#the soviets were imperialists

[warsofasoiaf]

Lenin’s actions in the Baltics can’t really be explained as “supporting authentic domestic revolutionary movements” because the actual revolutionary movements within these areas were very hostile to Soviet actions in setting up their puppet states. Modern historians have debunked the claim that the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic established itself in Vilnus as Soviet historians claim, rather that this government was imported into Lithuania following the Red Army. As this weak puppet state failed, the Soviet Union was promoting the idea of a Lithuiana-Belorussian Federation, which the native Lithuanians of all stripes roundly rejected. Nor was it acceptable to the Belorussians, who had established their own Belorussian People’s Republic but it’s own native leaders were kicked out by the advancing Red Army. In the Autonomous Governorate of Estonia, the Bolsheviks supported the Estonian Maapäev general elections until they lost, after which they invaded to establish the Commune of the Working Peoples of Estonia contrary to the clearly established desires of the population. In all of these cases, we see the wishes of those people stamped out and suppressed, so these actions are better contextualized as setting up pliant puppet states and dispensing with any leader that was insufficiently loyal rather than the support of any authentic domestic group or movement. This is further proven by later Soviet action in Eastern Europe with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or the Prague Spring in 1968, insufficient fealty is considered justification for intervention, which sounds awfully similar to Western European colonial revolts of earlier centuries.

Nor can these actions be explained in the context of continuing the Russian Civil War, either against the Russian whites or against any intervention by foreign powers. In Finland, for example, the Germans intervened only in March 1918, fully halfway through the Finnish Civil War and well after the USSR had already intervened in February with soldiers and generals sent into the country. Lenin himself signed off on the Finnish independence as proposed by the Vasa Senate (which was supported overwhelmingly in Finland even by the native socialists) in 1917, only to backpedal and intervene two months later. The Baltic States have similar stories - the Russians intervene well before the Germans in every case. Only in Latvia in the Baltics were White Russian-aligned forces, the West Russian Volunteer Force, present as an organized armed force. 

In both of your examples, the exceptions outnumber the rules to the point to the point where Lenin and the Bolsheviks cannot “pretty consistently” be anti-imperialism. I mean, I’m the first one to say that actions cannot always match ideology as a concession to operating within reality, but this goes far beyond “actions don’t always match ideology.“ The exceptions so outnumber the rule that I’m going so far as to say that the actions, more often than not, stood in direct contrast to ideology. Soviet support for various liberation movements can be explained more coherently as power politics against the West in the greater context of the Cold War, many of whom held colonial possessions (and it neatly explains the weird Nigeria-Biafra war, where the Soviets and the UK supported Nigeria while the French and Chinese supported the Biafran separatist state). Chinese accusations of “social imperialism” could be explained as a rhetorical technique, an appeal to gain moral leadership of the International in the greater context of the Sino-Soviet split. This isn’t even unique to imperialism or colonialism. Lenin wrote at length espousing self-determination but brutally suppressed it both within these earlier examples and at home, dissolving the 1917 All-Russian Constituent Assembly and banning elections after he and the Bolsheviks lost.

I’m not saying that Lenin didn’t couch those actions with the reasons you highlight, I’m just saying that the historical record doesn’t match up - they’re just rhetoric to clothe these actions in a greater sense of moral legitimacy than the naked expressions of imperialism that they were. Given how consistently he went against his professed beliefs across multiple fields, I’d say he had no sincere commitment to anti-imperialism as a concept but was quite happy to oppose Western imperialism in pursuit of power. But sadly, no one can ever really know what someone truly thinks.

-SLAL

As a Social Democrat, what would you say has been its historical tendencies towards colonialism and upliftment of developing nations? Why is that Communism, despite some acknowledged failures (Afghanistan, Tibet, Xinjiang), is seen as more anti-colonialist by comparison?

That's a really interesting question. Honestly, when it comes to social democracy's record on de-colonization, it's something of a mixed bag. One of Eduard Bernstein's major flaws, his feet of clay, is that he was pro-imperialism - although to be fair, the SPD as a whole was pretty consistently anti-colonialist between the 1890s and 1914. On the other hand, the British Labour Party did very little about empire and was arguably pro-empire up until 1945. Clement Attlee, however, had a personal interest in decolonization and was a committed supporter of Indian self-governance since the 1930s, and negotiated the independence of India, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. On the other hand, Attlee wasn't entirely consistent on this point - he rather mis-handled the British Mandate in Palestine, African colonies were bypassed for de-colonization, and the Attlee government began the counter-insurgency in Malaysia. So something of a mixed bag, as I said.

Attlee's policies did have a long-term effect on the Labour Party - it opposed British involvement in the Suez Crisis on a united basis despite its divisions on other issues, for example. Likewise, the Harold Wilson government was characterized by broad sympathies to the cause of decolonization but a relatively weak commitment to accepting much risk. For example, Wilson refused to send British ground troops to Vietnam but did provide intelligence and jungle warfare training and wouldn't publicly denounce the war.

He did remove British troops from Singapore, Malaysia, and the Persian Gulf and supported de-colonization in Africa, but he rather screwed up in Rhodesia where after insisting on black suffrage in return for Rhodesian independence, he refused to send the British military to "fight our kith and kin" when Ian Smith unilaterally declared independence for his apartheid state, delaying liberation for many years.

By contrast, the Soviet Union and China could more straightforwardly support anti-colonial insurgencies (that often blended nationalist and communist ideologies) in no small part because the Bolsheviks had been anti-WWI and anti-imperialism pretty consistently thanks to Lenin's influence.

And if you were an anti-colonial insurgency, would you prefer the folks who might give you a thumbs up or the folks who would give you weapons?

[warsofasoiaf]

Why was polish independence such a big nonstarter for the Soviets?

The Bolsheviks were Russian imperialists through and through, and loathed the idea of breakaway Russian imperial territories being fully independent. An independent Poland, to the Russians, was anathema, and so the Soviets saw the establishment of an independent Polish state as an affront to their sovereignty. Factor in great power politics, and it's easy to see that the Soviet Union wanted a compliant state that could count as an independent country but would brook no serious cleavage from Moscow.

This was the norm, rather than the exception. Lenin and the Bolsheviks talked a big game about anti-colonialism but fought ferociously that Russian imperial possessions needed to be ruled directly from Moscow. He was willing to entertain ideas of democracy, provided he won. When this didn't happen, he invaded to install his own puppet rulers, as had happened in Lithuania and Belarus and what failed to happen in Estonia and Finland.

Thanks for the question, Asdf

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[weirdlizard26]

mannnnn do NOT let me go off thinking abt the war for too long bc apparently there is no future for us lol!

[lightdancer1]

Russia has been an empire since the Grand Principality of Moscow made itself one:

This is not a discussion, this is not a premise up for debate, or interpretation. The Grand Principality of Moscow is and has been an imperial engine of conquest with few equals in world history. The logic of Putin's wars from Chechnya to Ukraine is the rebuilding of the fallen empire of the USSR and the Tsars before them.

A principled anti-imperialist stand would include the vast expanse of the Russian Empire in its eyes, and would note that Russia remains the last European empire still mostly intact.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

What does the "banana republic is a fucked up name for a store" post you reblogged mean? I'm afraid of looking dumb.

The term "banana republic" was originally coined to describe countries in Central and South America (mainly Honduras and Guatemala) whose economies were rendered dependent on the production and export of bananas (among other agricultural goods, but mainly bananas) by American fruit corporations leveraging the power of the U.S. government, the U.S. military and the CIA.

Throughout most of the of the 20th century, American corporations such as United Fruit, Cuyamel, and the Standard Fruit Company owned large portions of these countries' lands, to the point that in some cases they controlled their railway, road, and port infrastructure, and they engaged in a variety of imperialist actions to lower production costs, such as violence against labor activists and anti wage reform lobbying.

The pinnacle of this phenomenon was the 1954 Guatemalan coup, when United Fruit convinced the goverment of US president Dwight D. Eisenhower that the elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz (who had expropriated some of the company's unused land and given it to Guatemalan peasants) was secretly working with the Soviet Union, resulting in a CIA coup which deposed the Árbenz government and replaced it with a thirty-year right-wing military dictatorship which effectively acted as a puppet government to protect the interests of United Fruit and the U.S. government.

Nowadays the term has broadened to refer to any small, economically unstable country with an economy which has been rendered dependent on the export of a particular natural resource due to economic exploitation by a more powerful country.

[kelluinox]

I just want to understand how westerners who never experienced war, who don't have anyone they know affected by war, have the audacity to sit in their ivory towers and pontificate about war. It's truly mind boggling. These pampered, privileged, spoiled little kids sitting on social media, treating wars in which real people are dying like they're a particularly interesting Netflix show, drawing anime characters with the colors of terrorist regimes.

I have family in Odesa. Practically every summer of my childhood I spent in Odesa. I went to the beaches. I stayed at my aunt's apartment. Walked around the city with my cousin. Odesa is beautiful. And I watched it be bombed by Russians with no ability to stop my terrorist government from doing so. I received text messages from my cousin, saying, "we have fireworks tonight" and nearly lost my mind every time I heard of new bombing. I didn't know if the next day I would be hearing of my relatives being trapped under rubble. I had nightmares over what the Russians did and are doing in Ukraine. Bucha still haunts my thoughts. All of this slaughter is being done by my government and I have no ability to stop it. And Russian society supports it. You know, those screaming about innocent civilians show only one thing - they don't understand the first thing about fascist societies. The innocent civilians of Russia celebrated the annexation of Crimea. They stuck Z symbols to their cars and hung st George ribbons on their clothes to support the invasion. They got their kids to record their anti war teachers to get them fired or even imprisoned. They dress up their kids in military style clothes and they invite terrorists to speak in front of class about 'patriotism'. An innocent civilian art class teacher reported a girl who drew an anti war picture in class to the innocent civilian school principal. The principal called the police. The girl was put into solitary confinement until her mother agreed to take her. Her father was kidnapped and secretly put in prison.

Some other absolutely ignorant claims I've heard are ones about "collective punishment" and "illegal blockades". Funny. I live under collective punishment - sanctions, and countries bordering Russia are closing entry to Russians, slowly forming a blockade. And you know what? Russia deserves it. Russia deserves to learn the hard way that this is what you get for being an imperialist aggressor. I don't blame the Baltics, or Finland for closing their borders with Russia. I blame Russia for being such a shitty neighbor that such measures were needed in the first place.

And for those who will say, oh but how does this relate to the Middle East. Well, first of all, I'm a jew. I care when the biggest attack on jews since the Holocaust happens and the world spends 12 months celebrating it and bemoaning that only 1200 were murdered and not 7 million. I also care because, unlike you, I know Putin's allies, I know who helps bomb my family in Ukraine. I know that Hamas and Hezbollah and numerous other terrorist organizations terrorizing Israel are Iranian proxies. And I know Iran and Russia are buddies and Iran sells weapons to Russia. I was here, in Moscow, when the PA and Hamas were here for a visit. I was in the same city as those bloodthirsty murderers who want all jews dead. And yet people will still have the audacity to tell me that I'm the one who's in the wrong. It's me who doesn't understand anything about geopolitics, you see. I'm the one who can't tell the difference between a war and genocide even though I had entire branches of my family erased by the Holocaust, have parents and grandparents who lived in the Soviet Union and watched my own government attempt a genocide in Ukraine. I'm the one who doesn't understand imperialism even though Russia is an empire. Russians believe that all post Soviet states should still belong to them and make no mistake once they have them they'll go on to grab some more. I'm the one who doesn't understand how dictatorships operate such as using outside conflicts to distract the population from internal problems and hold on to power. I'm the one who doesn't understand anything.

I don't care if anything of what I say isn't politically correct. I don't care if just being honest about reality and refusing to coddle westerners with lies loses me followers. I'm not going to lie about my life just to be accepted on social media. I don't care. I don't care what the UN says, they've shown me their alliance way back when they didn't do shit for Ukraine. They let Russia veto whatever it didn't like. Putin wasn't arrested when he visited Mongolia. What did the UN do, really? Except waste their time with Israel? I'm not surprised to learn of the complicity of UNWRA. I'm not surprised to see videos of Hezbollah tunnels mere meters away from UN outposts. The majority of countries in the UN are undemocratic and interested in pushing their own agendas. The UN has lost its purpose. I don't care about the Red Cross, who told hostage families concerned about their family members being held by a brutal terrorist organization that "they should think about the palestinians". The red cross claimed there were no installations for the extermination of jews at Auschwitz too. I don't care about Greta Thunberg who now claims that Israel is causing damage to the environment and has forgotten all about Russia that continues to bomb Ukraine. Russia blew up a fucking dam, but everyone has already forgotten all about that. It wasn't the jews who brought down the Kakhovka dam, so who cares, right? No jews, no news. I don't care about student activists demanding they be brought humanitarian aid on the steps of elite US universities. I don't care about Biden who spent more time holding Israel back, than actually rescuing his own citizens from Hamas. I don't care about the Spanish with their history of antisemitism (the Inquisition), and colonialism (that they're now trying to blame on us by saying Columbus was a jew when he was not). I don't care about the British who also have their own history of colonialism and tried to stop jews who were fleeing the Holocaust from migrating to the then British Mandate. I don't care about South Africa, who would rather distract their own people with Israel rather than sort out their internal problems. I don't care about the BBC, Reuters, CNN, NYT nazi rags that give awards to terrorists taking pictures of the bodies of dead jewish women and cry bitter tears over a murderous monster like Nasrallah. I'm past the point of caring what any of these people say. I see who they are. I see their hypocrisy. I see their blatant bias and hatred. I see all of it. I'm tired of it.

And I'm tired of being lectured by westerners who don't live in reality. Who are so morally confused and who live with such a simplified worldview that they've started supporting terrorism. I actually live these conflicts. Who the fuck are you to lecture me? Who the fuck are you to "educate" me on anything?

[razistoricharka]

Very interesting + concise article, pertinent with how much I've seen the joke about that "sadness in his eyes you only see in east european gay porn". Warning for pretty much everything you can expect.

Describing the wave of Eastern European gay pornography that flooded the US market following the dissolution of the USSR, Jones said: “They were products of a crude imperialist enterprise: cheap and nasty looking, with an atmosphere of coercion and cultural misunderstanding pervading them. Customers adored these videos, and expressed their breathless admiration whenever given the chance”

It gets pretty rough from here onward.

The Fall… opens with a short clip of a young man in profile, undressing. He looks uncomfortable, alternating between staring forward and glancing in the direction of the camera, his eyes showing a mix of discomfort and contempt. Jones’ voiceover states: “even in an unlikely place, it is possible to find traces of recent history” followed by b-roll taken from the aforementioned porn films including maps of the former USSR, market scenes, beggars and street footage. Their purpose in the aforementioned films appears to be part exoticism and part poverty fetishism, attempting to show the former glory of the Eastern nations as an emphasis on their subsequent fall. They’re an essential part of the set-up, speaking directly to what made this genre of pornography appealing to a western, primarily American, market. It’s easy to comprehend the mixture of exploitation and exoticism that made these videos popular in the US, but Jones goes further, aiming to establish a firm link between the booming Western economy and a more global, less visible form of exploitation.

The latter half of the film compounds the atmosphere of coercion, focusing specifically on the casting and screen tests of performers. The voice from behind the camera probes the subject on their sexual preferences, their motivations for being filmed: “I’m doing it for the money” “That’s a very good reason” Western audiences were turned on by the idea that the performers were under some form of duress—the ostensibly straight man either consuming their sexuality through the guise of pornography, or in the case of several scenes, the performer showing visible discomfort at either the sex or the presence of the camera. The films are low budget, low production value and low brow—by intention, rather than necessity. Jones speculates that the developing Eastern European sex industry, with the influx of Western producers and a Western market in mind, could be seen as an indicator of fertile ground for fascist ideologies—an aspersion confirmed by the global rise of far-right ideologies in tandem with the economic pressure of late-stage capitalism, a point at which more contemporary comparisons can be made.

The brief conclusion on the contemporary form of this exploitation aesthetic is also noteworthy:

In the same way that the fall of communism was exploited by the West, the financial and social insecurity of a generation living in recession, under permanent austerity, is exploited now. The aesthetics utilised in Jones’ film are still broadly present, albeit perhaps in a slightly altered form, now accompanied by a new visual language born from a culture numb to being told to “like, comment, share and subscribe”.

[opencommunion]

"The Congo’s strategic location in the middle of Africa and its fabulous natural endowment of minerals and other resources have since 1884 ensured that it would serve as a theatre for the playing out of the economic and strategic interests of outsiders: the colonial powers during the scramble for Africa; the superpowers during the Cold War; and neighbouring African states in the post-Cold War era. To prevent a direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Security Council deployed from 1960 to 1964 what was then the largest and most ambitious operation ever undertaken by the UN, with nearly 20,000 troops at its peak strength plus a large contingent of civilian personnel for nation-building tasks.

This latter aspect of the Opération des Nations unies au Congo (ONUC) was a function of the fragile political revolution ... The Congo won its independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960. Patrice Lumumba’s MNC-L and its coalition of radical nationalist parties had captured a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament in the pre-independence elections in May. Lumumba became prime minister and head of government, while the Abako leader Joseph Kasa-Vubu became the ceremonial head of state. The victory of a militantly nationalist leader with a strong national constituency was viewed as a major impediment to the Belgian neocolonialist strategy and a threat to the global interests of the Western alliance.

Within two weeks of the proclamation of independence, Prime Minister Lumumba was faced with both a nationwide mutiny by the army and a secessionist movement in the province of Katanga bankrolled by Western mining interests. Both revolts were instigated by the Belgians, who also intervened militarily on 10 July, a day before the Katanga secession was announced. In the hopes of obtaining the evacuation of Belgian troops and white mercenaries, and thus ending the Katanga secession, Lumumba made a successful appeal to the UN Security Council to send a UN peacekeeping force to the Congo. However, the UN secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld, interpreted the UN mandate in accordance with Western neocolonialist interests and the US Cold War imperative of preventing Soviet expansion in the Third World. This led to a bitter dispute between Lumumba and Hammarskjöld, which resulted in the US- and Belgian-led initiative to assassinate the first and democratically elected prime minister of the Congo.

... Brussels’ failure to prevent a radical nationalist such as Lumumba from becoming prime minister created a crisis for the imperialist countries, which were determined to have a decolonization favourable to their economic and strategic interests with the help of more conservative African leaders. With Belgium’s failure to transfer power in an orderly fashion to a well-groomed moderate leadership group that could be expected to advance Western interests in Central and Southern Africa, the crisis of decolonization in the Congo required US and UN interventions. Working hand in hand, Washington, New York and Brussels succeeded in eliminating Lumumba and his radical followers from the political scene."

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, 2002

[probablyasocialecologist]

If Plan Dalet was a settler-colonial script for the destruction of Palestine from 1948 onwards, it was preceded by – and had its conditions of existence in – the imperialist vision of an entity imposed on the land of Palestine for the protection of the interests of the core: access to raw materials and markets, prevention of subversive projects, buffer zones and counterweights against more distant rivals. In 1840, it was cotton, Muhammed Ali and Tsarist Russia. 127 years later, when the occupation was completed, it was petroleum, third world liberation and the Soviet Union. We are dealing here with an exceedingly deep structure, not an event or two; a ratcheting up and escalation across two centuries, a worsening and intensification of patterns first developed in the early nineteenth – also, not coincidentally, the temporal form of global warming itself. I have pointed very quickly and superficially to three further pivotal moments of articulation. In 1917 and after, the British occupation of Palestine was part of the transformation of the Middle East into a foundation for fossil capital, by dint of its oil resources. In 1947 and after, Western support for the new Zionist state was informed by the consummation of that order; in 1967 and after, by its defence. The steps along the way to the destruction of Palestine were simultaneously steps along the way to that of the Earth.

[...]

The destruction of Gaza is executed by tanks and fighter jets pouring out their projectiles over the land: the Merkavas and the F-16s sending their hellfire over the Palestinians, the rockets and bombs that turn everything into rubble – but only after the explosive force of fossil fuel combustion has put them on the right trajectory. All these military vehicles run on petroleum. So do the supply flights from the US, the Boeings that ferry the missiles over the permanent airbridge. An early, provisional, conservative analysis found that emissions caused during the first 60 days of the war equalled annual emissions of between 20 and 33 low-emitting countries: a sudden spike, a plume of CO2 rising over the debris of Gaza. If I repeat the point here, it is because the cycle is self-repeating, only growing in scale and size: Western forces pulverise the living quarters of Palestine by mobilising the boundless capacity for destruction only fossil fuels can give.

[itsagrimm]

What is a Russian Character and How to write them

As @sarapaprikas-blog and I were working on this post, we noticed a gap of knowledge and public perception that we want to address. Plenty of characters get labelled as Russian in media without necessarily being Russian. On the other hand the Archetypal ”Russian” character often does not mirror the realities of being Russian. We are to talk about that.

What is Russia?

Russia is a country. It is the largest country in the world with over 140 million inhabitants, stretching over 11 time zones. It is often seen as the successor state to the Soviet Union, which in itself was the successor state of the Russian Empire. The Soviet Union and Russia do not have the same borders or government. However, modern Russia draws a lot from its history as the largest and dominant part of the Soviet Union. Before the Soviet Union, the area was governed by the Russian Empire. The Russian Empire, as the name already indicates, was imperialist. The history as an Empire with massive expansion, colonies and conquering different people, is arguably the biggest reason why modern Russia is as big as it is today.

What is Russian?

There is a difference between the language Russian, the ethnicity Russian, and the nationality Russian. In English the difference can be made out only by context. 

Who is Russian?

As aforementioned, there is a difference between Russian (Россиянин) meaning citizen of Russia, and ethnically Russian (Русские). The term Russian (Русские) usually refers to ethnicity, indicating a person who has Russian roots. Russian (Россиянин) implies Russian citizenship, regardless of ethnicity. Thus, a Russian can be someone with Russian citizenship, but not all Russian citizens are Russians in the ethnic sense. Also, not all ethnic Russians have Russian citizenship or live within Russia.

Ethnic-Russians are an East Slavic people. Obviously, they mainly live in Russia. But there are also large communities in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and other countries. The traditional religion among Russians is Orthodox Christianity. The main language is Russian.

The country Russia is home to more than 190 ethnicities, including indigenous and autochthonous people, leading to a variety of languages, religions and practiced cultures. So, someone who holds a Russian citizenship, has ethnic Russian heritage and / or speaks Russian, can look very different than the cliche Russian bond girl or evil-doer indicates. That also means that those who get labelled Russian can live very different lives. Writing a Russian character gives you a lot of room outside of the prevalent stereotyped depictions.

Who is not Russian?

Simple - those who say they are not Russian, are not Russian.

Who are Slavs? What is Slavic? 

The slavic people are a variety of people, ethnically Russian people are part of that group. However, there are a lot of other ethnic groups that are Slavs without being Russian e.g. Poles, Sorbs, Czech, Ukrainians, and many more. Slavic is the corresponding adjective to Slavs. It is often used to describe the indo-Slavic language group. Slavic is also often used to describe the collectively perceived similarities of Slavic peoples' culture. However, that can be misleading and get’s often orientalised as not everything from Eastern-Europe or Russia is slavic.

Russian vocabulary Да - Yes ��ет - No Привет - Hi Здравствуйте - Hello Как дела ? - How are you? Хорошо - Good Пожалуйста - Please Не за что - my pleasure  До свидания - Goodbye Пока - bye  Увидимся - See you later Хорошего дня - Have a nice day Простите - I'm sorry. (Plural or honoured addressee) Помогите, пожалуйста. - Help me please. (Plural or honoured addressee) Доброе утро - Good morning Доброй ночи - Good night. Добрый день - Good day / afternoon.

Pet names in Russian About pet names. They are either masculine of feminine . Please don't use words like darling, kitten, baby, pretty, sweetie, little one, little fox, etc. as they sound really strange in translation to native speakers. Pet names are common for close ones (family, close friends, spouses). Sometimes primary school teachers call students by affectionate names. Also sweet old lady may call you ( Дорогой/ Дорогая). But outside of that nobody calls each other by pet names, only using names because Russians are very reserved and private people in general. Gender neutral pet names: жизнь моя - my life солнце мое - my sun or my sunshine  ты мое все - you my everything. лучик - sunray. мое сокровище - my treasure.  мое золотце - my gold or sweetheart. моя любовь - my love. ты моя радость - you are my joy. ангелочек - Angel. прелесть моя - my precious.

Queerness and gender-neutral speech in Russian Being queer in Russia is hard as queers face oppression. Because of that, there is limited to no public discourse on how to adapt and diversify the language to include queer and especially non-binary identities. This is a problem as the Russian language is extremely gendered and expresses a gender binary in near default. While gender neutral pronouns in Russian exist, it's harder to use them in real life as the neutral pronoun “оно” is mostly associated with things or animals and not living humans, similar to the English “it”. Often words generally do not have gender neutral alternatives.  However, one way we suggest for a more gender neutral speech is to avoid most explicit gendering as the flexible syntax in combination with using plural pronouns in Russian allow for more gender neutral speech. For Example: Я люблю их всем моих сердцем - I love them with all my heart. Расскажи мне о них! - Tell me about them.  Дай им время- give them time. Я горжусь ими - I'm proud of them.  Они сделает это сами  -  they do it themselves. Read more about queerness in Russia here: one two three four

Russian swearing                             In Russia, swearing is considered a sign of rudeness and poor manners. Use accordingly. Also, as mentioned here, Russian syntax and inflection are different from English. Meaning one word can be a whole sentence. We punctuated every swearing that is technically a whole sentence and therefore can stand on its own grammatically. Блять - fuck Пошел нахуй. - fuck you  Хуй - dick Пизда - cunt Мы в пизде. - we are fucked / “We are stuck in the cunt.” Ебать - fuck Ахуел. - are you/they crazy?! Это пиздец. - this fucked up Мудак - asshole  Завали ебало. - shut the fuck up Сука - bitch Черт - damn Непизди. - stop fucking lying. / Cut your bullshit. Пиздобол - Person who lies a lot/ Don't lie  Мамку твою ебал. - i fucked your mom (mostly used by middle schoolers, here in grammatically masculine gender.) Заебись. - holy shit (could be bad or good depend on situation) Похуй! - I don't fucking care. Навешать пиздюлей - to beat up someone. Срать тебе в рот -  To crap in your mouth. Ты ебанулся. - Are you batshit crazy. Заебал. - I'm sick of you. Жопа - ass. Иди в баню. - soft version of Иди нахуй.

Explanation of the Russian Naming System & Patronyms

The Russian naming system consists of three main elements: first name, patronymic and last name. Name: This is the first name given to a child at birth. In Russia, the names are chosen by the parents or relatives of the child. Names can be both traditional (Alexander, Anna, Ekaterina) and modern (Sofia, Victoria, Yaroslav). Patronymic: this is the second name, which reflects the child's origin from his father. Some cultures in Russia also use the mothers name. The patronymic name among Russian people arose in the 10th - 11th centuries and was used infrequently at first, but became widespread around the 16th century. It is formed by adding the suffix "-ovich" or "-aries" to the father's name. For example, if the father's name is Ivan, then his child Ivan or Ivanna will be called Ivan Ivanovich or Ivanna Ivanovna. Last name: This is a family surname that is passed down from generation to generation. It is usually assigned at birth and does not change without special circumstances. Surnames can come from various sources, such as profession, place of residence, origin, or personal characteristics. As a result, a person's full name consists of a first name, a patronymic (if applicable) and a last name, for example: Ivan Ivanovich Petrov.

How to respectfully address a person in Russian. In Russian there are two ways to address someone. Using the polite you (Вы) amd using the formal you (Ты). The choice of mode depends on how well you know the other person and whether you are superior or inferior in terms of age and social position. If you know the person's first name you refer to them by first name and patronymic. For examples: Борис Юрьевич, Ваши рабочие отлично справились с ремонтом- Boris Yurievich, your workers did a great job with repairs. Adults never address a person by name, only by surname or patronymic unless the addressee gives permission to address them in an informal manner. Regulations of most military require their members address each other in formal you( Вы ); subordinates address commanders as товарищ (comrade) + rank , while higher ups address subordinates by military rank and surname. Example: [Colonel to Sgt. Sidorov] Сержант Сидоров, ко мне! Sergeant Sidorov, front and center! [sgt. Sidorov to colonel] По вашему приказанию прибыл, товарищ полковник! Reporting for duty [lit. arrived at your (pl.) request], comrade colonel! Military men sometimes use same forms of address, albeit in singular, in friendly conversation. Example: Сержант, дай сигарету. - Give (sing.) me a cigarette, Sarge. Military hierarchy in Russia You can find useful links here. One Two

[afghanbarbie]

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

[jewish-sideblog]

"Both indigenous and colonizers" CAN PEOPLE STOP TALKING ABOUT SHIT THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND PLEASE

This wave of antisemitism and bullshit about "indigenous vs colonizer" makes me so scared as an indigenous person in the US of what will happen when Land Back movements do result in actual sovereignty restoration and then tribes do what people do and disagree over land and resources, like we were doing for thousands of years before Europeans arrived. Will we be reduced down to colonizers too??

It feels like Westerners, especially USAmericans, have such a black and white idea of what it means to be indigenous and what it means to be a colonizer/settler (because those terms are always conflated) and it makes me so angry and frustrated to see people apply those standards and lines thinking not just to complex sovereignty movements in their own countries but also to incredibly complex conflicts and wars happening on the other side of the world.

The damage I've seen done to sovereignty movements here in the US alone, people going around claiming that we want all "settlers" to go back to Europe or that we're going to start massacring people, has been horrible and the fact that it's all just to justify antisemitism makes me sick.

Genuinely. They're blocked now, but that same person said something to the effect of "Would an Iranian praying in a Mosque built on the ashes of a former synagogue be decolonization?"

And that was the point at which I was like. Ok. It seems like most people genuinely don't actually know what the terms "colonization", "colonizer" and "coloniality" mean. Obviously, that wouldn't be decolonization, because the Jews never colonized Iran. Emigration and colonization aren't the same fucking thing!

I used to have so much faith in my generation. I thought we were critical thinkers, capable of flexibility and engagement with new ideas. But I'm realizing now that we're basically just rebranded boomers. Back in the day, anybody you disagreed with was labelled as a "Communist". It didn't actually fucking matter if they were communist sympathizers, Soviet sympathizers, or even if they were remotely allied with socialist ideals. You could just call them a "Communist" and be done with it, without even understanding what that term means.

It's the same shit today. Instead of a HUAC witch hunt targeting communists, it's a social witch hunt targeting "colonizers" and "Zionists". I am terrified that the moment indigenous rights movements in the Americas and Oceania start making practical strides in Land Back, regaining rightful control over the ways your own land is used, you'll all be labelled as "colonizers" or "imperialists" or whatever the bad buzz word of the month turns out to be.

People simply can't wrap their heads around the idea that indigenous decolonization doesn't have the end goal of ethnically cleansing non-native people from the Americas. And it's because they're so absorbed in colonial thinking. They can't even fucking imagine what sovereignty could look like beyond an authoritarian structure based on control and violence. It's the same with Israel and Palestine-- they think that Jewish sovereignty must look like complete Jewish control to the detriment of Arabs, and they think Palestinian sovereignty must look like total Arab control to the detriment of Jews. The idea that a shared state or a two-state solution is "racist" stems from that false dichotomy.

Establishing an ideological binary of violence that pits "indigenous" against "colonizer", "native" against "settler", and "us" against "them" with no room for cooperation or collaboration is the core of colonialism. Because the core of colonialism is the idea that only one group can have true power at a time. And that's just not the way the world has to work.

[taiwantalk]

I understand your position, keep on doing what you do. Food for thought: Don’t blame people, blame Russia China Iran but not Russian, Chinese or Iranian people. American philosophy also applies.

I don’t know what military intelligence you work with but you’re not in the Intel part if you preach about that kind of nonsense.

Tell that to nazi germans, the Ottoman Empire turks, or the Mongolian ghangis khans, or ancient Romans.

Russians, chinese, and Iranians have a very clear and simple sentiment right now. It’s a fashionable trend started by isis. They’re deprived of glorious destiny by everyone else and so they’re on a path and destruction to restore their great power and show the world how ruthless they can be when they are near the revival. It’s like the mummy returns.

[vanessalocke]

Black Triangle Trio

One of the things I don't like about Himaruya is that this author loves to create triangles, but the triangles he creates are often very unnatural and forced to satisfy his complicated loveline fetish. While the true triangle relationship really affects the whole world, he doesn't care. (But I care!)

As I said before, I have the headcanon that the Big5 is divided into two parts:

Russia/Soviet Union -> America: Russia really likes, even admires America. There are many American cultural elements that greatly impact the lives of Russians. However, despite admiring America's liberty, if Russia were told to live like America, Russia would refuse.

America -> Russia/Soviet Union: in short, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States sent experts to research and review the situation to help the Soviet Union avoid collapse. The collapse of the Soviet Union makes America sad.

Russia/Soviet Union -> China: two lone wolves isolated by the whole world had to rely on each other. Economically, China is the largest economic supporter of Russia when Russia is under economic sanctions.

China -> Russia/Soviet Union: admire, really admire. Very few countries (especially Western countries) have this admiration from China. Even during the most crisis period of the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, the Chinese, although angrily said "the imperialist Soviet Union", still carried a feeling of anxiety and regret about the period when the two countries were close.

China -> America: from enemy to ally. China used to rely on and be protected by the US in every move, gaining a lot of influence in US diplomacy. However, China does not admire America, so China always tries to deny that past.

America -> China: very apprehensive. Having wholeheartedly covered both the dark side and the bright side, the relationship was also very close, but unexpectedly, the later rise of China, tolerated and supported by the US, would become a serious competitor to the US.

Ps: I don't ship 3p. Actually, I really like trios, but hate love triangles. These three are my brot3, I like to think that although they are rivals, they are also close friends, and I like to talk about their ambiguous and complicated relationship.

[mesetacadre]

What should be done with royal palaces and the like after revolution? Obviously any extant monarchies will be abolished but I'm curious what you think should be done with the stuff they leave behind

Hi! In the vast majority of cases, as far as I'm aware, the palaces and castles of monarchs were turned into public places for cultural purposes, such as the Winter Palace becoming the Hermitage Museum, its first exposition was on the history of the October revolution, and the private rooms and such were open to the public so they could see the wealth the Tsars had accumulated. Throughout the Soviet era, the emblems of the Tsars and other objects were gradually removed and dispersed to museums throughout the country.

Unless there is a very pressing need to reuse the materials with which these properties are decorated and built, I don't see any reason to blow them up or demolish them or remove them in some way. Palaces specifically are places with a lot of room and usually well communicated, they are ideal for those cultural purposes as well as for the sake of not forgetting the absurd concentration of wealth monarchies accumulate.

In North Korea, for example, although this isn't specifically about the property of a monarchy, they opened the various resorts and villas for the recreational use by the Korean people:

Nonetheless the North Koreans have the right to feel proud of their achievements. In one respect they can claim to surpass their Chinese brothers – their well-equipped social insurance. The Japanese had more health resorts and summer villas in Korea than in China and the present Department of Labor has taken them over. The North Koreans have also a larger amount of publicly owned industry than the nearby Chinese, for Korea was highly industrialized by the Japanese.

In North Korea: First Eye-Witness Report, Anna Louise Strong, 1949

And I think this should be the attitude that has to be taken towards the more lavish properties of the old bourgeoisie/imperialists/monarchy, of putting that wealth in service of the workers whenever possible. Revolutions don't create a blank slate, we are forced to build upon what remains of what came before. And ultimately, it's the workers who should decide what to do with these vestiges of the past. If the workers of Leningrad preferred the Winter Palace to be a museum, who can criticize them? It's not like it brought the Romanovs back ;)

[dontforgetukraine]

Ukrainian language and literature have been a target for Russia for many years. Today, they are the target for its missiles, drones, and bombs. In past centuries, they were the targets of imperialist persecutors who hunted down Ukrainian writers. —MFA of Ukraine

Russia targets printing houses like Faktor-Druk in Kharkiv, which only recently restored some of its printing capacity and began printing textbooks for the new school year.

The Ukrainian language is also suppressed in the occupied territories. You can be tortured and killed just for speaking it. Libraries are targeted and destroyed and there has been an immense loss in the number of Ukrainian books.

In Soviet times, the Ukrainian letter "ґ'" (sounds like the letter g in English) was banned by the Soviet government. Ukrainian spellings were changed to make it more similar to Russian. If Ukrainian words differed from their Russian counterparts, those words were banned and replaced with more phonetically similar words to Russian. Any separation of the Ukrainian language from Russian was seen as nationalistic.

Russian propagandists and useful idiots love to promote the narrative that Russian speakers are oppressed in Ukraine to justify their invasion, but Russia has a lengthy history of committing linguicide of Ukrainian that continues into the current war today.