Was the USSR a Colonial Power?

The idea of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) as a colonial power remains a contentious issue. During the Cold War, the United States was keen to promote the idea of the Soviet Union as a “red” colonial power, bent on world domination of the “free” world. However, as a known advocate for decolonization, friend to many countries in the developing world, and an ostensibly socialist state, American efforts failed to gain much traction on the international stage. A case might nonetheless be made that the USSR practiced a form of “internal colonialism,” aspects of which were remarkably similar to those practiced by conventional imperial powers.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, the United States sought to undermine the USSR’s status as a champion of decolonization by portraying it as an imperial power with its sights locked on Eastern Europe.  

On November 14, 1955, Nelson A. Rockefeller, special assistant for foreign affairs to President Eisenhower, proposed a strategy to raise the specter of “Red Colonialism” as an issue at the United Nations. Rockefeller’s narrative was that Red Colonialism was ‘the means by which Moscow has enslaved the captive nations and continues to subvert others for eventual domination.’

The goal was to position the United States as the leader of the “free world,” appealing to newly independent nations in the developing world. However, the campaign gained little traction at the UN, at a time when more pressing themes of development, racial equality, and national self-determination comprised the agenda (Heiss, 2015). 

Internal Colonialism I: Central Asia 

From the early stages of the Russian Civil War (1918-1921), the Bolsheviks expanded into former territories of the Russian Empire. Captured by the Red Army and aided by local Bolshevik chapters, a new Soviet order in the East emerged, from the Bukharan and Khorezm People’s Soviet Republics to Russian settler colonies such as Semirechye Oblast (northeastern Kyrgyzstan). By the 1930s, the Central Asian territories were reorganized into five Central Asian Soviet Republics: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet authorities encouraged the settlement of Soviet citizens (predominantly Russians and Ukrainians) in the so-called “Virgin Lands” of Kazakhstan, to boost agricultural output. As Soviet Central Asia became more politically and economically integrated into the Union, the region became a space for the production of raw materials – such as cotton – improving the USSR’s economy, but leaving the region dependent on the rest of the union for food and other goods (Harris, 2020). 

Joseph Stalin is notorious for his cruel will, ruthless political purges, and penchant for sending his rivals to the Gulag. His policies towards the indigenous Tartar people of the Crimean Peninsula during World War II were equally chilling. 

Crimea, at the bridgehead of Europe and Asia, affording access to the Black Sea, and boasting a strategically significant deepwater port, was coveted by Stalin. Accusing the Tartars of collaborating with the Nazis, in 1944 he ordered their mass deportation, attempted to erase their culture in Crimea and Russify the Peninsula. 

Acting under Stalin’s orders, NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria, oversaw the “exile” of nearly 200,000 Tartars with ruthless efficiency. Men, women, and children were crammed into cattle trains under brutal conditions and sent off to distant Soviet territories in Central Asia. Many died en route, while the Soviet Union, like the Russian Empire before it, deployed genocidal tactics to “make Crimea Russian.” 

So, Was the USSR Really a Colonial Power?

In the early Soviet era, Vladimir Lenin powerfully emphasized the right of all peoples and nations to national self-determination. Yet in practice, the Soviet Union exploited Central Asia economically while promoting Russian language and culture, as local elites were co-opted into the Soviet political system. Popular Islamic expression – historically central to the identity and culture of the region – was heavily repressed. Today, many Central Asian states view the history of their Soviet past through a postcolonial lens. 

In the case of Crimea, the Tartars were accordingly afforded significant cultural and linguistic autonomy, as the peninsula was organized into an autonomous Soviet Republic. The rise of Stalin marked a swift reversal, as official policy shifted towards the ‘homogenization of the Soviet nations into one Soviet people’ (Sviezhentsev (2020). The “exile” (Sürgünlik) of Crimean Tartars, exemplifies the Soviet practice of “internal colonialism,” resulting in a radical shift in the demography, culture, and history of the peninsula according to the needs of the Soviet project.