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> During the Cold War, ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union were treated just as bad as US minorities. This part is simply not true. > Today the situation is
by _pi 2y ago
> During the Cold War, ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union were treated just as bad as US minorities.
This part is simply not true.
> Today the situation is even worse.
This part is.
The USSR was never institutionally racist. Russian chauvanism was still a thing in the USSR and that was relic of the Tsarist era that keeps on giving.
The USSR's repressions were not a cut and dry wealth transfer between ethnicities unlike the US policies.
At their worst in terms of American morality, institutionally targeted programs were to enforce political control and break nationalistic tendencies of ethnic groups.
The vast majority of the repressions in the USSR were a result of the explosive growth of productive forces. It's very hard to make the case for the USSR that the benefits of those productive forces inherently benefitted Russians over everyone else.
It's very easy to make the case in the US for white supremacy.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> The USSR was never institutionally racist. I think you are misusing “institutionally” and mean something more like “openly” or “explicitly”, because everything you cite in support of this describes rather than refutes institutional racism.
- _pi 2y ago> because everything you cite in support of this describes rather than refutes institutional racism. Please expand on this.
- dragonwriter 2y agoInstitutional racism includes institutional policies, practices, and structures with racially/ethnically biased effects, not just those with explicit racial/ethnic targeting, and even moreso not just those based on racial/ethnic animus. The justifications upthread are a mix of explaining deliberate bias as not based on animus and explaining biased effects as not being deliberate bias; neither refutes institutional racism.
- _pi 2y agoOkay how about this. Tell me which policies of the USSR were racist, who they were racist against and why you think they were racist.
- kelnos 2y agoYou mention one yourself: > institutionally targeted programs were to enforce political control and break nationalistic tendencies of ethnic groups. If that's not "institutional racism", I don't know what is.
- _pi 2y ago"enforce political control and nationalistic tendencies of ethnic groups"? This literally means stop nationalist secession movements. Literally no country on earth basically lets their citizens secede dude. Russians were ALSO the target of such programs. It's like saying state atheism is uniquely Islamophobic or uniquely anti christian or uniquely antisemitic. I'm not saying it's not repression. It totally is, but it's not racist.
- azmodeus 2y agoLooking at your statements from a Hungarian perspective, I think you are wrong 1. The USSR always discriminated non Russian speakers. 2. Collectivisation and military occupation was used as a large scale wealth transfer. In addition forced reeducation camps and population swaps were used to put Russian observers into positions where they were first amongst equals Russian imperialism has always been the core of the Soviet union. When people rised up against Russian occupation they got slaughtered in Hungary in 1956 and later in 1968 with the Prague Spring Russian oppression continued