may 31, 2024

Such a country as the Russian Federation did not exist until 1991

It could very well not exist, and it would be better if it did not exist. The foundation of this artificial country was laid by Lenin and the Bolsheviks at the beginning of the 20th century.

Of course, you can write a whole monograph (and more than one) on this topic, but I don’t have time or money for a monograph, so I will write briefly, in the most general terms.

In 1917, the dynastic Russian Empire collapsed. An empire is a state that has gone beyond ethnic boundaries, has a certain core and subordinate territories inhabited by other peoples. The process of the collapse of the empire is the separation of the former enslaved peoples from the “core”.

But where was the core of the Russian Empire?

This is where the problems begin. Because the state-building myth of the Russian Empire placed this core on the lands that for centuries – in places up to 500 years – were not part of it and did not participate in its construction. The concept of the “triune nation” blurred the concept of the contours of this core even more. No one had ever outlined the lands of the Great Russians. They were everywhere and nowhere.

Lenin and other Bolsheviks seemed to compete with “Russia – the prison of the peoples” and Great Russian chauvinism, but in reality they gave the future Russians a gigantic territory, which they consider their own – and not enough!

That’s right – it was given.

The Russian Empire was not a country of “Russians”, it was the ethnically very colorful possessions of the Rurikovichs, and then the Romanovs. A huge part of the lands were not “original” not only for the Great Russians, but even for the Slavs in general .

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At the end of the 19th century and at the time of the first census, the Great Russians made up 44% of the empire’s population. At the same time, they received about 80% of its territory from the Bolsheviks. For comparison: Ukrainians made up almost 18% of the population, and about 2% of their territories were cut (in the case of Belarusians – 4.6% and 0.9%, respectively).

And these people whined that they were “robbed”? At their expense, they say, they gave out candy to everyone?

Yes, formally the RSFSR was not a “national republic”. Russian nationalists often complained about this. As if not understanding that their “national republic” would be much smaller in terms of territory (and should and should be).

As a matter of fact, instead of a “national apartment”, the Russians got an entire residential complex.

How did it happen?

Strictly speaking, more or less by accident. There is no evidence that the Bolsheviks cared about the interests of future Russians from the beginning. Great Russian chauvinism has forgotten this since the time of mature Stalin. Previously, the Bolsheviks thought of themselves as Europeans and Westerners, bearers of the ideas of enlightenment and modernism, reformers of the whole world. And they dreamed of a “World Socialist Soviet Republic” (from the text of the 1924 Constitution).

In fact, the Bolshevik state was supposed to be unitary according to the plan. Because Marx said that it should be so. Until the last moment, they were completely against federalism. Lenin and Stalin were equally opposed to him as early as 1917.

But they knew how to make tactical concessions in order to establish their power. And under federalism there were many peoples enslaved by the empire.

Of course, these peoples – including Ukrainians and Belarusians – considered the creation of autonomies as a step towards independence. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, went for federalization (in a broad sense – including the creation of the USSR) in order to reduce the costs of joining territories and establishing their power there.

” At the time of the October Revolution, a whole number of Russian nationalities found themselves in a state of complete separation and complete detachment from each other, due to which the federation turned out to be a step forward – from the separation of the working masses of these nationalities to their convergence, to their unification… The specific weight of the national movement turned out to be much more serious, and the path to the unification of nations is much more difficult than it might have seemed before, in the period before the war, or in the period before the October Revolution. (Stalin’s 1924 comment on his own 1917 article titled Against Federalism.)

Actually, the RSFSR was not a republic of any people, but a rough version of what the USSR would later become. That is, the actual state of the Bolsheviks.

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Stalin was still stupid and thought that it was possible to join the future Soviet republics to the RSFSR with the rights of autonomy. Now the Russian imperialists whine that the German agent Lenin did not allow him to do this because he “hated everything Russian.” In reality, Lenin was simply a little smarter or more cunning. This option was fatal – if they tried to push through it, the Soviet experiment would have ended much earlier. That is why Lenin proposed the model of the USSR.

And in this way, a quasi-national republic of Russians appeared de facto.

In general, republics on the territory of post-imperial provinces were created where there were powerful national liberation movements. Who, including with weapons in their hands, advocated the implementation of their national project. Where there was no such rise and there were no forces advocating the creation of national entities, they were not created. If it was relatively easy to strangle, they strangled.

Or if such an entity looked too dangerous, such as the State of Idel-Ural or the Republic of Northern Ingria, etc.

Republics were not handed out like candy. The only such republic that became the “Russian Federation” in 1991 was the RSFSR. And I will emphasize once again – it appeared by accident.

The “thousand-year history” of this Russian Federation is just a crazy myth.

https://espreso.tv/poglyad-rosiya-e-shtuchnoyu-krainoyu-stvorenoyu-leninim