I did something very unusual for me and bought a newspaper yesterday. It was Adevarul and in it I read a report of an analysis (it didn't say where or when it was published) by one Kamil Galeev, of something unpromisingly named the Wilson Center. He's a Russian apparently.
Translated by Google Translate:
Russia is the last European colonial empire still intact. Its expansion really began only in the 16th century starting from a relatively small state entity, namely the Princedom of Moscow, and largely coincided with the creation of the first European overseas empires.
Those who doubt the colonial nature of Russia emphasize the differences between it and what is currently interpreted as the epitome of colonialism, the British Empire. In fact, Russian colonialism was very different from Anglo-Saxon colonialism. Instead, it bears strong similarities to Ibero-American colonialism.
We can understand Russia more easily if we see it as an empire of the Iberian-American type that has not yet fallen apart. Apart from the obviously important question of territorial continuity, the Russian Federation, which mostly incorporates Siberia, is not radically different from Spain which controlled Mexico or Portugal which controlled Brazil.
Doing some research, I found Mr Galeev tweeted this back on 3rd June, 2022.
Ethno-nationalist ideology was called love of country in Shakespeare's, Dr Johnson's and Winston Churchill's time. Now it is poison for Newstar and many others, but be it poison or healthy national pride (you decide, gentle reader) it would flourish if twenty-one new republics, each an ethnic state I think, came into existence.
Out of three great European empires: the Habsburgs, the Ottomans and the Romanovs, the Russian empire is the only one that remains largely intact. That's anachronism. Dissolution of the Russian empire will enfranchise its people.
Replying to
Of course the break up of the RF is the best that could happen, and with it the death of useless poison ethno-nationalist ideology. BUT the west have signalled they don't want that to happen so unless the collapse is chaotic enough for the regions to move fast its not likely.
I'd say that Russia is still what Lenin called it in 1914, the prison of the nations.
To be fair, I imagine most of the US defence establishment and deep state do not want the break-up of Russia any more than they wanted the break-up of the USSR. Too much room for things to go wrong.
I am very much in favour of the break-up of the Russian Federation and, inter alia, freedom for Tula-Tuva again, providing it happens spontaneously, without assistance from the Americans and peacefully.
I don't like revolutions so would like it to happen legally too, like the dissolution of the USSR, which so saddened George H W Bush and the US State Department.
I am strongly not in favour of the break up of Russia becoming an American war aim.
But for many American decision makers the fall of Putin and the break up of Russia is their aim. Paul Massaro, of the US Helsinki Commission, a Congressional agency, for example, tweeted this.
"There are parts of Russia that are prisons for other nations. These parts of Russia could be liberated, like Chechnya, for example. They could become independent," says Polish PM Morawiecki
To be fair, I imagine most of the US defence establishment and deep state do not want the break-up of Russia any more than they wanted the break-up of the USSR. Too much room for things to go wrong.
But they do, I am sure, want Putin to go.
By the way, talking about the formerly independent state of Tula-Tuva on the border with China, annexed by Russia in 1944 and now called simply Tuva, Sergei Shoygu, who has been a Russian minister since 1991 and Minister of Defence since 2012, is a Tuvan.
The fact that he's not an (ethnic) Russian probably means he's not seen as a competitor to Vladimir Putin for power.
I agree with the tweet below.
Replying to @wutalb and @mtracey
There is literally no threat of any sort whatsoever from Russia to Western Europe since 1992. It should be noted that there has never been any threat of any sort to the UK from Russia or the USSR *ever*. But there is quite definitely a threat to Europe from the United States.
Political correctness, Woke and the nervous breakdown over race come to Western Europe and the UK from USA. From there they are seeping into Romania. They, terrorists and illegal immigrants are the main threats to Western Europe.
De Gaul’s grandson blames the US for the war as do many silenced voices in the west .Russia is the last bastion of resistance to the liberal west’s hubristic megalomaniac madness as more Ukrainians die needlessly .
ReplyDeleteAbout 80% of the population of the Russian Federation is ethnically Russian. And the population of the largest cities - from Saint Petersburg to Vladivostok, is overwhelmingly Russian. I despise Mr Putin - but if one is looking for nations that may (perhaps) cease-to-be - one should look to such nations as the United States and United Kingdom, not Russia.
ReplyDeleteBut the other 20% is very interesting. There are 21 republics within Russia, each of them the land of a people or ethnic group. Wikipedia: "There are secessionist movements in most republics, but these are generally not very strong. The constitution makes no mention on whether a republic can legally secede from the Russian Federation. However, the Constitutional Court of Russia ruled after the unilateral secession of Chechnya in 1991 that the republics do not have the right to secede and are inalienable parts of the country. Despite this, some republican constitutions in the 1990s had articles giving them the right to become independent. This included Tuva, whose constitution had an article explicitly giving it the right to secede. However, following Putin's centralization reforms in the early 2000s, these articles were subsequently dropped. The Kabardino-Balkar Republic, for example, adopted a new constitution in 2001 which prevents the republic from existing independently of the Russian Federation. After Russia's annexation of Crimea, the State Duma adopted a law making it illegal to advocate for the secession of any region on 5 July 2014."
DeleteLook at London, the largest city in the United Kingdom, and New York, the largest city of the United States, and then compare them to Moscow. Moscow is Russian - as our the other cities of Russia.
DeletePaul, we are talking at cross purposes. I am talking about the various republics in the Russian Federation which are lands conquered by Russia.
DeleteRussia has assassinated multiple Russians it doesn’t like in the West. Does that count as a threat? Maybe a minor one.
ReplyDeleteHow does bombing the bloody bejesus out of Ukraine counteract Western wokeness or political correctness in any effective way?
ReplyDeleteThe West attracts more people to come and live than Russia does. Russia has never been a place where large numbers of people voluntarily move. That’s a vulnerability for the West, but also arguably an asset too.
"How does bombing the bloody bejesus out of Ukraine counteract Western wokeness or political correctness in any effective way?" Of course it does not. Russia's invasion is an outrageous crime.
DeleteThirdCity is completely ignorant of the pervasive Soviet meddling in the UK and the West during the Cold War. Also. Much of the poisonous neo Bolshevik ideology in the West (including liberation theology in Latin y, for example) was promoted and funded by the Kremlin. The Mitrokhin files revealed a lot about that, and the Kremlin's ties to the Western press and its institutions. Russia remains a threat to the civilized world, despite their PR stunts and supposed opposition to the woke agenda. (Don't forget it's one of the most pro abortion societies in the world).
ReplyDeleteI think the civilised world is a greater danger to itself than any putative external threats. As for the Cold War nobody disputes that Communist Russia was then a threat to the West, though I am not sure how much of one it really was.
DeleteIn what ways is Russia different in this respect from say china? ic
ReplyDeleteNone, obviously.
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