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Soviet and Post-Soviet Totalitarian Imperialism and Nationalism

Hannah Arendt's anatomy and genealogy of Russian totalitarian imperialism, which is briefly reviewed in this article, is relevant in many ways today against the background of another expansive, aggressive war of the Russian totalitarian empire.

Significantly, the framework proposed by Arendt gives us an adequate assessment of Russia's actions and, to some extent, the possibility of predicting them.

We must point out that it would be a fundamental mistake to see Russia's aggressive war through the prism of a nationalist project. On the contrary, Russia's action in Ukraine supports the conclusion that its goal is the complete and consistent realization of the project of a totalitarian empire.

This conclusion includes several necessarily related results: a) Russia's primary goal is to destroy Ukraine's sovereignty and expand on its entire territory; b) If this goal is achieved, the territorial expansion of the Russian totalitarian empire will continue consistently to other adjacent lands as well. The ambition of expansion on the Eurasian continent will not be subject to any geographical or other internal barriers; c) the formation of a new system of satellites will be unacceptable for the regime of the Russian Empire; d) Consequently, all those peoples in whose territory the Russian totalitarian empire will be able to expand will lose their sovereignty and will be subject to the same regime of totalitarian domination as that which operates in the heart of the empire; e) All those peoples facing the seizure of sovereignty by a totalitarian empire should not expect partial retention of sovereignty or other concessions from the empire, including refusal to use the instruments of totalitarian domination over them and "softer" approaches to domination.

 

Note: The full document is available only in Georgian.


Author(s)

Davit Zedelashvili