Just please flag this if you see this comment as being too political, as in this forum we are mostly spared of these wrangles.
But anyway, I would encourage reading "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Преданная революция: Что такое СССР и куда он идет?" by the exiled Soviet Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky to get perspective whether the peaople (Narodnost народность)were really represented in the Soviet nomenklatura (номенклату́ра). At least almost every Finnish speaking representative from Karelia were "neutralized", leaving the previously most prosperious part of Finland in the state as it is now. Finland would not take it back even it was paid for it.
To be (less) political, and apologies if this comes across as insensitive - all of those discussions (of which I've read many) are post-facto. The terrible things some power structures do to dissidents are indeed terrible.
My point, I guess, is that they happened. And the power structure that did it, did it from Moscow.
Trying to perform something humans do to one another, assigning blame, to a successor state who is very much not human, is the wrong way to look at the thing.
I prefer to see the Russian invasion as the delayed violence from the Soviet Union's breakup. Russian politicians were very much in control of all of Eastern Europe, and the Moscow political class was going to build a political case to try and retake Ukraine by force. That the violence did not happen in 1989 probably prevented nuclear war, and the fact it is happening now and not in 2032 is probably also preventing nuclear war.
I can’t reply to comment under this that claimed that people in Moscow were from all across USSR so I’m replying here.
The Soviet Union was still ruled by Russians [0]… “ From 1919 until 1991, 89 members of the Politburo were Russians (which makes up 68 percent). In distant second were Ukrainians, who had 11 members in the Politburo, making up 8 percent. In third place are both ethnic Jews and Georgians, who had 4 members respectively.”
It was less than the population since by population , 80% are Russian [1], but still shows that the USSR was ruled by Russians.
Well everyone was "Russian" officially. Khrushov was Ukrainian, same can be said with Gorbachev. Many Armenians. There is a concentrated effort to erase all the contributions of other nations of USSR and make Russians as the only builders and inheritors.
And this is different from Tsarist Russia where very few non-Russains were allowed to rise in the ranks. That's why large part of Communist movement was comprised from minorities since they were the ones who suffered more from the brutal Tsarist regime.
The fact that political stars could rise to the top does not negate the point that the main ethnical actor and benefactor of the Soviet Union were the Russians. Those star Ukrainians had to please the Russians first and foremost.
It's the same thing in Communist China. Nobody can displease the Han.
Stalin was born in Georgia of course. But where did he live when he was doing his reign of terror?
Moscow.
Hitler was from Austria, but he still ran things from Berlin. And Berlin is where the power structure was, and still is.
It's always more than one man, even if the man is a dictator. The dictator is just the one who survives the power structures environment in a way to be 'the top'. And that power structure exists in a place.
The vast, vast majority of everything that actually happens under a power structure is done by everyone who ISN'T the dictator. And those folks don't just disappear when the dictator dies.
As to if a countries power structure represents a people or not, meh. It always says it does, and it draws resources, taxes, and conscripts from them. So regardless of any individuals take on if they are 'represented' or how that power is acquired, 'it is the people' near as I can tell.
And many of them are happy to murder anyone who says otherwise to prove it.
Stalin and most other dictators bring their own power structures. The capital city is just that. As an example, some roman dictators/emperors never even went to Rome, but still had strong power structures.
And just because it has to be pointed out, Stalin didn't do his reign of terror from the Kremlin in Moscow, but from his dacha in Kuntsevo.
Hitler also spent most of his reign of terror from Wolfsschanze and Obersalzberg. He definitely had his own power structure, completely independent of the city of Berlin.
Stalin used (and took over) Lenin’s power base, and built up more as time went on. He didn’t ‘bring his own’. Even despite all the purges, for instance, the Red Army was there before and after him. The NKVD, KGB, MDB all had predecessor agencies (some back to the Tsars even, but the NKVD was first formed in 1917).
And Kuntsevo is in Moscow. Literally.
And if you’re asserting that Hitler didn’t need, or use, the Wehrmacht or other organs of state power (including the Gestapo, which was consolidated out of the prior Prussian Secret Police), and didn’t spend most of his time in Berlin, then I don’t know what to say.
Yes it is, but it's not in the Kremlin, where the official seat is.
Both Stalin and Hitler were independent of their capital cities for conducting their rule. Dictators and emperors are not mere symbolic heads of state, and their network of people means much more than where they sit to conduct their business. This network is not necessarily connected to the capital.
I think we're maybe debating semantics, but I strongly disagree with the idea that the capital cities are more influential than the dictators and emperors. As in my example of Roman emperors who hardly even went to Rome.
Politics is much more about abstract human connections, than brick and stone buildings. We are a very mobile species after all.
But anyway, I would encourage reading "The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Преданная революция: Что такое СССР и куда он идет?" by the exiled Soviet Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky to get perspective whether the peaople (Narodnost народность)were really represented in the Soviet nomenklatura (номенклату́ра). At least almost every Finnish speaking representative from Karelia were "neutralized", leaving the previously most prosperious part of Finland in the state as it is now. Finland would not take it back even it was paid for it.