Historian Every Saturday: Yana Prymachenko. Was Ukraine a colony of the Kremlin? (part two) (02.03.2024)
An academic lecture by historian Yana Prymachenko (the “Historian Every Saturday” series, part two) on the colonial nature of relations between Russia and Ukraine. Key points: Russian colonialism was political rather than economic (the priority was power and prestige, not resource extraction), so the “classic” maritime-economic template of the British type does not fit it — which is precisely why the West underestimates it; the “Russian world” as a modernized imperial identity based on language and “shared memory”; and the Soviet hierarchy of ethnicities. A source for the article on whether Ukraine was a colony of Russia.
Key moments
- 05:30 A hierarchy of ethnicities in the USSR: Russians first, Ukrainians the "younger brothers" (from 1954)
- 08:08 Russian colonialism was political, not economic (unlike the British)
- 10:00 The "Russian world" is a modernized Uvarov triad; the foundation is headed by Molotov's grandson
- 13:00 The "Great Victory" as symbolic capital; the co-optation of the "Immortal Regiment"
- 23:30 Ukraine as Russia's "East India" (in the words of Russian imperialists)
- 40:41 Russia is a raw-materials state; the world is ruled by technology, not raw materials