this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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It's unsurprising that many Russians look back fondly to the time when they had imperial domination over more than a dozen foreign countries, looting them for resources and using them as military puppets.
You said:
Are you backing down on that statement now or are you saying that Russia isn't in Eastern Europe?
Russia is sometimes included in that, I wasn't. My apologies for being unclear. Russia is the former imperial center of the Soviet Empire, so they benefited dramatically from the labor and resources of their colonies. They also never adopted the kind of modern democratic capitalism which was a competing ideology to communism during the Cold War, instead adopting a form of fascism, so I thought it was obvious to anyone that when making the comparison between capitalism and communism in Eastern Europe, a good faith participant in a discussion would look at Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, etc.
Silly of me the think that someone who lived in Russia during the USSR would know what it's like to live under communism
When you're contrasting communism and capitalism, it's strange to do it by asking someone in a fascist kleptocracy whether they miss being at the heart of a massive empire
Russia is about the only former communist nation which is worse off now, excepting perhaps Ukraine - blame Russia for that, too - and it's because they're Russia, not because they're ex communists.
Non-russians especially in Central Asia voted to not dissolve the USSR at a much higher rate than Russians in 1991, so claiming it was a Russian empire is a bit nonsensical.
Check out the sources on this Wikipedia article
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum
Mm hmm.