Hmmm, you woke up a lot of former Soviet Bloc demons there.
Moldova isn't Russia, but has a sizeable Russian-speaking minority concentrated in a generally non-recognized separatist state of Transnistria. This minority is mostly Putin-oriented and despises the West and anything Western-related.
Until/unless Russian imperial intents are defeated or collapse on their own, the risk of Russia reabsorbing parts or whole of Moldova stays real, though mostly contingent on defeating and reabsorbing Ukraine first.
There are many countries where Russian is spoken as a language and when people identify as "Russian" it is mostly the traditions and history. It has nothing to do with geopolitics.
It is language, religion, family values, holidays, food, celebrations, traditions, etc.... This is what is meant by identifying as Russian.
There are people proud to say they have this heritage, it doesn't mean you are a Putin lover and want to recapture the former USSR.
> It is language, religion, family values, holidays, food, celebrations, traditions, etc.... This is what is meant by identifying as Russian.
Complete BS. The only people in Moldova/Romania that identify as Russian are Russians or Putin sympathizers. And this is also true of most other former soviets I've met . No one is "proud" of having been colonized by the USSR. Source: am Moldovan.
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Yes. Many of the Russian Empire's, and later USSR's former territories have their own versions of the trail of tears, reservations, and atrocities in Congo, except with Russian/Soviets at the privileged end. It's not a frivolous use of the word at all.
I think Moldovans are doing much better that Native Americans in the US.
"have their own versions of the atrocities in Congo"
I think you need to read on the history of Congo.
"except with Russian/Soviets at the privileged end"
This is where you are wrong. Russians suffered from the crimes of bolshevik's/Stalin's regime just as much.
Mate, you realise you're talking to someone who's lost family members to, and has grown among victims of, trail of tears, state-organised atrocities (from forced labour to hostage-taking) that totally didn't happen, and reservations that we totally didn't have, right? You think those things didn't happen in the former Soviet space? Buy a plane ticket, I'll introduce you to a few hundred survivors who experienced them first-hand so that you can tell them they just imagined it.
Colonial Europe had no shortage of mad dictators that European population suffered at the hands of. Colonising other parts of the world while also hurting one's own people are not mutually incompatible.
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> The USSR proclaimed friendship of peoples
My apologies, I thought this was a serious discussion.
By that standard, European colonization never happened, either. All European colonial powers proclaimed things like a civilizing mission. Several of them had "indigenous" programs, too.
> Had Stalin who collectively punished ethnicities which collaborated with Nazi more than others.
Oh really. Remember that time when, in formal collaboration with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and later annexed parts of then-neutral Romania, after which they promptly began mass repressions against Romanian-speaking population? Does that count towards the "friendship of peoples", or, as the Radio Yerevan joke went, only towards friendship with certain Aryan peoples?
Not to mention that this entire "Nazi collaboration" narrative is a fictitious distinction in and of itself. The Soviet Union literally collaborated with Nazi Germany at the highest government level before their alliance broke down and ended up in war.
It is. Apologies are not accepted.
Can you give me an example where an ethnicity was declared inferior in the USSR? I doubt you can.
In the Europe and in the US the theories of the superiority of white people were abound and used to justify slave trade and exploitation.
"By that standard, European colonization never happened, either."
What standard exactly? Ideology is important, but it wasn't the main point of my argument. Soviet republics got industrialized thanks to what you call 'Soviet colonization', their population got rid of illiteracy at the same time as Russians. You can't say that about real colonies of Europe.
"Oh really."
Please don't make major edits to your comments which make replies seem inadequate or incomplete.
Funny that you have no objection to collective punishment which is enough to make it a crime. And your examples are irrelevant because they describe relations between different states, not the unequal treatment of different ethnicites by the same government.
"later annexed parts of then-neutral Romania"
You mean the parts that were grabbed by Romania 20 years earlier? [0]
"The Soviet Union literally collaborated with Nazi Germany at the highest government level before their alliance broke down and ended up in war."
The USSR was supporting anti-fascist side in the Spanish civil war and was trying to arrange anti-Nazi treaty with the Britain and France, only after the infamous Munich agreement, when the West green-lighted dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by Germany, Poland and Hungary, the USSR signed the non-aggression pact with Germany.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukovina#Kingdom_of_Romania
> It is.
It clearly isn't, because so far you've moved the goalposts of colonization several times, including claiming that it couldn't have happened because Soviet authorities said it didn't.
But, sure, what's another goalpopst: sure I can, and you don't have to take my word for it, it's literally the Soviet state apparatus that admitted to it. Law N 1107-I of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on the rehabilitation of the repressed people recognizes that there were several peoples "against whom a policy of slander and genocide was pursued at the State level on the grounds of national or other affiliation, accompanied by their forced relocation, the abolition of national and State entities, the redrawing of national and territorial boundaries, the establishment of a regime of terror and violence in places of special settlement" (Art. 2). Several of the peoples on the list were, ironically, indigenous peoples that were supposedly protected by the Soviet Union's policy of indigenization, like the kalmyks.
The Soviet Union never developed a legal theory of racial superiority because it had a theory of political superiority from the very beginning, which it could conveniently apply along ethnic lines.
Edit: oh really now, who's sneak-editing their comments? (Besides, you don't need me editing my comments post-factum to make your own posts seem incomplete: most of your quotes end halfway through the phrase anyway)
> Funny that you have no objection to collective punishment which is enough to make it a crime.
Of course I do. That's the whole thing you're skirting around.
> You mean the parts that were grabbed by Romania 20 years earlier? [0]
Yes, the one that had been grabbed by Russia 100 years before that, and the other one, which it had "grabbed" from the other European empire and had never been incorporated in the Russian empire or the USSR before. Funny how when someone else does it, it's "grabbing", but when the Soviet Union did it, it's the friendship of peoples.
> the USSR signed the non-aggression pact with Germany.
...uh-huh, which included, you know, that part about the partitioning of Poland, the Baltics (which was eventually walked back on through another pact), and the non-interference of Germany in the occupation of Bassarabia and Northern Bukovina. And was promptly executed through the joint invasion of Poland.
"The Soviet Union never developed a legal theory of racial superiority because it had a theory of political superiority from the very beginning, which it could conveniently apply along ethnic lines."
That was rich. Ok, so what was that "theory of political superiority" and how, as you allege, it was applied to Kalmyks?
Anyway, the conversation seem to have drifted quite a lot from the topic of 'colonization' of Moldova. Tell me, was its population enslaved, put into reservations or exploited? Was it robbed of its resources? Wasn't its industry developed?
What gives you any basis for spreading the narrative of 'colonization'?
Yes, the population of Moldova was enslaved, put into reservations or exploited. About 90,000 people were arrested, executed, deported, or placed under forced labour conscription during the first year of Soviet occupation alone. About 30,000 of these were forcefully interned in June 1941 alone, and forcefully relocated either to labour camps or to controlled settlements which they were not allowed to leave.
This is ridiculous. You're insisting that the Soviet Union can't have pursued colonization because it used different names for its colonialist policies and justified them by different idelogical means than its Western counterparts. If calling them by a different name helps you reconcile the cognitive disonance of your beliefs, that's fine, but you don't need my help for that, you can keep referring to these policies by whatever name you please. Have fun!
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> You keep misrepresenting repressions against anti-communists as colonization.
No, you, as the Soviet authorities did, keep misrepresenting colonial policies of forced labour, mass deportation, forced internment, forced language policies, and many others, specifically devised to pursue, establish and maintain control and exploitation of people and of resources, the very definition of colonialism, as "repressions against anti-communists".
That's what you've been doing for this whole thread: claiming that these things did not happen, and when it was pointed out that they did, in fact, happen, backpedalled to insist they can't have been colonial policies because Soviet authorities called them by some other names. Western colonial powers called them by other names, too, that doesn't stop us from labeling them as colonial policies.
I'm going to stop this poor-taste "debate" here. I understand your need to defend your political views and I take no issue with that, it happens at both ends of the spectrum. Western liberalism has considerable difficulty reconciling its current human rights policy with its past human rights record, too.
But we'll keep going in circles here: you're going to ask me for another instance of colonial policy from the Soviet Union, I'm going to point one out, you're going to say oh, but that wasn't a colonial policy of the government in Moscow, that was mass repression against anti-communists (as if there isn't a whole history of mass repression against anti-government and/or pro-independence groups in Western colonies), or part of the five-year plan to improve agricultural output (as if there isn't a whole history of, at the very least, deliberate withholding of resources against colonial population, if not outright use of hunger as an instrument of repression), or part of the Soviet educational policy or some other buzzword that Soviet press used.
Sure, Soviet practices were not identical to Western practices, they came from a completely different political tradition and were thoroughly informed by the Russian Empire's politically disastrous and much harsher colonial tradition. Colonialism, like all government policies, changed with time and varied with the government that pursued it. Nothing new here.
But all colonial governments developed their own euphemisms for their practices, and I'm all too familiar with the Soviet array, studying it was literally part of my work at one point. I really don't need a refresher on it.
"(as if there isn't a whole history of mass repression against anti-government and/or pro-independence groups in Western colonies)"
Anything on the scale of what they have done in their colonies?
"part of the five-year plan to improve agricultural output (as if there isn't a whole history of, at the very least, deliberate withholding of resources against colonial population, if not outright use of hunger as an instrument of repression)"
You are missing the point again -- unlike the USSR, western colonial powers didn't do that to their own people.
"or part of the Soviet educational policy"
I have already gave you the link to korenization.
Wasn't its industry developed?
The exact same justification/apology used by every colonizing power ever (including the U.S. and all the European powers), of course.
Welcome to the club.
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> So, which industries did European countries develop in their African colonies, for example?
Racists usually bring up ports, railways and whatever resource extraction they set up in Africa as their gift to humanity. As the other poster said, that's a very common thing to say for imperialists who justify colonization. Incredibly funny that you keep doubling down on the same tropes without recognizing how they sound.
> Compare that to what USSR developed in Moldavia: power plants, large steel plant, metalworking, machine building, construction materials production, chemical industry, electronics, parts of defense industry, etc
... as if as a free European country, none of that (and much more) would've happened. The common case study is Estonia vs Finland, two very similar countries in the 1930s, both got invaded by Russians, one remained free, the other occupied for 50 years. Despite a very similar culture, language, history and socio-economic starting position, Finland ended up as one of the most prosperous nations on the planet, while Estonia was a "1 dollar a day" shithole (along with rest of the USSR and Eastern Bloc) by 1990. After Russian geniuses were overthrown, Estonia started a meteoric climb and is on track of catching up with Finland. All these Russian "factories and industries" were nothing but a horrible stagnation that robbed the country of 50 years of proper progress. They were wasteful and polluting, produced for USSR's internal consumption and had to be scrapped because they were utterly uncompetitive on the global market.
It's been the same externally forced stagnation, followed by meteoric success everywhere where they decisively got rid of Russian domination in the 1990s (Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, etc). The greater role Russia has played in post-USSR times in a country, the worse the outcomes (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, etc).
This map sums it up: https://i.imgur.com/4bEf0Sr.jpeg
As does this chart: https://i.imgur.com/uDpWHNq.png (Polish GDP PPP per capita as a fraction of the US')
Even the most envied parts of the Eastern Bloc were depressingly poor by Western European standards, several laps behind the worst performers. Immense negative impact on Central and Eastern Europe is the reason why Russia and Russians are considered a cancer on humanity in this part of the world. Somehow, everything you touch turns to shit, and you can't stop sticking your fingers into where they don't belong.
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Why? That's a very mild way to put it. Entire generations of people were robbed of freedoms and natural progress of their society. Most of Central and Eastern Europe will catch up with the rest by around 2040-2050. Moldova will be lucky if they recover and reach parity even this century.
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Frivolous?
Stalin's campaign against various subjugated nations (Baltic, Crimean Tatars etc.) would fit right in, only it happened generation(s) later, in a supposed Paradise of Workers and Peasants.
Mass deportations, artificial famine, mass executions, torture.
Don't you think Moldovans are doing much better that Native Americans in the US?
You need to see the breakdown of Stalin's victims by ethnicity and see how many Russians there are.
"artificial famine"
For example:
"It has been estimated that between 3.3 and 3.9 million died in Ukraine, between 2 and 3 million died in Russia, and 1.5–2 million (1.3 million of whom were ethnic Kazakhs) died in Kazakhstan." [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...