logoalt Hacker News

ShinyLeftPadlast Friday at 4:42 PM1 replyview on HN

You would be wrong. The people you described were called "тунеядцы" in USSR. With a possible exception of bureaucrats who existed as a result of centralized government but were also called "a barrier for the working class" by Lenin etc.

I also highly doubt USSR would accommodate people who move in and don't bother to integrate into the culture and speak Russian. Ask people from entire countries where Moscow did Russification, and those people didn't even move in from outside they already lived there.


Replies

int_19hlast Monday at 9:52 PM

> I also highly doubt USSR would accommodate people who move in and don't bother to integrate into the culture and speak Russian

USSR was schizophrenic in that regard. Early on, it had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia, which was quite literally about de-russifying the local elites and promoting local languages. Then Stalin did a hard 180 on that, like he did on so many other things (e.g. re-criminalizing abortion and homosexuality, or reintroducing paid high school). I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that under Stalin, the USSR truly switched from being a left totalitarian dictatorship to right totalitarian.