Can we count Russia as a Colonial Empire?
They have explored big amount of lands, colonized, civilized and populated them. Yet their actions were in same manner as annexing lands and making them a part of your country, just like Ottomans did. So can we really count them as a Colonial Empire?
No. They were expansive, but not colonial.
>>1199856
What land did the Ottomans annex outside of Anatolia?
>>1199856
Most of Siberia was quite literally empty. It was very similar to the colonization of north america. With cossacks being similar to cowboys.
Ottoman conquered land inhabited by arabs and various others, so it was different. Russia conquered lands like that too, but that was later, in the 18th-19th century, such as central asia.
>>1199856
It was a colonial empire for all intents and purposes. In fact, it still is one. Sure, they won't have the sea to separate the huge amounts of fucking nothing they have, but that doesn't make their way of managing annexed territories any less of a colonial one.
>Set up forts
>Tax the natives
>Export resources
>>1199856
>Colonialism is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.[6]
-Jurgen Osterhammel.
Colonial entails the othering of some Imperial Core versus it's subjects.
Since the Russian Empire included the Asiatic Nobility in its list of aristocrats, it wasn't colonial. Today: since everyone there is a Russian Citizen, it's not colonial.
>>1199956
>The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis.
Russia has always been an extremely centralized country, even today. All the business done in Siberia amounts to extracting resources and refining them.
>Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonized population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.
Absolutely true for Russia, they're extremely chauvinist and endless Russification policies are a staple of the country. I really don't want to quote Lenin and I'm not a marxist by any means but he said it best:
>It is quite natural that in such circumstances the "freedom to secede from the union" by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from the onslaught of that really Russian man, the Great-Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great-Russian riffraff like a fly in milk.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm
And so they drowned.
>>1199971
the Russification came way too late. Late in the Russian empire.
Come the Soviet Union, Russification policies were largely abandoned.
>>1199978
>Come the Soviet Union, Russification policies were largely abandoned.
For ten years. Then they resumed with even bigger intensity than before.
It was colonial empire for the century that they held on to Alaska, the only New World colony they established.
>>1199956
That's a shitty anti-colonization definition. If you follow that then Spanish and English forts along North America at first weren't colonies because they didn't include any natives.
Colonialism is really just investment into an area by moving a population there, for any particular reason. Russia fits this.
Russia fits colonialism by this definition.
>>1199856
It depends on your definition of colony and, basically, what you're proposing is a discussion of semantics that will lead nowhere.
It was an empire (this can't be denied) and it was very similar to other european empires of the same era. When talking about european imperialism Russia is often (to not say always) included. The big difference was that there was no ocean.
>>1199978
>Come the Soviet Union, Russification policies were largely abandoned.
Am I falling for a low quality bait or what?
>>1200328
>Colonialism is really just investment into an area by moving a population there.
No not at all.
Many colonies had little to no settlers.
>>1199856
Are you implying that the Ottoman empire was a colonial empire? Why?
>>1200328
Famous colonial studies phrase
>Colonialism can happen without colonies.
>>1199856
russia is bizarro america. if america had been colonised while feudalism was still a thing it would look like russia.
russkies love god and guns as much as americans do, and central asia is russia's arizona, new mexico and utah.
all those siberian and altaic tribes have been "ruaasian'd" as much as the NA tribes have been "american'd"
russkies even see themselves as of europe but not european in the same way americans do. russkie tourists love branded goods and are visually identical to american tourists, in my experience.
the only difference is the income level. americans are rich russkies. russkies are poor americans.
