Content area
Full text
Colonialism has been traditionally defined as West European powers' rule over overseas territories inhabited by other racial groups. "What is the distinctive feature of colonial expansion, seen as a quality of the Western civilization? In a nutshell, it is the striving to turn advantage, control and ascendancy over other societies into domination and imposition of supreme authority. A colony is a territory subordinated politically and economically, lying outside the colonizers' own state and their own civilization."1 Coming as an important part of such understanding of colonialism is the belief that its specific traits manifested themselves most fully towards the close of the "imperialist" stage of 19th-century capitalism.2
That definition needs to be broadened. Colonialism should be described as a protracted rule over another racial/ethnic group, coupled with a policy of economic exploitation and forced acculturation. So understood, the notion of colonialism can be applied to Antiquity (Rome), white settlers' colonies (Australia, Canada), or the expansion of some non-European powers (Japan). It also embraces internal colonization, i.e. the policy pursued towards smaller discriminated peoples in a given state. A classic example here is offered by Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which, although finding themselves in a different situation than other possessions of the British Crown (now and, to some extent, also in the past), have in many respects resembled the traditional colonies.
Increasingly more authors have been seeking to put the (post)colonial paradigm to use in interpreting the past and the present of the Soviet/Russian empire and states arising therefrom.3 Many publications on the colonial nature of the Soviet/Russian empire appeared prior to 1991,4 but this paradigm is also drawn upon today.5
While no doubts are provoked by opinions about the colonial character of Central Asian countries (ethnic/religious differences, economies dominated by commodities and agriculture), some objections do appear when discussing Ukraine. It could be argued that the three East Slavic nations are derived from the same stem (Kyivan Rus), that they united voluntarily and in pursuit of common interest (Union of Pereyaslav, 1654), as propounded by Russian historians, and that the community of religion and linguistic similarity rule out any talk about colonization. The English may have treated Ireland as a colony, but in that case there were differences in terms of religion (Catholicism) and, theoretically,...