@dump_stack @kravietz And here I was doubting whether I need to mention "whiteness" as a concept in this toot. It's uncanny how well the whole thing translates to post-Soviet states.
In seriousness, it's going to be pretty hard to explain, but I'll try. Starting with, "a Tatar woman taught me Russian". That happens a lot. People from other ethnicities have to work in Russian, teach in Russian, and then get branded as Russian. It's like half my thesis: see someone called "Russian?"
@dump_stack Check. A lot of the time they're going to be from Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, whatever. I can't even begin with the complexities of the Indigenous folks that actually have to live in Russia, because that situation's worse. The rest of us have borders.
As for "well-integrated"... Well, let's put it this way. Once our war with Russia started, I had no problem explaining cultural appropriation to post-Soviet folks. All I had to do was say the following:
@dump_stack "Oh, you khokhly, you guys have such nice food, and really pretty shirts, I bought one the last time I was there, shame about the civil war, though, but at least we're going to have a nice holiday in Crimea, which you shouldn't have ever been given anyway, but it's ok, we'll come save you from yourselves."
You know, people get it. Even the most hardcore right-wingers get it immediately.
@dump_stack The kicker is this: this sort of attitude is aimed at the second largest nation in the region. That "big brother" narrative. Before the war, we were stuck in this weird position where we were always close to power (quite a few of us even made it into the high halls), but despite the practical indistinguishability of "Russianized" Ukrainians from Russians proper, there was always this undercurrent. And we're not even visually different, which is a game changer in these questions.
@dump_stack So yeah. If it was like this for us, I imagine the "well-integrated" folks have it much worse on a daily level and also did so in the time you lived there. I don't know about this, obviously, but from the general logic of empires and Russia specifically - I'd be willing to bet quite a bit on it.
According to several thinkers (Turchin, Travin) the success of empires is driven by their ability to create a multi-ethnic system that agrees on a single set of ideas. Examples: Romans, Mongols, Russian Empire, USSR.
And vice versa, empires fall when the consensus on these common (but not uniform!) values fails, e.g. by nationalism of one group. Example: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Or when not everyone benefits equally any more, e.g. USSR.
@kravietz @dump_stack It's an interesting idea, but I'd have to read up on them to comment properly. At first glance, I'm not sure there's enough time in the lifespan of a few of these to get people to agree (e.g. the Soviet Union never really finished that process, I think, though not for lack of trying).
But there's something to it. That's why the Great Patriotic War vs. WWII narrative is so important today ("we can do it again" vs. "never again"), it's very much a crystallized key value.
Many of the later efforts to support local cultures in the USSR were pretty good but were ultimately hindered by the fundamental paradigm of Marxism-Leninism with all its lies and double-think.
So basically you could engage in local culture as much as it didn't step out of the boundaries set by the party line at given moment, which gradually narrowed down, peaking during Stalinism.
Ultimately, in 80's everyone had enough of everyone so much that they just ran away.
