A little more than 100 years ago, the Russian Revolution of 1917 changed economic and political systems around the world. In contrast to Western imperialism, which colonized overseas regions, the Tsarist Empire expanded by annexing its adjacent lands from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, and from the Baltic Sea in west to east Pacific Ocean.

As an anti-imperialist, the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin was opposed to Great Russia's annexation of the lands of non-Russian peoples, as well as the annexation of the lands of others by Western imperialism, and this was explained in his book Introduction to "Imperialism, the Highest Stages of Capitalism" published in 1917 , as he considered that capitalism devolves into monopoly, widens the gap between classes and shows the need for new markets to sell products at low prices and cheap labor, which creates the need for colonialism and colonies.

Lenin linked colonialism to the fear of world war, as he considered that the presence of more than one capitalist state in the international system results in competition for colonies, which results in a struggle for control between these powers, as happened in the First World War.

However, many of Lenin's colleagues opposed his policies favoring the right of the Russian colonies to national liberation, according to a report by the Indian newspaper "the wire".

After Finland's independence was recognized in 1917, no other country received the same treatment, but larger countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent Soviet republics, while smaller countries became within the borders of the RSFSR (including Central Asian countries) Republics and autonomous regions responsible for the local affairs of government, such as education, culture and agriculture.

It has taken some policies aimed at promoting the national, economic, and cultural progress of non-Russians;

Priority was given to the local language, mother tongue schools increased dramatically, and those policies sought to develop national cultures, and to employ as many local citizens as possible in the Soviet administration, but that era did not last long.

Stalinist imperialism

Lenin suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right hand and leg and affected his ability to speak in May 1922, the year his successor Joseph Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party.

Lenin later suffered two strokes and health problems, and with Lenin marginalized by illness, Stalin grew stronger.

The dispute over national liberation reached its climax during this period.

Lenin opposed Stalin's attempt to integrate the five independent republics into the Russian Federation, but Stalin went ahead with his plans, and Lenin was powerless to stop him until his death in 1924.

The most Lenin could do was to dictate what came to be known as his "will", including his groundbreaking reflections on the national and colonial question which he dictated at the end of December 1922, which are worth reading and we will mention some of them here.

Starting with an incident that greatly annoyed Lenin (the physical assault by Stalin's envoy on a comrade from Georgia who did not agree to the plans imposed on them), Lenin noted that "in such circumstances the 'freedom to secede from the Union' by which we justify ourselves would be but a scrap of paper, And it will not be able to defend non-Russians against the attack of that truly Russian man, the great Russian chauvinist, who is in essence a scoundrel and a tyrant," according to his description.

Lenin insists on the necessity of distinguishing between the nationalism of oppressed states and the nationalism of states that practice oppression, adding, “We, citizens of the Great Power, have been involved throughout history in an infinite number of instances of violence, moreover, we commit innumerable acts of violence and humiliation. without us noticing it."

Lenin died in January 1924, without ever having the opportunity to defend these principles within the party.

His ideas were suppressed by Stalin, whose policies were the antithesis of what Lenin advocated.

The leader of the Soviet Communist Party, Mir Sultan Galiyev, was tried in a show trial. He was the first Bolshevik to face this fate. He was later arrested and shot.

In the 1930s, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide", described Stalin's policies, which included the mass murder of Ukrainian intellectuals and priests and the forcible seizure of grain from Ukrainian peasants despite the starvation of millions of them.

Describing this within what he called the "Soviet genocide", he said, "What we saw here is not limited to Ukraine. The plan used by the Soviets there was and continues to be repeated."

As Timothy Snyder points out in his book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, “The Islamic countries of the Caucasus and Crimea were particularly targeted, between 1943 and 1944, during which all the inhabitants of the Caucasus and the Crimea were arrested and expelled. Karachay-Cherkess, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Turks, those who could not move were shot, and their villages were completely burned.”

Stalin's legacy

Lenin was criticized for his role in the formation of an authoritarian state in the post-revolutionary era, but he was not given enough credit for his role in fighting Russian imperialism.

The last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, attempted to return to Lenin's anti-imperialism by rejecting the invasion of East Germany in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, and tried to pursue an equal and voluntary relationship between Russia and other Soviet republics in 1991. Stalin turned against him and put him under house arrest.

Ironically, this accelerated the disintegration of the Soviet Union, marginalizing Gorbachev - who wanted to democratize rule - and empowering Boris Yeltsin, who headed the opposition to the coup but was not interested in preserving the Soviet Union because Gorbachev was not only trying to democratize Only Russia but the Soviet Union as a whole.

According to the writer, Vladimir Putin - who succeeded Yeltsin - pursued imperialist policies, waging a brutal war to crush Chechnya's struggle for independence and annexation of Crimea. Unfortunately, Lenin's legacy against Russian imperialism has been overshadowed by the legacy of his genocidal successor, Stalin.