Russia’s Colonial Allergy
▻https://eurasianet.org/russias-colonial-allergy
Russia’s Colonial Allergy
Alexander Morrison Dec 19, 2016
“The history of Russia is the history of a country that colonizes itself.” This phrase, first coined by the historian Sergei Solov’ev in the 1840s, gained widespread currency thanks to Vasilii Kliuchevskii’s Course of Russian History, first published in 1911 and still popular today.
It remains one of the best-known aphorisms about Russian history. And yet, any historian of the Russian empire knows that one surefire way today to drop a brick in a conversation with Russian colleagues is to refer to ‘Russian colonialism.’ With rare exceptions, you will be met with a baffled, if not offended, response: “Colonialism? What Colonialism? Russia has never had colonies.”
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