Part of the massive rewrite of soviet history that has happened in my lifetime is that all of the peoples of the non-Russian republics did not experience genuine class conflict and mass uprisings that led them to be part of the USSR. Nobody actually wanted rapidly developed, shared prosperity. The forces that overthrew the reactionary elites of Central Asia and Eastern Europe didn’t actually exist, or they all came from Russia. It’s just Jim Crow “outside agitator” rhetoric filtered through the last bit of acceptable liberal racism.

The scope of acceptable racism will soon start expand rapidly. We’re gonna need a lot of hated outsiders to blame the next capitalist crises on. Get ready, Ireland.