This is making the Twitter-Marxists very mad, but on...
"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@BretDevereaux
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May 06, 2024
~3 min read
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This is making the Twitter-Marxists very mad, but on reflection...no, I think I am comfortable with this judgement, especially if we're limiting the set to 'European colonial empires, 1917-present' though of course even then the competition for awfulness is stiff. 1/
"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@BretDevereaux
@BeijingPalmer The collapse of the USSR ought to be part of the 'decolonization' story, the capstone end of the last, great-and-very-terrible remaining European colonial empire.
And even by the low standards of European colonial empires, the USSR was *very bad.* Worst of a very bad lot.
And even by the low standards of European colonial empires, the USSR was *very bad.* Worst of a very bad lot.
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First, was the USSR a colonial empire?
Yes, obviously! If the Russian Empire was, why wouldn't the USSR - which spent its first years violently reincorporating Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, etc. - why wouldn't it be?2/
Yes, obviously! If the Russian Empire was, why wouldn't the USSR - which spent its first years violently reincorporating Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, etc. - why wouldn't it be?2/
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Did it then collapse, leading those peoples to reassert their independence against the - largely ethnic Russian - imperial metropole, thus no longer being colonial possessions?
Uh, yeah: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissoluti…
So that's decolonization. Glad we cleared that up. 3/
Uh, yeah: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissoluti…
So that's decolonization. Glad we cleared that up. 3/
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"But the USSR supported decolonization!"
The USSR supported decolonizing the West's colonies and the USA supported decolonizing the USSR's colonies. They're both hypocrites, welcome to geopolitics.
That doesn't make the USSR (or the USA) not an empire or truly anti-colonial. 4/
The USSR supported decolonizing the West's colonies and the USA supported decolonizing the USSR's colonies. They're both hypocrites, welcome to geopolitics.
That doesn't make the USSR (or the USA) not an empire or truly anti-colonial. 4/
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As an imperial power, was the USSR very bad? Well, you've got the Red Terror (1918-c.1923) and then Decossackization in the 1920s and then state-inflicted Ukrainian famine in the early 1920s, the same for the Kazakhs in the early 1930s, then the Holodomor in 1933...5/
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...the mass murder of Poles (both in the 37-38 context and then again after WWII), the c. 28.7m prisoners in the broader Gulag slave-labor system, of whom some number north of 3m died as a result (the true number is unknown) - elements of this system continued to 1987. 6/
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Plus, of course, violent suppression of democratic movement in satellite states - the 1948 Czechoslovakian coup, crushing the Hungarian revolution in 1956, crushing the Prague Spring in '68 and so on. 7/
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This is, of course, not to blink the awful things the United States and its partners did in this period as well, including some very similar awful things (military interventions to support authoritarian regimes, for instance), but that's not our topic here. 8/
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So we have a regime that is 1) a colonial empire, the successor of a previous colonial empire which 2) collapsed, resulting in decolonization and which was 3) awful, killing millions (historians debate the exact number, we're clearly at 'millions' if not 'tens of millions.'). 9/
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I think one could absolutely make arguments for worse colonial empires (avoidable famines in British India also killed millions, as did Belgian cruelty in the Congo, and of course the USA has its own atrocities to answer for, more if we extend the timeframe pre-1918, etc.). 10/
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...but for a colonial empire that was around for less than 75 years, the USSR really was robustly horrible and deserves to be understood in the context of other horrible colonial empires.
The refusal to see through the thin Marxist paint on empire is an intellectual failing. 11/
The refusal to see through the thin Marxist paint on empire is an intellectual failing. 11/
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Final note: I have not mentioned Nazi Germany here, because I think the 12-years of that state fits into a different category than 74-years of the USSR.
I hope we can all agree that Nazis, past&present, are the worst and that Nazi Germany was a regime terrible beyond words. /end
I hope we can all agree that Nazis, past&present, are the worst and that Nazi Germany was a regime terrible beyond words. /end
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Curious at the frequent response by folks frustrated by this thread who - despite being solidly outnumbered by those agreeing - pronounce the position 'embarrassing' on its face.
There isn't an argument there, just a statement of purportedly self-evident truth.
There isn't an argument there, just a statement of purportedly self-evident truth.
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I hardly know the background of the folks making that statement, so I can only speculate, but it certainly suggests to me minds that have not been sufficiently challenged and forced to defend their ideas and instead have always been able to flee to in-group consensus.