Many Russians would argue that Russian Siberian territories are not colonies and have never been colonies. They claim that unlike the European powers, which exploited their African, American and Asian colonies for resources and enslaved or exterminated the indigenous populace, Russians never oppressed the locals and put a lot of money and resources into developing these territories, instead of simply pumping the resources out.
History is written and re-written by the victors, especially those who have had totalitarian political apparatuses in the past that could airbrush events, people and even historical nations out of existence and create them at will if the situation required it.
You will notice that few of the Native Siberians who were so very happy to be civilised by the noble Europeans sweeping through their lands actually wrote any of those history books.
Russian expansion into Siberia didn't encounter much resistance, aside from Ermak's war with the Khanate of Sibir and occasional small skirmishes with some tribes and (later on) China. Many Siberian tribes were integrated relatively peacefully.
And yet Russian expansion into the Caucasus encountered so much resistance Russians are still being killed in 2014 over it. But lack of resistance doesn't necessarily indicate the natives wanted to be conquered, just that they couldn't do much about it.
Also:
exterminated
Let's not go there again.
Canada could be considered colonial, not only for our treatment of the natives in the 20th century but also our control of the Inuit territories.
Pretty much every country in the New World would fit that category I think. We're looking at you, Australia.
Actually any European country that had any chance to do so did oppress someone else at some point in time.
And scandinavian countries did have colonies much more recent than viking times. At least Sweden and Denmark, Finland and Norway weren't independent at the time.
Even tiny Courland had overseas colonies.
Scotland had overseas colonies too in Panama, Eastern New Jersey, a town somewhere in the Carolinas and finally our largest and most successful ones in the Maritimes of Canada. There we oppressed the hell out of the Acadians.
When Great Britain was formed Scots were first into the fray to civilise those heathen natives and steal develop/pump money into the land and such. Our soldiers were the Crown's chief colonial enforcers and we made the best administrators. We made up the bulk of the Loyalist population during the American Revolution, hence the number of Scots in Canada. There's always that expression "the English ruled the British Empire, the Scots ran it".
I realised a while ago that a lot of my strong support of independence might actually be rooted in the terrible sense of white guilt I feel for everything we've done in the past as part of the UK. Maybe the reason why my criticism for other big, colonial empires like France, Spain, Russia etc is so strong is related to that too.
If I criticise your country's past at any point, I say this in general to anyone who reads this, please do not get offended. Usually the countries I criticise the most I like best.
The whole argument about which country is/has been the most oppressive out of all is based on a very important underlying argument - which nation/country/civilization has the right to criticize other countries?
At this point, United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and other countries of the Western world think that they are the most righteous countries in the world and that they are morally and ideologically superior to the rest of the world. No one did grant the Western world the title of paragon of virtue and the right to enforce their own political ideologies and morals around the world. Such a claim is backed solely by the military and economic power of Western countries. As the saying goes, "Might makes right".
In my opinion, however, if Russia or other country had a similarly powerful economy and military force, they would definitely proclaim themselves the most righteous countries in the world and then haughtily asserted about how virtuous they are, how awful is the life in Britain or America and how all the British or American rulers that opposed them in the past or oppose them at the moment are the scum of the earth... all the while covering up their own skeletons in their closets.
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