Russian Colonialism

Muscovite/Russian Colonialism has evolved over the past five hundred years in the wake of miliatry conquest or ideological and political unions.

The Grand Duchy of Moscow's (Muscovy) conquest of the Republic of Novogrod and the Principality of Smolensk amongst others under various rulers over the course of several hundred years, culimated with a 16 year old Ivan the Trerible being crowned Tsar of the newly proclaimed Tsardom of Russia in 1547.

Ivan expanded Muscovy's borders considerably to the south and east. After a period of political instability the Romanovs came to power and the expansion of the Tsardom continued.

While the western Europeans explored the new world building colonial empires overseas; Russia expanded overland east and south. East of the Urals it encountered little resistance in a region that had developed little since the height of Mongol power.

By the end of the 19th century the Russian Empire reached from the Black sea to the Pacific Ocean including for some time Russian America (Alaska and some settlements in California.)

The region ruled from Moscow continued to grow under Soviet rule. Areas that were formerly part of the Russian Empire, and others that had been captured from the Nazis during WWII were proclaimed as autonomous republics, within the USSR.

Tsarist Era

In the late 19th century industrialization became a driving force behind imperial policy and coal and iron-ore extraction were rapidly developed in non-Russians areas like the Donets Basin, eventually eclipsing production in the Urals. Cotton began to be planted in Central Asia. While industrial growth occurred it was one sided because finishing and manufacturing was underdeveloped in non-Russian territories, except for Russian Poland and Baltic provinces.

In the 19th century, Russian settlers on traditional Kirghiz land drove a lot of the Kirghiz over the border to China.

In Ukraine under Tsarist rule mercantilist legislation enacted in the 1720s in order to foster trade and commerce in central and north-western Russia effectively destroyed Ukrainian urban manufacturing and merchants by the nineteenth century. Throughout the next century tariff policy benefited central-Russian producers at the expense of non-Russian borderland producers. State-sponsored programs under the Tsarist and Soviet regimes developed extractive and heavy machine-building industries and promoted agricultural export. On the other hand, they neglected the consumer manufacturing, finishing, and service sectors. In 1900 Ukraine produced 52 percent of the empire's pig iron and 20 percent of its iron and steel. Between 1900 and 1914,Tsarist Ukraine produced on average 75 percent of the empire's grain export. Meanwhile, peasants still used earthenware utensils, wooden axles and hinges, and straw-thatched roofs. Finished goods were imported at excessively high prices set by Russia, while the prices for Donets' industrial products was low. Vladimir Lenin, in exile in 1914, stated in a speech that "it [Ukraine] has become for Russia what Ireland was for England: exploited in the extreme and receiving nothing in return."

Soviet Era

On the eve of independence, eight of Ukraine’s thirteen parties referred to the country as an exploited “colony” in their programs. After 1991 most Ukrainian historians described Ukrainians as victims of colonialism while literary scholars drew attention to the nation’s “post-colonial” condition. Most Russian historians stressed that Ukrainians had also been agents of empire and characterized Ukraine’s historical status as “semi-colonial.” Whereas academics disagree as to whether central policies were “Russian,” tsarist, or soviet and intentionally “anti-Ukrainian,” and whether the development that did occur was worth the cost, most Russians and a minority of the population in Ukraine regard the country’s historical association with Russia favourably and deny that it was a colonial victim of Russian imperial power.

Post Soviet Era

Although Russian colonialism formally ended in 1991 with the political independence of the former Republics, in practice Russian capital still dominates those territories and can be said to maintain a neo-colonial relationship to them, much as the US and European countries still control their former overseas colonies. Russian settlers who arrived in Soviet times still tend to identify culturally and intellectually with Moscow and Russian, rather than the nations they live in. The media in the newly independent non-Russian former Republics, with the exception of the Baltic states, remain heavily Russified. Much more audio-visual products are in Russian than warranted by the percentage share of the Russian population.

See also

• Russian colonization of the Americas
• Russification
• Russification of Finland
• Colonialism

References

• Iavorsky, M. Ukraina v epokhu kapitalizmu Kiev: Derzhavne Vydavnytstvo Ukrainy, 1924.
• Koropeckyi, I. Development in the Shadow (New York, 1990)
  • idem, ed. Ukrainian Economic History(Cambridge MA, 1991)
• Krawchenko,B. Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth Century Ukraine (NewYork, 1985)
• Martin, Virginia. Law and custom in the steppe: the Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian colonialism in the nineteenth century. Richmond: Curzon, 2001
• Serbyn, Roman. Lenine etla question ukrainienne en 1914. Pluriel no. 25, 1981.
• Subtelny, Orest (1988). Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-5808-9. 
• Velychenko, Stephen, The Issue of Russian Colonialism in Ukrainian Thought.Dependency Identity and Development, AB IMPERIO 1 (2002) 323-66