Thread by @DrKevorkO

So, why was postcolonial scholarship so slow in waking up to Russia’s empire(s)?

The reasons are complex, and have to do with the nature of postcolonial scholarship itself, and Russia’s specific position in the modern global order.

A thread 🧵

To start with, postcolonial thought first aimed its arrows at its most obvious target:

the Western empires at the core of the global international order that emerged with modernity. /2

Two points are important here:

Firstly, that Russia was a late entrant to that modernity.

Secondly, that postcolonial thought emerged when Russian empire was in its Soviet guise, and, therefore, ‘credibly deniable’. /3

The first point - on Russia’s late modernisation - meant that it was never unequivocally part of the Western core; it was usually an outsider looking in, more a norm-taker than a norm-maker when it came to the functioning of post-Westphalian International Society. /4

It was, in other words, at least partly subaltern to the West.

The second point is actually quite important since the USSR:

a) ideologically defined itself as ‘anti-imperialist’ throughout its existence. /5

b) was really not seen as an ‘empire’ until the outside world was reminded of its multi-national - and hierarchical - nature during its final years. /6

Its ‘anti-imperialism’ obfuscated an authoritarian top-down civilising project through a statist form of Marxism, twisted in a Russo-centric vein following the demise of ‘nativisation’ during the Stalinist 1930s… /7

…where Russians were tasked with a particular version of the ‘white man’s burden’: leading the USSR, and, through it, humanity, towards Communism./8

Western overseas empires were also a more obvious target because of the clearer separation between core and periphery, metropole and colonies than the one seen in Russia and the USSR. /9

Oceans and seas separated Britain from India, or France from Algeria, whereas Russia flowed into the Eurasian steppes of Central Asia much like Europe’s defunct territorial empires flowed into their ethnically diverse territories. /10

For those viewing the USSR from the outside in, in a world where such territorial empires were assumed to be a thing of the past, it would have been easy to forget that this was not a nation-state, or a genuine federation - even leaving aside its vocal ‘anti-imperialism’. /11

The fact that Russia/USSR was a territorial rather than an overseas empire straddling Eurasia added another complication:… /12

… it ruled over subalterns that were often perceived as more ‘Western’ as itself, in addition to other, more recognisably ‘Oriental’ peoples, in the Caucasus and Central Asia. /13

It was therefore much easier to insert the plight of the Kyrgyz or the Chechens in postcolonial notions of power and political economy - based on Western dominance of non-Westerners - than it was in case of, for instance,… /14

… the Baltics or Ukrainians - all dominated by a power that was either itself not-quite-Western, or avowedly - and very imperfectly - ‘anti-imperialist’. /15

So yes, Russia is a complicated case because it situates itself outside of and against the West, and because of its other specificities, but that doesn’t really exclude treating it as an imperial power./16

Its own outsider status should not allow it to deny its own history of imperial and colonial conquest - and oppression.

This can, and should be done without allowing such arguments to be used by apologists of Western empire in a perverse form of whataboutism./17

Some are thus unable to see Russian imperial behaviour while it is staring them in the face, possibly because of an unhealthy and intellectually lazy exclusive obsession with *Western* hierarchical assumptions - a deficiency now on full display in Ukraine /18

Against this, a proper acknowledgment of Russia’s tendency to conquer and oppress should not lead to a certain forgetfulness regarding the West’s own empires of conquest and genocide, and its own very hierarchical presumptions when it comes to International order. /19

This should also enable greater engagement with the former Soviet space in Postcolonial Theory, especially in light of the similarities and specificities presented by Russian imperial thought and practice./20

Theorising Russia’s simultaneously subaltern (to the West) and imperial (over its own subalterns) forms of hierarchical control will greatly complement the ever-more dynamic body of work on the legacies of colonial and racial realities elsewhere in the contemporary world./21

For those of you who have bravely stuck with this long thread, here’s a - broadly conceived - selection of works dealing with Russian/Soviet empires and colonialism. 1drv.ms/b/s!AumYBjBIgB… /End