this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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Are you actually claiming that the Soviets invaded and annexed Armenia to prevent an Armenian genocide and that the Uzbeks were so stupid that they deserved to be invaded and annexed? Because the first is ludicrous and the latter is just racist.
Social development and class struggle aren't matters of stupidity or superior races, but of material and historical conditions. Uzbekistan didn't have the material and historical conditions up to 1917 that allowed for the emancipation of women. Hell, 90% of Tsarist Russia were serfs bound legally to the lands they worked, how progressive can we imagine these people were? It was only through socialism that women were able to considerably (though not completely) liberate themselves, thanks to the work of intellectual feminists like Kollontai and to the social progress achieved in the 20s in the RSFSR and posterior Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks liberated Uzbekistan from their feudal system and their most oppressive customs, while maintaining the language and culture in the region, which again explains why 95% of people in Uzbekistan voted to stay in a socialist USSR.
Dude, "we civilized them" is literally a colonizer's excuse.
And suggesting any vote in the Soviet Union was fair or the vote count accurate is laughable.
Colonialists use that excuse, I'm very aware, the difference is that they're lying when they say it. Number of hospital beds per capita, salaries, number of teachers per capita, conservation of local language through language choice in education and written publications such as books or newspapers in the local language, industrialization of the area... Literally no metric points towards colonization. You can't say the same of, say, modern Puerto Rico, or colonial India under the British rule. That's the difference.
So I assume the 1991 referendum in Estonia whereby 75+% of the population wanted to secede the USSR was also invalid? Have some rigor, there's no question on the validity of the referendums that took place over the USSR in its final moments.
Yes, also a defense of colonialism. "The others are lying, but it's true in our case." Which is, by the way, not an excuse to annex a sovereign nation and make it part of yours. That literally makes it a colony.
And we have no idea if the Estonian vote was valid or not, no. I hope it was.
No, it doesn't. You just don't understand colonialism. Without exploitation of labor and resources from an imperial core, there's no colonialism. Please, read a book.
Im not talking about opinion, I'm talking about data. Look at any of the metrics I've already provided you, comparing the data between republics in the USSR, and look at data comparing colonial India with the UK. If you refuse to acknowledge empirical evidence that's not my fault. Not all political systems are identical as proven by data.
Sure, I'll read a book. How about the dictionary?
Sounds like a colony to me.
If the british had built comparable infrastructure in India as in the UK, if they had industrialized it, if there had been no extraction of wealth, resources and of human labor, if there had been a similar amount of doctors and hospital beds per capita as in the UK, if there had been a similar amount of teachers per capita as in the UK, if there had been similar salaries for locals in India as those in the UK, if there had been education in the native language sponsored by the UK... If all of those things were true, then the UK wouldn't have been committing colonialism in India. The difference is that they didn't do these things, where as the USSR did. It's not a matter of opinion, it's simply factual. So, yes, the UK committed colonialism against India. the USSR never committed colonialism to any of its republics.
I'm not saying the USSR was responsible for the development of the Estonian economy, Estonia was relatively industrialised prior to the establishment of the USSR. But the Estonian industry grew very fast even after the annexation to the USSR. Again, you're grasping to whatever you can, because all the evidence points towards the same: there was no colonialism in the USSR.
Please. Show me the data for that. Show me how exploited the Estonians were, how much lower their wages were than in the rest of the USSR. Spoiler alert: data contradicts your claims.
Trading between different republics within the USSR wasn't subjected to unequal exchange, which conforms the BASIS of colonialism. Saying that Estonia went and started trading more with the USSR than with the west is as useful and interesting analysis than saying after the 90s Poland started trading more with the west than with Russia.
Again, please, for the love of god, read a fucking book on what colonialism is and what "unequal exchange" means. It's literal high-school stuff, the whole "import raw materials and cheap labor, export complex to manufacture goods", remember???