Re:19th-Century Lithuanians Who Smuggled Books to Save Their...
by fsloth on Saturday July 22, 2017 @03:55AM
(#14825946)
"This reminds of the evils of Communism so much that it makes me feel like Communist ideology in fact didn't mean much for Russians. It is an evil by itself, before or after Communism too.
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No, it's the nature of old empires. All large empires have eradicated - or tried to eradicate - minorities at one point or the other. Not through genocide mind you - you don't have to destroy the genetic inheritance. It's sufficient to destroy cultural inheritance and implant the cultural identity of the master. Language is one of the strongest markers of cultural identity and thus it's understandable why it would be one of the things on the 'hit list' - and literature especially. Since we don't have an oral tradition anymore, destroying books effectively would have destroyed the cultural inheritance in a generation.
Even Denmark quite forcefully tried to "civilize" Greenlanders in the 20th century with very bad mental health results.
No, it's the nature of old empires. All large empires have eradicated - or tried to eradicate - minorities at one point or the other. Not through genocide mind you - you don't have to destroy the genetic inheritance. It's sufficient to destroy cultural inheritance and implant the cultural identity of the master. Language is one of the strongest markers of cultural identity and thus it's understandable why it would be one of the things on the 'hit list' - and literature especially. Since we don't have an oral tradition anymore, destroying books effectively would have destroyed the cultural inheritance in a generation.
Even Denmark quite forcefully tried to "civilize" Greenlanders in the 20th century with very bad mental health results.