this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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I personally think Russia's long-standing attitude and justifications for undermining and attacking Ukraine are imperialist. It seems Russians view Ukraine as traditionally Russian, even the Ukraine has developed their own national identity. Same thing with how China views Taiwan and Tibet, they use past history to hand-wave away any claims of self-determinism and develop a narrative that manipulation and threats are justified.
(I'm not a geopolitical expert and willing to hear good-faith arguments, but anyone who's just snarky or insulting will just get ignored. I'm here to learn, not to fight.)
But why? What is your understanding of imperialism that qualifies Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
I guess it's the textbook definition? A larger nation using its resources (cultural soft power, or military power) to extend their authority over a smaller country. Usually for economic or territorial ends. I apply it to Russia/Ukraine because I put more stock in Ukraine's sovereignty-from-cultural-identity than I do in Russia's historical claims over it. It seems adjacent to decolonization to me.
Don't forget all the russification brought to eastern Europe by the bullshit imperalist Soviet union.
Should they have made everybody speak French or English? To compete with the West economically the East needed a common language. How should the language have been chosen?
What they should have done is let countries keep their sovereignty. Or are you saying that ecomonic competition with the west is a valid reason for what Russia did to eastern Europe?
What would have happened if they had let the countries keep their sovereignity?
Why? Is countries having their souvereignty and agency not enough?
Least of all eastern Europe might not hate Russia as much as they do now.
Countries with souvereignity usually have a capitalistic elite. For the elite that's enough, but for the people?
Without the USSR the US would have been able to treat the countries much earlier like they treat South America. I doubt that people would have been happy with it. But they would hate Russia much less.
Well with the USSR, countries were occupied, countless people murdered and exiled, families destroyed, and forcefully replaced with russians who would influence the future of their states forever.
What the USSR did with russification is just like what the israelies are doing in the west bank with their "settlers". The USSR was an imperialist colonizer and was fucking awful; not some heroic response to the west.
Sent there by a Georgian. Unless people want to end Communism, what does it matter if there are resettled people? The party had to create work for everybody. The EU has free movement. It will end the same way, only that there will be an elite that owns everything but doesn't share.
I have read about resettlements gone wrong but has the USSR resettled people without offering new land?
It "had to create work for everybody"? By deporting native people from their land and replacing them with russians? That sounds normal to you?
Without offering new land? russia straight up stole the land from these people and gave them to russians in the name of their fake communism which just meant shipping resources to moscow as the expense of the countries they illegally occupied.
Was it entire people or just the elite?
Do you have numbers? I have seen numbers that like before the war, Russia exported oil for cheap. The fewer resources compared to today were caused by the smaller economy.
Here's just Estonia: SOVIET REPRESSION AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES IN ESTONIA
Before Soviet occupation:
Population of Estonia: ~1.13 million
Ethnic Estonians: ~1.0 million (~88%)
Ethnic Russians: ~90,000 (~8%)
Soviet repression:
People deported from Estonia: ~50,000
June 1941 mass deportation: ~10,000
March 1949 mass deportation: ~20,000–21,000
Men forcibly mobilized and transported into the USSR in 1941: ~32,000–34,000
People murdered, imprisoned, or deported by the Soviet regime: more than 75,000
Identified victims who were killed or died in imprisonment/forced resettlement and never returned: more than 22,000
By 1989, near the end of Soviet occupation:
Population of Estonia: ~1.57 million
Ethnic Estonians: ~963,000 (61.5%)
Ethnic Russians: ~475,000 (~30%)
Ukrainians: ~48,000
Belarusians: ~28,000
Demographic change:
Ethnic Russian population increased from ~90,000 to ~475,000
Net increase in ethnic Russian population: ~385,000
Estonian share of the population fell from ~88% to 61.5%
Despite nearly 50 years passing, there were slightly fewer ethnic Estonians living in Estonia in 1989 than before Soviet occupation.
This isn't some Russo phobia or anti communism thing. What they have done is fucking awful and anyone who spews some bullshit about NATO expanding and threatening russia can go fuck themselves. Russia represents an existential threat to its neighbors and it has no one to blame for that sentiment besides itself.
I asked for numbers about:
What your numbers don't show is the class war. The people who were deported, were they part of the elite or regular citizens?
It also seems like the migrants are not only Russians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Estonia
What I don't understand is the logic of the resettlement. Most migrants are in one county close to Russia. That's only a bit more helpful to influence the population than having them live across the border in Russia.
Glad you're focused on how they shipped more resources to moscow and leningrad instead of the human impact. Tells a lot about you.
Don't bother with him.
He's so deep into the Authoritarian/tankie rabbithole, that he hasn't realised he turned into a fascist imperialist by pleading that countries shouldn't have sovereignty and that the forceful relocation of a peoples against their will is a good thing.
I didn't, but you haven't continued that part:
Btw, your human impact argument is almost entirely about the racial purity of Estonia. I think you don't see the danger of that. The capitalistic elite uses that identity to let the workers fight against Communism and now Russia. Once control is established, wages will be reduced as you can see in Germany after reunification. You can't rely on trickle down economics. On top, within the EU, Estonian companies may not even be owned by Estonians.
Then Estonians will not be able to afford children and the companies will seek migrant workers, as you can see in other parts of the EU.
Look at the elections of South American governments and the US prison population or US health care. That's the final development you are rooting for.
That doesn't mean that we should bring back the USSR or hand over Europe to Putin. Just make sure that your aversion of Russia isn't used against you.
This is what I mean, by that definition you can cover almost every war. You don't see smaller nations invading larger, more powerful ones. You can even use it to say the US influence in Ukraine over the last 30 has been imperialist. The Norman invasion of 1066 becomes imperialist. Can you really not see how meaningless a definition that is?
Only if your reading comprehension sucks...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism
Well, I mean, as an American I can mention a couple of important wars to my homeland that weren't driven by these motivations. Shall I elucidate?
Agreed as very well known and easy examples that prove not all wars got the definition.
Plus what in the world is wrong with it fitting 80-90% of wars for at least one side of the conflict? It is easily one of the most likely reasons for counties to go to war.
Please stop engaging with this troll, they're not operating in good faith, they just want to engage in russian atrocity apologia
You mean the revolution? Because I'm pretty sure you aren't about the raise the civil war, where the more powerful north imposed it's will on the confederacy through military power.
As I understand them,
It wasn't until the post-WWII era of the Cold War that America shifted gears from a habit of isolationism to global interventionism, and began a long line of imperialist atrocities.
I'm only bringing these wars up because they're the ones I'm familiar with - I'm sure there are plenty of examples of wars across the globe, even in more modern eras, that Western Liberals wouldn't call imperialist.
The US Revolution was justified as being in protest against taxes, but taxes raised to pay for the Seven Years War which (chronologically, if not causally) began with George Washington ambushing French troops and resulted in colonists gaining significant territory. One of the nowadays less romanticised causes of the revolution itself was the block on westward expansion of the colonies by the British government too, incidentally.
Your outline there also ignores the many wars and atrocities that describe the westward expansion of the USA (and beyond, the Philippines for example) as it actually did happen too, they very much did not begin their imperialism with the start of the cold war.
That's a really interesting perspective on the precursors to the US Revolutionary War, and exactly the kind of think I hope to learn about in these exchanges. I will also concede that Manifest Destiny was, to be glib, manifestly imperialistic and one of the many grand sins of my country.
Morality doesn't change facts. If it is imperialistic then it is, no matter what it means to the Confederacy. At that point it is also possible to question if imperialism is always a bad thing.
Okey doke, I'll concede that. I'll admit that I overextended myself rhetorically. I still maintain the point that I don't think there was anything explicitly imperialistic about the Civil War, though.
Are you saying the south didn't want to preserve slavery? You'll note your definition of imperialism doesn't include anything about right or wrong, just one nation imposing it's will on another. This is what people mean when they describe liberal politics as vibe based - it fits the definition exactly, but you don't feel it's imperialist because it was the morally right thing to do.
While America wasn't the imperialist power in the world wars, they were thoroughly imperialist wars, by either definition, between European countries.
It was a war of secession, they were part of the same nation....
According to one side. I don't think there would had been a war if they weren't actually split. One side declared itself separate, and the other militarily brought them back under their political control. It fits your definition.
Hey I don’t have time to do a whole infodump style reply but off the dome Washington profited immensely from the revolutionary war because he was a land speculator and the us needed to get into ww2 so it could stop the empire of japan from taking control of all the island territories it chased Spain off of.
I wouldn’t personally call the first example imperialism because you gotta make a distinction between Byzantine and American somehow and the one from imperialism the highest stage of capitalism seems appropriate and answers a lot of questions but the second one is literally imperialism by any definition you wanna call it.
Also even if you fully reject Lenin’s work you gotta grapple with the historical facts that the eastern states didn’t really create a program of mass import of raw materials from the western expansion states and complete control over the western states government to the detriment of the people who lived in them to the extent that the nation they represented did to the Philippines for example. The distinction between imperialism and colonialism for the modern age helps with that and fits many other modern examples, most notably israel. Israel isnt doing imperialism to Palestinians, they are doing colonialism.
Regarding Americas western expansion I am compressing a million pages of history and some really powerful counterexamples into a did they didn’t they statement here and I know that.
Like I said I don’t have time to do the other two without referring to a bunch of books to get my claims perfectly exactly irrefutably correct on the (no offense intended) Redditor instance.
Most wars have economic causes and impacts, but that alone does not imperialism make. There are "unprovoked punching down" as well as interventionist components that I don't think describe America's intentions or entries into either World War.
Either way, the argument I'm trying to refute is that me, as a Western Liberal, view any kind of modern war as imperialist, and thus dilute the definition of the term. I think I've demonstrated that while I don't adhere to Lenin's more strict definition, I don't want to use the term lightly, either.
I'm also not trying to make an argument that the USA isn't imperialist, in any strictness of the term. Western Liberals aren't a monolith, my bud.
I don’t care about whatever argument you’re having. It’s extremely inaccurate to claim Americas entry into ww2 was diplomatically motivated when Japan was taking by military force islands that had been part of an extractive zone contested by them and America. It’s literally two imperial powers low key fighting over their periphery then one goes PISS NUKE INCOMING.
Again, I do not care about whatever argument you’re having. If anything I want you to be able to integrate more information into your understanding of imperialism. It’s really hard for us as westerners to do that when so much of the groundwork of our historical understanding is jingoism and great man and it’s good you’re interrogating your own ideas.
Also you should probably start with the Spanish American war as your American point of entry into imperialism (you say here “global interventionism” but idk wth that means.)
Right on, as I said, I'm here to learn too. And I agree that the education and milieu I got in Florida in the 80s is pretty poor. What recommendations would you make to find out about these subjects?
BTW what I meant by "global interventionism" is how the US Government really ramped up manipulating the internal affairs of countries across all over the world, both depth and breadth. Twilight Struggle is one of my favorite board games, because of how much history I learned from it.
You're a sealioning fascist
Yeah, yeah, can you give me a definition without opening Wikipedia or not?