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Soviet Empire

January 07, 2023

Soviet Empire is a political term which is used in Sovietology to describe the actions and power of the Soviet Union, with an emphasis on its dominant role in other countries.

The greatest extent of the Soviet Empire, the territory which the Soviet Union politically, economically and militarily dominated as of 1959–1960, after the Cuban Revolution but before the official 1961 Sino-Soviet split (total area: c. 35,000,000 km2)[a]

In the wider sense, the term refers to the country's foreign policy during the Cold War, which has been characterized as imperialist: the nations which were part of the Soviet Empire were nominally independent countries with separate governments that set their own policies, but those policies had to stay within certain limits decided by the Soviet Union. These limits were enforced by the threat of intervention by Soviet forces, and later the Warsaw Pact. Major military interventions took place in East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980-81 and Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. Countries in the Eastern Bloc were considered satellite states.

Characteristics

Although the Soviet Union was not ruled by an emperor, and declared itself anti-imperialist and a people's democracy, it exhibited tendencies common to historic empires.[1][2] The notion of "Soviet empire" often refers to a form of "classic" or "colonial" empire with communism only replacing conventional imperial ideologies such as Christianity or monarchy, rather than creating a revolutionary state. Academically the idea is seen as emerging with Richard Pipes' 1957 book The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923, but it has been reinforced, along with several other views, in continuing scholarship.[3]: 41  Several scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states.[1] The Soviet Union practiced colonialism similar to conventional imperial powers.[2][4][5][6][7][8][9]

The Soviets pursued internal colonialism in Central Asia. For example, the state's prioritized grain production over livestock in Kyrgyzstan, which favored Slavic settlers over the Kyrgyz natives, thus perpetuating the inequalities of the tsarist colonial era.[7] Maoists argued that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade, or social imperialism.[10][11] Another dimension of Soviet imperialism is cultural imperialism, the Sovietization of culture and education at the expense of local traditions.[12] Leonid Brezhnev continued a policy of cultural Russification as part of Developed Socialism, which sought to assert more central control.[13] Seweryn Bialer argued that the Soviet state had an imperial nationalism.[14]

From the 1930s through the 1950s, Joseph Stalin ordered population transfers in the Soviet Union, deporting people (often entire nationalities) to underpopulated remote areas. The policy officially ended in the Khrushchev era, with many of the nationalities allowed to return in 1957. However, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev refused the right of return for Crimean Tatars, Russian Germans and Meskhetian Turks.[15] In 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Russia declared the Stalinist mass deportations to be a "policy of defamation and genocide".[16]

The historical relationship between Russia (the dominant republic in the Soviet Union) and these Eastern European countries helps explain their longing to eradicate the remnants of Soviet culture. Poland and the Baltic states epitomize the Soviet attempt to build uniform cultures and political systems. According to Dag Noren, Russia was seeking to constitute and reinforce a buffer zone between itself and Western Europe so as to protect itself from potential future attacks from hostile Western European countries.[14] The Soviet Union had lost 26 to 27 million lives over the course the Second World War.[17] To prevent a recurrence of such costly warfare, Soviet leaders believed that they needed to establish a hierarchy of political and economic dependence between neighboring states and the USSR.[14]

During the Brezhnev era, the policy of "Developed Socialism" declared the Soviet Union to be the most complete socialist country—other countries were "socialist", but the USSR was "developed socialist"—explaining its dominant role and hegemony over the other socialist countries.[18] This and the interventionist Brezhnev Doctrine, permitting the invasion of other socialist countries, led to characterisation of the USSR as an empire.[13]

Soviet influence in the "socialist-leaning countries" was mainly political and ideological rather than economically exploitative: the Soviet Union pumped enormous amounts of "international assistance" into them in order to secure influence,[19] ultimately to the detriment of its own economy. The Soviet Union sought a group of countries which would rally to its cause in the event of an attack from Western countries, and support it in the context of the Cold War.[20] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation declared itself the successor state, and recognized $103 billion of Soviet foreign debt while also claiming $140 billion of Soviet assets abroad.[19]

Economic expansion did, however, play a significant role in Soviet motivation to spread influence in its satellite territories. These new territories would ensure an increase in the global wealth which the Soviet Union would have a grasp on.[20]

Soviet officials from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic intertwined this economic opportunity with a potential for migration. In fact, they saw in these Eastern European countries the potential of a great workforce. They offered a welcome to them upon the only condition that they work hard and achieve social success. This ideology was shaped on the model of the meritocratic, 19th-century American foreign policy.[20]

Formal and informal empire

Scholars discussing Soviet empire have discussed it as a formal empire or informal empire. In a more formal interpretation of "Soviet empire", this meant absolutism, resembling Lenin's description of the tsarist empire as a "prison of the peoples" except that this "prison of the peoples" had been actualized during Stalin's regime after Lenin's death.[3]: 41–42 

Another view, especially of the non-Stalinist eras, sees the Soviet empire as constituting an "informal empire" over nominally sovereign states in the Warsaw Pact due to Soviet pressure and military presence.[21] The Soviet informal empire depended on subsidies from Moscow.[22] The informal empire in the wider Warsaw Pact also included linkages between Communist Parties.[23] Some historians consider a more multinational-oriented Soviet Union emphasizing its socialist initiatives, such as Ian Bremmer, who describes a "matryoshka-nationalism" where a pan-Soviet nationalism included other nationalisms.[3]: 48  Eric Hobsbawn argued that the Soviet Union had effectively designed nations by drawing borders.[3]: 45  Dmitri Trenin wrote that by 1980, the Soviet Union had formed both a formal and informal empire.[24]

The informal empire would have included Soviet economic investments, military occupation, and covert action in Soviet-aligned countries. The studies of informal empire have included Soviet influence on East Germany[23] and 1930s Xinjiang.[25][26] From the 1919 Karakhan Manifesto to 1927, diplomats of the Soviet Union would promise to revoke concessions in China, but the Soviets secretly kept tsarist concessions such as the Chinese Eastern Railway, as well as consulates, barracks, and churches.[27][28] After the Sino-Soviet conflict (1929), the Soviet Union regained the Russian Empire's concession of the Chinese Eastern Railway and was held until its return in 1952.[28]

Alexander Wendt suggested that by the time of Stalin's Socialism in one country alignment, socialist internationalism "evolved into an ideology of control rather than revolution under the rubric of socialist internationalism" internally within the Soviet Union. By the start of the Cold War it evolved into a "coded power language" that was once again international, but applied to the Soviet informal empire. At times the USSR signaled toleration of policies of satellite states indirectly, by declaring them consistent or inconsistent with socialist ideology, essentially recreating a hegemonic role. Wendt argued that a "hegemonic ideology" could continue to motivate actions after the original incentives were removed, and argued this explains the "zeal of East German Politburo members who chose not to defend themselves against trumped-up charges during the 1950s purges."[23]: 704 

Analyzing the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Koslowski and Kratochwil argued that a postwar Soviet "formal empire" represented by the Warsaw Pact, with Soviet military role and control over of member states' foreign relations, had evolved into an informal suzerainty or "Ottomanization" from the late 1970s to 1989. With Gorbachev's relinquishing of the Brezhnev Doctrine in 1989, the informal empire reduced in pressure to a more conventional sphere of influence, resembling Finlandization but applied to the erstwhile East Bloc states, until the Soviet fall in 1991. By contrast "Austrianization" would have been a realist model of great power politics by which the Soviets would have hypothetically relied on Western guarantees to keep an artificial Soviet sphere of influence. The speed of reform in the 1989 to 1991 period made both a repeat of Finlandization and Austrianization impossible for the Soviet Union.[29][30]

Allies of the Soviet Union

 
The Soviet Union is seen in red while states in light pink were satellites. Yugoslavia, a Soviet ally from 1945 to 1948 and non-aligned state thereafter, is marked in purple. Albania, a state which ceased being allied to the Soviet Union in the 1960s after the Sino-Soviet split, is marked in orange.

Warsaw Pact

These countries were the closest allies of the Soviet Union and were also members of the Comecon, a Soviet-led economic community founded in 1949. The members of the Warsaw Pact, sometimes called the Eastern Bloc, were widely viewed as Soviet satellite states. These countries were occupied (or formerly occupied) by the Red Army, and their politics, military, foreign and domestic policies were dominated by the Soviet Union. The Warsaw Pact included the following states:[31][32]

In addition to the Soviet Union in the United Nations Security Council, the Soviet Union had two of its union republics in the United Nations General Assembly:

Other Marxist–Leninist states allies with the Soviet Union

These countries were Marxist-Leninist states who were allied with the Soviet Union, but were not part of the Warsaw Pact.

Non-Marxist–Leninist countries allied with the Soviet Union

Main article: Socialist-leaning countries
 
States that had communist governments in red, states that the Soviet Union believed at one point to be moving toward socialism in orange and other socialist states in yellow (not all of the bright red states remained Soviet allies)

Some countries in the Third World had pro-Soviet governments during the Cold War. In the political terminology of the Soviet Union, these were "countries moving along the socialist road of development" as opposed to the more advanced "countries of developed socialism" which were mostly located in Eastern Europe, but that also included Cuba and Vietnam. They received some aid, either military or economic, from the Soviet Union and were influenced by it to varying degrees. Sometimes, their support for the Soviet Union eventually stopped for various reasons and in some cases the pro-Soviet government lost power while in other cases the same government remained in power, but ultimately ended its alliance with the Soviet Union.[36]

Marxist–Leninist states opposed to the Soviet Union

 
Communist state alignments in 1980: pro-Soviet (red); pro-Chinese (yellow); and the non-aligned North Korea and Yugoslavia (black); Somalia had been pro-Soviet until 1977; and Cambodia (Kampuchea) had been pro-China until 1979

Some communist states were opposed to the Soviet Union and criticized many of its policies. Although they may have had many similarities to the USSR on domestic issues, they were not Soviet allies in international politics. Relations between them and the Soviet Union were often tense, sometimes even to the point of armed conflict.

Neutral states

The position of Finland was complex. During World War II, the Soviet Union invaded Finland in the Winter War, which ended with the 1940 Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland would re-enter the Second World War when they invaded the Soviet Union alongside Germany in late June 1941. The war ended in Soviet victory, but Finland retained most of its territory and its market economy, trading on the Western markets and ultimately joining the Western currency system.

Nevertheless, although Finland was considered neutral, the Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 significantly limited Finnish freedom of operation in foreign policy. It required Finland to defend the Soviet Union from attacks through its territory, which in practice prevented Finland from joining NATO, and effectively gave the Soviet Union a veto in Finnish foreign policy. Thus, the Soviet Union could exercise "imperial" hegemonic power even towards a neutral state.[39] Under the Paasikivi–Kekkonen doctrine, Finland sought to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and extensive bilateral trade developed. In the West, this led to fears of the spread of "Finlandization", where Western allies would no longer reliably support the United States and NATO.[40]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ 34,374,483 km2.
  2. ^ Following the Soviet–Albanian split (1955–1968) and the Sino–Albanian split (1972–1978).
  3. ^ After Nicolae Ceaușescu's refusal to participate in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 (see de-satellization of Communist Romania). Remained as member of Comecon and Warsaw Pact until 1989.
  4. ^ With the Soviet intervention in the Angolan Civil War.
  5. ^ Following the Sino-Soviet split (1956–1961).
  6. ^ After Chinese intervention in the Korean War in 1950, North Korea remained a Soviet ally,[34] but rather used the Juche ideology to balance Chinese and Soviet influence, pursuing a highly isolationist foreign policy and not joining the Comecon or any other international organization of communist states following the withdrawal of Chinese troops in 1958.
  7. ^ At the outbreak of the Somali invasion of Ethiopia in 1977, the Soviet Union ceased to support Somalia, with the corresponding change in rhetoric. In turn, Somalia broke diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and the United States adopted Somalia as a Cold War ally.[35]
  8. ^ It was absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1944, and became part of the RSFSR.
  9. ^ Unlike other countries and although leaning towards the Soviet side, Vietnam's domestic policy and foreign policy were not dominated by Soviet Union.
  10. ^ It ended affiliation with the Soviet Union in 1948 due to Tito–Stalin split. After Joseph Stalin's death and the repudiation of his policies by Nikita Khrushchev, peace was made with Josip Broz Tito and Yugoslavia re-admitted into the international brotherhood of socialist states, although relations between the two countries were never completely rebuilt. See also the Informbiro period.
  11. ^ Soviet-Chilean alliance ended with the overthrow of the Allende government in a military coup, after which Chile became a Cold War ally of the United States. The Soviet Union would later support an armed insurgency against the military government until Chile returned to democracy in 1990.
  12. ^ Declared independence from the Republic of China in 1944, annexed by the PRC in 1949.
  13. ^ Due to the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.

References

  1. ^ a b Beissinger, Mark R. (2006). "Soviet Empire as "Family Resemblance"". Slavic Review. 65 (2): 294–303. doi:10.2307/4148594. JSTOR 4148594. S2CID 156553569.
    Dave, Bhavna (2007). Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, Language and Power. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
  2. ^ a b Caroe, O. (1953). "Soviet Colonialism in Central Asia". Foreign Affairs. 32 (1): 135–144. doi:10.2307/20031013. JSTOR 20031013.
  3. ^ a b c d Bekus, Nelly (1 January 2010). Struggle Over Identity: The Official and the Alternative "Belarusianness". Central European University Press. pp. 4, 41–50. ISBN 978-963-9776-68-5.
  4. ^ Annus, Epp (2019). Soviet Postcolonial Studies: A View from the Western Borderlands. Routledge. pp. 43–48. ISBN 978-0367-2345-4-6.
  5. ^ Cucciolla, Riccardo (23 March 2019). "The Cotton Republic: Colonial Practices in Soviet Uzbekistan?". Central Eurasian Studies Society. Retrieved 22 April 2019.
  6. ^ Kalnačs, Benedikts (2016). 20th Century Baltic Drama: Postcolonial Narratives, Decolonial Options. Aisthesis Verlag. p. 14. ISBN 978-3849-8114-7-1.
  7. ^ a b Loring, Benjamin (2014). ""Colonizers with Party Cards" Soviet Internal Colonialism in Central Asia, 1917–39". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Slavica Publishers. 15 (1): 77–102. doi:10.1353/kri.2014.0012. S2CID 159664992.
  8. ^ Thompson, Ewa (2014). "It is Colonialism After All: Some Epistemological Remarks" (PDF). Teksty Drugie. Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (1): 74.
  9. ^ Vardys, Vytas Stanley (Summer 1964). "Soviet Colonialism in the Baltic States: A Note on the Nature of Modern Colonialism". Lituanus. 10 (2). ISSN 0024-5089.
  10. ^ Szymanski, Albert (1977). "Soviet Social Imperialism, Myth or Reality: An Empirical Examination of the Chinese Thesis". Berkeley Journal of Sociology. 22: 131–166. ISSN 0067-5830. JSTOR 41035250.
  11. ^ "The Soviet Union: Is it the Nazi Germany of Today?". www.marxists.org. 1977. Retrieved 29 September 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  12. ^ Tsvetkova, Natalia (2013). Failure of American and Soviet Cultural Imperialism in German Universities, 1945–1990. Boston, Leiden: Brill.
  13. ^ a b Roberts, Jason A. (2015). The Anti-Imperialist Empire: Soviet Nationality Policies under Brezhnev (PhD dissertation). West Virginia University. doi:10.33915/etd.6514.
  14. ^ a b c Noren, Dag Wincens (1990). The Soviet Union and eastern Europe: considerations in a political transformation of the Soviet bloc. Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Amherst. pp. 27–38.
  15. ^ Rodriguez, Junius P. (2011). Slavery in the Modern World: A History of Political, Social, and Economic Oppression. ABC-CLIO. p. 179. ISBN 978-1-85109-783-8.
  16. ^ Perovic, Jeronim (1 June 2018). From Conquest to Deportation: The North Caucasus under Russian Rule. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-093467-5.
  17. ^ Ellman, Michael; Maksudov, S. (1 January 1994). "Soviet deaths in the great patriotic war: A note". Europe-Asia Studies. 46 (4): 671–680. doi:10.1080/09668139408412190. ISSN 0966-8136. PMID 12288331.
  18. ^ Sandle, Mark (2002), Bacon, Edwin; Sandle, Mark (eds.), "Brezhnev and Developed Socialism: The Ideology of Zastoi?", Brezhnev Reconsidered, Studies in Russian and East European History and Society, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 165–187, doi:10.1057/9780230501089_8, ISBN 978-0-230-50108-9, retrieved 30 May 2021
  19. ^ a b Trenin, Dmitri (2011). Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. p. 144–145.
  20. ^ a b c Виталий Лейбин: Экономическая экспансия России и имперский госзаказ – ПОЛИТ.РУ (in Russian). Politic. Retrieved 20 April 2019.
  21. ^ Starr, S. Frederick; Dawisha, Karen (16 September 2016). The International Politics of Eurasia: v. 9: The End of Empire? Comparative Perspectives on the Soviet Collapse. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-48363-4.
  22. ^ Parker, Noel (6 May 2016). Empire and International Order. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-14439-7.
  23. ^ a b c Wendt, Alexander; Friedheim, Daniel (1995). "Hierarchy under anarchy: informal empire and the East German state". International Organization. 49 (4): 689–721. doi:10.1017/S0020818300028484. ISSN 1531-5088. S2CID 145236865.
  24. ^ Trenin, Dmitri. "Russia's Post-Imperial Condition". Carnegie Moscow Center. Retrieved 8 February 2022.
  25. ^ Kinzley, Judd C. (1 October 2015). "The Spatial Legacy of Informal Empire: Oil, the Soviet Union, and the Contours of Economic Development in China's Far West". Twentieth-Century China. 40 (3): 220–237. doi:10.1179/1521538515Z.00000000067. ISSN 1521-5385.
  26. ^ Kinzley, Judd (2018), "Industrial Raw Materials and the Construction of Informal Empire", Natural Resources and the New Frontier, University of Chicago Press, doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226492322.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-226-49215-5, retrieved 8 February 2022
  27. ^ Elleman, Bruce A. (1997). Diplomacy and Deception: The Secret History of Sino-Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1917–1927. M.E. Sharpe. pp. 134, 165, 168, 174. ISBN 978-0-7656-0142-1.
  28. ^ a b Elleman, Bruce A. (1994). "The Soviet Union's Secret Diplomacy Concerning the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1924–1925". The Journal of Asian Studies. 53 (2): 459–486. doi:10.2307/2059842. ISSN 0021-9118. JSTOR 2059842. S2CID 162586404.
  29. ^ Lebow, Richard Ned; Risse-Kappen, Thomas (1995). International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War. Columbia University Press. pp. 146–148, 155–157. ISBN 978-0-231-10195-0.
  30. ^ Koslowski, Rey; Kratochwil, Friedrich V. (1994). "Understanding Change in International Politics: The Soviet Empire's Demise and the International System". International Organization. 48 (2): 215–247. doi:10.1017/S0020818300028174. ISSN 0020-8183. JSTOR 2706931. S2CID 155023495.
  31. ^ Cornis-Pope, Marcel (2004). History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and disjunctures in the 19th and 20th centuries. John Benjamins. pp. 29. ISBN 978-90-272-3452-0.
  32. ^ Dawson, Andrew H. (1986). Planning in Eastern Europe. Routledge. p. 295. ISBN 978-0-7099-0863-0.
  33. ^ 『북한 사회주의헌법의 기본원리: 주체사상』(2010년, 법학연구) pp. 13–17
  34. ^ Shin, Gi-Wook (2006). Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy. Stanford University Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-8047-5408-8.
  35. ^ Crockatt, Richard (1995). The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics. London and New York City, New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-10471-5.
  36. ^ Friedman, Jeremy (2015). Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World.
  37. ^ "Soviet Intelligence in Latin America During the Cold War 28 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine", Lectures by General Nikolai Leonov, Centro de Estudios Publicos (Chile), 22 September 1999.
  38. ^ Kass, Ilana (September 1977). "The Forgotten Friendship: Israel and the Soviet Bloc 1947–1953". American Political Science Review. 71 (3): 1304–1305. doi:10.2307/1960285. ISSN 0003-0554. JSTOR 1960285. S2CID 146764535.
  39. ^ "The Empire Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, "National" Identity, and Theories of Empire" (PDF).
  40. ^ "Finns Worried About Russian Border".

Further reading

See also: Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union, and Bibliography of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union
  • Crozier, Brian. The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire (1999), long detailed popular history.
  • Dallin, David J. Soviet Russia and the Far East (1949) online on China and Japan.
  • Friedman, Jeremy. Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (2015).
  • Librach, Jan. The Rise of the Soviet Empire: A Study of Soviet Foreign Policy (Praeger, 1965), online free, a scholarly history.
  • Nogee, Joseph L. and Robert Donaldson. Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II (4th ed. 1992).
  • Service, Robert. Comrades! A history of world communism (2007).
  • Ulam, Adam B. Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1973, 2nd ed. (1974), a standard scholarly history online free.
  • Zubok, Vladislav M. A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (2007) excerpt and text search.

January 07, 2023
soviet, empire, political, term, which, used, sovietology, describe, actions, power, soviet, union, with, emphasis, dominant, role, other, countries, greatest, extent, territory, which, soviet, union, politically, economically, militarily, dominated, 1959, 196. Soviet Empire is a political term which is used in Sovietology to describe the actions and power of the Soviet Union with an emphasis on its dominant role in other countries The greatest extent of the Soviet Empire the territory which the Soviet Union politically economically and militarily dominated as of 1959 1960 after the Cuban Revolution but before the official 1961 Sino Soviet split total area c 35 000 000 km2 a In the wider sense the term refers to the country s foreign policy during the Cold War which has been characterized as imperialist the nations which were part of the Soviet Empire were nominally independent countries with separate governments that set their own policies but those policies had to stay within certain limits decided by the Soviet Union These limits were enforced by the threat of intervention by Soviet forces and later the Warsaw Pact Major military interventions took place in East Germany in 1953 Hungary in 1956 Czechoslovakia in 1968 Poland in 1980 81 and Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 Countries in the Eastern Bloc were considered satellite states Contents 1 Characteristics 1 1 Formal and informal empire 2 Allies of the Soviet Union 2 1 Warsaw Pact 2 2 Other Marxist Leninist states allies with the Soviet Union 2 3 Non Marxist Leninist countries allied with the Soviet Union 3 Marxist Leninist states opposed to the Soviet Union 4 Neutral states 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 Further readingCharacteristics Edit Flag of the Soviet Union Although the Soviet Union was not ruled by an emperor and declared itself anti imperialist and a people s democracy it exhibited tendencies common to historic empires 1 2 The notion of Soviet empire often refers to a form of classic or colonial empire with communism only replacing conventional imperial ideologies such as Christianity or monarchy rather than creating a revolutionary state Academically the idea is seen as emerging with Richard Pipes 1957 book The Formation of the Soviet Union Communism and Nationalism 1917 1923 but it has been reinforced along with several other views in continuing scholarship 3 41 Several scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states 1 The Soviet Union practiced colonialism similar to conventional imperial powers 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 The Soviets pursued internal colonialism in Central Asia For example the state s prioritized grain production over livestock in Kyrgyzstan which favored Slavic settlers over the Kyrgyz natives thus perpetuating the inequalities of the tsarist colonial era 7 Maoists argued that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist facade or social imperialism 10 11 Another dimension of Soviet imperialism is cultural imperialism the Sovietization of culture and education at the expense of local traditions 12 Leonid Brezhnev continued a policy of cultural Russification as part of Developed Socialism which sought to assert more central control 13 Seweryn Bialer argued that the Soviet state had an imperial nationalism 14 From the 1930s through the 1950s Joseph Stalin ordered population transfers in the Soviet Union deporting people often entire nationalities to underpopulated remote areas The policy officially ended in the Khrushchev era with many of the nationalities allowed to return in 1957 However Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev refused the right of return for Crimean Tatars Russian Germans and Meskhetian Turks 15 In 1991 the Supreme Soviet of Russia declared the Stalinist mass deportations to be a policy of defamation and genocide 16 The historical relationship between Russia the dominant republic in the Soviet Union and these Eastern European countries helps explain their longing to eradicate the remnants of Soviet culture Poland and the Baltic states epitomize the Soviet attempt to build uniform cultures and political systems According to Dag Noren Russia was seeking to constitute and reinforce a buffer zone between itself and Western Europe so as to protect itself from potential future attacks from hostile Western European countries 14 The Soviet Union had lost 26 to 27 million lives over the course the Second World War 17 To prevent a recurrence of such costly warfare Soviet leaders believed that they needed to establish a hierarchy of political and economic dependence between neighboring states and the USSR 14 During the Brezhnev era the policy of Developed Socialism declared the Soviet Union to be the most complete socialist country other countries were socialist but the USSR was developed socialist explaining its dominant role and hegemony over the other socialist countries 18 This and the interventionist Brezhnev Doctrine permitting the invasion of other socialist countries led to characterisation of the USSR as an empire 13 Soviet influence in the socialist leaning countries was mainly political and ideological rather than economically exploitative the Soviet Union pumped enormous amounts of international assistance into them in order to secure influence 19 ultimately to the detriment of its own economy The Soviet Union sought a group of countries which would rally to its cause in the event of an attack from Western countries and support it in the context of the Cold War 20 After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the Russian Federation declared itself the successor state and recognized 103 billion of Soviet foreign debt while also claiming 140 billion of Soviet assets abroad 19 Economic expansion did however play a significant role in Soviet motivation to spread influence in its satellite territories These new territories would ensure an increase in the global wealth which the Soviet Union would have a grasp on 20 Soviet officials from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic intertwined this economic opportunity with a potential for migration In fact they saw in these Eastern European countries the potential of a great workforce They offered a welcome to them upon the only condition that they work hard and achieve social success This ideology was shaped on the model of the meritocratic 19th century American foreign policy 20 Formal and informal empire Edit Scholars discussing Soviet empire have discussed it as a formal empire or informal empire In a more formal interpretation of Soviet empire this meant absolutism resembling Lenin s description of the tsarist empire as a prison of the peoples except that this prison of the peoples had been actualized during Stalin s regime after Lenin s death 3 41 42 Another view especially of the non Stalinist eras sees the Soviet empire as constituting an informal empire over nominally sovereign states in the Warsaw Pact due to Soviet pressure and military presence 21 The Soviet informal empire depended on subsidies from Moscow 22 The informal empire in the wider Warsaw Pact also included linkages between Communist Parties 23 Some historians consider a more multinational oriented Soviet Union emphasizing its socialist initiatives such as Ian Bremmer who describes a matryoshka nationalism where a pan Soviet nationalism included other nationalisms 3 48 Eric Hobsbawn argued that the Soviet Union had effectively designed nations by drawing borders 3 45 Dmitri Trenin wrote that by 1980 the Soviet Union had formed both a formal and informal empire 24 The informal empire would have included Soviet economic investments military occupation and covert action in Soviet aligned countries The studies of informal empire have included Soviet influence on East Germany 23 and 1930s Xinjiang 25 26 From the 1919 Karakhan Manifesto to 1927 diplomats of the Soviet Union would promise to revoke concessions in China but the Soviets secretly kept tsarist concessions such as the Chinese Eastern Railway as well as consulates barracks and churches 27 28 After the Sino Soviet conflict 1929 the Soviet Union regained the Russian Empire s concession of the Chinese Eastern Railway and was held until its return in 1952 28 Alexander Wendt suggested that by the time of Stalin s Socialism in one country alignment socialist internationalism evolved into an ideology of control rather than revolution under the rubric of socialist internationalism internally within the Soviet Union By the start of the Cold War it evolved into a coded power language that was once again international but applied to the Soviet informal empire At times the USSR signaled toleration of policies of satellite states indirectly by declaring them consistent or inconsistent with socialist ideology essentially recreating a hegemonic role Wendt argued that a hegemonic ideology could continue to motivate actions after the original incentives were removed and argued this explains the zeal of East German Politburo members who chose not to defend themselves against trumped up charges during the 1950s purges 23 704 Analyzing the dissolution of the Soviet Union Koslowski and Kratochwil argued that a postwar Soviet formal empire represented by the Warsaw Pact with Soviet military role and control over of member states foreign relations had evolved into an informal suzerainty or Ottomanization from the late 1970s to 1989 With Gorbachev s relinquishing of the Brezhnev Doctrine in 1989 the informal empire reduced in pressure to a more conventional sphere of influence resembling Finlandization but applied to the erstwhile East Bloc states until the Soviet fall in 1991 By contrast Austrianization would have been a realist model of great power politics by which the Soviets would have hypothetically relied on Western guarantees to keep an artificial Soviet sphere of influence The speed of reform in the 1989 to 1991 period made both a repeat of Finlandization and Austrianization impossible for the Soviet Union 29 30 Allies of the Soviet Union Edit The Soviet Union is seen in red while states in light pink were satellites Yugoslavia a Soviet ally from 1945 to 1948 and non aligned state thereafter is marked in purple Albania a state which ceased being allied to the Soviet Union in the 1960s after the Sino Soviet split is marked in orange Warsaw Pact Edit These countries were the closest allies of the Soviet Union and were also members of the Comecon a Soviet led economic community founded in 1949 The members of the Warsaw Pact sometimes called the Eastern Bloc were widely viewed as Soviet satellite states These countries were occupied or formerly occupied by the Red Army and their politics military foreign and domestic policies were dominated by the Soviet Union The Warsaw Pact included the following states 31 32 People s Socialist Republic of Albania 1946 1968 b People s Republic of Bulgaria 1946 1990 Czechoslovak Socialist Republic 1948 1990 German Democratic Republic 1949 1990 Hungarian People s Republic 1949 1989 Polish People s Republic 1947 1989 Socialist Republic of Romania 1947 1965 c In addition to the Soviet Union in the United Nations Security Council the Soviet Union had two of its union republics in the United Nations General Assembly Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic Ukrainian Soviet Socialist RepublicOther Marxist Leninist states allies with the Soviet Union Edit These countries were Marxist Leninist states who were allied with the Soviet Union but were not part of the Warsaw Pact Democratic Republic of Afghanistan 1978 1991 People s Republic of Angola 1975 1991 d People s Republic of Benin 1975 1990 Chinese Soviet Republic 1931 1937 People s Republic of China 1949 1961 e People s Republic of the Congo 1969 1991 Republic of Cuba 1959 1991 Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia then People s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia 1974 1991 People s Republic of Kampuchea 1979 1989 People s Revolutionary Government of Grenada 1979 1983 Democratic People s Republic of Korea 1948 1991 also allied with China 33 f Lao People s Democratic Republic 1975 1991 Democratic Republic of Madagascar 1972 1991 Mongolian People s Republic 1924 1991 People s Republic of Mozambique 1975 1990 Somali Democratic Republic 1969 1977 g Tuvan People s Republic 1921 1944 h Democratic Republic of Vietnam 1954 1976 then Socialist Republic of Vietnam 1976 1991 i Federal People s Republic of Yugoslavia 1945 1948 j People s Democratic Republic of Yemen South Yemen 1967 1990 Non Marxist Leninist countries allied with the Soviet Union Edit Main article Socialist leaning countries States that had communist governments in red states that the Soviet Union believed at one point to be moving toward socialism in orange and other socialist states in yellow not all of the bright red states remained Soviet allies Some countries in the Third World had pro Soviet governments during the Cold War In the political terminology of the Soviet Union these were countries moving along the socialist road of development as opposed to the more advanced countries of developed socialism which were mostly located in Eastern Europe but that also included Cuba and Vietnam They received some aid either military or economic from the Soviet Union and were influenced by it to varying degrees Sometimes their support for the Soviet Union eventually stopped for various reasons and in some cases the pro Soviet government lost power while in other cases the same government remained in power but ultimately ended its alliance with the Soviet Union 36 Algeria 1962 1991 People s Republic of Bangladesh 1971 1975 Burkina Faso 1983 1987 Burma 1962 1988 citation needed Cape Verde 1975 1990 Chile 1970 1973 k 37 Egypt 1954 1973 Ghana 1964 1966 Guinea 1960 1978 Guinea Bissau 1973 1991 Equatorial Guinea 1968 1979 India 1971 1991 Indonesia 1959 1965 Iraq 1958 1963 1968 1991 Israel 1948 1953 1991 38 Jamaica 1972 1980 citation needed Libya 1969 1991 Mali 1960 1991 Nicaragua 1979 1990 Peru 1968 1975 Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic 1976 1991 Sao Tome and Principe 1975 1991 Seychelles 1977 1991 Sudan 1968 1972 Syria 1955 1991 Tanzania 1964 1985 Second East Turkestan Republic 1944 1949 l Uganda 1969 1971 Zambia 1964 1991 Zimbabwe 1980 1991 Marxist Leninist states opposed to the Soviet Union Edit Communist state alignments in 1980 pro Soviet red pro Chinese yellow and the non aligned North Korea and Yugoslavia black Somalia had been pro Soviet until 1977 and Cambodia Kampuchea had been pro China until 1979 Some communist states were opposed to the Soviet Union and criticized many of its policies Although they may have had many similarities to the USSR on domestic issues they were not Soviet allies in international politics Relations between them and the Soviet Union were often tense sometimes even to the point of armed conflict Albania 1955 1991 Cambodia 1975 1979 m China 1961 1989 Romania 1965 1989 Somalia 1977 1991 Yugoslavia 1948 1955 Neutral states EditThe position of Finland was complex During World War II the Soviet Union invaded Finland in the Winter War which ended with the 1940 Moscow Peace Treaty Finland would re enter the Second World War when they invaded the Soviet Union alongside Germany in late June 1941 The war ended in Soviet victory but Finland retained most of its territory and its market economy trading on the Western markets and ultimately joining the Western currency system Nevertheless although Finland was considered neutral the Finno Soviet Treaty of 1948 significantly limited Finnish freedom of operation in foreign policy It required Finland to defend the Soviet Union from attacks through its territory which in practice prevented Finland from joining NATO and effectively gave the Soviet Union a veto in Finnish foreign policy Thus the Soviet Union could exercise imperial hegemonic power even towards a neutral state 39 Under the Paasikivi Kekkonen doctrine Finland sought to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet Union and extensive bilateral trade developed In the West this led to fears of the spread of Finlandization where Western allies would no longer reliably support the United States and NATO 40 See also EditAmerican imperialism Anti Russian sentiment Brezhnev Doctrine Captive Nations Cominform Communist state Containment Eastern Bloc Evil Empire speech Foreign relations of the Soviet Union Informal empire Imperialism Index of Soviet Union related articles Military occupations by the Soviet Union Russian imperialism Russian occupied territories Sino Soviet split Social imperialism Soviet Union United States relations Western betrayalNotes Edit 34 374 483 km2 Following the Soviet Albanian split 1955 1968 and the Sino Albanian split 1972 1978 After Nicolae Ceaușescu s refusal to participate in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 see de satellization of Communist Romania Remained as member of Comecon and Warsaw Pact until 1989 With the Soviet intervention in the Angolan Civil War Following the Sino Soviet split 1956 1961 After Chinese intervention in the Korean War in 1950 North Korea remained a Soviet ally 34 but rather used the Juche ideology to balance Chinese and Soviet influence pursuing a highly isolationist foreign policy and not joining the Comecon or any other international organization of communist states following the withdrawal of Chinese troops in 1958 At the outbreak of the Somali invasion of Ethiopia in 1977 the Soviet Union ceased to support Somalia with the corresponding change in rhetoric In turn Somalia broke diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and the United States adopted Somalia as a Cold War ally 35 It was absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1944 and became part of the RSFSR Unlike other countries and although leaning towards the Soviet side Vietnam s domestic policy and foreign policy were not dominated by Soviet Union It ended affiliation with the Soviet Union in 1948 due to Tito Stalin split After Joseph Stalin s death and the repudiation of his policies by Nikita Khrushchev peace was made with Josip Broz Tito and Yugoslavia re admitted into the international brotherhood of socialist states although relations between the two countries were never completely rebuilt See also the Informbiro period Soviet Chilean alliance ended with the overthrow of the Allende government in a military coup after which Chile became a Cold War ally of the United States The Soviet Union would later support an armed insurgency against the military government until Chile returned to democracy in 1990 Declared independence from the Republic of China in 1944 annexed by the PRC in 1949 Due to the Cambodian Vietnamese War References Edit a b Beissinger Mark R 2006 Soviet Empire as Family Resemblance Slavic Review 65 2 294 303 doi 10 2307 4148594 JSTOR 4148594 S2CID 156553569 Dave Bhavna 2007 Kazakhstan Ethnicity Language and Power Abingdon New York Routledge a b Caroe O 1953 Soviet Colonialism in Central Asia Foreign Affairs 32 1 135 144 doi 10 2307 20031013 JSTOR 20031013 a b c d Bekus Nelly 1 January 2010 Struggle Over Identity The Official and the Alternative Belarusianness Central European University Press pp 4 41 50 ISBN 978 963 9776 68 5 Annus Epp 2019 Soviet Postcolonial Studies A View from the Western Borderlands Routledge pp 43 48 ISBN 978 0367 2345 4 6 Cucciolla Riccardo 23 March 2019 The Cotton Republic Colonial Practices in Soviet Uzbekistan Central Eurasian Studies Society Retrieved 22 April 2019 Kalnacs Benedikts 2016 20th Century Baltic Drama Postcolonial Narratives Decolonial Options Aisthesis Verlag p 14 ISBN 978 3849 8114 7 1 a b Loring Benjamin 2014 Colonizers with Party Cards Soviet Internal Colonialism in Central Asia 1917 39 Kritika Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History Slavica Publishers 15 1 77 102 doi 10 1353 kri 2014 0012 S2CID 159664992 Thompson Ewa 2014 It is Colonialism After All Some Epistemological Remarks PDF Teksty Drugie Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences 1 74 Vardys Vytas Stanley Summer 1964 Soviet Colonialism in the Baltic States A Note on the Nature of Modern Colonialism Lituanus 10 2 ISSN 0024 5089 Szymanski Albert 1977 Soviet Social Imperialism Myth or Reality An Empirical Examination of the Chinese Thesis Berkeley Journal of Sociology 22 131 166 ISSN 0067 5830 JSTOR 41035250 The Soviet Union Is it the Nazi Germany of Today www marxists org 1977 Retrieved 29 September 2021 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Tsvetkova Natalia 2013 Failure of American and Soviet Cultural Imperialism in German Universities 1945 1990 Boston Leiden Brill a b Roberts Jason A 2015 The Anti Imperialist Empire Soviet Nationality Policies under Brezhnev PhD dissertation West Virginia University doi 10 33915 etd 6514 a b c Noren Dag Wincens 1990 The Soviet Union and eastern Europe considerations in a political transformation of the Soviet bloc Amherst Massachusetts University of Massachusetts Amherst pp 27 38 Rodriguez Junius P 2011 Slavery in the Modern World A History of Political Social and Economic Oppression ABC CLIO p 179 ISBN 978 1 85109 783 8 Perovic Jeronim 1 June 2018 From Conquest to Deportation The North Caucasus under Russian Rule Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 093467 5 Ellman Michael Maksudov S 1 January 1994 Soviet deaths in the great patriotic war A note Europe Asia Studies 46 4 671 680 doi 10 1080 09668139408412190 ISSN 0966 8136 PMID 12288331 Sandle Mark 2002 Bacon Edwin Sandle Mark eds Brezhnev and Developed Socialism The Ideology of Zastoi Brezhnev Reconsidered Studies in Russian and East European History and Society London Palgrave Macmillan UK pp 165 187 doi 10 1057 9780230501089 8 ISBN 978 0 230 50108 9 retrieved 30 May 2021 a b Trenin Dmitri 2011 Post Imperium A Eurasian Story Carnegie Endowment for International Peace p 144 145 a b c Vitalij Lejbin Ekonomicheskaya ekspansiya Rossii i imperskij goszakaz POLIT RU in Russian Politic Retrieved 20 April 2019 Starr S Frederick Dawisha Karen 16 September 2016 The International Politics of Eurasia v 9 The End of Empire Comparative Perspectives on the Soviet Collapse Routledge ISBN 978 1 315 48363 4 Parker Noel 6 May 2016 Empire and International Order Routledge ISBN 978 1 317 14439 7 a b c Wendt Alexander Friedheim Daniel 1995 Hierarchy under anarchy informal empire and the East German state International Organization 49 4 689 721 doi 10 1017 S0020818300028484 ISSN 1531 5088 S2CID 145236865 Trenin Dmitri Russia s Post Imperial Condition Carnegie Moscow Center Retrieved 8 February 2022 Kinzley Judd C 1 October 2015 The Spatial Legacy of Informal Empire Oil the Soviet Union and the Contours of Economic Development in China s Far West Twentieth Century China 40 3 220 237 doi 10 1179 1521538515Z 00000000067 ISSN 1521 5385 Kinzley Judd 2018 Industrial Raw Materials and the Construction of Informal Empire Natural Resources and the New Frontier University of Chicago Press doi 10 7208 chicago 9780226492322 001 0001 ISBN 978 0 226 49215 5 retrieved 8 February 2022 Elleman Bruce A 1997 Diplomacy and Deception The Secret History of Sino Soviet Diplomatic Relations 1917 1927 M E Sharpe pp 134 165 168 174 ISBN 978 0 7656 0142 1 a b Elleman Bruce A 1994 The Soviet Union s Secret Diplomacy Concerning the Chinese Eastern Railway 1924 1925 The Journal of Asian Studies 53 2 459 486 doi 10 2307 2059842 ISSN 0021 9118 JSTOR 2059842 S2CID 162586404 Lebow Richard Ned Risse Kappen Thomas 1995 International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War Columbia University Press pp 146 148 155 157 ISBN 978 0 231 10195 0 Koslowski Rey Kratochwil Friedrich V 1994 Understanding Change in International Politics The Soviet Empire s Demise and the International System International Organization 48 2 215 247 doi 10 1017 S0020818300028174 ISSN 0020 8183 JSTOR 2706931 S2CID 155023495 Cornis Pope Marcel 2004 History of the Literary Cultures of East Central Europe Junctures and disjunctures in the 19th and 20th centuries John Benjamins pp 29 ISBN 978 90 272 3452 0 Dawson Andrew H 1986 Planning in Eastern Europe Routledge p 295 ISBN 978 0 7099 0863 0 북한 사회주의헌법의 기본원리 주체사상 2010년 법학연구 pp 13 17 Shin Gi Wook 2006 Ethnic Nationalism in Korea Genealogy Politics and Legacy Stanford University Press p 94 ISBN 978 0 8047 5408 8 Crockatt Richard 1995 The Fifty Years War The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics London and New York City New York Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 10471 5 Friedman Jeremy 2015 Shadow Cold War The Sino Soviet Competition for the Third World Soviet Intelligence in Latin America During the Cold War Archived 28 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine Lectures by General Nikolai Leonov Centro de Estudios Publicos Chile 22 September 1999 Kass Ilana September 1977 The Forgotten Friendship Israel and the Soviet Bloc 1947 1953 American Political Science Review 71 3 1304 1305 doi 10 2307 1960285 ISSN 0003 0554 JSTOR 1960285 S2CID 146764535 The Empire Strikes Out Imperial Russia National Identity and Theories of Empire PDF Finns Worried About Russian Border Further reading EditSee also Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union and Bibliography of the post Stalinist Soviet Union Crozier Brian The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire 1999 long detailed popular history Dallin David J Soviet Russia and the Far East 1949 online on China and Japan Friedman Jeremy Shadow Cold War The Sino Soviet Competition for the Third World 2015 Librach Jan The Rise of the Soviet Empire A Study of Soviet Foreign Policy Praeger 1965 online free a scholarly history Nogee Joseph L and Robert Donaldson Soviet Foreign Policy Since World War II 4th ed 1992 Service Robert Comrades A history of world communism 2007 Ulam Adam B Expansion and Coexistence Soviet Foreign Policy 1917 1973 2nd ed 1974 a standard scholarly history online free Zubok Vladislav M A Failed Empire The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev 2007 excerpt and text search Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Soviet Empire amp oldid 1128619665, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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