𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠

So this is the application form:

Mamdani was born in Uganda to a Ugandan father and an Indian (Gujarati) mother. Which box would you tick?

Mamdani opted to tick “Black/African American” as well as “Asian”, and at the “Other” box wrote “Ugandan”.

I personally fail to see the problem. Given the constraints of these boxes, this seems to be the most accurate way of describing his ethnicity? Am I missing something here? Why is NYT presenting this as an issue at all?

Trump saying he’s white despite him being orange seems like a bigger discrepancy.

That’s not specific to having a constitution. Judges in the Netherlands for example also cannot do a judicial review to determine the constitutionality of any passed laws. And that’s with a written constitution. There’s also no supreme court. The closest thing is the Raad van State (the “state council”), which evaluates all laws on proportionality, constitutionality, and executability, and then advises the government what to do with a law. It’s convention that that advice is followed, but it’s not required.

There’s still a judicial challenge happening. And just because the UK doesn’t have written constitution doesn’t mean there’s no constitution at all. Most of it is even written down, just not in one place.

Why not?

Not sure that matters too much, frogs in the US are boiling fine too. The constitution can be brushed aside just as easily.

Yet there were still no findings that Iran indeed was working towards nuclear weapons. Just having the means to do it isn’t the same as actually doing it.

If you actually bothered to read the book at least a little bit, you’d have read he actually sources a fair bit.

He’s also providing an eyewitness account from his time there. I’m not sure how much more primary you want to get.

Tsarist Russia started with the russification process. The Soviets initially under Lenin reversed course, but this later changed under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. They accelerated the process. None of this is contradictory to what I’ve said.

The pogroms in tsarist Russia are horrible acts of genocide, but they were fairly simply anti-Jewish in nature. They were not a part of the russification process and should be considered separate. Hence when I compare the russification between tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, I’m obviously not taking any pogroms into consideration. It’s horrible, but unrelated to the subject at hand.

I’ve already provided a source.

Perhaps also read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification then, which is linked on that page. It explains how the Soviets:

• Forced other languages to use cyrillic if they didn’t before, aligning the spelling of words with Russian
• Made Russian a mandatory subject in schools
• In mostly urban areas made sure education was primarily provided in Russian
• Made indigenous people learn Russian, but Russian immigrants to those areas did not learn the indigenous language there

These were all policies aimed at “unifying” the various cultures in the Soviet Union and strengthening control.

Early Soviet Union is as you described, promoting various cultures and languages. Lenin saw that as a way to gain favour with the local populations. Later leaders however went down a different path.

If said Chinese ambassador wrote a book that was also sourced (like this British ambassador’s book is in a fair few places), their claims aren’t disputed by any factual evidence and is generally corroborated by historians, I’d be inclined to believe them yes.

I wouldn’t expect said ambassador to have a scientific study backing up every single sentence in the book. If he’s writing about his experiences, that can be a valuable perspective on things. I wouldn’t treat it as gospel necessarily but I can still apply critical thinking to ascertain whether or not they’re a credible source.

This is kind of interesting considering that you’ve claimed that the repression was most severe under his successors.

I claimed the russification process was more severe, not the executions. It’s well known that as a part of destalinization the executions largely stopped. That doesn’t mean the Union stopped promoting russification.

If you have a source that claims the opposite, feel free to share it.

I trust someone who was actually there more than a random user on the internet, yes. If you have a source that shows the opposite, feel free to share.

Page 151 has what you’re looking for:

The reality was, of course, that Russian and later Soviet imperial rule was at least as brutal as that of other imperial powers. In their campaigns of Russification the Tsars imprisoned and exiled Finns, Ukrainians, and others who dared to practise their national language and sustain a national culture. The Communists continued the practice even more brutally under the guise of eradicating ‘bourgeois nationalism’. Large numbers of intellectuals, especially in Ukraine and the Baltic States, were killed or exiled by Stalin. Under his successors the executions were fewer but the pressures continued. Communist Parties, with their own local First Secretaries, existed in all the fifteen constituent republics of the Union save for Russia itself. Russians saw this as discrimination. In fact it was a sign that the Russians did not need their own party, since they dominated the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and exercised effective central control over the republican parties. Throughout the Soviet period discontent flared up from time to time in one or other of the constituent republics, and was brutally suppressed.

Initially this is absolutely true! Under Lenin particularly this was very much promoted “indiginenisation” iirc it’s best translated as in English. But particularly under Khrushchev and later Breznhnev this very much changed, focusing on the single Soviet identity.

They didn’t really prosecute these minorities mind, just very much promoted the Soviet culture and Russian language in a large variety of ways.

Sure, here’s a source: https://archive.org/details/acrossmoscowrive00brai

The Soviets pursued korenization initially, which actually revived efforts towards Ukrainization. But this was later stopped and reversed to pursue a single Soviet identity with the Russian language. Ukrainian culture was suppressed and even Ukrainian membership of the communist party declined sharply. Russification intensified under Khrushchev and later Brezhnev.

The Ruthenians had been a people for centuries at that point, culturally similar but distinct from the Russians. History did not begin with the Soviet Union, nor are people defined by their borders, especially not in an age of empires and often shifting borders.

That’s even further back. I’m talking about the period when the Russian empire controlled the territory. During that time (+100 years), there was far more economic integration with the Ruthenians than there was with Russia proper. It made more logistical sense, it’s the same reason for which Crimea was ceded to Ukraine by the Soviets, Kiev due to its positioning was better suited to administratively control it.

The tsar sought to increase his influence over the region and began the process of russification, to tie the valuable region to Russia proper. The Soviets accelerated this, as they did in most of the other Soviet states.

Also thanks to ml mods to shut down any discussion. Come on, you’re better than just censoring comments.

The only historical revisionist here is you.

Historically the acceptable answer if you want to live in a different country would be to, you know, move to that country, instead of trying to move that country to you through war.

Btw, the Donbas is not a historically majority Russian region. It was subject to russification starting under tsarist Russia and intensified under the Soviets. But it was majority Ukrainian, home to the Ukrainian cossacks and major settlements were also deeply intertwined with the Ukrainian economy.