Was Soviet Union a colonial power?/ World Revolution
Book project (at present, perhaps it takes another form in a future situation.) 2011
Yevgeniy Fiks, Olga Kisseleva and Elena Sorokina asked if I would like to contribute to the project Was Soviet Union a colonial power? This is how they posed their question;
„In your opinion, was the Soviet Union a colonial power?“ We will address this question to a selected correspondents in different countries, asking them, actually, for two things. The first is to be willing to articulate an opinion. And the second is to relate your personal opinion to a school book. Could you choose pages from a school book (it could be the one you used as a child orany other) which are related to your thoughts on the matter?
Why are we doing this? Because another change of scene is occurring in regard to the way the Soviet history is discussed today - there are various types of treating the Soviet condition: negation, assimilation, or nostalgic renewal of some codes and symbols. A pre-defined mix of amnesia and nostalgia is being officially promoted in Russia, while the art scene displays a seemingly unproblematic integration of the past, exploring its conflicts and correspondences, if at all, through playful sampling rather than serious research.
What are we trying to do? A book. A publication featuring several texts and all the collected materials.
Our frame is a collaborative project by Yevgeniy Fiks, Olga Kisseleva and Elena Sorokina, with the support of the DCR studious in The Hague, Holland.
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This is part of my answer/contribution:
World revolution...
To consider whether the Soviet Union was a colonial power or not I decided to dwell on the question through the rhetoric of my old gymnasium* history book Alla Tiders Historia (1985). The word “colonial”, “colonialism” or “colonizing” didn’t occur once in relation to Soviet Union activities. This didn’t surprise me, remembering how I was taught about this subject in school, but I decided to look at some more both older and newer Swedish gymnasium history books to have a larger material to consider. Again, the same answer, “colonial”, “colonialism” or “colonizing” didn’t appear in relation to the Soviet Union one single time. Instead many other words were used to describe Soviet Union colonial enterprises and I decided to put these words into lists. The selection of words in the lists is based upon how they are discursively used in the particular book, and I have tried to avoid adding extra value to the words. Therefore many words that appear in the lists are not necessarily a reflection of my own association chains but should be understood as being part of a larger ideological framework, which of course I am also implicated in.
The words have then been translated by me from Swedish to English and placed in alphabetical order. The eight books, published between 1929 and 2004, that I have chosen to use in this work are mentioned in Sven-Åke Johansson’s research on history education in Sweden during the last century. According to him, the books I have chosen are the most commonly used books in Swedish gymnasiums and therefore can be said to shape the historical consciousness of a considerable part of the Swedish population. None of the books have been written by or even partly written by a woman and the field has been dominated by quite a small number of authors.
Below is a short list, based on all the eight books, of the most commonly used words to replace “colonial”, “colonialism” or “colonizing” in relation to Soviet colonial activities. The list states how common the word is in relation to other words and exactly how many times it appears.
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1.occupation/occupy/occupied...............28
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2.world revolution...................................17
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3.control.................................................14
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4.expand/expansion/expansive.............13
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5.intervene/intervention.........................12
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6.dictatorship/dictatorial.........................11
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6.invade/invasion...................................11
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6.strike down/struck down.....................11
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7.influence.............................................10
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8.dictatorship of the proletariat...............9
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9.Comintern............................................8
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9.iron curtain...........................................8
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9.rule/ruled/ruling....................................8
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9.force.....................................................8
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10.Berlin wall..........................................7
* A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form collages and U.S. college preparatory high schools.
