Why Colonialism is More Complicated Than You Think - with Botakoz Kassymbekova

Описание: What’s the difference between colonialism and imperialism? What types of colonialism can we identify — and which of them are playing out in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other countries?

This conversation is not purely academic. It helps us better understand what’s happening today — and what might happen tomorrow. Russian colonial and imperial practices sometimes resemble those of other empires — but at other times, they differ significantly. Russia often masks its imperial violence with nationalist mythology. It’s important to reveal why that mythology is misleading — and dangerous.

🎤 Host: Volodymyr Yermolenko, a Ukrainian philosopher, editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld, and president of PEN Ukraine.

Our guest today is Botakoz Kassymbekova, a renowned scholar of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. She is currently Professor of Eastern European History at the University of Zurich and specializes in Soviet history, Stalinism and post-Stalinism, and Russian imperial practices. She holds a PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin.

🌐Explaining Ukraine is produced by UkraineWorld, an English-language media project about Ukraine, run by Internews Ukraine.

This episode is created in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute, the country’s leading cultural diplomacy institution.

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00:00 — Intro: what is colonialism and imperialism, and why does it matter now?
02:06 — Why Russia is an empire? What is the difference between colonialism and imperialism?
04:32 — Russia’s colonial tactics
07:44 — Why does Russia seek full control over Ukraine? Not just influence, but domination and assimilation.
09:55 — Difference vs. sameness: how empires shape identities
11:24 — Settler colonialism vs. extractive colonialism: what drives conquest?
16:30 — Russia as a settler empire: back then and now
18:22 — How Russia colonises its internal nations through assimilation and language suppression.
20:50 — Censuses, schools and silent erasure: how Russian state mechanisms classify and erase non-Russian identities within its borders.
23:00 — Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and the memory of famine
25:30 — Why colonialism is about state power, not ethnicity, and why Ukrainians were tools, not masters, of the Russian colonialism elsewhere.
27:42 — Soviet categorisation: Muslims vs. Europeans. How the USSR racialised and managed populations with a colonial gaze.
32:04 — Why Russia criticises Western colonialism while mimicking it.
34:57 — “Greatness” as the keyword of Russian imperial ideology. Territory as the imperial prestige
40:15 — Russia's strategic aims: bullying Europe for superpower status.
43:33 — Why the Soviet Union’s support for global decolonisation masked its own imperial domination.
45:15 — “Friendship of peoples”: a Soviet colonial tactic in disguise
50:10 — Nuclear tests, cotton fields, and poisoned generations: how Moscow exploited Central Asia
53:20 — Health and autonomy: why so-called “Soviet development” often meant suffering, not progress.
55:44 — Who decides? The colonial theft of political agency
58:12 — Why many Western scholars failed to see Soviet colonialism and still don’t.
59:21 — Final reflection: Ukraine’s struggle is part of a bigger story

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