[nothal]

I think a fundamental part of the reasons that Russia and the West cannot seem to escape a death-march to war is that Russia is so often conflated with the USSR. They are ideologically and politically distinct entities, even as much as some in the current state of Russia might wish for the old days.

[TulliusCicero]

Conflated? Russia literally declared itself the successor state of the USSR and assumed the latter's position on the UN Security Council.

[lostlogin]

> Russia and the West cannot seem to escape a death-march to war is that Russia is so often conflated with the USSR.

Do you think that invading your neighbours might be a contributing factor? We are in a thread about Russia shooting down an airliner, again. It’s pretty amazing to claim equal culpability here.

[ivan_gammel]

Russia legally declared itself a successor to USSR, took the UN seat, nuclear weapons, assumed debt and foreign assets, kept contacts with former communist allies like Cuba, so it’s not completely wrong. The topic of admission of Russia to NATO demonstrates this very well: Putin thought that Moscow is peer to Washington D.C. and needed special invitation (as if USSR resolved hostilities and wanted to partner with the Western bloc). NATO was treating him like any other country in Eastern Europe: apply and we will think about it — didn’t even bother to formally invite (IIRC Stoltenberg basically said in one of the interviews that even if the door was closed, the doorbell was working).

[etc-hosts]

Interesting, I did not know Russia assumed almost all of the USSR debt

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10nnw9s/comm...

[glogla]

It is not that Russia is USSR, it is that USSR was Russia + colonized, enslaved nations, like Russian Empire before it.

The evil of USSR did was because Russia was in charge.

[int_19h]

There was never such a thing as a Russian state that didn't include colonized neighbors.

Even if you unwind all the way to the Grand Duchy of Moscow, we'd have to talk about Kazan etc.

[nine_k]

How about Novgorod, which was a member of the Hanseatic Union back in the day, among other things?

[ivan_gammel]

I‘d reserve the word „colony“ for its original meaning. USSR was a dictatorship, but not a colonial state. As a matter of fact it even prioritized the reduction of inequality between the republics of the union for several decades.

[aguaviva]

I‘d reserve the word „colony“ for its original meaning.

Which per Wikipedia is simply:

   A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule.

And which was a perfectly reasonable description of the situation in all the peripheral republics, as well as many constituent parts of the RSFSR itself.

The fact that it might have also provided subsidies to some of the republics at various times (when not withholding food and/or engaging in massive, violent repressive actions against them) is entirely irrelevant to this definition. Recall that the Western colonial powers always bragged about all the infrastructure they built in their colonies, and South Africa always tried to point out the subsidies it provided its Bantustans, etc.

[ivan_gammel]

It is not a reasonable description, because there was no „foreign“ rule in USSR. E.g. Russia was not ruling over Ukraine, both were equal parts of the union and both Russian and Ukrainian republican governments were subjects to the rule of the communist party and union government. Same as Germany not being a colony of EU or contemporary Australia not being a colony of the Commonwealth. Russian colonial empire has fallen in 1917-1922 during the civil war.

[epolanski]

I think this is highly debatable, as even the European part of Russia hosted no less than dozens of different ethnicities. What you say makes little sense in the context of Russian and generally eastern European history.

[fnqi8ckfek]

Now this is gonna shock you, but USSR is Russia.

Russia created the USSR as a legal framework to exert power over its neighbors. This was engineered by Stalin himself.

The most important feature of Russian culture is the sentiment that Russia is great but the world is conspiring to put it down. That's 100% the same in present day Russia as it was in the USSR. They're the same.