To be somewhat fair, all of Russia's claims in Ukraine (Crimea, the Donbas) would give them unparalleled access to the Sea of Azov and the northern banks of the Black Sea. Yes, I know they control a significant portion of the Black Sea already, but this would allow them to wrap the Sea of Azov nicely.
I know Russia states they're there to kick the Nazis out of the Donbas and protect the Russian language minority in that region, but I also don't believe any nation, especially a very nationalistic, neoliberal government like Russia's, is out doing something out of the goodness of their hearts. Call me a cynic, but I think the expanded Black Sea control is more important to the government.
I see the expanded Black Sea control as a way to sure up control of Crimea. If they didn't then the only physical connection between Crimea and the rest of Russia would be the bridge, which has shown to be quite vulnerable.
What, all of them, unanimously, assembling their bodies into a single collossal humanoid mass of flesh and bone? This is the problem with a nationalist worldview, you miss the actual dynamic driving the event. Which Russians?
Then why are you talking about it in the same terms as naive nationalists who don't know materialism? It's some really sus shit to proclaim to know all this but then make zero effort to differentiate your rhetoric from the "inherently authoritarian ruzzian orcs" crowd, continuing to frame it as though people who happen to be born in a certain socially constructed polity are somehow inherently a problem, while arguing pretty unmaterialistically that Russians (not the Russian Federation, just Russians gestures vaguely) started the conflict in Ukraine rather than joining a conflict that had been ongoing for nearly a decade. I'm not saying you're not a materialist, but I am saying i detect latent nationalist brainworms.
Do you get as pedantic if I were to say “the Americans benefited from chattel slavery”
Not the person you replied to, but I’d like to jump in on that question. Yes, we should be; do you think Black Americans benefited in any way from slavery?
You didn’t say “America” though, you said “the Americans”:
Do you get as pedantic if I were to say "the Americans benefited from chattel slavery"
Versus
Saying that black Americans did not benefit from slavery, doesn't mean that America itself didn't benefit from slavery.
You had to change your language from the American people to the American state in order to be able to claim that people are putting words in your mouth because they’re not doing that and you conflate people and states all over this thread.
The thing people are trying to get you to not do is conflate people and states because that kind of rhetoric is inherently nationalistic and invites belief in a unified immutable polity where none exists.
The given context is you flattening 200 years and three Russian states into wanting a warm water port.
It’s not unreasonable for a person reading your responses to see that particular form of national essentialism and then you referring to all Russians as wanting that thing and recognizing at the very least someone with extreme nationalism brain.
It’s okay to be wrong here. If you’re okay with it you can move on to something else after learning some shit. If you’re not okay with it you’ll end up dying mad and no one wants that.
I’m not talking about the veracity of your original claim, whatever that is.
The thing you’re wrong about is that it’s obvious what you’re talking about when you aren’t careful with your nationalist language and present the modern history of Russia in the Black Sea as a book entitled “the quest for a warm water port”.
If it was there wouldn’t be a bunch of people giving your posts the hairy eyeball in written form.
If it was obvious you’d have a bunch of people apologizing for doubting you instead of thoroughly questioning you to figure out what the heck you mean.
And if that questioning was gonna turn up a hapless lib who stumbled into right wing language without knowing, you’d be recognizing it instead of digging your heels in!
Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex.
— Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (1980)
When you frame your arguments in this nationalist way, you’re concealing these conflicts of interest. It would be clearer if you frame it in a way that specifies exactly who you mean.
The USSR was invited by the government of Afghanistan to defend it against US-funded Mujahideen. It did not "start" the war in Afghanistan in any sense of the word.
The first Chechen War was a civil war within Russia between the government and separatists. I won't defend Yeltsin's government, but I don't see how Russia started the conflict.
you fucking dumb antisemitic piece of shit, Poland was occupied by the Nazis and was massacring Jews and other minorities. the USSR intervened to protect people and give themeselves buffer space for the future Nazi invasion of russia. If you are aiding Nazis your 'self determination' is less than worthless. A shitload of Polish citizens sought refuge in the USSR and a shitload more fought on their side against the Nazi collaborators. Literally look at the citations of the WIkipedia page for the occupation of poland, they cite Tadeusz Piotrowski constantly, who on his own wikipedia page is said to be regurgitating Polish nationalist right wing propaganda.
Piotr Wróbel considers Piotrowski's works to be "highly polemical and controversial", similar to those by Richard C. Lukas and Marek Jan Chodakiewicz.[5] According to Ukrainian historian Andrii Bolianovskyi, Piotrowski's studies on the Ukrainian-Polish ethnic conflicts rely unilaterally on the way they were conceived and presented by Polish right-wing politicians and the underground press during World War II.[6]
America hired and funded right wing and Nazi propaganda immediately after world war 2 to push "double genocide" narratives exactly like yours. You are ignorantly repeating debunked Nazi propaganda.
the fucking nazis were literally racist against slavic people, they did not take prisoners during their invasions, they sent them to death camps. to suggest that the soviets and the nazis were allies is patently absurd, their ideologies are diametrically opposed and you can do literally any cursory research to confirm the opinions of the people involved. literally read anything the nazis wrote about the soviets at the time, or anything the soviets wrote about the nazis. other users have already provided the context for those agreements, which you ignore. The soviets had tried to establish treaties with the allies before the molotov-ribbentrop pact, which they refused. it was an act of desperation to give the USSR time to establish military production factories and supply lines before the war. to spin that into an alliance is simply irresponsible historiography.
I don’t want to put a bunch of preludes and explain myself etc.
But man, you really think Russia invaded because of a “land grab”? Does that make any sense to you?
The Russian Federation, famously short on land
To be somewhat fair, all of Russia's claims in Ukraine (Crimea, the Donbas) would give them unparalleled access to the Sea of Azov and the northern banks of the Black Sea. Yes, I know they control a significant portion of the Black Sea already, but this would allow them to wrap the Sea of Azov nicely.
I know Russia states they're there to kick the Nazis out of the Donbas and protect the Russian language minority in that region, but I also don't believe any nation, especially a very nationalistic, neoliberal government like Russia's, is out doing something out of the goodness of their hearts. Call me a cynic, but I think the expanded Black Sea control is more important to the government.
I see the expanded Black Sea control as a way to sure up control of Crimea. If they didn't then the only physical connection between Crimea and the rest of Russia would be the bridge, which has shown to be quite vulnerable.
It's literally just to stop NATO expansion, protecting Russian speakers in Ukraine is just an incidental political benefit
The "warm port" and "land grab" theories are pure nonsense that ignore the last 8 years of Eastern European history
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Not the dreaded warm water port discussion. When will we ever grow as a society?
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What, all of them, unanimously, assembling their bodies into a single collossal humanoid mass of flesh and bone? This is the problem with a nationalist worldview, you miss the actual dynamic driving the event. Which Russians?
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Then why are you talking about it in the same terms as naive nationalists who don't know materialism? It's some really sus shit to proclaim to know all this but then make zero effort to differentiate your rhetoric from the "inherently authoritarian ruzzian orcs" crowd, continuing to frame it as though people who happen to be born in a certain socially constructed polity are somehow inherently a problem, while arguing pretty unmaterialistically that Russians (not the Russian Federation, just Russians gestures vaguely) started the conflict in Ukraine rather than joining a conflict that had been ongoing for nearly a decade. I'm not saying you're not a materialist, but I am saying i detect latent nationalist brainworms.
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Not the person you replied to, but I’d like to jump in on that question. Yes, we should be; do you think Black Americans benefited in any way from slavery?
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You didn’t say “America” though, you said “the Americans”:
Versus
You had to change your language from the American people to the American state in order to be able to claim that people are putting words in your mouth because they’re not doing that and you conflate people and states all over this thread.
The thing people are trying to get you to not do is conflate people and states because that kind of rhetoric is inherently nationalistic and invites belief in a unified immutable polity where none exists.
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The given context is you flattening 200 years and three Russian states into wanting a warm water port.
It’s not unreasonable for a person reading your responses to see that particular form of national essentialism and then you referring to all Russians as wanting that thing and recognizing at the very least someone with extreme nationalism brain.
It’s okay to be wrong here. If you’re okay with it you can move on to something else after learning some shit. If you’re not okay with it you’ll end up dying mad and no one wants that.
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I’m not talking about the veracity of your original claim, whatever that is.
The thing you’re wrong about is that it’s obvious what you’re talking about when you aren’t careful with your nationalist language and present the modern history of Russia in the Black Sea as a book entitled “the quest for a warm water port”.
If it was there wouldn’t be a bunch of people giving your posts the hairy eyeball in written form.
If it was obvious you’d have a bunch of people apologizing for doubting you instead of thoroughly questioning you to figure out what the heck you mean.
And if that questioning was gonna turn up a hapless lib who stumbled into right wing language without knowing, you’d be recognizing it instead of digging your heels in!
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My point is perhaps best expressed as follows:
— Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (1980)
When you frame your arguments in this nationalist way, you’re concealing these conflicts of interest. It would be clearer if you frame it in a way that specifies exactly who you mean.
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"Access to infrastructure that allows the movement of critical goods" isn't really captured by the phrase "land grab"
please name one (1) war started by the Russian Federation or the USSR
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you fucking dumb antisemitic piece of shit, Poland was occupied by the Nazis and was massacring Jews and other minorities. the USSR intervened to protect people and give themeselves buffer space for the future Nazi invasion of russia. If you are aiding Nazis your 'self determination' is less than worthless. A shitload of Polish citizens sought refuge in the USSR and a shitload more fought on their side against the Nazi collaborators. Literally look at the citations of the WIkipedia page for the occupation of poland, they cite Tadeusz Piotrowski constantly, who on his own wikipedia page is said to be regurgitating Polish nationalist right wing propaganda.
America hired and funded right wing and Nazi propaganda immediately after world war 2 to push "double genocide" narratives exactly like yours. You are ignorantly repeating debunked Nazi propaganda.
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the fucking nazis were literally racist against slavic people, they did not take prisoners during their invasions, they sent them to death camps. to suggest that the soviets and the nazis were allies is patently absurd, their ideologies are diametrically opposed and you can do literally any cursory research to confirm the opinions of the people involved. literally read anything the nazis wrote about the soviets at the time, or anything the soviets wrote about the nazis. other users have already provided the context for those agreements, which you ignore. The soviets had tried to establish treaties with the allies before the molotov-ribbentrop pact, which they refused. it was an act of desperation to give the USSR time to establish military production factories and supply lines before the war. to spin that into an alliance is simply irresponsible historiography.