--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
> Chris, I am not in disagreement with you or John on
> the issue that the
> native populations of America or Asia were decimated
> by European
> colonization. What I find disagreeable is the "who
> killed more people"
> rhetoric that indiscriminately attributes all death
> to a hated political
> factor of one's choice. The very same logic forms
> the foundation of right
> wing diatribes against communism - so what is bad
> for the goose is also bad
> for the gander.
Who was doing that? What I stated was:
1) Russia has a destabilizing factor built into it because, unlike the US, it has large minority populations concentrated in specific areas, which creates the preconditions for serious ethnic conflict.
2) The reason the US doesn't have this problem is that all the contendors for this role are either extinct or decimated.
3) Part of this is because the Russian Empire did not by and large attempt to replace the locals with Russians (anymore than the Roman Empire did with Romans). They didn't even bother to do this with the liberated serfs, who would have given them a huge amount of potential settlers if the tsar had wanted them. (Instead, much like Black slaves after the Civil War, the then-ex-serfs became sharecroppers or part of the tiny urban proletariat.) It was largely an empire based on tribute: you give the tsar his due, and do what he says, and he'll leave you alone. If you don't, you will be fucked.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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