:zizek: I LOVE COLLEGE :zizek:

edit: thirty years old, post-soviet country origins, used lived experience when I pressed the point :zizek-preference:

  • plov_mix [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    used lived experience when I pressed the point

    I had a Polish student who wrote to me questioning why I include Marxist stuff in my teaching, and she be like “I grew up seeing the horrors and traumas of socialism.” She’s in her mid 20s. I was too tired to point it out so I just ignored.

      • plov_mix [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Exactly. But I was really, really, REALLY too tired to respond with anything at all when in the same email she was like “I’d rather read Thomas Sowell than Fanon.”

  • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The USSR doesn't have a spotless record here -- virtually no one does -- but it did a number of things that are almost unparalleled in terms of decolinization:

    1. Let some former Russian territories peacefully spin off as independent states (based on this; see Finland for an example).
    2. Gave political subdivisions of the new USSR (the constitituent SSRs) objectively more sovereignty than U.S. states or any comparable subdivision in a former empire. The SSRs had (mostly? entirely?) ethnic bases and had a constitutional right to secede.
    3. This right to secede was used (albeit tragically) in the breakup of the USSR, so it wasn't illusory. It didn't require some high-ranking official in the larger political structure to sign off (as the Good Friday Agreement's reunification referendum does) and it didn't result in mass violence (like the U.S. Civil War).

    What other decolinization process has accomplished so much, so peacefully?

    • geikei [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The SSRs had (mostly? entirely?) ethnic bases

      some were designed to have ethnicaly based political self determination and (X ethnicity republic) with actual comprehensive ethnic character on those level even in chases that the ethnicity was a minority in the territories. Which is unprecedented

      Post-1920, Bashkirs of the Bashkir Autonomous SSR were never a majority. In ’59, Bashkirs were 737,744 (22.1%), Russians 1,418,147 (40.6%) & the rest 1,185,718. (32.3%), yet the Bashkirs kept autonomy

      in the Kazakh SSR in 1959, Kazakhs were only 2.79 million (30%), Russians 3.97 million (42.7%) and Ukrainians 762,131 (8.2%). Did the Russians/Ukranians claim the Kazakh SSR as “Orthodox land” b/c they were the +50% majority? No! They respected Kazakh autonom

    • jkfjfhkdfgdfb [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      This right to secede was used (albeit tragically) in the breakup of the USSR,

      this is why it was fucking stupid

      • mazdak
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

          • mazdak
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            deleted by creator

            • OgdenTO [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              Working precarious jobs with less than living wage (eg you work an hour to be able to afford a pizza)

              American minimum wage worker: :side-eye-1: :side-eye-2:

          • geikei [none/use name]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Vietnam didnt take a much different approach than China but due to various factors executed worse but a lot not of their own fault. Opened up, privatized and liberalized even more with Capital expansion and power getting more out of hand , got significantly IMF fucked and tangled , didnt have China's equivalent of massive anti-corruption campaign and shift in the last decades etc. So party's power and efficiency and its will to excersice power over capital and the market is lagging quite noticably behind the Chinese equivalent and doesnt present the positive trends towards that direction that have been noticed in China under Xi

  • CoolerOpposide [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Ask your prof why the USSR gave sovereignty to the Ukrainian people after a thousand years of not having designated Ukrainian political representation

    • Shoegazer [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It’s because Stalin wanted to eat grain, but he couldn’t eat grain from Russians, so he needed to invent a new group called Ukrainians to eat all the grain from with impunity.

  • Diogenes_Barrel [love/loves]
    ·
    2 years ago

    cultural genocide is when minorities learn how to read their own language in numbers they never had before and had the state supporting and publishing their literature and art

    • WhyEssEff [she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      literally brought up the minority cultural protection efforts by the soviet union but she just brushed it off

      • Diogenes_Barrel [love/loves]
        ·
        2 years ago

        people ignoring or demonising that shit makes me see red. lionising countries actively extinguising indigenous peoples and languages while insisting soviet bi-lingualism and state sponsorship of cultural activities were equivalent or worse.

  • Shoegazer [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    It’s true that the USSR imposed socialism unnaturally on some of the countries, but they weren’t really minorities :lenin-disguise:

    colonial empire

    Why did so many third world countries support socialism and/or the USSR over capitalism and the west after being independent :thinking-about-it:

    • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Why did so many third world countries support socialism and/or the USSR over capitalism and the west after being independent

      :calipers:Something, something, latin brainpan, something, authoritarianism:expert-shapiro:

  • ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Their lived experience was suffering under western imperialism after the USSR was already gone but they can't even understand that much

  • Notcontenttobequiet [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Didn't the USSR under Stalin literally make the supression of local languages against the law, along with racist language? :freeze-peach:

    • D61 [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      See... this is why math is bad. :honk-enraged:

  • CheGueBeara [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    People pay this professor to spout bullshit they've clearly never studied

  • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I mean this is mostly true for the majority of countries around the world. Many European countries like Spain or France have minority languages and cultures that they've been oppressive against. The Americas gained their land by invading and eradicating indigenous nations. Even smaller countries like Tonga could be considered an empire if we use this logic.

    • Biggay [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      France had like a dozen different languages and all of them were meat grindered for parisian french. One of the only languages that has a regulatory body for its use and evolution.

  • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    More like clown college.

    It seriously amazes me how conservatives are like: colleges turn our kids into gay commies. And then there's this shit.

  • geikei [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Tfw when you are a colonial empire but you go out of your way to give huge amounts of land and create ethnicaly autonomous republics for ethnic minorities in order to help preserve their culture and character https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FSkNchlXoAMtiJI?format=jpg&name=medium

  • posadist_shark [love/loves]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This is why I simplely choose not to go to clown school anymore, for real American collage is a joke and anymore waving a degree around like it means should be publicly shamed :funny-clown-hammer: