108. ANALYSIS: Botakoz Kassymbekova on the Soviet project as settler colonialism, legacies, & implications for the war in Ukraine

War in Ukraine: Update from Kyiv

Botakoz Kassymbekova, Lecturer in Modern History at Universitat Basel, discusses the Soviet Union as a colonial empire: forced resettlement, settler colonialism, humans as territory, the leagacies of colonialism today, and implications for the war in Ukraine.

"The difference between settler colonial empires and extractive overseas empires lies in the relationship to land and labour… for settler colonial empires securing territory is the key purpose… in settler colonial empires in order to secure land for settlement you try to free the territory from the indigenous populations… using two modes… the first one is genocides… the second one is assimilation of local populations … when you assimilate people … they don’t claim the land back… so this very violent process of assimilation took place throughout the Soviet Union”

"What we can see in Ukraine is settler colonialism again in action...The coloniser will never accept you [the colonised] as equal and you will never be allowed to go your own way… you will always have to identify with the coloniser”

Botakoz Kassymbekova on Humans as Territory: Forced Resettlement and the Making of Sovet Tajikistan

Botakoz Kassymbekova on Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan

Botakoz on twitter: @BotakozKassymb1

My twitter: @jessicagenauer

More about the host: Jessica Genauer