Was the USSR an "empire" in the imperial sense (genuine question) ?

I had thought the revolution was to destroy all that, remove the czar, bring in autocratic states, etc.

I feel like there is a distinction here but I can't easily point to it.

An empire is not defined by its internal form of government, but by having a poweful core state that keeps other territories (provinces, colonies, client states) in permanent subservience.

Surely not, an empire has an emperor/empress (an Imperator of some sort).

No, that is not the definition used by historians and political scholars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire#Definition

Because what some ruler calls him- or herself isn't really a useful category.

The usual definition of an empire is a state where a dominant group uses an imperial elite to extract resources from peripheral groups.

If you accept this definition, the USSR was an empire in the exact same sense the Romans or the British were, they just instantiated the template a little differently.

I think the USSR was a colonialist empire in the post Napolean Republican sense.

The ideals of the exceptional Republic make it the perfect overseer of the implementation of its system upon inferior nations that lack the vision or commitment to find and implement the perfect ideals. My impression from how it is coverred in the US is that the UK's early colonialism was simple feudal empire (the Queen is pleased with your venture) and late colonialism was of the Republican empire sort (they need our assigned administration to at least become a poor model of us).

Who were the colonisers?

Private people who follow (or are relatives of) the military and other state personnel of a coloniser are generally the colonists and might be the only colonists unless a state starts forcibly exporting people like the UK and USSR did.

It wasn't colonialist, in that the USSR did not expand into overseas areas of nonwhite people, because by that time there weren't any left uncolonized, but it had all the other attributes of a Russian empire over the satellite republics. The liberatory aspects of it collapsed very early on in infighting. Then there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_the_Soviet_Uni...

> It wasn't colonialist, in that the USSR did not expand into overseas areas of nonwhite people

That is a peculiar definition of "colonialist".

For instance, the ancient Romans colonized Great Britain, despite the fact that the Romans and the Britons were both "white". The Arabs colonized Spain, despite the fact that the Arabs were "non-white" (by some definitions) and the Spaniards were "white". The Mongols colonized a whole bunch of areas, of pretty much every ethnicity that exists in Eastern Europe and a large swath of Asia. And so on.

It’s not “first and foremost”: you literally have nothing else to add to the discussion, besides spitting out russian propaganda.

You poor thing..

Look at yourself: they took from you the ability to think..

Which interest did you have in Ukraine, apart from your devilish war mongering? And you are speaking of "Russian propaganda"..

There was a much more pragmatic fundamental reason for the regime to start the war: siloviki don’t tolerate democratic governments on their borders, as they might inspire the repressed population to demand the same democracy. Pride in the empire is an ideological crutch to explain the war rather than a reason for it.

Also it’s just “Ukraine”, not “the Ukraine”.

>Also it’s just “Ukraine”, not “the Ukraine”. //

In en-gb "the Ukraine" is the established form; without "the" it sounds strange. There's no academy that dictates acceptable form for English language. Do you think it's unclear? Is there a good reason to be a language fascist on this point?

Financial Times, The Times and the BBC all omit the “the”. So I’d say that this is the established form.

The “the Ukraine” form was used to refer to Ukrainian territory being part of the USSR or the Russian empire in the past. But the language seems to have evolved now to omit the article.

Also I don’t think I’m being a fascist about it at all.

Does everything have to be so black and white? The article clearly states "pride, as well as shame"

Everything to do with colonialism = bad is such a boneheaded simplification, thank god there are academics brave enough to look at it from a non-hysterical perspective

> Everything to do with colonialism = bad

European colonialism. Take a look at Wikipedia's article on Muslim-colonized Spain, and it's almost nothing but praise. The entire opening section doesn't even mention the slavery of non-Muslims that was practiced.

Under the Caliphate of Córdoba, al-Andalus was a center of learning, and the city of Córdoba, the second largest in Europe, became one of the leading cultural and economic centers throughout the Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Islamic world. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus

Isn't it more one specific person's ego, wanting to leave their mark in history before they shuffle off?

Only if you ignore the spectacular resurgence of nationalism, revanchism, and 'make Russia great again' rhetoric that has completely embedded itself in the culture in the past twenty years.

Of course it was driven top-down, but I don't see how that has any bearing on anything. The US didn't invade Iraq because there was some kind of grassroots fear of it, and the English didn't get an empire spanning half the world because some blokes down at the local thought it was a swell idea.