this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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The USSR’s republics didn’t just debate independence, they actually left. If it was just “internal politics,” why did every non-Russian republic take the first opportunity to break away?
The Texas/California comparison is a weak false equivalence. The USSR suppressed nationalist movements (read on the Hungarian Revolution), while the U.S. allows open political discourse.
It's the only equivalency there can be between the two countries; unlike the Soviet Union, the United States was not formed by colonial absorbtion of neighboring nations. The closest thing there is, is the Mexican land grab in the 19th century and Europe has a long history of nationalist movements being suppressed, so the Soviet Union is not unique in that regard.
And, just like the USSR, the US has a track record of not allowing political discourse that threatens its hegemony; the Black Panthers, Pinochet, and Cuba are probably the most glaring examples.
You're deflecting. If the USSR was truly a voluntary workers' paradise, why did nearly all of its republics leave at the first opportunity? You’re avoiding that question by pointing to U.S. wrongdoing, but the reality is that Soviet republics didn’t just ‘entertain’ secession like Texas, they actively fought for it and succeeded.
Comparing minor secessionist sentiments in Texas to the complete collapse of a superstate is absurd.
And you're refusing to accept that political and cultural divisions are a natural part of any state's existence; it has little to do with it being capitalist nor communist and those divisions will be based on the country's disposition. Ie workers rights for a worker's country like the USSR and oligarchical primacy for a country controlled by wealth like the US.
I bring up American successionist movements because they've been a thing for the United States just as much as the they were for the Soviet Union; my point could have probably been better made by the American civil war.
Secessionist sentiments in the united states were not nearly as big a thing as they were for soviet republics who faced economic and civic turmoil for decades.
A better comparison would be if after the US civil war, America fell apart entirely. That's the only reasonable comparison i can accept.