The USSR was comprised of 15 (16 until 1956) allegedly equal and sovereign republics. Stalin used this logic to argue for 16 UN seats, to which the US replied they should get 50 seats. They compromised on the USSR getting three seats for Belarus, Ukraine and the USSR.
Note that distinction. The other states could have their own organs and recognition, but not Russia. There was no Russian UN seat, no Russian KGB or any of the other organs that the other republics could typically have and call their own, rather than just absorbed into the Soviet bureaucracy.
This is an example of what I call Russian wokeness. People look at me funny when I say that, but it is true and logical. Everyone tends to associate wokeness with gay pride parades and children identifying as nonbinary cats peeing in litter boxes at school; but when you strip away all the deranged nonsense, you can see similar strengths and weaknesses in every European culture that built an empire, including Russia.
Russian wokeness is the idea that Russians are the privileged group, and the other people living under Russian rule are underprivileged groups, so the system has to lift them up. So the Armenians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, etc. got special treatment and more tax expenditure. But the Russian farmer in Siberia was privileged, so got none of that while also paying the lion’s share of the taxes.
The end result was that Russia and (interestingly) Belarus were the only two net payers in the Soviet system. Everyone else (even Ukraine!) was a net tax burden. This woke system continued even while the majority of Russians were per capita poorer than many of their neighbors.
When you cut out the stuff about gays and non-binary cats, that’s in basic principle similar to the attitude in western countries in the 1960s onward. For example, the black tech executive in California is underprivileged, and the white hillbilly with no toilet in West Virginia is privileged. So the hillbilly owes the black executive reparations. These reparations are paid in the form of affirmative action. The black executive’s children can get into the best universities in the USA, while the hillbilly’s children cannot, even if they score higher on the exams.
Now I am not saying all of that to make the Soviet system look bad. Quite the opposite, the Soviets lifting up all of those nations was undoubtedly good for them, and during the Soviet period the republics had their own movie studios, cultural infrastructure and art scenes to praise and raise awareness for the local culture. But it is also important to understand why this system created dissatisfaction, especially as the unifying ideology of communism began to fade.
The Soviet system comprised 15 states, but the majority of its population was Slavic in the three states Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and the vast majority of the energy that went into creating and maintaining the Soviet system came from the Russians (or Eastern Slavs if you prefer). I don’t mean to downplay the contributions of communists in the other republics, but no system can survive without the devotion of the majority group.
And it was ultimately the disillusion of the Russians that caused the Soviet system to end.
That’s also why it is ridiculous when westoids claim Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union. For starters, Putin isn’t a communist. And even if he was, he would be basically alone in that desire. As far as I can tell, Russians have exactly zero interest in going back to feeding Central Asia. Take my word for it, I PROMISE you that Russians do not lay awake at night thinking “I wish I could pay higher taxes to give to Tajikistan.” Please dissuade yourself of this notion.
And at the same time, the Soviet Union was a Russian-driven idea, which was apparent even from the outside.
Ian Kummer
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