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The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Opposing the Concept of Establishing Unions of States on its Western Borders in 1939–45, as Reported by the Soviet Press

100%

Miszewski D.

Institute of National Remembrance Review

2021-2022

vol. 3

287-369

In 1939–40, in the agreements imposed by the Soviet Union by force on Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, these nations were forced to withdraw from the Baltic Entente, and in the agreements of 1940 and 1944, it forbade Finland from joining the Scandinavian states. It also rejected the right of “small states”-Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as Yugoslavia and Greece (1942)-to join plans for regional integration supported by Great Britain. It should be recalled that in the interwar period, the Soviet Union had opposed Aristide Briand’s plan (1929) for a united Europe, which Soviet propaganda called “the holy capitalist alliance”. The Soviet Union policy believed that as a socialist state it resolved national, economic and social problems in the spirit of brotherhood and cooperation between nations. Capitalist states were allegedly incapable of equal unions of states. The Soviet Union described itself as a union of republics which were formally independent and equal states. In fact their independence was superficial, and the republican institutions were strictly controlled by the Communist party and the Soviet secret services. In foreign policy, the concept of Soviet federalism served to justify the successive annexation of neighbouring nations as republics “liberated” by the Red Army. The Soviet goal was to unite Europe, and even the whole world, on the basis of Communist ideology.

European imperialism and colonialism in Africa: conceptual lessons for understanding the former Soviet Union and present day Russia

86%

Yakovlyev M.

African Journal of Economics, Politics and Social Studies

2022

issue 1

31-39

This article claims that the legacy of European imperialism and colonialism in Africa can be conceptually compared to the legacy of Russian and Soviet imperialism and colonialism in the former USSR republics and the nations of Central and Easter Europe that were under Soviet dominations. Despite the obvious fact that the historical conditions and paths of African nations that were colonized, repressed and ruled by the European empires differ significantly from the experience of the nations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, that were conquered and colonized by the Russian Empire and later on were subjects to the Soviet rule, it is suggested in this article, that the conceptual lessons drawn from the vast literature dedicated to the studies of the aftermath of colonialism in Africa can enrich the scholarly efforts aimed at understanding the post-soviet spaces and different processes in it. What is meant by “conceptual lessons” is methodological opportunity for a different perspective or even a different lens through which the legacy of the Soviet rule and the current Russian neo-imperial foreign politics can be better understood. Much is written about the European imperialism and its colonial policies, however there is still some reluctance in applying the methodological framework of postcolonial studies to the former Soviet Union and present day Russia. Scholars all over the world studied the colonial legacies that African nations struggled to overcome and there are topics of particular relevance to the study of the post-soviet space: the processes of post-colonial nation building, the roles of new national elites, the ideological choices in foreign policies of newly independent nations, the aftermath of the policies of assimilation, the imperial “ideologies of superiority”, the economic consequences of colonialism, the role of churches and religious organizations in supporting colonial suppression – as conceptual topics, all of them can be studied critically, also in a comparative perspective, to have a much better understanding of the former soviet and current Russian foreign politics and policies.

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1 African Journal of Economics, Politics and Social Studies

1 Institute of National Remembrance Review

1 Miszewski D.

1 Yakovlyev M.

2 2022

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The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Opposing the Concept of Establishing Unions of States on its Western Borders in 1939–45, as Reported by the Soviet Press

European imperialism and colonialism in Africa: conceptual lessons for understanding the former Soviet Union and present day Russia