russian language is a colonization tool.

Colonialism is about money first. It is about economic domination and exploitation. The most efficient types of Western colonialism aimed at maximising profits from the looting of indigenous resources while maintaining a minimum presence on the ground. Ethnic cleansing, genocides and cultural erasure would make sense for Westerners only up to the point when it served their extraction rackets. However, for russian colonialism, economic exploitation and full cultural assimilation always go hand-in-hand. Think of russian colonisers as more of the Borg of colonialism, rather than the Cardassians of colonialism (apologies for extra nerdy reference, but I waited years to use it!)

Now, this is all high-brow talk about concepts. But how exactly does this russian colonialism assimilation manifest in our everyday life as Ukrainians? This week, I share a personal story about the use of the russian language in our family and how it keeps manifesting hundreds of years of systemic erasure of our Ukrainian identities by russian colonialism.

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by ukrainian illustrator Maria Foya. please amplify her art: @foya_illustrations

here is what’s in store for you this week:

• How russian colonialism manifests in the daily life of Ukrainians. The language edition

• Footnotes on russian colonial reconquest of Central Asia in 1916-1930

• Ukrainian Spaces latest: we look at the Western intellectual blindness when it comes to russian colonialism

• russian classic literature and art are chock-full of colonial and imperial ideology

Like it?

Then Slava Ukraïni and let’s go.

Russian Colonialism 101 is the first newsletter to shed light on Russian colonialism and is part of the Volya Hub network.

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