Was the USSR actually a union or just another Russian Empire? (Short Animated Documentary)

I love how the outfits of each historical figures gets a new design one in a while

"So did running a country centered in Russia benefit Russia and the Russians?" Well yes, but actually no.

2:00 “If Stalin didn’t like you…. Oh boy”

Fun fact: There are a ton of works of fiction (many of them made before the collapse of the communist regimes) in which the Soviet Union is still alive and powerful in a futuristic world. The 1968 dystopian science-fiction novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheeps?" (set in 2019) and the 1987 cyberpunk anime "Bubblegum Crisis" (set in 2032) serve as great examples of such works

"If Stalin didn't like you, oh boy..." I almost choked on my Fanta

Everyone is equal, but some people are more equal than others.

If you wonder why there is slide "Finns learn in Finnish", there used to be sizable Finnish minorities in Ingria and Republic of Karelia and Kola peninsula. "Used to be" being the important part here, they ended up as a significant minority in Siberia, Finland, Sweden or six feet under.

I like that you dont actually answer the question but just give the facts and let us viewers decide.

Very interesting topic! Keep it up!

2:40 there technically did exist one officially sanctioned form of regional pay discrimination in the form of the so-called "Northern Bonus", instituted in regions designated as "the Far North" (mostly sparsely populated areas beyond or near the Arctic circle) where extra pay and non-monetary benefits were used to compensate workers for the harsh conditions and/or incentivise workers from other areas to move there at least for a short stint. To some extent this system still exists in modern Russia.

When Tsar Nicholas took Russia into WW1 in 1914, he did so under the banner of Russianness and Orthodoxy. Yet at the time the country was only around 50% Russian, because it included lots of non-Russian minorities: Poles, Finns, Balts, Ukrainians, Tatars etc. At the end of WW1, the Bolsheviks took power under the banner of Communist cosmopolitanism and anti-nationalism. The nine members of the first Soviet Politburo included four Jews (Lev Kamenev, Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Moisei Uritsky, plus Lenin was one quarter Jewish), a Georgian (Joseph Stalin), a Pole (Felix Dzerzhinsky) and just three Russians (Alexandra Kollontai, Andrei Bubnov and Lenin himself). But the country they governed had lost Poland, Finland, the Baltic States and around half of Ukraine. Now it really was very glaringly majority Russian (around 70-75%). Maybe it’s not surprising that the eventual winner of the post Lenin power struggle was the Georgian who preferred “socialism in one country” to Trotsky’s internationalist “permanent world revolution”.

This is a really great video idea, it was really interesting. I'd also like to add on that my mum, born and raised in modern day turkmenistan (or USSR) learnt about both turkmen and soviet culture. She says that she felt soviet and had no problem with learning about russian history. Education for history was both soviet and turkmen (in other republics they would be similar for example in Ukraine they would learn both Soviet and Ukrainian history). They also learnt about older russian history like Peter and Catherine the great. After the collapse of the Soviet Union she was in University and said that they had compulsory history and learnt alot about Turkmen/ central asian history, which felt forced for her. She was born in 1974.

It was actually the James Bisonette empire

Was the Soviet Union just a rebranded Russian Empire? "Yes, but actually no, but actually yes."

Another great video 👍

In Bessarabia and Baltics it definetely was a Empire.

Have you considered making a video about the Pogroms in the Russian Empire?

I ADORE your attention to detail. At 2:09 Antanas Smetona, the Lithuanian President (Dictator) on the left is carrying a suitcase, a reference to how he fled the country before occupation Also, the main group that benefitted were those working with the communist party or the KGB, as far as I can recall

Love this channel!

It's very incorrect to say that the USSR adjusted border lines based on ethnic groups' boundaries - why do you think there is so much conflict between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.