Today, one can often hear negative reviews about the former Soviet Union, with some calling it a state prison, while others, especially former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, called it an "evil empire." In addition, even some modern Russian historians have called the Soviet Union an empire.
Ronald Reagan, the 33rd president of the United States, is the one who owns this ridiculous claim (image from publicly available sources)
Many former Soviet republics, such as the Baltic States, Georgia or Ukraine, also considered themselves victims of Soviet colonial expansion, and in their view, "evil Russia" occupied their territory, extracted all resources and suppressed the people. But is it possible to agree with this argument, is the USSR an empire?
Before answering this question, let's first look at the definition of an equally pro-Western empire on Wikipedia, so:
Empires (from lat.imperium-power) are monarchies led by emperors or colonies or internationally important powers, acting on the basis of their domestic and foreign policies towards military estates (organized armies) and in the interest of military estates. As a rule, an empire unites different peoples and territories into a single state with a single political center, playing an important role in the region and even the world. The most famous empires were Rome, Holy Rome, Mongolia, Ottomans, Russia, and Britain.
As we have seen, even the Liberal Wikipedia in English gives the answer given in the title of this article, refuting the argument that the Soviet Union was an empire, for example, we were given the British, Ottoman, and Russian empires. The Soviet Union had no monarch, society had no hierarchy, and the Soviet Union did not occupy any foreign territory. However, some foreign experts argue that the Soviet Union was supposed to be a hidden empire, arguing that the Soviet leadership took control of the republics out of fear and carried out military expansion in Eastern Europe. What about these pseudo-experts, I'm going to give a rebuttal argument, so:
Map of the USSR and Republics (image taken from open source)
1) According to the Constitution, all union republics are sovereign and can secede from the USSR at any time, which was finally completed in 1991;
2) As a rule, any empire has a center, the metropolis, which draws all resources from its colonies for profit. However, if we look at this interesting map of the supply of the Republics, we will find that the so-called "metropolises" under the name of the Republic of the Russian Federation supply all the Republics financially and materially. Sometimes it reaches the point of absurdity, where the remote republics live better than Russia itself.
Map of union budget subsidies in the territories of the USSR (image taken from open source)
3) In empires, colonies were appendages of raw materials, and colonies produced more than they consumed, while metropolises, on the contrary, consumed more than they produced. Let's take a look at this wonderful base table. From this table, we see that the Federal Republic consumes more, while RSFSR produces more. This Russia was a strange "empire" where the local inhabitants lived worse than in the "colonial" Federal Republic
conclusion. In summary, we see that the Soviet Union cannot be called an empire. In fact, during the Soviet period, Russia did not enslave the republics. Ever since the Russians came to the Soviet Republic, schools and hospitals, factories and factories have been built for them, not to mention entire cities. Therefore, all the anti-Soviet remarks of some leaders of the former Soviet republics are simply absurd.