European imperialism and colonialism in Africa: conceptual lessons for understanding the former Soviet Union and present day Russia

This article claims that the legacy of European imperialism and colonialism in Africa can be conceptually compared to the legacy of Russian and Soviet imperialism and colonialism in the former USSR republics and the nations of Central and Easter Europe that were under Soviet dominations. Despite the obvious fact that the historical conditions and paths of African nations that were colonized, repressed and ruled by the European empires differ significantly from the experience of the nations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, that were conquered and colonized by the Russian Empire and later on were subjects to the Soviet rule, it is suggested in this article, that the conceptual lessons drawn from the vast literature dedicated to the studies of the aftermath of colonialism in Africa can enrich the scholarly efforts aimed at understanding the post-soviet spaces and different processes in it. What is meant by “conceptual lessons” is methodological opportunity for a different perspective or even a different lens through which the legacy of the Soviet rule and the current Russian neo-imperial foreign politics can be better understood. Much is written about the European imperialism and its colonial policies, however there is still some reluctance in applying the methodological framework of postcolonial studies to the former Soviet Union and present day Russia. Scholars all over the world studied the colonial legacies that African nations struggled to overcome and there are topics of particular relevance to the study of the post-soviet space: the processes of post-colonial nation building, the roles of new national elites, the ideological choices in foreign policies of newly independent nations, the aftermath of the policies of assimilation, the imperial “ideologies of superiority”, the economic consequences of colonialism, the role of churches and religious organizations in supporting colonial suppression – as conceptual topics, all of them can be studied critically, also in a comparative perspective, to have a much better understanding of the former soviet and current Russian foreign politics and policies.