Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
Redbrickbear said:
whiterock said:
Redbrickbear said:
FLBear5630 said:
Redbrickbear said:
FLBear5630 said:
Redbrickbear said:
FLBear5630 said:
trey3216 said:
Nationalizing industry
He is recreating the Soviet Union. He wants the old Communist Soviet Union back and is doing it.
No he is not....and even if he wanted to do so...he can't actually do it.
The Baltic States are all now in NATO/EU.
Its old European satellite States are also in NATO/EU now (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, the Balkans)
Finland and Sweden that used to be militarily unaligned are now in NATO
That is the whole reason why Moscow is fighting hard to keep Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan in their sphere of influence
Ok, he is trying...
If he was trying he would be trying to invade Finland (and pull them out of the NATO alliance)
Or invading the Baltic States
Or invading Poland
Or invading Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, etc
He is not doing that...
And even if he wanted to do so....he CANT.....literally economically-militarily the remnant Russia State does not have those capabilities.
This.....is never coming back.....
Modern Russia will be lucky if it can even keep its local neighbors in its alliance network (something it's failing at right now)
Whatever happens in this War most of Ukraine is now headed into the West...and the "Stans" in Central Asia are rapidly moving into the Chinese orbit and Islamic world orbit.
Russia is ending up with few real partners
BS. Finland? That is the barameter?
Nationalizing the economy, invading Ukraine, and is actions in Georgia and Chechnya.
He may say he is not doing it, but his actions say otherwise. Will he attack NATO? No. Will he put autocratic state control in place over as many miles as he can? Damn right. The State Union...
1. Finland is not a barometer but if Putin really wanted the USSR back he would want Finland demilitarized and out of NATO.
2. The USSR was Marxist....more than just Marxists nationalize their economies. I mean some on here have said that Putin is a fascist....and maybe he is....certainly not just communists are into nationalization. That does not prove he wants the old Communist Empire back.
3. Chechnya was/is legally part of the Russian Federation...thats not a good geo-strategic point. D.C. just like Moscow crushes separatist movements.
It is a good point at how Moscow is hypocritical...it crushed separatists in Chechnya then complained when Ukraine tried to do the same in Donbas.
4. Ukraine and Georgia are examples of Russian trying to hold its sphere of influence….even through invasion and violence.
5. The USSR was Leftist totalitarian....not authoritarian.
A nationalist-authoritarian modern Russia is NOT the same as the Communist totalitarian USSR of old
Here's the fatal flaw in your logic: USSR was not a communist empire. It was a Russian empire.
.
Oh but it's was not.
Even though many posters on here obviously think that.
The communists in the USSR ruthlessly suppressed Russian nationalism
It was a Moscow based empire no doubt (and thus has similar regional security desires as does any Moscow based State) but it was no "Russian Empire"
[The roots of nationalist discontent lay in Russia's peculiar status within the Soviet Union. After the Bolsheviks took control over much of the tsarist empire's former territory, Lenin declared 'war to the death on Great Russian chauvinism' and proposed to uplift the 'oppressed nations' on its peripheries. To combat imperial inequality, Lenin called for unity, creating a federation of republics divided by nationality. The republics forfeited political sovereignty in exchange for territorial integrity, educational and cultural institutions in their own languages, and the elevation of the local 'titular' nationality into positions of power. Soviet policy, following Lenin, conceived of the republics as homelands for their respective nationalities (with autonomous regions and districts for smaller nationalities nested within them). The exception was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, or RSFSR, which remained an administrative territory not associated with any ethnic or historic 'Russia'.
Russia was the only Soviet republic that did not have its own Communist Party, capital, or Academy of Sciences. These omissions contributed to the uneasy overlap of 'Russian' and 'Soviet'.]
but the Soviet regime had the exact same territorial ambitions that every Russian regime before it had. Every single aspect of Soviet foreign policy can be tied back to national security of a regime headquartered in Moscow....
The Roman Empire had non-Italian emperors, governors, and generals but the empire was still....ROME. The Roman Senate was in ROME. Roman policy served the interests of ROME.
Then you are making a argument that the USSR or modern Russian Federation serve the interests of MOSCOW (and whatever ruling class/regime exits there at a certain time)
*not necessary the ethnic Russian people.
So stop calling it a "Russian Empire" and start calling it more accurately a Moscow centric-Empire.
One that depending on the time/regime might be ruled by ethnic Jewish guys (Lenin) or ethnic Georgians (Stalin), or ethnic Russians (Putin)
Either way the Russian Empire, the USSR, and the Russian Federation are 3 separate entities with separate and different ideologies
now you're being silly. Moscow is in the core of Russian nation. Russians comprise majorities in aggregate, and substantial minorities in particular places, over much of the various iterations of Russian empire. In particular, we see in the Ukraine War the exact same pattern from the Putin regime that we saw from the communist and tsarist regimes - use of minority populations in front-line attrition warfare while limiting exposure of Russians from the core Moscow/St Petersburg axis. This is a de facto ethnic cleansing exercise, to ensure non-Russians bear a disproportionate burden of casualties in order to protect and project Russian demographics into places well outside the Russian core. Look at Donbas (outright majority). Look at Transnistria. (Plurality.) Look at Estonia (30% of the population). Look at Uzbeckistan (15% of the population). And so on. That is what a legacy of empire looks like. You take over an area. Your nationals move into administer government and business interests. Thru intermarriage and continued immigration, their numbers grow.....and with it your influence over those areas. the Russian expat populations there are disproportionately powerful upper-class urbans; locals tend to be the dispossessed rural poor Even where they do not facilitate outright control, the Russian minorities have a defacto hecklers veto - the ability to undermine the viability of things they do not like.
Russia is an empire. It has always been an empire. Indeed, that is a material factor in the Ukrainian conflict. Western Europe has moved beyond empire; Russia has not.
There is a new joke about Russian difficulties in the Ukraine War - their inability to win in Ukraine has much to do with the fact that they no longer have Ukrainian shock troops to throw at a formidable enemy.
Yet none of that explains how the USSR was a "russian empire"
As I have showed you….the USSR racially discriminated against ethnic Russians.
Its was a Marxist-communist empire that viewed ethnic minorities more positively than it did Russians.
And that violently opposed Russian nationalism.
hyperbole does not help your argument.
The USSR was a "union" which included (in every case by use or threat of force) Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbeckistan, Turkmenistan, Kirgyzstan, and Moldova. Each of those places had different religions, cultures, and languages than Russia. Each of them sought independence from Russia when given the chance. More to the point, each of them have been chess pieces in Russian foreign policy for centuries....in/out of Russian polity, in/out of Russian alliance. Most of them fought wars of liberation, several of them multiple times. Each of those areas are called "shatterzones" i political geography - smaller nations of peoples caught between much larger major powers and therefore consigned to the unenviable role in history of being the places where great powers engage in proxy conflict.
Your entire argument rests on the notion that the rise of ideology, in this case communism, rendered all that history moot. Such is a very silly notion. It does not matter whether a state is a kingdom, a republic, or an ideological auktarky. It still has to build roads, bridges, armies, etc..... it still has to defend itself from attacks from other powers. It still has to deal with the strengths and weaknesses of the geography it was blessed/cursed with. Russia engaged in a great European war as a monarchy; and barely 2 decades later it engaged in another as a communist state. And as a communist state, Russia went after the same peripheral geography as did the Tsarist regimes (only more effectively).
to understand what you are watching, you must first let go of the false dichotomy. It does not matter whether Russian expansionism was in the name of "mother Russia" or "the working classes." Russia expanded to control other nations for its own benefit. That's what great powers tend to do.......they tend to probe with a bayonet and advance until they meet resistance.
