet years a question of "anti-Russian politics"? If anyone was the loser here before 1990, it was the Estonians.
AHC Make modern Russia have the same territory as the Soviet union.
- Thread starter Dominic Harvey
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How exactly is the situation in Estonia during the Soviet years a question of "anti-Russian politics"? If anyone was the loser here before 1990, it was the Estonians.
So it isnt as simple as kill some move some? Maybe Russia has it's own baby boom and that helps offset ww2?
With after 1950-s POD? It is possible if not very likely to have USSR survive intact though it is unlikely to be pleasant as the Baltics would not stay voluntary (though with earlier 1950-s POD there may not be much chance to act on any discontent). It is not possible for Russia to have USSR borders without major wars, calamities and ASB intervention. Like US displaced with Virgin Earth, dissolution of EU or limited nuclear war. Maybe not that fantastic but seriously different than anything happened OTL.
Alcsentre Calanice
Gone Fishin'
He did continue Lenin's policy, but originally, he wanted to integrate all SSRs into the USSR. That plan was opposed by Lenin.
It was nearing the point that Russians were no longer the majority. In 1989 51.4% of the Soviet population was Russian. 81.3% or 81.5% of the RSFSR was Russian. In 2010 80.9% of the population of the Russian Federatoin was ethnically Russian (there is a reason they used the name Russian Federation and why the Russians have separate terms for the Russian ethnicity and nationality). Depending on the demographics of other areas, I would say Russians would be a plurality, but not a majority. If there were any elections then the other states, plus those within Russian itself, would have massive votes for independence. Considering the Soviets claimed Belarus and Ukraine were separate ciuntries at times for extra UN seats, and the Soviet rights to national self determination (of you would be locked up as insane or a traitor if you publicly or privately said the Soviets should let people have the rights promised by the Soviet constitution), I can't see people staying peacefully, ESPECIALLY if the country is just called 'Russia'. I already mentioned the thing with the naming of the Russian Federation, but we also have how the Czars changed their titles to Emperor and Autocrat in order to make the country seem less Russian cominate. Or, you know, because the Czars doing that were mostly Germans and kinda snobbish. But yah, I know about the thing for the Russian population as I read it in a book on how Russians were not likely the idea of not being the majority.
Maybe we do something about all those nationalities and Soviet policy. I believe they didn't let Jews and other groups label themselves as Russians. Maybe we also see the Rusyn of Transcarpathia Ruthenia, who originally wanted to be Russian instead of Ukrainian (it was a confusing time during the mid-end of WWI and onward of course). If something is done to eliminate Poland early on then the Russians might not keep around Ukrain or Belarus. And of course the Soviets only ever gave SSRship to those on borders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union#Ethnic_groups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia
Maybe we do something about all those nationalities and Soviet policy. I believe they didn't let Jews and other groups label themselves as Russians. Maybe we also see the Rusyn of Transcarpathia Ruthenia, who originally wanted to be Russian instead of Ukrainian (it was a confusing time during the mid-end of WWI and onward of course). If something is done to eliminate Poland early on then the Russians might not keep around Ukrain or Belarus. And of course the Soviets only ever gave SSRship to those on borders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union#Ethnic_groups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia
Kapellan23
Banned
The losers here were primarily Russians. Here it is worth recalling that at first, mainly the Baltic punishers were Lenin's guard and organized terror against the civilian population. Also in all national republics korenizatsiya was carried out.
This is even if you do not remember about the separatism of Estonia.
About the transfer of the territory of the Estland province by the socialists:
By a resolution of the Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies of the Estland Province of December 23, 1917 (January 5, 1918), the city was transferred from the Petrograd Province to the Estland Province, where Narva County was created. The Narva County included: the city of Narva, Vaivarskaya and Syrenetskaya volosts, Iizaku volosts, Johvi of the Wesenberg district of the Estland province and a number of villages of the Yamburg district of the Petrograd province.
Modern Imperialism
Banned
Putin isn’t a purely Soviet man. He a KGB boy all the way.
it has been almost 75 years or more since most of those borders have been put in place. There does come a point where the deed has been done and can’t be changed. Belarus is literally called white Russia because many of them considered themselves Russian. Russia does somewhat have a point about artificial nationalities. Languages aren’t even completely different. Ukraine I think is somewhere between 40 to 60 percent similar to Russian in language which is more then some Chinese dialects have in common. The west talks about popular sovereignty but ignores it when it’s inconvenient. They made the exact same mistake after ww1. Stalin regime was hell. Many people from the former USSR won’t deny that but those people did fight, work, and died together often. Communism did treated everyone equally but that didn’t mean they always treated them well. They were not always racist like fascist. They were often brutal to everyone all around. Communist countries often focused more on loyalty to the state and party. It was more political then ethnic. Nazis kill and enslave gypies and Jews because they hate them. Communist do it because they don’t want drifters and prefer national conformity. It is more just heartless but with a practical reason. Ukraine only has a strong sense of nationality because of Stalin inefficient management of it. The famine wasn’t intentional. He was just stupid. Same goes for Mao. Stalin wasn’t even Russian. The Baltic has more of a case but they do have people who like Russia more or who are actual Russians who still live there. Even some non-Slavs lean more with Russia. The federation still has variety of people too. Central Asia never had a strong sense of nationality and have been influenced greatly by Russian culture. Same with some of the Caucasus.
I am not denying the fact Putin is a very corrupt and brutal man but Russia does have many somewhat legitimate claims and points. Denying that is the very reason many foreign people think Americans are ignorant. You can’t get power or even expand without some support base. People act like they are just marching into there. Also Ukraine is often doing shady stuff too. Russian might send more troops and volunteers over to Ukraine but they do have some local support too otherwise it would be much harder to take part in partisan activities. A group of complete foreigners often stick out especially if they have weapons. A Russian partisan in Ukraine can literally drop his weapons and blend in with the civilian population. A US soldier in Afghanistan can’t do the same. That’s where culture comes into play and why borders and nationality in the old world is tricky. It’s the very reason the USSR did forced population transfers. It was wrong but people literally did not know how to get along on either side. That era was a truly dark one.
It the same reason why the United States themselves encouraged assimilation and a very general sense of nationality. Many regions of the US are as different culturally as parts of the former USSR are with each other especially in the past. For example if the south won the civil war going into the 1900 century you would see what could be arguably the formation of new ethnic groups. Many whites and blacks by that point have lived there 200 to 300 years in the Americas especially with the much lower influx of immigration. Rural regions and confederate system also sees more regionalism form. How would that not be considered the native population or a ethnic group in any other situation especially when they have different immigration patterns and cultural influences? The United States doesn’t want that concept to even form here. Federalization was created to try and nip that but mass media is what started to help lessen that greatly here which honestly might just be more random luck then anything. If people have been living in a land for generations they will consider it home and will be much more tied to it. How would Americans feel if the US fell part one day especially as time past? Some will accept it and many won’t or seek to fix it. If the US fell apart you would see people loyalties shift a lot especially depending on politics due to varying governments and social conditions in the US predecessor states. Many would be hostile or resentful to idea of predecessor states drifting to much towards a foreign bloc or organization. Russia and the US has many striking parallels and similarities when it has come to the challenges each nation has faced. Popular sovereignty isn’t clean cut. People are often very primal and irrational about what they consider home.
Kapellan23
Banned
Kick
I will say more in Germany among the Prussians and the Bavarians, greater language differences than among the Maloross and the Velikoross.
Ukraine has a strong sense of nationality only because of korenizatsiya and derussification, like all the national republics created by the soviets. Before the revolution, Kiev was the Russian national center, and in Galicia there was a wide movement of Russophiles that Austria-Hungary began to create concentration camps for them.
Communism treated everyone the same, but it is worth remembering that the RSFSR did not even have its own communist party and KGB, and you can Look at the production / consumption in the USSR and the national composition in the Second World War.
Putin is a Soviet man primarily because of his anti-Russian national policy and adherence to Soviet borders.
Irredent Russian loyalists in the Crimea and the Donbass caught him aback and he was forced to admit the return of Crimea and began to advocate the return of Malorossiya to Ukraine.
I agree with you about the United States, but there are regional language differences in all countries. Fortunately for the residents of the United States, their country was not captured by an international terrorist organization for 100 years, which dismembered Russia and created a couple of hundred artificial nationalities that did not have their own language and culture before them. Now their descendants ruled.
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Modern Imperialism
Banned
Germans in those areas got screwed but Prussian has been long dead by the time the 80s come around and the fall of Berlin wall happens. That’s not getting undone. You have to have actual people in that place to even have it considered yours. It might be your historically but that is stupid to claim it once your people aren’t there anymore. As American I find it absolute stupid when Native Americans claim this is there land and complain about something that happened over 100 years ago. History is full of population movements, demographic changes, and assimilation of people. Native Americans complaining about lost land is like the Irish bitching at France or Italy because Romans wiped out much of Celtic culture from mainland Europe. Germans have historically been pushed more west by Slavic population movements in Eastern Europe since the time of the Romans. European history is full of genocides and forced population movements. World wars just brought it back and with modern technology made it much worse. Celtic people have arguably been the European equivalent to Native Americans considering how much they been targeted or land they lost over many centuries lost. At one point Europe kingdoms were playing hot potato with its Jewish population. They would literally let them in sometimes and kick them out a few decades later.I will say more in Germany among the Prussians and the Bavarians, greater language differences than among the Maloross and the Velikoross.
Ukraine has a strong sense of nationality only because of korenizatsiya and derussification, like all the national republics created by the soviets. Before the revolution, Kiev was the Russian national center, and in Galicia there was a wide movement of Russophiles that Austria-Hungary began to create concentration camps for them.
Communism treated everyone the same, but it is worth remembering that the RSFSR did not even have its own communist party and KGB, and you can Look at the production / consumption in the USSR and the national composition in the Second World War.
Putin is a Soviet man primarily because of his anti-Russian national policy and adherence to Soviet borders.
Irredent Russian loyalists in the Crimea and the Donbass caught him aback and he was forced to admit the return of Crimea and began to advocate the return of Malorossiya to Ukraine.
I agree with you about the United States, but there are regional language differences in all countries. Fortunately for the residents of the United States, their country was not captured by an international terrorist organization for 100 years, which dismembered Russia and created a couple of hundred artificial nationalities that did not have their own language and culture before them. Now their descendants ruled.
The Baltic and many others are actual ethnic and religious groups separate from Russian. They do have their own history and traditions too. Belarus should be part of Russia and Ukraine isn’t a completely different foreign culture. I would argue Western or rival powers have fed into many of these artificial nationalities and it was more of USSR just not addressing that well that lead to the growth of this. Communist aren’t like modern western liberalism unlike many of the right likes to claim(many traditional Marxist actually hate the new left). Identify politics isn’t desire because it creates loyalty issues with the state and party. The Soviets wanted to create a brand new culture based around there ideology and mixed with past elements of their choosing. That’s why the Soviet Union wanted and had people who identify as Soviet instead of Russian or whatever else. It’s easier to get minorities to speak Russian and act more like them when you have a less bias name for it like “Soviet”. It’s like being American. Ethnicity, religion, and race doesn’t matter and anyone can become a American just like anyone can become a Soviet. It is the reason Soviets didn’t want to appear solely Russian. It is like a traditional empire with assimilation(when in Rome mindset). Colonial system is actually very stupid because you don’t want to alienate the people you conquer too much unless you want to guarantee your eventual lost of that land.
Soviet Union did have multiple different religious and ethnic scattered everywhere but demographics are often heavily mix and many don’t have demographics or size to be a functional nation independently but some will still oppose Soviet/Russian rule. But not all had a strong sense of nationality. Let’s include both the groups within Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Poles, Baltic people, Armenians, Finns, Georgians, and Muslims do all have a clearly different cultures and histories from Russians. The Slavs east of Poland is more artificial. One reason for state atheism in the USSR is to eliminate religion because it can create foreign loyalties, make people question them more, or people tie it to nationality a lot. It is easier to make Muslims Soviets if they aren’t Muslim anymore because after they leave their faith they don’t have a strong sense of nationality themselves so they are easier to assimilate especially when they are scattered and divided into a variety of ethnic groups(remember Russian Empire took over a lot of pre-industrial and nomadic societies out there. You can’t have strong sense of nationality if you never had one. That’s why Muslims rally behind religion more then nations a lot). Baltic will always be a harder area to keep because they are more clearly different. The longer the USSR survives the more you see Slavic culture in USSR become more like being Chinese. Cantonese and Manchurian Chinese people can’t even understand each other a lot but are still considered Chinese. The Soviet Union wants people in Central Asia, Moscow, Ukraine, and Baltic to identify as “Soviets”.
People forget French did a lot of similar stuff a 100 years back before Russian Revolution with their very own. They tried to create a new culture and identity but when you do that especially at a rapid rate some people literally start not knowing what is what anymore and become super unsure of what to believe. This is made worse when they lose and enemies exploit there failures. They were both radicals who seek not just a political or economical revolution but a cultural one but this stuff takes a lot of time. USSR was actually showing success at assimilation until it fell apart. Continued one just sees many cultures fade away or mix together into the new “Soviet” identity. Stalin was smart in regards to understanding the need to focus domestic issues, defense, and calming down on the world revolution stuff that could have seen USSR destroyed much earlier if someone like Trotsky ran it. The only thing solely Russian about Soviet identity is language but for communist that’s more just for convenience reasons instead of nationalistic ones. Also this method is arguably smarter and more subtle then the Russian nationalist are.
I think the scene from Victory Over Berlin shows the mindset of the average Soviet well. Even with the hell that was Stalin and horrors of war with the Nazis these people from a variety of backgrounds, groups, and languages had one very simple cause survival and victory. They fought together, worked together, went to the gulags together, marched Nazis lines with no guns together, starved together, and labor tirelessly together. People find kinship when they suffer together. What makes fascist Nazis worse is their killing had no practicality or reason to it besides straight up hate. Jews in kaiserreich often saw themselves as Germans and loyal to the nation because Germany ironically use to be the place that was the more welcoming to them. Many felt betrayed, bitter, and dishearten by the actions Hitler and Nazis did to them which they often tied to all of Germany. Nothing is worse to a loyal patriot then to be called a traitor and be unwelcome by people you use to think we’re his own countrymen. Image being a German who doesn’t even follow Judaism but your mom was one. You fought bravely for Germany in ww1 and now you aren’t even a citizen anymore after Hitler takes power. That’s the major difference between USSR and Nazis. People know when they are being singled out. USSR had jews, Russians, Muslims, women, and variety of different people working together for a common cause even if the circumstances around it were not that pleasant. Even if you are a Russian or Tatar who hate Stalin and communist your still will find comrades from all walks of life in the USSR who are suffering or laboring like you. The USSR did target certain groups but even if it’s wrong it had a clear reason a lot even if the reason wasn’t always the most educated one(sometimes they were just straight up stupid or incompetent).
The difference between the 1900th and 2000th century is the radicals in the 1900th century lost most of the time and forced to moderate their views and chip away at the old system. 2000th century actually saw them win and maintain victory after the revolution. The whole issue I find with people calling the USSR a “criminal or terrorist regime” is many nations often would do the same thing if not worse if put into a similar position. If the Nazis actually won they would put communist and Stalin to shame on death counts. Also let’s be honest the Russian Empire could have been just as bad if not worse if it survived. Many of the increases in war crimes and total deaths in the last century was more due to advances in technology and the mess the world wars created. Also Russia and China have a lot of people. Incompetence by itself can lead to millions of death by starvation. Any leader can be guilty of that not just communist. Hitler can only kill so many people in Germany. Stalin has a lot more just to worry about. If Nazis did what it did to the Soviets to Americans or Japanese did what it did in China on the American west coast I say with little doubt in my mind Germany and Japan would have no economic miracle after the war. The only reason the US wasn’t as brutal as USSR is because we never experienced anything that extremely messed. Japan would be a graveyard if they did a raping of Nanking type thing in LA once Americans are able to attack them at home.
On Stalin's supposedly "anti-Russian" policies:
(1) It is not true that he always settled boundary issues to the disadvantage of the RSFSR. For example, the RSFSR retained the Kuban, even though the Ukrainians had a reasonable demographic claim to it, based on both the Imperial 1897 http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/emp_lan_97_uezd.php?reg=414 and the Soviet 1926 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians_in_Kuban census. Other areas the Ukrainians could plausibly claim include Taganrog http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\T\A\Tahanrih.htm and parts of Voronezh oblast, especially Ostrogozhsk. http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\O\S\Ostrohozke.htm
(2) To view Ukrainian national consciousness in Ukraine as simply the product of Korenizatsiya is a gross oversimplification. Look at the 1917 Constituent Assembly election. Why did so many Ukrainians (especially in the most "Ukrainian" of provinces like Poltava) vote for the Ukrainian SR Party when they had a choice of voting instead for the all-Russian SR's? This is in striking contest to Belorussia where the vote for the Belorussian Socialist Hromada (the largest "Belorussian" party) was negligible. Here are a couple of pages from Oliver Radkey's book on the Constituent Assembly elections:
I agree that the majority of Ukrainians in 1917 did not favor complete separation from Russia but it is impossible to say that by this time they had no national consciousness. For that matter, even the first two State Dumas had a substantial number of nationally conscious Ukrainian deputies. http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ussianStateDuma.htm+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
As for western Ukraine, which was added to the USSR in 1939-41 and again after 1944-5, it is ridiculous to see national consciousness there as Soviet-inspired. Even in 1914, Durnovo dismissed the Russophiles in Galicia as a hopeless minority: "It is obviously disadvantageous for us to annex, in the interests of national sentimentalism, a territory [Galicia] that has lost every vital connection with our fatherland. For, together with a negligible handful of Galicians, Russian in spirit, how many Poles, Jews, and Ukrainized Uniates we would receive! The so-called Ukrainian, or Mazeppist, movement is not a menace to us at present, but we should not enable it to expand by increasing the number of turbulent Ukrainian elements, for in this movement undoubtedly lies the seed of an extremely dangerous Little Russian separatism which, under favorable conditions, may assume quite unexpected proportions." https://books.google.com/books?id=KVVK8Wra4iIC&pg=PA472"Negligible" may be understating their numbers but they were definitely in decline by 1914: "Help from Russian and Polish patrons largely failed to prevent the Russophile decline. By the early 20th century, the Russophiles became a minority in Galicia. Within the Church, they were nicknamed "bisons," in scholar Himka's words an "ancient, shaggy species on the verge of extinction." Of nineteen Ukrainian periodicals published in Galicia in 1899, sixteen were Ukrainophile in orientation, only two were Russophile in orientation and one was neutral.[19] In the 1907 elections to the Viennese parliament, the Ukrainophiles won 22 seats while the Russophiles won five. But the Russophiles, due to Polish interference, won elections to the Galician parliament the same year by taking 11 seats, the Ukrainophiles 10. In 1913, 30 Ukrainophile and only 1 Russophile delegate were sent to the Galician Diet..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_Russophilia
(3) Yes, Stalin took the lead in introducing Korenizatsiya in the 1920's. But he also took the lead in retreating from it in the 1930's. The percentage of publications in Ukrainian as opposed to Russian reached its peak in 1931 and had declined steadily by 1939. Ukrainian and Russian orthography were brought into closer alignment, the Ukrainian language was "cleansed" of "Polonisms," etc. And a lot of Ukrainians and other non-Russians were shot for "bourgeois nationalism." (Yes, plenty of Russians were shot, too--but they were not accused of Russian nationalism.)
(4) With regard to the Kazakhs, yes, it is true that they were outnumbered by East Slavs in Kazahstan by the time of the 1939 census. But this was largely because of the famine of 1932-33 and it seems rather bizarre to see the massive decrease in the Kazakh population caused by this as a sign of anti-Russian pro-Kazakh bias! (If I were Ukrainian or Kazakh, I think I would judge the question of whether Stalin favored the non-Russian nationalities less by the boundaries of the Union Republics and more by the fact that Ukrainians and Kazakhs died disproportionately in the famine...)
Granted, the Kazakh SSR did contain some areas where Kazakhs were in a minority even in 1926. But instead of seeing their inclusion in the Kazakh SSR as "anti-Russian" it would be just as plausible to say that it was a way to guarantee that Russians and Russified Ukrainians etc. would dominate Kazakhstan. (It didn't turn out that way in the long run but that was only because of the Kazakh demographic revival decades later.)
Now, I agree that people who see Stalin as a "Russifier" are oversimplifying things. The decision in the 1930's to make Russian a compulsory subject in schools could be justified; the Soviet Union needed a lingua franca, and that could only be Russian. And during World War II he encouraged not only Russian patriotism but a sort of Ukrainian patriotism, though one based on the assumption that "true" Ukrainian patriotism was based on close ties to Russia, Khmelnytsky being a hero because of the treaty of Pereyaslav, Shevchenko being praised as an ally of Russian radicals (with his nationalism denied or played down), etc. It was in this period that Sosiura's poem Love Ukraine was published. But it is significant that this poem was later attacked as "nationalistic," and that Stalin never entrusted the First Secretaryship in Ukraine to an ethnic Ukrainian; his last First Secretary there, Leonid Melnikov, was a Russian who was later condemned after Stalin's death for Russifying policies.
And one cannot ignore Stalin's rehabilitation of Russian history starting in the late 1930's or his famous toast to the Russian people, "the most outstanding nation of all the nations forming the Soviet Union.... the leading force of the Soviet Union among all the peoples of our country....Our Government made not a few errors, we experienced at moments a desperate situation in 1941-1942, when our Army was retreating, abandoning our own villages and towns of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldavia, the Leningrad Region, the Baltic area and the Karelo-Finnish Republic, abandoning them because there was no other way out. A different people could have said to the Government: “You have failed to justify our expectations. Go away. We shall install another government which will conclude peace with Germany and assure us a quiet life.” The Russian people, however, did not take this path because it trusted the correctness of the policy of its Government, and it made sacrifices to ensure the rout of Germany. This confidence of the Russian people in the Soviet Government proved to be that decisive force which ensured the historic victory over the enemy of humanity—over fascism." https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1945/05/24.htm Of course one should not take anything Stalin said at face value, but there was some truth there: the resistance to the Soviets was greatest among non-Russians, especially in areas recently incorporated into the USSR (western Ukraine, the Baltic states).
(5) Finally, it is true that the RSFSR, almost until the end of the Union, lacked some institutions the other Union Republics had: there was no RSFSR Communist Party Central Committee or Politburo (though Khrushchev did set up a Bureau for the RSFSR), no RSFSR Academy of Sciences, etc. I do not see this as necessarily "anti-Russian" however. Rather, the point seems to be that the USSR itself, though multinational (as indeed the Russian Empire had been in its population) was fundamentally a Russian state: the majority of its population had Russian as their first language (and even many of those who didn't knew it about as well as their "own" language). Russians could therefore realize their national aspirations on an all-Union level. There was no need to duplicate all-Union institutions on the soil of the republic which constituted the majority of the USSR. As Gorbachev put it, "What is Russia? It is the Union. What is the Union? It is mostly Russia." https://books.google.com/books?id=Y5QYDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT164 In short, Soviet identity and Russian identity were not regarded as two distinct things.
(1) It is not true that he always settled boundary issues to the disadvantage of the RSFSR. For example, the RSFSR retained the Kuban, even though the Ukrainians had a reasonable demographic claim to it, based on both the Imperial 1897 http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/emp_lan_97_uezd.php?reg=414 and the Soviet 1926 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainians_in_Kuban census. Other areas the Ukrainians could plausibly claim include Taganrog http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\T\A\Tahanrih.htm and parts of Voronezh oblast, especially Ostrogozhsk. http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\O\S\Ostrohozke.htm
(2) To view Ukrainian national consciousness in Ukraine as simply the product of Korenizatsiya is a gross oversimplification. Look at the 1917 Constituent Assembly election. Why did so many Ukrainians (especially in the most "Ukrainian" of provinces like Poltava) vote for the Ukrainian SR Party when they had a choice of voting instead for the all-Russian SR's? This is in striking contest to Belorussia where the vote for the Belorussian Socialist Hromada (the largest "Belorussian" party) was negligible. Here are a couple of pages from Oliver Radkey's book on the Constituent Assembly elections:
I agree that the majority of Ukrainians in 1917 did not favor complete separation from Russia but it is impossible to say that by this time they had no national consciousness. For that matter, even the first two State Dumas had a substantial number of nationally conscious Ukrainian deputies. http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...ussianStateDuma.htm+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
As for western Ukraine, which was added to the USSR in 1939-41 and again after 1944-5, it is ridiculous to see national consciousness there as Soviet-inspired. Even in 1914, Durnovo dismissed the Russophiles in Galicia as a hopeless minority: "It is obviously disadvantageous for us to annex, in the interests of national sentimentalism, a territory [Galicia] that has lost every vital connection with our fatherland. For, together with a negligible handful of Galicians, Russian in spirit, how many Poles, Jews, and Ukrainized Uniates we would receive! The so-called Ukrainian, or Mazeppist, movement is not a menace to us at present, but we should not enable it to expand by increasing the number of turbulent Ukrainian elements, for in this movement undoubtedly lies the seed of an extremely dangerous Little Russian separatism which, under favorable conditions, may assume quite unexpected proportions." https://books.google.com/books?id=KVVK8Wra4iIC&pg=PA472"Negligible" may be understating their numbers but they were definitely in decline by 1914: "Help from Russian and Polish patrons largely failed to prevent the Russophile decline. By the early 20th century, the Russophiles became a minority in Galicia. Within the Church, they were nicknamed "bisons," in scholar Himka's words an "ancient, shaggy species on the verge of extinction." Of nineteen Ukrainian periodicals published in Galicia in 1899, sixteen were Ukrainophile in orientation, only two were Russophile in orientation and one was neutral.[19] In the 1907 elections to the Viennese parliament, the Ukrainophiles won 22 seats while the Russophiles won five. But the Russophiles, due to Polish interference, won elections to the Galician parliament the same year by taking 11 seats, the Ukrainophiles 10. In 1913, 30 Ukrainophile and only 1 Russophile delegate were sent to the Galician Diet..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_Russophilia
(3) Yes, Stalin took the lead in introducing Korenizatsiya in the 1920's. But he also took the lead in retreating from it in the 1930's. The percentage of publications in Ukrainian as opposed to Russian reached its peak in 1931 and had declined steadily by 1939. Ukrainian and Russian orthography were brought into closer alignment, the Ukrainian language was "cleansed" of "Polonisms," etc. And a lot of Ukrainians and other non-Russians were shot for "bourgeois nationalism." (Yes, plenty of Russians were shot, too--but they were not accused of Russian nationalism.)
(4) With regard to the Kazakhs, yes, it is true that they were outnumbered by East Slavs in Kazahstan by the time of the 1939 census. But this was largely because of the famine of 1932-33 and it seems rather bizarre to see the massive decrease in the Kazakh population caused by this as a sign of anti-Russian pro-Kazakh bias! (If I were Ukrainian or Kazakh, I think I would judge the question of whether Stalin favored the non-Russian nationalities less by the boundaries of the Union Republics and more by the fact that Ukrainians and Kazakhs died disproportionately in the famine...)
Granted, the Kazakh SSR did contain some areas where Kazakhs were in a minority even in 1926. But instead of seeing their inclusion in the Kazakh SSR as "anti-Russian" it would be just as plausible to say that it was a way to guarantee that Russians and Russified Ukrainians etc. would dominate Kazakhstan. (It didn't turn out that way in the long run but that was only because of the Kazakh demographic revival decades later.)
Now, I agree that people who see Stalin as a "Russifier" are oversimplifying things. The decision in the 1930's to make Russian a compulsory subject in schools could be justified; the Soviet Union needed a lingua franca, and that could only be Russian. And during World War II he encouraged not only Russian patriotism but a sort of Ukrainian patriotism, though one based on the assumption that "true" Ukrainian patriotism was based on close ties to Russia, Khmelnytsky being a hero because of the treaty of Pereyaslav, Shevchenko being praised as an ally of Russian radicals (with his nationalism denied or played down), etc. It was in this period that Sosiura's poem Love Ukraine was published. But it is significant that this poem was later attacked as "nationalistic," and that Stalin never entrusted the First Secretaryship in Ukraine to an ethnic Ukrainian; his last First Secretary there, Leonid Melnikov, was a Russian who was later condemned after Stalin's death for Russifying policies.
And one cannot ignore Stalin's rehabilitation of Russian history starting in the late 1930's or his famous toast to the Russian people, "the most outstanding nation of all the nations forming the Soviet Union.... the leading force of the Soviet Union among all the peoples of our country....Our Government made not a few errors, we experienced at moments a desperate situation in 1941-1942, when our Army was retreating, abandoning our own villages and towns of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldavia, the Leningrad Region, the Baltic area and the Karelo-Finnish Republic, abandoning them because there was no other way out. A different people could have said to the Government: “You have failed to justify our expectations. Go away. We shall install another government which will conclude peace with Germany and assure us a quiet life.” The Russian people, however, did not take this path because it trusted the correctness of the policy of its Government, and it made sacrifices to ensure the rout of Germany. This confidence of the Russian people in the Soviet Government proved to be that decisive force which ensured the historic victory over the enemy of humanity—over fascism." https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1945/05/24.htm Of course one should not take anything Stalin said at face value, but there was some truth there: the resistance to the Soviets was greatest among non-Russians, especially in areas recently incorporated into the USSR (western Ukraine, the Baltic states).
(5) Finally, it is true that the RSFSR, almost until the end of the Union, lacked some institutions the other Union Republics had: there was no RSFSR Communist Party Central Committee or Politburo (though Khrushchev did set up a Bureau for the RSFSR), no RSFSR Academy of Sciences, etc. I do not see this as necessarily "anti-Russian" however. Rather, the point seems to be that the USSR itself, though multinational (as indeed the Russian Empire had been in its population) was fundamentally a Russian state: the majority of its population had Russian as their first language (and even many of those who didn't knew it about as well as their "own" language). Russians could therefore realize their national aspirations on an all-Union level. There was no need to duplicate all-Union institutions on the soil of the republic which constituted the majority of the USSR. As Gorbachev put it, "What is Russia? It is the Union. What is the Union? It is mostly Russia." https://books.google.com/books?id=Y5QYDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT164 In short, Soviet identity and Russian identity were not regarded as two distinct things.
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I mean with all the deportations to Central Asia and aggressive settlement of ethnic Russians I'm pretty surprised the Baltics didn't end up being Russian majority.
Modern Imperialism
Banned
Is it me or do Russian seem like the type to welcome anyone they like or who works with them while shooting or oppressing the rest who don’t? They come off as blunt but pragmatic. They also seem to have a trend of just getting insane leaders by bad luck. Stalin rise to power was a lot of chance. Also so was a lot of the tsars who rule Russia had a load of mental issues. That’s why I could see a surviving Russian Empire being more insane then the Soviet Union.
Since the Balts, Chechens and Kazakhs were already there well before Russian colonization, wouldn't that make the Bolsheviks the heroes in that case?It is a myth. After the death of Lenin, Stalin continued the same policy.
In 1924, the BSSR transferred part of the Vitebsk (from the city of Vitebsk), part of the Smolensk provinces (from the city of Orsha), as well as the Kalininsky, Mogilev and Rogachev counties of the Gomel province to the Belorussian SSR. In the same year, the Bukhara NSR and the Khorezm NSR were separated from the RSFSR, which were transformed into the Bukhara SSR and the Khorezm SSR.
Stalin and Ukraine did not offend, as the following territories were separated from the RSFSR: the territories of the former Putivl uyezd, Krenichansky volost of the Greyvoron uyezd and two incomplete volosts of the Greyvoron and Belgorod districts, a little later in 1926 the Semenov volost of the Novozybkovsky uyezd of Gomelsky, Troitskaya Troitskaya and Urytsky uyezd were transferred. the province.
But the main blow to the territorial integrity of the country was dealt in the 30s. Thanks to the Stalinist constitution, the Kazak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was removed from the RSFSR and transformed into the Kazakh SSR, the same thing happened with the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which became the Kyrgyz SSR. On March 31, 1940, the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was removed from the RSFSR with the formation of the Karelian-Finnish SSR (all other territories transferred to the Soviet Union after the Winter War were transferred to it as well). After the Karachayev Autonomous Region was liquidated on March 12, 1943, its southern part was transferred to the Georgian SSR.
More than half of present-day Central Asia has been developed and settled by Russians; these were Russian provinces. A particularly striking example is Kazakhstan, which exists almost entirely on Russian South Siberian lands, in which Kazakhs almost did not live in the Kazakh steppes, but Russians (the capital of Kazakhstan is Astana, the old Russian city of Akmolinsk with 100% of the Russian population, now there are about 15% of Russians and continues to decline).
And you can go on about anti-Russian politics in the USSR for a long time - and about the greater part of Chechnya, which are Russian Cossack lands, and about the good half of Estonia and Narva, and about national autonomies sucked from a finger (one Yakutia, the size of Western Europe built around a micro -ethnos, which even now does not reach 500,000 people, and at the time of the formation of the republic, and in general was a miserable handful, which is worth it; and I generally am silent about comic Jewish autonomy), and about Ukraine and Belarus torn from the body of the Russian people, etc.
Umm, you do realize how racist it is to claim that hundreds of ethnic groups are a Communist invention, right? That's straight in the territory of Protocols of Zion/Frankfurt School lunacy.I will say more in Germany among the Prussians and the Bavarians, greater language differences than among the Maloross and the Velikoross.
Ukraine has a strong sense of nationality only because of korenizatsiya and derussification, like all the national republics created by the soviets. Before the revolution, Kiev was the Russian national center, and in Galicia there was a wide movement of Russophiles that Austria-Hungary began to create concentration camps for them.
Communism treated everyone the same, but it is worth remembering that the RSFSR did not even have its own communist party and KGB, and you can Look at the production / consumption in the USSR and the national composition in the Second World War.
Putin is a Soviet man primarily because of his anti-Russian national policy and adherence to Soviet borders.
Irredent Russian loyalists in the Crimea and the Donbass caught him aback and he was forced to admit the return of Crimea and began to advocate the return of Malorossiya to Ukraine.
I agree with you about the United States, but there are regional language differences in all countries. Fortunately for the residents of the United States, their country was not captured by an international terrorist organization for 100 years, which dismembered Russia and created a couple of hundred artificial nationalities that did not have their own language and culture before them. Now their descendants ruled.
You have to be joking. Just on the language front alone your position is clearly in error on its face.I will say more in Germany among the Prussians and the Bavarians, greater language differences than among the Maloross and the Velikoross.
Ukraine has a strong sense of nationality only because of korenizatsiya and derussification, like all the national republics created by the soviets. Before the revolution, Kiev was the Russian national center, and in Galicia there was a wide movement of Russophiles that Austria-Hungary began to create concentration camps for them.
Communism treated everyone the same, but it is worth remembering that the RSFSR did not even have its own communist party and KGB, and you can Look at the production / consumption in the USSR and the national composition in the Second World War.
Putin is a Soviet man primarily because of his anti-Russian national policy and adherence to Soviet borders.
Irredent Russian loyalists in the Crimea and the Donbass caught him aback and he was forced to admit the return of Crimea and began to advocate the return of Malorossiya to Ukraine.
I agree with you about the United States, but there are regional language differences in all countries. Fortunately for the residents of the United States, their country was not captured by an international terrorist organization for 100 years, which dismembered Russia and created a couple of hundred artificial nationalities that did not have their own language and culture before them. Now their descendants ruled.
Russian Nationalism that demeans/denies the centuries old realities of there being Ukrainian language, or a Georgian Language or an Armenian Language, or an...
Well, you should get the idea.
Kicked for a week. Pull this sort of crap again and it WILL be the last time you do it here.