American Imperialism In Russia

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Russia is the largest country in terms of territory in the world. This territory is populated by a myriad of ethnicities. These ethnicities have a major impact on the historical policies and current policies of the Russian government. The multi-ethnic nature of the Russian and Soviet empires created more internal conflict throughout the years by dividing the nation unnecessarily.

Empire and Nation During the Time of the Tsar, Russia was a vast empire that ruled over a myriad of different culture and peoples. To the different groups who lived in Russia during this time, Russia was the empire that ruled over their ‘nation’, or land. The ideas of empire and nation carry on this way for many centuries until, in the 1920’s, different nationalities
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The Russians were asked to provide protection to the Kazakh Hordes who wanted protection from the empire without becoming apart of the empire. The Resettlement Act of 1889 systematically surveyed the land “...cramp[ing] the nomads’ movements and thus compelled them to take up a more settled life” (Hosking, 62) as more settlers migrated into the area. The Russian rule here was not living up to its full potential as the officials in the area were mostly military men who had no desire to empathize with local while also relying on translators, who were not always trustworthy. The lower-level authority positions were left to the locals which allowed for a more independent sort of rule, but this also led to a major problem. The local law and Russian law were very different; local customs were often viewed as illegal by the Russians.

The Ukrainian area that is documented in Kate Brown’s book The History of No Place highlights the treatment of minorities in the Stalinist era. In the 1920’s, before Stalin came to power, Lenin implemented policies that encourage minorities to embrace their nationality and have pride. Independence states were formed to report back to the main government in Moscow. Moscow sent in officials to build schools in each town and establish local governments. These local government would operate in the most popular language
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Certain minorities could no longer be trusted to live where they have always lived because they would sabotage the nation. Soviet Germans were all Nazi-sympathizers and the Soviet Poles were trying to Polonize the Ukraine; they were all spies and reporting back to the enemy. The NKVD kept a close eye on towns with high minority populations until they were able to send deportation teams in to deport the ‘untrustworthy’ away from the border and bring in ‘loyal, trustworthy’ collective farmers to secure the border. The deportation teams offered nice amenities in the beginning, but so ran out of resources and had to resort to ensuring the deportees didn’t flee by posting guards outside their doors. Since the government wasn’t offering many details, the public began to become distrusting and fearful of what the government would implement next. Many of the people who were deported felt extremely lonely and sold everything they had so that they could make their way back to their homes. The government responded by moving the deportees even farther from their homes in hopes of keeping the deportees in the new location. Those that weren’t affected by the deportations still had to worry about the purges, which targeted ‘corrupt’ officials, and unjustified trails, which could end with a sentence to a gulag or work camp, or an execution