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[+] -20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (58 children)

But many do, and did historically, as it was part of Russia prior to the USSR.

But I have a genuine question: suppose that the majority of people living in Donbass genuinely wanted to break off and become part of Russia. Should they be allowed to, and if so, what steps should they have taken to make it happen, in the context that the government banned major opposition parties that were sympathetic towards Russia? What are you supposed to do, exactly, when the country is moving in a direction that you disagree with and shutting the opposition out of the political process, after seizing power through force?

A downvote is not an answer, btw.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago*

    That's not what it says. Your refusal to engage with evidence has you pretending you found a gotcha because you assume anything that disagrees with you has to be based on a flawed premise.

    You're literally ignoring the facts he presented (maidan was a coup, Donbas collectively decided to secede in a referendum). The people of the Donbas were resisting an attempted genocide as much as Gazans, you can listen to Poroshenko's statements about bombing their hospitals, having their women and children hiding in basements, you can see the indiscriminate shelling of civilian centers. Both of them were propped up by your government (the lapdog of the only empire on earth rn), and by you personally, from your stupid refusal to acknowledge actual imperialism and pretending the enemies of the State Department must be the enemies of all of us everywhere.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    I didn't say any of that shit.

    What I did was state a couple objective historical facts and then ask a question, one that none of the downvoters and none of the people who have replied to me (including you) have anything resembling an answer to.

    All y'all do when you get confronted by something you can't answer is downvote, fall back on lazy talking points, block, and ignore it. This makes your criticism very hard to take seriously, you just parrot the news, with no investigation or critical thought.

    Not all of modern Ukraine was part of Russia before the USSR, btw. When I said "it" I was referring specifically to the Donbass. Donbass was given to Ukraine, perhaps in the hope that the Russian population would influence the politics of the Ukrainian SSR in a way that was more cooperative with the rest of the Union. This is simply a fact, and astute readers will note that it's mostly tangential to my actual question, except in that establishes that many Russians have lived there historically.

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  • [+] 10 points 1 year ago (9 children)
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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    He fucked things harder

    Last when i checked Russia is winning the war, its economy is rising, its economical bloc is gaining traction while the US hegemony crumbles and US vassals are in complete shambles (a lot of which like the liberation of Sahel is directly possible only because NATO is currently being uncovered as paper tiger).

    I would say it's very distant from "fucking up".

    than a thousand pogroms in the Donbas could have done.

    What a nice thing to say, pogrom enjoyer. Donbass is one of the genocides we will never know how bad they would get because they were stopped in time. And if it wasn't, you probably wouldn't even cry the crocodile tears, beacuse what's a pogrom or hundred, right?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Might want to update your priors. Russia’s claiming a pyrrhic victory on the ground while losing irreplaceable assets and allies. US hegemony has been crumbling since the '00s, that’s nothing new. The vassals are, if anything, more militant and expansionist than ever (glances towards Israel)

    What lack of historical materialism does to a mfer.

    How can you count the dead in this war well over the million mark and say that with a straight face?

    I also suspected that you can't tell a difference between a genocide and a war where mainly members of genocidal organisations like AFU die, but you had to open your mouth and end the doubts. It always take a war to stop the nazis, always. But you people always shed tears over them unless they get to the level of III Reich or Israel (and often even then). I bet if USSR invaded nazi Germany in 1940 or if someone invaded Israel in october 2023 you would write such rot with a straight face too about them.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    you can’t tell a difference between a genocide and a war

    Talk about a lack of historical materialism. When the bulk of the casualties are unwilling conscripts and civilians, what do you think the difference is? Hell, the opening premise of the Russian invasion was to defend ethnic Russians. Much like with the US intervention in the former Yugoslavia and the de-Ba'athification of Iraq, this didn't simply end in the allied ethnic groups being sheltered. It kicked off a wave of reprisal killings facilitated by the occupying army.

    But you people always shed tears over them unless they get to the level of III Reich or Israel

    Whether you've got a Sudanese Civil War or a Kashmiri occupation or a 40 year long Drug War, the first step to end the conflict is to stop the killing. Escalation never facilitates peace. What we saw out of Russia was an enormous cross-border escalation. And what we saw out of NATO was an enormous retaliation. Now its a bloodbath with no end in sight, because both parties have convinced themselves they're Churchill and the other guy is Hitler.

    if someone invaded Israel in october 2023 you would write such rot with a straight face too about them

    Nobody was going to invade Iran in 2023 for the same reason nobody is going to invade North Korea after 2017. That game plan ended with the Six Day War. The only international solution to Israel in the modern day is containment and isolation, until the country can be de-radicalized through economic attrition and disarmed through treaty.

    Same as the ANC's allies used against the Boers in South Africa.

    If you think the Israel-Iran War is going to somehow end in a more peaceful Israel or Iran, you need to put down Elon Musk's ketamine and get back on that historical materialism you seem to care so much about.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    The World Bank just reclassified Russia as a high income country https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/world-bank-country-classifications-by-income-level-for-2024-2025

    Meanwhile, the IMF forecasts that Russian economy is set to grow faster than all the western economies https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/17/russia-forecast-to-grow-faster-than-advanced-economies-in-2024-imf.html

    I'm really not sure what it is you think Russia lost access to exactly given that they're part of BRICS which is a bigger economic bloc than the G7 at this point.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    The Russian ethnic minority and it’s treatment is a domestic issue.

    Hey that's exactly what Candice Owens said about how Hitler treated the jews

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Hey let's switch examples and see if your logic stands up. The name Los Angeles is Spanish. Because Spanish speakers have been there longer than English speakers. If the Spanish speakers don't like the president of the United States, does that mean it's perfectly acceptable for the Mexican government to provide Spanish speaking protesters in LA with artillery systems and missile batteries? Or is that fucking weird?

    A downvote is not an answer btw.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    Bruh

    Really telling on yourselves that yet another liberation movement reclaiming land that was stolen and an occupied and exploited to enrich empire is framed as the ultimate evil.

    Fucking gringos.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    The name Los Angeles is Spanish. Because Spanish speakers have been there longer than English speakers. If the Spanish speakers don’t like the president of the United States, does that mean it’s perfectly acceptable for the Mexican government to provide Spanish speaking protesters in LA with artillery systems and missile batteries?

    glances at the current President of the United States

    glances at the current President of Mexico

    I'm raising my little Casa Bonita style Mexican flag to signal that I approve.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    There is a mild secessionist movement in CA. People of all ethnicities in the city can dissaprove of the oppression taking place. Pre-2022, ask in Donbas was just autonomy from nazis shelling it relatively indiscriminantly. CA even if it were to ask for military help from Mexico or China, wouldn't have as first choice to join as one of their provinces. In both cases, independence is more about humanist self determination rather than ethnic loyalties even if the fascist oppression is centered on extermination of ethnic/liberal "sub humans"

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    Yes. I wish they would.

    Especially if the government said that those people were not allowed to participate in the political process, but given that the US political process is a joke and a sham, I don't have any sort of belief in "upholding its territorial integrity" or anything like that.

    Legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed, does it not?

    See how I was able to immediately provide a very clear answer to your question? Now do mine.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    So, do you remember how British colonists Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin went to France to negotiate for French military aid against the British, and how Lafayette arriving with that aid was vital to the success of the American Revolution? Well, I happen to be of the opinion that when people say that Trump is a fascist or is acting like a king, and that "in America, we don't do kings," that those words actually have meaning and aren't just empty slogans.

    The real question is, why do y'all think it would be bad for people resisting fascism to have access to artillery systems and missile batteries? 🤔

    Btw, still no answer to my original question.

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  • [+] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    your not answering questions either

    Didn’t read

    How do you know I'm not answering questions if you didn't read what I wrote? 🤔

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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (34 children)
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (30 children)

    This is completely false. It was seat of Crimean Khanate, vassal of Ottoman Empire, which was also hostile to Poland, Russia AND cossacks. And "deeply intertwined with the Ukrainian economy" was mostly looting, kidnapping, raping and murdering Ruthenian peasants (ancestors of both Ukrainians and local Russians) as part of one of biggest historical slave trades which Russia ended when it conquered that blight of humanity Khanate was.

    Your post is deeply ahistorical, disgusting and borders on slavery apologia, and you should be ashamed.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (23 children)

    The Soviets accelerated this

    Do you have any supporting evidence whatsoever for the claim that Russiafication was worse under the Soviets than under the tsar? Because if not, the mods are well within their rights to remove your unsupported claims as misinformation.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (22 children)

    Sure, here's a source: https://archive.org/details/acrossmoscowrive00brai

    The Soviets pursued korenization initially, which actually revived efforts towards Ukrainization. But this was later stopped and reversed to pursue a single Soviet identity with the Russian language. Ukrainian culture was suppressed and even Ukrainian membership of the communist party declined sharply. Russification intensified under Khrushchev and later Brezhnev.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (21 children)

    Sure, here’s a source: https://archive.org/details/acrossmoscowrive00brai

    That's an entire book, about an entirely different topic, written by the British ambassador working in the last few years of the USSR.

    Do you at least have a page number where he compares Ukraine during the USSR compared to Tsarist Russia? It is specifically the claim that Donbass was was more heavily suppressed than in Tsarist Russia that I'm disputing.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (20 children)

    Page 151 has what you're looking for:

    The reality was, of course, that Russian and later Soviet imperial rule was at least as brutal as that of other imperial powers. In their campaigns of Russification the Tsars imprisoned and exiled Finns, Ukrainians, and others who dared to practise their national language and sustain a national culture. The Communists continued the practice even more brutally under the guise of eradicating ‘bourgeois nationalism’. Large numbers of intellectuals, especially in Ukraine and the Baltic States, were killed or exiled by Stalin. Under his successors the executions were fewer but the pressures continued. Communist Parties, with their own local First Secretaries, existed in all the fifteen constituent republics of the Union save for Russia itself. Russians saw this as discrimination. In fact it was a sign that the Russians did not need their own party, since they dominated the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and exercised effective central control over the republican parties. Throughout the Soviet period discontent flared up from time to time in one or other of the constituent republics, and was brutally suppressed.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    The reality was, of course, that Russian and later Soviet imperial rule was at least as brutal as that of other imperial powers. In their campaigns of Russification the Tsars imprisoned and exiled Finns, Ukrainians, and others who dared to practise their national language and sustain a national culture. The Communists continued the practice even more brutally under the guise of eradicating ‘bourgeois nationalism’.

    So the British ambassador asserts that the Soviets did the same thing as the Tsars but it was "more brutal." What, specifically, does "more brutal" mean here? As in, more people affected? What were the numbers? Where did he get those? Am I just expected to take his word for it?

    Large numbers of intellectuals, especially in Ukraine and the Baltic States, were killed or exiled by Stalin. Under his successors the executions were fewer but the pressures continued.

    This is kind of interesting considering that you've claimed that the repression was most severe under his successors.

    Communist Parties, with their own local First Secretaries, existed in all the fifteen constituent republics of the Union save for Russia itself. Russians saw this as discrimination.

    Where does this information come from? Were there polls on whether Russians saw this as discrimination? Or is it anecdotal/vibes based, something that the British ambassador simply assumes the Russians must have felt?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    You're making the claims, you get the source. It's really not that hard.

    You don't have a source? It's ok. Don't make claims, only repeat things you checked the source for.

    No investigation, no right to speak.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You provided a second claim from somebody else. That's not a source. Sources include verifiable facts.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    If you had actually bothered to link the specific instances where he sources those claims, we would have read them.

    But you didn't, because you probably didn't read a book you want us to go on a wild goose chase for. Eyewitness accounts from anglos are only good enough to wipe your ass with and even then there's better alternatives.

    No facts then? Cool, I thought so.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    You trust an anti-communist british ambassador at their word?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I wonder if you'd apply the same standard in reverse. If a Chinese ambassador says something about the US, should I just take them at their word with no further evidence, until someone can prove that their claim is wrong?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    You're not going to find many books to the effect of, "see how hegemonic we aren't", so you mainly need to look at how the ussr treated republics within it, and especially preserved national minorities.

    The USSR academy of sciences published works in many languages, same for the state publishing houses.

    There are also some longer works on the languages of the USSR, because there was such a diversity of them and the constitution mandated their protection, but I haven't read them.

    Compare with the US (wiped out every indigenous language), or the UK (tried to do the same for Irish and Welsh). It's always projection with these anticommunist westerner historians.

    You can see the diversity here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_Soviet_Union

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Eastern Ukrainians weren't grateful to be bombed by NATO-funded banderites for several years in the donbass, nor were most Ukrainians glad to have their government overthrown in a US-backed coup in 2014.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The soviets did not expand russification, it was the opposite. They preserved and made official tons of minority languages (yiddish comes to mind), even establishing publishing houses in these languages. In addition to the SSRs that preserved the national identities and cultures of the given republics, the soviets instituted protections for minorities within these ssrs.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Initially this is absolutely true! Under Lenin particularly this was very much promoted "indiginenisation" iirc it's best translated as in English. But particularly under Khrushchev and later Breznhnev this very much changed, focusing on the single Soviet identity.

    They didn't really prosecute these minorities mind, just very much promoted the Soviet culture and Russian language in a large variety of ways.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Not two comments ago you were saying the soviets accelerated the Tsarist policies of forced russification. Either you know fuck all about Tsarist Russia and it's pogroms (and thus you're doing genocide apologia) or you don't know shit about the Soviet Union. Either way you should stop commenting on it and replying like you're aware of everything and that's just the thing you meant.

    Unless, of course, disinfo is the point.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Interesting how "russiafication intensified under the Soviets" when the Soviets are the ones who gave the territory to Ukraine 🤔

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago*

    Non sequitor?

    The claim you made was "Russiafication of the Donbass increased under the Soviets." The same Soviets who granted the Donbass to Ukraine. Nothing in your comment seems at all relevant to that.

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