Was the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance just a Soviet version of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?
No. Sure the USSR supported people’s movements abroad, but that’s not imperialism. Neither are military alliances in themselves. There wasn’t an export of private or nationalized Soviet finance capital in order to exploit workers elsewhere.
Yes. Look at the evolution of the polish border between 1939 and 1945 for example. USSR moved the entire country to grow its territory. Look the Prague Springue. Those are two examples of russian imperialism
Look at the evolution of the polish border between 1939 and 1945 for example. USSR moved the entire country to grow its territory.
Half Ukrainian half Polish territories got fights for control by the two new nation states at their creation. Is it supposed to refute USSR imperialism?
Poland lost territories to Russia during this war
But at least, we agree that the invasion of Prague in 1968 was an imperialist move
TIL stopping reactionary fascist interlopers is imperialism.
Crushing color revolution attempts is “an imperialist move”? Also it was Poland that started the 1920 war in hopes of rebuilding its former empire and ended up stealing land that was not majority Polish by population.
The USSR was not imperialist at any point in its history. The worst you can accuse them of is revisionism (starting with Khrushchev) and perhaps “great nation chauvinism”.
Treating half of Europe as puppet states and sending the army to cancel reforms is imperialist. Prague 1968 is a reform movement that was initiated by Dubček the head of the party. It is not a color revolution. The operation is controversial, even for communists country, even for country of the Warsaw pact ! Albania left the Warsaw pact after the event. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring
I am sorry but the Brezhnev Doctrine is an imperialist doctrine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brezhnev_Doctrine
The goal of USSR was to impose progressively communism to the (bourgeoisie of the) whole world. Because, communism in one country could only lead to proletariat dictatorship. So to move further toward communism, they had to have a communist world. USSR imperialism is an imperialism of an other nature than the american one or the european one. Trotsky wrote about it
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperialism
The cold war is an influence war and an aggregate of proxy war between two imperialist states. How can it be understood otherwise ?
That Trotskyist definition of imperialism is not one that is recognized by most communists. Lenin’s definition of imperialism necessitates monopoly capitalism and capture of markets for capital export. The USSR did not fulfill the Leninist definition of imperialism. The so-called “reform movement” you speak of was nothing more than a Gorbachev-like attempt at smuggling liberalism in through the back door in order to destroy the socialist system.
The USSR was 100% right in defending socialism in Eastern Europe. The Cold War was nothing less than global class war, a struggle between an imperialist capitalist camp and a socialist anti-imperialist camp.
(Also, Trotsky was not even alive anymore by the time the Cold War started, not to mention he got a lot of things wrong about the USSR, i don’t think he is the best person to cite on this issue…)
