How would the USSR survive to the present day?

I'm a bit skeptical of this, tbh. In terms of GDP the USSR managed to recover (as did France, the UK, and Germany; one of the reasons I'm skeptical of enduring colonial empires is because the nations of Europe were far richer in 1965 than in 1939).

So, okay, more Ukrainians and more Russians; but if anything this should increase the reliant on western imports of grain.

Of course, a USSR that didn't go through Barbarossa would look incredibly different. I think Stalin would be viewed a lot more like Mao in China at best.

I confess to being no good at all at number-crunching. One finds it difficult to imagine that a course of development missing destruction on such a massive scale could be worse, but history does funny things; however if we treat the Cold War and the swollen military expenditure and holding up of puppet-states that it implies as a consequences of the second world war that's another big factor.

The really essential point, though, is that the USSR will be almost unrecognisable (I do like that Stalin-Mao comparison), and so the kind of exact analogy to the crisis of the 1980s being posited isn't going to happen.
 
But did Kruschev consider himself a Ukrainian? Techniacally Stalin was Georgian, though he, as many other Bolsheviks abandoned their “nationality”, since it was what bolshevsim expected. So even if we were consider the leaders of the SU as non-russians (the Tzars weren’t of Russian descent, but German) doesn’t change the fact that the status of Ukraine within the power structure of the SU wasn’t equal to that of the RFSSR.

He changed his census-nationality several times, IIRC, despite being born to Russians in Russia. That it was under some circumstances politic to become a Ukrainian is specially significant, no? The USSR had an insecure anxiety to be seen as multinational and anti-imperialist.

Are you suggesting that history is irrelevant, and that past actions are of no use of predicting the future? There can be no tangible evidence on what is going to happen tomorrow or in an AH, but we can give some kind of predictions about it based on past experiences.

Past actions are one of a whole complex of intersecting things that explain the present. According to the weight of hereditary, I should be spending my life on a small northerly island digging my food out of the ground; but I'm not, because history is of course the study of a constant change.

To use a notion of the past which is itself stereotyped and coloured by present perceptions, of which more later, as ones only bit of evidence for something inspired no confidence.

Typical problem with studying history or politology – those closest to events are also least likely to be objective about them. But that doesn’t stop us from either agreeing or disagreeing with their statements. So if the Ukrainians are to be considered biased about the SU collapse, so should the Russians. And we ought to make up our minds based on all accounts.

The urgent question not being answered here is 'which accounts'? I can name some - Wilson, Lieven - and can name more if you want but in general have better things to do than hunt for books and articles about Ukraine, Russia, or the USSR that I read some time.

What are these sources, and is 'Ukrainian descent' a word for diaspora-driven historiography?

The Ukrainians did not, but the Russians were quite happy living in a country sending them to die in Chechenya, simply because their leaders said so, not because the Chechens were “unruly Russians” to be brought under control. The Russians big on “territorial integrity”, even (or especially) of non-russian territory.

This statement dances on the line beyond which lies outright prejudice. Russians apparently like violence and dictatorship, 'cos they're Russian.

Consider the actual situation, in which the Russians who lived in Chechnya had been forced into flight and the world of Russian knowledge was hardly devoid of grizzly social collapses for people to panic about. One can instantly perceive reasons for wanting to fight the Chechnyan insurgency beyond the thuggish love of violence implied by your nationally-charged analysis.

This is why I referred to other examples, like Lithuania and Azerbaijan, in which at least a substantial minority of Russians - whose goals were what came about, too - wished to have nothing to do with in boots-on-ground terms.

You seem like a reasonable person, but I hope you understand that this kind of bold, unsupported, and prejudiced remark is repellant.

Nah, it’s not “history as monoliths”. It’s “attempting to understand the reason why the majority made a particular decision”. Sure, the exact reasons why individual Ukrainians voted one way or the other are a highly individual matter, but overall the majority were dissatisfied with their situation and wanted to change it, somehow. The Galician might have wanted an independent Ukraine with all ties with Russia broken, a Kievan a Ukraine tied with Russia in some supra-national organization, a Kharkovite might have wanted Ukraine as part of some federation with Russia. But overall, most of them did not want to be part of the SU on the same basis as they were in the past.

This is what I said. Who does want to be standing in a queue for an egg?

Sure, it does. If you live in dictatorship, and the dictator asks you something, you always answer YES. :p

Unless you belong to the groups of people who voted no, or did not vote, whose actions have not been explained; but anyway, is this a concession?

But it might not have been. Especially if the New Union State would come into being and would don satisfy the Ukrainians. I wouldn’t say that they are the type of people who accept anything fate gives them and don’t want to change it.

Whereas the Russians apparently are.

That aside, this whole narrative rests on the assumption that the Ukrainians can never be happy in anything except a sovereign national state, because they can never be happy in anything except a sovereign national state.

You must appreciate that for me, a person happy not to live in a sovereign national state, this is a slightly personal matter. I am being called a historical aberration and threat to humanity's supposed march towards freedom.

I can’t give you a definition, no one can I think. Definitions are tricky, since it’s rare that one can’t find an example escaping any definition to prove his point.

For the purposes of discussion one can declare a definition acceptable to the two or three people concerned and decide that anything not matching it is simply not the thing being defined.

I think final authority in coercion, extraction, and punishment is a pretty good example. In Scotland's case, the position espoused by most people, including me, is that Scotland's people can not be subject to laws and levies that no Scottish person agrees to.

As for the second question – because like I said, such Unions ought to emerge from popular consent, not wishes of unelected leaders. That the Union of Scotland and England was not made in such fashion, doesn’t mean the way it occurred ought to be the standard fashion for creating such Unions. Better make it between free, independent states and avoid it’s legitimacy being questioned. The XX century has different rules than the XVIII.

What is the criterion of freedom?

Further, burden of proof. If good and functional unions can emerge from historical accident, it's up to you to prove that getting rid of the USSR is an inherent moral good.

Further, what were the 'Scotland' and 'England' being united? One was seven kingdoms that had been united by hooks and crooks and gone on to gain control of Wales in a protracted, racially-charged, and frequently bloody conquest; the other was the land and people gradually accrued to the descendants of MacAlpin by a few royal marriages and some underhanded deals and lots and lots of blood

All states must be unions or empires at some point in their history - they don't spring from the brow of Zeus - and if the only process of state formation that's allowed is democracy, hardly any state has a right to exist. Certainly not Ukraine, whose present territorial extent is the result of settler-colonisation visited on the steppes by tsarist Russia, Stalin's conquests, and Khrushchyov's arbitrary attachment of the Crimea.

So we disagree again. How many times did people abandon convenient lifestyles to fight, or serve something they considered to be of greater value?

Less often than they abandoned inconvenient lifestyles, that's for sure.

Even today, a lot of people serve in the British Armed Forces not because it ways extremely well and there is free bread, but because they feel service being important to them. Abstracts like “Honor”, “Duty”, “Freedom”, “God” have led people on the barricades for centuries.

And is the freedom not to get shot different from the other kinds?


Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude -
No - in countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be
As in England now we see.


More prosaically, which grand humbug is at stake in this particular case? :p

So yeah, I think they would mind anyway. Maybe a generation later, but still.

The purpose of this several million people appears to be serve as a projection for our particular grand humbugs, vis, 'national independence'.

Wasn’t there an office called “Secretary of State for Scotland”? And various Scottish Offices in London since the Union?

Appointed by a government which has no constitutional for any Scottish votes whatever. (Less importantly, there were two lengthy - as in, the second one was 139 years - intervals in which no such office existed.)

This is a transparent double-standard. If the name 'Scotland' is sufficient to make institutions Scots and the whole union hence voluntary, why isn't it enough that the UkSSR existed?

Different? Yeah. Any? Not really.

There were identities at the intersection of kingdom, language, religion, and other things which sometimes shared the names of modern 'nations' and sometimes didn't; but until very recently in the scheme of things hardly anybody believed that 'nations' were the basis of states and sovereignty.

You don’t really have a Belgian nationality despite over 2 centuries having passed (Joke I heard said that the only Belgians in Belgium are the Football team, the Royal Family and the Jews). So I never question that Belarus could remain part of Russia indefinitely, but Ukraine is a different matter. Different language, different traditions, even different rites. Perhaps East Ukraine, which was part of Russia since the mid-XVII century and highly russified, but Ukraine is larger than that, and adding it’s western parts led the Ukrainians to identify more with “Ukraine” and less with Russia.

You are still speaking in the terms of a world in which these things are mutually exclusive (leaving aside for a moment, but never forgetting, that Soviet is not Russian).

In the earlier half of the 19th C, Ukrainian language rustic poetry circulated in the Russian journals and Ukrainophilia was more-or-less compulsory for members of the Tsarist establishment, so that one critic who said bad things about Khmelnytsky was referred to the censorship authorities. Where do you think Shevchenko got the money from?

Let us consider your criteria of nationality in reference to Scotland.

Language? Five or six were used in Scotland when it's nationality originated, nearly all more-or-less identified with something outside Scotland as well (English, the Bardic standard of Gaelic that was basically Irish, Norse, French, Latin; as usual only the Welsh are native, and we're not Welsh up here now, are we?).

Traditions? Lowland oral tradition and music are far closer to those of England than those of the Gael.

Rites? Scotland has been the scene of dramatic religious difference.

Evidently, according to these criteria, Scotland never existed in the first place. India? Don't make me laugh.

I buy this, though it would require an early PoD.

You seem to have argued yourself into a corner. If a sufficiently early PoD can cause Ukrainians to identify as Russians, why can't a sufficiently early PoD cause them to identify, much less drastically, as Soviets?

Scots, we know, were able to become Britons starting in 1707; they weren't ready to become Englishmen under any circumstances, even though they could easily have become so centuries earlier if Bruce had fallen in the water.

Damn you! You have fooled me! Or is what you said just a lie as well?

There is room here for an edifying diversion.

If AH is good for a really serious purpose it is showing how much our historiography is shaped by our present. Britain became a democracy and never experiences a violent revolution in the critical period, hence it has 'a tradition of democracy'.

In Ed Thomas' magisterial timeline Fight and be Right a different course of British party-politics in the 1870s and 80s leads some decades later to the establishment of dictatorship within the frame of the constitution and then to its overthrow by revolutionary socialists who, in their self-justifying pamphlets, explain that Britain, unlike other countries such as France, never had any democracy of even bourgeois kind at all.

If Ukraine had not become independent, it would not be necessary to argue that its independence was inevitable. If Scotland had remained independent, it would not be necessary - as it was formerly quite usual to do - to argue that its union with England was inevitable.

Not so random. Being British You obviously know that it was British policy not to allow any state in Europe to dominate the continent, and it fought wars to prevent that from happening. Not because of random shit. It was a raison d’etat and for Britain to do anything else would be out of character.

I don't follow.

Obviously not 'random' in the sense of number-generators, but 'depending on the junction of factors and circumstances so numerous and complex within themselves as to render statistical analysis and prediction pointless' is a bleedin' mouthful.

But do you mean to suggest that the present patterns of identity in Europe were created by British foreign policy? We mucked up far too often for this to be true. If we decided everything, why does America exist, huh? :p

Sure, minorities can live in nation states, and Unions can survive. It’s just more likely for those which are new to break up than to survive.

They're all new at some point. Such is the nature of time.

The Italians and Germans and Spanish are for the most part single nations. (NEVER heard anyone refer to themselves as Brandenburgian, Berliner or Mecklemburgian. Only once some germanophonic dude from Poland called himself a Prussian, though I don’t know if he was pulling my leg or not.)

You are giving a very clear example of present-coloured and, honestly, woolly thinking.

People do identify as Austrians, Luxemburgers, Swiss, Dutchmen, Flemings, and Frenchmen who happen also to be Alsatian.

Wind the clock back far enough, and each of these people was at one point considered German by both themselves and others.

The people of modern German have been 'German' - although nationality was not until very recently the primary part of their self-identification - for a long time, yes. But other people who belonged to previous ideas of Germandom have ceased to be German. So evidently it no longer means the same thing to be German. Because history is indeed the history of change.

Do you know who believed in nationalities as distinct, discrete, inherent, privileged categories with a genesis and a continuous existence?

The Soviet historiographers, that's who. :D

A continuation of Muscovy, the Holy Rus. :p

But this is absurd. The Russian Revolution represented one of the most total breaks in history, with all the people, institutions, and organs of the previous regimes being destroyed and abominated. If an approximately similar shape is the beginning and end of continuity, it is clear that the republic of Egypt is one and the same with the united Nile kingdom at the dawn of civilisation. After all, they're both just that one big river, aren't they?
 
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Whereas I fully agree that without WW2 the Soviet Union would be in a much better shape than IOTL, I think it would still be in a bad shape in comparison to the west. Even decades after the war, when they had ample of time to recover, they were not really able to feed themselves. The reason IMHO is inefficiency in a communist system. I once read that around 1% of the land in agricultural use in the Soviet Union was in private hands, mainly datschas and gardens. This 1% provided significant parts of vegetables, fruits and even meat for the Soviet population. Thus obviously the Soviet Union would be able to feed itself and millions of additional Comrades based on the natural ressources - but the system wasn't able to use these ressources efficiently.

I therefore think that this should be changed to prolongue the life of the Soviet Union.

That old canard is often brought up by people who then neglect to mention the fact that the fertilizers & machinery etc used on that ‘’private land’’ only existed as a direct result of state investment. And the crops grown there tended to be suited towards smallholders not large scale agriculture which was dominant elsewhere.

The U.S.S.R main problem wasn’t amount of crops grown, but the fact that their transport, storage & distribution system tended to be inconsistent. However that problem is far from isnt insurmountable, with a more realistic leadership. Which would have much greater resources available than OTL.
 
Would require two things:

1. Have the Soviets develop Caspian oil more efficiently and/or develop Siberian oil more quickly, in order to avoid OLTs trough in production

2. Keep would oil prices high through the 80s and 90s.

...even if Eastern Europe slips away, Soviet citizens will see how painful capitalist transition is there and will likely opt for the security of a semi-democratised Soviet system.
 

MSZ

Banned
The urgent question not being answered here is 'which accounts'? I can name some - Wilson, Lieven - and can name more if you want but in general have better things to do than hunt for books and articles about Ukraine, Russia, or the USSR that I read some time.

What are these sources, and is 'Ukrainian descent' a word for diaspora-driven historiography?

Riabczuk, Stecko, Magosci for those of Ukrainian descent – meaning people either born in Ukraine, or whose parents were born there, and emigrated at some point.

This statement dances on the line beyond which lies outright prejudice. Russians apparently like violence and dictatorship, 'cos they're Russian.

Consider the actual situation, in which the Russians who lived in Chechnya had been forced into flight and the world of Russian knowledge was hardly devoid of grizzly social collapses for people to panic about. One can instantly perceive reasons for wanting to fight the Chechnyan insurgency beyond the thuggish love of violence implied by your nationally-charged analysis.


This is why I referred to other examples, like Lithuania and Azerbaijan, in which at least a substantial minority of Russians - whose goals were what came about, too - wished to have nothing to do with in boots-on-ground terms.

You’re putting words in my mouth. I never said Russian are robots hardcoded for violence and tyranny, only pointed out that the war in Chechnya had considerable support in Russia, and hardly had any massive demonstration against it, or against the leadership. I do not want to start a discussion on the reasons of the war or whether Russian actions in Chechnya were justified or not, but the war nevertheless proved Russian willingness to resolve the issue of “territories wanting to secede” with violence – something many other post-USSR states did not do. Moldova did not fight a war in Transnistria, the Ukrainians gave Crinea autonomy, the Baltic States didn’t go on sprees of violence against their Russian populations either. The situation of Estonia and Chechnya in the USSR was quite similar, the difference was that one was a SSR, the other an ASSR – and Soviet Russia had little trouble changing the status of it’s administrative units (like with the Karelo-Finnish SSR).

This is the reason why I believe that Russia could have used force to keep Ukraine for themselves without fearing that it would lead to massive dissent of their own population. And why Ukraine would seek not to be part of a state where the violent approach in dealing with dissenters was very much real.

As for Russian expansionism – you would be hard pressed to find a period of, say 30 years, during which Russia did not conduct hostile military actions against other states. I understand You don’t consider past actions as a factor in political decision making, but I think that past experiences very well influence people’s judgments.

Unless you belong to the groups of people who voted no, or did not vote, whose actions have not been explained; but anyway, is this a concession?
Not a concession, more a hypothesis. We agreed on that people voted YES for many reasons, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise that there were many reasons why they would vote NO. On top of my head – those 30% could very well be the Russian, Russified Ukrainian and Hardhead Communists who did not seek change, as it would undermine their position in the State.

For the purposes of discussion one can declare a definition acceptable to the two or three people concerned and decide that anything not matching it is simply not the thing being defined.

I think final authority in coercion, extraction, and punishment is a pretty good example. In Scotland's case, the position espoused by most people, including me, is that Scotland's people can not be subject to laws and levies that no Scottish person agrees to.
This definition would imply that Scotland can be the subject of laws and levies that only a minority of Scottish people agree on, regardless how small it is and how it was introduced. So hypothetically You’re Scotland could be ruled by a dictator supported by a private army, establishing whatever laws it sees fit – and still be “sovereign” since the minority running the show agree to that. Hardly fair in my opinion.

I think that sovereignty has more to do with the ability of a State to terminate any and all obligations it has to other subjects of international law without a realistic threat of those obligations being re-imposed by the use of force or other disproportional means, as well as the leaders of such state who made such decisions being responsible to the states population in all their actions (internal as well) with accordance to the practices of democratic state of law – either elections or trial.

What is the criterion of freedom?

As I said above.


Further, burden of proof. If good and functional unions can emerge from historical accident, it's up to you to prove that getting rid of the USSR is an inherent moral good.

You mean apart from being a totalitarian state with a long history of mistreating it’s own population as well as the populations of neighboring states? I’m sorry, but we might as well be having a philosophical debate on “what good and evil really is”. That something good can happen from “occurrence A” doesn’t mean that “occurrence A” is desirable, especially if it is harmful, and chances of good coming up from it are low.

Further, what were the 'Scotland' and 'England' being united? One was seven kingdoms that had been united by hooks and crooks and gone on to gain control of Wales in a protracted, racially-charged, and frequently bloody conquest; the other was the land and people gradually accrued to the descendants of MacAlpin by a few royal marriages and some underhanded deals and lots and lots of blood

All states must be unions or empires at some point in their history - they don't spring from the brow of Zeus - and if the only process of state formation that's allowed is democracy, hardly any state has a right to exist. Certainly not Ukraine, whose present territorial extent is the result of settler-colonisation visited on the steppes by tsarist Russia, Stalin's conquests, and Khrushchyov's arbitrary attachment of the Crimea.

There are significant differences between a “modern nation” and “nation in feudal states” or clan or primal community. Certainly no nation started out as a modern democracy and carried on that way until present. But at present, the means used in ages past are no longer acceptable. If at present a population accepts something done without their ancestors consent that’s fine; but if they wish change a status quo they find undesirable, and neither them or their ancestors had their input in forming it – changes ought to be made and having the consent of as much of the population as one can should be sought.

And is the freedom not to get shot different from the other kinds?

More prosaically, which grand humbug is at stake in this particular case?

I don’t follow here. Are you saying that avoiding getting shot is preferable to standing up and taking action for the goal of not fearing that you might get shot in the future?

This is a transparent double-standard. If the name 'Scotland' is sufficient to make institutions Scots and the whole union hence voluntary, why isn't it enough that the UkSSR existed?

No, no, no. Names are mostly meaningless. I was trying to say that the political situation of Scotland was considerably better than Ukraine’s in the XVIII – XX centuries. It isn’t about the name, it is about Scots having voters rights, economic powers, various cultural and economic freedoms the Ukrainians couldn’t enjoy. Thus, the Prime Ministers of the UK had to take the Scots into account more than the Tzars had to take the Ukrainians into account when conducting their policies.

Let us consider your criteria of nationality in reference to Scotland.

Language? Five or six were used in Scotland when it's nationality originated, nearly all more-or-less identified with something outside Scotland as well (English, the Bardic standard of Gaelic that was basically Irish, Norse, French, Latin; as usual only the Welsh are native, and we're not Welsh up here now, are we?).

Traditions? Lowland oral tradition and music are far closer to those of England than those of the Gael.

Rites? Scotland has been the scene of dramatic religious difference.

Evidently, according to these criteria, Scotland never existed in the first place. India? Don't make me laugh.

So what You say is that Scotland had used similar languages as England did (English, French, Latin), had similar oral traditions, and had religions o similar orientation. These are good reasons for populations too get along and form a Union State. But the Irish were in a similar (though worse) position and left regardless. The Ukrainians however have a different language than the Russians, a large part of them had distinct traditions (PLC vs. Muscovy) and religions (other Patriarchates). So my point stands, a Union between Russia and Ukraine would be hard to preserve, as the two nationalities have considerable differences.

The difference between us seems to be, that whereas You believe that multinational union states can be reformed from top down without spiting up, I find that a rare and unexpected, as
breakups of such states are overall much more common than them surviving. They can survive as long as all the nations inhabiting them are content with their situation – but once they are not, changes are more difficult to make than in nation states as different issues have to be resolved. If a government of a nation state fails to reform on time, it will experience a revolution, but in a manner that will only lead to the leadership being changed. In the case of multinational unions, revolutions more often lead to one group choosing to abandon the other and seeking to reform according to it’s own will. If the sentiment for union to preserved is strong enough, it might survive, but identification with the smaller, more trusted group usually leads the people of that group to not trust the others and keep to themselves.

You seem to have argued yourself into a corner. If a sufficiently early PoD can cause Ukrainians to identify as Russians, why can't a sufficiently early PoD cause them to identify, much less drastically, as Soviets?

Because a sufficiently early PoD for the Soviets would still be a XXth century PoD, leaving the conflict between “Soviet Identity” and “Ukrainian Identity” still alive, as Ukrainian nationalism came before Bolshevism. And that would be a conflict bolshevism would eventually come to lose, as it didn’t offer the same benefits as nationalism did. Unless it significantly changed, in which case we would be talking about an ideology only called “Bolshevism”.

You keep on saying that people can have a plural “sense of belonging” – that they can identify themselves as being part of many entities, such as “Scottish” and “British”. Or “Bavarian” and “German” – Heimat-sentimentand Vaterland-sentiment being a good example of it. But “Soviethood” is not an identity like “Ukrainianhood” – it’s an ideology, like Conservatism. It tried to establish itself as an national identity to succeed all others but failed, as people in general seek to preserve their culture, not replace in with another. They may have accepted bits and pieces of it, but they did so to broaden and develop their culture, not terminate it. Ideology is something you can change at will – you simply stop to follow it. You can’t do that with nationality, as it takes more than simply declaring oneself to be that, one has to abandon his past one and be recognized as being of part of his new one. One can be considered to be a multi-national – children of parents of distinct nationalities, the child being brought up with both cultures being present and identifying with both – but these are exceptions.

But do you mean to suggest that the present patterns of identity in Europe were created by British foreign policy? We mucked up far too often for this to be true. If we decided everything, why does America exist, huh?

No, I mean that British foreign policy has come to shape at least a part of what British identity is (Isn’t the sense of splendid isolation still echoing in the minds of Brits?). And British foreign policy was dictated by Realpolitik, not sentiments and feelings, so it wasn’t random.

But this is absurd. The Russian Revolution represented one of the most total breaks in history, with all the people, institutions, and organs of the previous regimes being destroyed and abominated. If an approximately similar shape is the beginning and end of continuity, it is clear that the republic of Egypt is one and the same with the united Nile kingdom at the dawn of civilisation. After all, they're both just that one big river, aren't they?

But even with the institutions in the Soviet Union being radically different from those of the Russian Empire, both foreign and internal policies of those states had similarities one cannot avoid to see. The principle of Imperial Russian foreign policy was Pan-Slavism – in the Soviet Union, formation of a Global Social Soviet Republic. Different name, but in both cases it meant to place non-Russian territories under Russian control under the guise of “liberating” them from oppressors (the Germans being replaced by Imperialists).

In case of internal policies, the standing doctrine of tsarist rule was Uwarow’s Three – Orthodoxy – Autocracy – Folklorism (narodnost – not sure how to translate it properly). Under Soviet rule, Orthodox faith was replaced with “Cult of personality” and unshaken belief in the righteousness of Communist ideology. Autocracy was renamed to “Democratic Centralism” without changing anything in essence. Folklorism – communist ideology inherently identifies itself with the people, workers of the cities and the land.

So despite a lot changes being considerable in form, a lot was preserved in essence. The Cold War was in some ways similar to the years before the Great War, complete with arms races, economic competition, military tension, the alliances being extended, etc - only with more players being present
 
I will begin by cordoning off a discursive part of my response correcting misconceptions about this wonderful country of ours and its nasty vicious history.

MSZ said:
it is about Scots having voters rights,

In Edinburgh before 1832, about 32 people had the vote. The poor and women received the vote in Russia, then including Ukraine, before they did in Britain 1917 vs 1918-28).

MSZ said:
economic powers,

The power to get cleared to make room for the sheep?

MSZ said:
various cultural and economic freedoms the Ukrainians couldn’t enjoy.

Before the 1850s, there was a Ukrainomania in Russian intellectual circles rather like the British elites Highlandism. And what economic freedoms were these, exactly? Fun fact: until the 1790s, Scottish coal-miners were enserfed.

MSZ said:
So what You say is that Scotland had used similar languages as England did (English, French, Latin),

1) At this time, the majority of the population were Gaels.

2) What is meant by 'English' at the time when 'Scotland' in the modern sense began to exist (latter 13th C) is an Anglo-Saxon language mutually comprehensible with the neighbouring dialects in England but not with those of, say, kent.

By the time union entered the question, Scots and English were universally recognised to be different languages or to be two branches of a language that was 'saxon', not English. Nobody believed that the Scots were speaking the same thing as the English (in reality of course it was a continuum of dialects).

English came to dominate intellectual life in Scotland after the Reformation, although this was not inevitable (the Catholic Reformers played up their use of Scots) and more to the point Russian enjoyed an analogous status in Ukraine.

Scots and English are not so much closer than Russian and Ukrainian, to judge from a comparison I once made of a Bible passage in the four languages.

[The Scots an Inglis lieds arena sae muckle mair sindert nor Russian an Ukrainian, tae tak tent o hou a verse frae the Haly Bible is scrieven atween the fower o thaim.] And it's harder spoken. I've met people who can't understand me speaking English with a pronounced Scots accent. :p 'Language' is made up, like nationality.

MSZ said:
had similar oral traditions,

There's another side to that coin. Yes, the folk-memory of William Wallace is essentially a Scots Robin Hood. He still kills the English. If that Scots Robin Hood kills Englishmen, this is significant.

A mutual belief in Jenny Greenteeth hardly makes up for consistent suspicion and hostility, much more consistent than that between Russia and Ukraine. When the Declaration of Arbroath - a complex document that was largely the work of the Bruce propaganda machine, sure, but still a) the officially articulated voice of Scotland's top man, signed by the other top men, and therefore important and b) hugely influential on later representations of Scottishness - said that a person's right to be King of Scots was more-or-less a function of their ability to fight the English, Russians and Ukrainians as distinct categories did not yet exist.

MSZ said:
and had religions o similar orientation.

I never said that; you are making things up. If I had said that I would have been lying, what without the churches of England and Scotland are so different that multiple wars have been fought over them and the monarch currently has to stop believing in apostolic succession whenever she crosses the border.

Russian and Ukrainian Orthodoxy is theologically pretty much the same. Nobody ever suggests that acknowledging bishops is grounds for going to hell.

MSZ said:
a large part of them had distinct traditions (PLC vs. Muscovy)

If it is traditions of politics and statehood being talked about, the experience of Scotland and England has been plenty different; on the one hand, an early establishment of administrative monarchy; on the other hand, crown-magnate power-sharing lasting in some form into the 17th and even 18th centuries. York was Lancastrian during the Wars of the Roses, or possibly vice-versa; but in the 18th century the Duke of Argyll still pretty much owned the souls of people living in Argyll.

The Scottish monarchy was a quite different institution, having been both declared absolute and declared to depend on popular sovereignty (within the same decade) because the English of course are so fond of the middle-of-the-road approach.

MSZ said:
as the two nationalities have considerable differences.

The implication being that the differences between Scotland and England are not worthy of consideration.

The custom of my people is to invite persons of other nationalities who express this view to come and express it on our native soil, and for some reason particularly in a public house. :p
 
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This wretched machine swallowed my full-length reply, and I have work to be doing. I shall try and finish it soonish; for the moment, I invite engagement with the above post and with a few key points:

1) 'Nationality' and 'ideology' are all fudge and can be fudged as the subject wills. My granny was Orcadian, Irish, Scottish, and British, for example.

2) One can easily abandon nationality and in eastern Europe it was done all the time. But David Hume, to take an example from home, was Scots, then English, then Scots again when the English didn't stop making fun of him.

3) People abandon their cultures or identities all the time; since the present cultures and identities haven't existed for terribly long, this ought to be obvious. Where is the Norn of my ancestors?

4) If there is any possibility for change in society without people being horribly slaughtered, it is worthy of consideration.

5) Your list of Chechnya comparisons is bogus. It excludes all those former Soviet states that did sit on secessionists. There was a short conflict in Transnistria, and Russia has lots of minority languages and autonomous regions that didn't attempt to violently secede and throw out all the Russians.

6) By your definitions of sovereignty, Ukraine never achieved it before 1991.
 
Added to what IBC has said. the idea that Ukrainians & Russians are drastically different nationalities is patently absurd and is only propagated by extremist nationlists in Ukraine the Ukrainian diaspora, who like other diasporas tend to be 100% ethnic nationalists representing the ‘’true voice of a people & nation’’. Whilst never setting foot in their ‘’homeland’’ or having any real understanding of how the people actually living there really think.

Also it should be said that Ukrainian & Russian culture is highly similar. With the similarities drastically outweighing differences even today after Ukraine has existed as a separate state for twenty years. The idea that any Union between the two (along with Belarus) is doomed seems more like the wishful thinking of a nationlist with an intense dislike for ''Moskals''. Than any real evaluation n of the historic facts surrounding the two countries and the collapse of the U.S.S.R an event that was highly unlikely.
 
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It seems to me that the whole distinction between 'nation-state' and 'multinational state' is top-quality Barra fudge made by craftsmen who care.

Everybody who doesn't want a frigid raised eyebrow and/or a nutting, depending on whether this is Edinburgh or Glasgow, acknowledges Scotland to be a nation and Britain thus to be a multi-national state.

But it is pure historical fluke that at almost precisely the time when Scotland was uniting with England on terms that preserved the institutions vital to its nationhood, Aragon had the same institutions violently destroyed and became part of an apparently 'national' state of Spain.

Late Tsarist Russia was a national state, so it declared; whereas the USSR, we can agree on this much, was not; and yet they were almost exactly the same shape, except that the USSR in its first decades actually had rather fewer national minorities.

And of course the matter of India has been carefully sidestepped. India's languages, traditions, religions and so on are as or more varied than those of... like, Europe, but millions upon millions of people acknowledge themselves to belong to the Indian Nation.

Nationality is made up by people. Historical circumstances may cause them to make up new nationalities. This is terribly simple.
 
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MSZ

Banned
Your list of Chechnya comparisons is bogus. It excludes all those former Soviet states that did sit on secessionists. There was a short conflict in Transnistria, and Russia has lots of minority languages and autonomous regions that didn't attempt to violently secede and throw out all the Russians.

Yet Moldova gave up on taking Transnistra, while violence in Russia is still present. Did any other SSR have the same degree of difficulties with it’s minorities like Russia? I can only think of Karabakh, and even there Azerbaijan mostly gave up on trying to control it.

It seems to me that the whole distinction between 'nation-state' and 'multinational state' is top-quality Barra fudge made by craftsmen who care.

But the fact that “nation states” (states where a single nation comprises a large majority of the population) and “multinational states” (states comprising two or more nations) are considered to be different categories of state remains. It’s a dichotomic division.

Everybody who doesn't want a frigid raised eyebrow and/or a nutting, depending on whether this is Edinburgh or Glasgow, acknowledges Scotland to be a nation and Britain thus to be a multi-national state.

Sure. Does anybody deny that?

But it is pure historical fluke that at almost precisely the time when Scotland was uniting with England on terms that preserved the institutions vital to its nationhood, Aragon had the same institutions violently destroyed and became part of an apparently 'national' state of Spain.

Meaning the Aragonese were assimilated into Spaniards. The Scots managed to resist that, and good for them.

Late Tsarist Russia was a national state, so it declared; whereas the USSR, we can agree on this much, was not; and yet they were almost exactly the same shape, except that the USSR in its first decades actually had rather fewer national minorities.

Tsarist Russia may have declared anything, it hardly matters; it declared a lot of things. Russians however made up only about 50% of it’s population making it a multi-national state as well. The British Office of National Statistics describes the UK as a “nation-state”, yet we both know something else.

And of course the matter of India has been carefully sidestepped. India's languages, traditions, religions and so on are as or more varied than those of... like, Europe, but millions upon millions of people acknowledge themselves to belong to the Indian Nation.

I thought the matter of India was answered – it was a multi-national state and broke up into a number of smaller nation states once British Imperial authority weakened. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Burma/Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal if you consider them to be part of the Raj as well. While language and religion are very important matters in nation-shaping, they are not definite. So there is no reason for a multi-lingual, multi-religious Indian Nation not to form. But it did take more than a 1000 years.

Nationality is made up by people. Historical circumstances may cause them to make up new nationalities. This is terribly simple.

“May cause” is very blurry. Do You really believe that any groups can together “make up” a new nation on a whim? Nationality requires more than self-declaration, it requires others to perceive one as belonging to that nationality.
 
Yet Moldova gave up on taking Transnistra, while violence in Russia is still present. Did any other SSR have the same degree of difficulties with it’s minorities like Russia? I can only think of Karabakh, and even there Azerbaijan mostly gave up on trying to control it.

The whole Georgia for Georgians thing springs to mind; and since 'sprees of violence' against ill-defined ethnic minorities have been raised, that brings us to Kyrgyzstan.

And who doesn't give up when they're losing? If the Russians had lost, you could excuse them on grounds of giving up (which was of course what happened between the first and second wars). That doesn't change your telling of an untruth about Transnistria.

But the fact that “nation states” (states where a single nation comprises a large majority of the population) and “multinational states” (states comprising two or more nations) are considered to be different categories of state remains. It’s a dichotomic division.

Nobody has provided me with a satisfactory definition of a nation, and until they do it is a dichotomic divisions between Barra fudge and Orkney fudge.

Scotland, for instance. Are we a nation? Are we defined by religion, tradition, language, and culture? Which of those things do I have in common with a Hebridean crofter? The most important I have in common with him is a belief that I belong to something called the Scottish nation.

Meaning the Aragonese were assimilated into Spaniards. The Scots managed to resist that, and good for them.

But there were no Spaniards before, only Castillians. Aragon was not annexed and assimilated by an already-extant Spanish nation; without Aragon, there was no Spain (which is before we get into the whole matter of Catalonian nationalism emerging later and being an altogether different creature from Aragonese pre-national identity). Similarly, in the earlier 19th century many Russians believed that without an integral and distinctive Little Russia there was no Russia.

In Scotland, meanwhile, there were plenty of people - far more Scots than there were ever English - who were in favour of abandoning 'English' and 'Scottish' nationality and becoming fully assimilated North Britons. You still seem to be labouring under romantic delusions about this country. It took a hundred years before Sir Walt made Scotland all the rage again, and it was a new Scotland which combined Stewart Scotland and Covenanter Scotland with Britishness in a way that would have made people in 1700 go "Whit?".

Nationality is invented. Scots should know, we invented ourselves very succesfully.

And a big reason the whole 'North Britons' thing didn't catch is because the English refused to buy it, but I suppose the big nation being hostile to assimilation doesn't fit the Grand Scheme.

Tsarist Russia may have declared anything, it hardly matters; it declared a lot of things. Russians however made up only about 50% of it’s population making it a multi-national state as well.

Russians or Rossiyans? One again we are confronted by complexities of identity. At this time, a great many Ukrainians and Belarussians would have defined themselves as Russkiy.

And if the French are the people who speak French, as opposed to languages like Occitan, how many of them were there in France in 1789 before the invention of the French Nation in its modern form?

The British Office of National Statistics describes the UK as a “nation-state”, yet we both know something else.

But it is a nation-state. It's the state of the British Nation, an entity which some people deny but most acknowledge and to which I am proud to belong.

But my belonging to two things, both of which are nations, doesn't fit with The Grand Universal Scheme Of Imperial Collapse, apparently. Well, bugger the scheme.

I thought the matter of India was answered – it was a multi-national state and broke up into a number of smaller nation states once British Imperial authority weakened. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Burma/Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal if you consider them to be part of the Raj as well.

Most of those are nonsense since they were never considered part of the cultural and geographic area of India, and Sri Lanka was always a seperate colony, as was Burma before the end of the Raj. Bhutan and Nepal were protectorates.

But neither India nor Pakistan is a 'nation-state' defined by the criteria used by you, vis, language, culture, tradition, religion. Burma, of course, is also a multi-ethnic state with violent ethnic conflicts. Sri Lanka knows all about violent ethnic conflicts. And Nepal is a multiplicity of tribes. So much for breaking down into nation-states.

While language and religion are very important matters in nation-shaping, they are not definite. So there is no reason for a multi-lingual, multi-religious Indian Nation not to form. But it did take more than a 1000 years.

Timing from when the inhabitants of India were vaguely recognisable? Than any nation in the Old World took as long, Britain included. That's to grasp at straws. How long something took depends on when it happens: this statement would sound pretty stupid in a context other than alternate history, but fortuitously we are discussing alternate history.

If India had broken down into a large number of smaller states, or never been united to begin with, it would have taken 1000 years for the Indian Nation not to exist.

“May cause” is very blurry. Do You really believe that any groups can together “make up” a new nation on a whim?

Yep. They may not always succeed, but they can try and quote often do succeed. Italy, the great nation state, was made by people belonging to the 2% of its population who spoke literary standard Italian circa 1861, and they said so. "We have made Italy; now we must make Italians."

People can even make up nations in the past Celts, for instance. Made up in the 1880s by dissenting Dublin bourgeois and Scots arts-and-crafts enthusiasts, now existed in Roman times and afterwards.

Nationality requires more than self-declaration, it requires others to perceive one as belonging to that nationality.

How many others? Which others? Can the other impose nationality on me?

My argument:

1) Nationality, being a word for a set of identities dreamed up by people to connect them to an imaginary community, is to vague for any definition much beyond 'identity dreamed up be people to connect them to an imaginary community'.

2) Since it is so vague, the difference between 'nation-state' and 'multi-national state' is a difference of attitudes and there is no compelling reason why a state like, say, the UKGBNI can't be both.

3) Therefore to declare that multi-national states are doomed to fall for some reason is nonsense.

4) Therefore the collapse of the USSR - much less total, violent, and chaotic than the fall of the old Russian Empire/Republic, which still somehow saw the main part of the old territory hang together - deserves analysis on its own terms.
 
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