> I wonder why Russia gets a pass from the left and right on being pretty brutal colonial empire.

Can you give some examples of what you are talking about here, and in what countries?

The entire expansion of Russia eastward across Asia to the Pacific ocean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russi...

I am well aware of Russian Imperialism.

Are you talking about the left and the right in the USA?

Who aside from modern US Republicans is giving them a pass?

pretty much everyone on the left too. Outside of Chechen wars I've never seen Russia criticised for it's colonial practices from prominent figures on the left.

Jeremy Corbyn has consistently criticised Putin's aggression since Georgia - far more consistently than anyone else on the Right or the Left in the UK.

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-corbyn-interview-russia-ceas...

This is for countries that gained independence from Russia not 100s of nations that are still part of it. Plus he parrots so many Russian talking points on stop arming Ukraine that it's not a very good look.

It's been understated in the US because the US did something similar marching westward across the continent.

Are you equating the control that the USA exerts over countries like Holland, Germany, and France with the control that The Kremlin exerted over countries like Poland, Lithuania, and Georgia?

No, I'm equating the subjugation of low population density areas of Siberia and such with the conquest of North America from its native peoples.

OK, I totally misread that. In that case, that was a while ago. I mean does Belgium turn a blind eye towards Russian massacres in Ukraine because of their history in Congo?

Belgium no longer holds the Congo. The US still holds this huge chunk of North America. It's easier to be moral when it's not in conflict with your own selfish interests.

Mostly US.

How does "the left" give them a pass exactly?

Until recently, both Dems and Reps were happy to fund and expand NATO, which is basically and anti-russian expansion org. Now Republicans seem to have an issue with that though.

I just don't understand what you mean by "Russia gotten a pass?"

None in russia's ruling class believes NATO is anti-russia that's a TV talking point for the masses.

The talking point afaik, is that NATO is coming to kill all russians, in Russia.

The goal of NATO is to defend members against invasion. Who tends to invade those nations? Russia. BTW, I am fully in support in NATO.

I think it's fair to say that NATO is an anti-Russian imperialist organization.

Hmm Russia can stop invading other countries ... In reality all of Russian elite was living in the west prior to the war. Lavrov's daughter in US Lavrov's Mistress and their children in UK. Putin's daughter in Netherlands and other daughter in South Korea and so on. Medvedev's son in California etc.

Chomsky, Greenwald and the lot.

Greenwald ain't left anymore. Hasn't been for a decade now.

Then please post direct quotes by Chomsky and prove it for everyone. The guy always gets defamed and everyone likes to put words into his mouth.

I don't see any evidence that either of these two have influence on "the left's" policies as seen by actions and laws passed.

Caitlin Johnstone is a lefty shilling for Russia. Chomsky blames NATO expansionism for the war.

I see lots of such posts by my lefty friends with nary a mention of Russian culpability.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/its-not-okay-for-gro... https://www.afr.com/world/europe/chomsky-we-re-approaching-t...

it's not colonial

> it's not colonial

What a lazy answer! for sure, it is colonial. During the imperial time, during soviet time and now in the east of Ukraine. In all periods, Russia tried to destroy the local population/settlements and tried to build Cossak/Russian defense lines.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_imperialism

the Soviets liberated those colonised under the tsarists

You call this liberated?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

because a famine has never occured before in the history of civilisation

>Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by the European Parliament,[4][32] Ukraine[33] alongside 22 countries, as a genocide against the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet regime.[34]

now do the bit about academic debate

Please enlighten us then.

you want me to explain a section of a Wikipedia article to you?

You have to admit, a famine in the region’s foremost exporter of grain, whose main export of that year was grain, takes spectacular mismanagement and neglect. That’s Soviet industrialization for you. I have to admit the genocide part makes no sense to me, though—I’ve seen no evidence that it was in any way targeted at Ukrainians specifically, only that they constituted a huge portion of the agricultural population at the time.

You don’t have to look that hard to find actual displaced peoples—the way the Russian Empire burned down all of Ossetia, the way Stalin ejected most of the population of Chechnya after that, the way Crimean Tatars constituted the bulk of the population in the Crimean peninsula and then suddenly Russians and Ukrainians did for some reason—there’s plenty. (If you really want to get into the history, care to find some speakers of the North Slavic languages for me?) It’s that the example does not seem to be a good one.

it was collectivisation not industrialisation, there were droughts in Ukraine 3 years in a row, there was an epidemic, the kulaks were sabotaging farming

I meant industrialization as a general government direction, not as an official Party policy buzzword: the Soviet state just did not care about the agricultural population except as a potential source of workers for the industry. The droughts and the epidemic still did not stop the grain exports (again, the main source of income for the state before, during, and after the famine, even per the official statistics) or affect the food supply in the cities all that much. The amounts an agricultural worker could legally leave for themselves were below subsistence, for years both before and after the war—steal (“steal”), escape to the city, or die.

The last part is so much bullshit thst it isn’t even really worth considering. (Every sentence in the whole of official Soviet history that includes the word kulak is bullshit.)

do you expect a serious response

did you enjoy the latest marvel movie

as they are liberating Ukraine right now from Nazis.. right.

If by liberated you mean killed 10s of millions and forced erased cultures and languages sure

no i dont

No? Who is doing the killing in Ukraine right now? A lot of them don't look Slav to me at all. Russia has built the definition of an imperial army. Once I see the moscovites dying in droves for more territory (9 time zones is never enough), we can talk more.

exactly, Ukraine now, Ukraine back in the days, Chechnya, you name it.

totally sane reply

The non-Slavs in the army are more likely to be picked up by the media because of racist attitudes, both in Russia and, apparently, in Ukraine. There's even a common slur for them, "бойові буряти"/"боевые буряты", meaning "combat Buryats".

Take a look at Russia's eastward expansion in the 18th and 19th century.

yes and as we know nothing has changed since then

You can't just say "Left" and "Right". That distinction has become rather meaningless.

While the Right as a whole is leaning stronger and stronger in at least silent support of people like Putin (Christian defender of the white race and all that), the Left does not have this problem. There is a small crew of commies and tankies that drool over Putin, but us left-leaning folk laugh at them as much as anyone.

They might not drool over Putin but they are the most effective people to push the stop arming Ukraine narrative. Also again I've pretty much never seen them criticise russia for being a colonial empire with pretty brutal practices towards the colonised nations (outside of Chechen wars). Compare the amount of criticism Israel gets to Russia from the left.

That's not a Left/Right problem. Everyone, and I mean everyone, fell for the "Russia is not an empire" schtick.

Right now the world is in a process of reevaluation, and academia is a huge part of this. Educational institutions have realized they have been teaching Russian history all wrong, and it SHOULD be taught through the prism of imperialism. It's kind of amazing, considering that even looking at the last 100 years, Russia has been on a rampage of conquering and subjugating nations from East to West.

Before anyone tries, please do not compare this to ill-fated American adventures. Last I checked, Vietnam and Iraq are still not part of the United States.

Can you point to at least one historical analysis which identifies Russia as a colonial empire?

Seeing people draw this parallel was surprising to me, as I associate colonialism with the European conquerors of the world: Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, The Netherlands and Germany.

Indeed I’ve gotten this list from a GEO Magazine special issue dedicated to colonialism, showing on a map where each of those countries had their colonies between ~1400 and 1915. OTOH Belgium isn’t directly mentioned, so perhaps the list is not exhaustive.

>Can you point to at least one historical analysis which identifies Russia as a colonial empire?

Is this even a debate? Do you need an analysis also showing that the UK was a colonial empire? The second bit is trivial, it was called the Russian Empire. The first bit is also trivial, they had colonies in North America, for example.

> I associate colonialism with the European conquerors of the world

Russia is (historically) a European country. It only has land in Asia because of imperialism and colonisation.

It’s not a debate, seems more like a fringe theory trying to muddy the waters by making Russian imperialism look like colonialism, because the latter probably sounds worse to the modern average citizen.

If you look at e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism there’s a really long list of countries under British colonialism. Russia has such a short list, it’s no wonder it’s not considered a (former) colonial power.

Well Russia's list is longer than Belgium's on that page, so I don't really see your point, unless you wish to argue that Belgium also wasn't really a colonial power?

> Seeing people draw this parallel was surprising to me, as I associate colonialism with the European conquerors of the world: Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, The Netherlands and Germany.

Indigenous peoples living in Russia like Mansis are simply not known about, while everyone has heard of Incas, Apaches and Comanches and their fate. The actual Russian-Russia is pretty small and borders Eastern Europe. Most of the territory you see on maps has historically belonged to indigenous peoples and is still dominated by them in many regions outside of major cities, wouldn't surprise me if the majority of land area of Russia to this day had ethnic majority of non-Russians. Their culture and language has been suppressed for a long time to turn them into loyal Russians, the same way US and Canadian and many other governments destroyed traditional lifestyle, forced resettlement, forced indigenous children into state schools and so forth. The difference from historic colonialism is that it's still happening in present day, and on a scale that has not been seen elsewhere in a long time - by that, I mean the war in Ukraine, also colonial in nature in what motivates Russia, and how they disproportionally conscript ethnic minorities to fight and die for Russia.

Anglo-american histography is fairly self-centered on these topics, lots of focus on American slave trade and colonialism by Western Europe, but very little on what happened in the rest of the world. This feeds into perception that the colonial history of the Americas is unique, that only blacks have been slaves, that only western countries have been colonial, etc while we have a large country in Europe even in 2023 that wants to establish politic and economic control over a nation of 40 million people, exploit them in every way, and impose foreign language and culture on them. And it's been like this for centuries.

If you want to get started somewhere, then I'd avoid publications that explicitly set to prove or disprove colonialism. Instead, read a balanced history of Eastern Europe and Russia, especially from the perspective of smaller nations if you can, and make up your own mind. You may discover that the life of farmers in Latvia in early 19th century wasn't that much different from Antebellum South. Same overall story, different setting.

Some experts have defined russian colonialism as "internal colonialism", they didn't conquer and abuse overseas territories, but expanded by taking over their neighbours and then used the resources of the territories taken over. Opressed the original local population and gradually destroyed their culture and language and identity by trying to russify them. Russia does it whenever it gets a chance.

The colonial Russian Empire is extremely well documented on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_Russi...