this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian lawmakers have submitted a draft bill to the State Duma that would rewrite a chapter of history by nullifying the Soviet decision in 1954 to transfer Crimea from Russia to Ukraine.

The move appears aimed at establishing a legal basis for Russia to argue that Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which it claims to have annexed from Ukraine in 2014, was never really part of Ukraine to begin with.

The draft, submitted by a lawmaker from each of Russia's two houses of parliament, describes the 1954 handover as arbitrary and illegal because no referendum was held and Soviet authorities had no right to transfer territory from one constituent republic to another without consent.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm sure they will also considered illegal taking teritory from China and Japan as there was no referrendum in those places. Right ? I bet they will also compensate whole east block for occupation that took about 4 decates. Right ? I'm sure we can go on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Pick the one that is economically necessary, Stalingrad.

[–] [email protected] 73 points 8 months ago (4 children)

So they're admitting that without this nullification, Chrimea is part of Ukraine and Russia has no claim to it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Soviet borders are arbitrary. Nobody cared as long as they were all part of the union.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

No, no, no, no, no.

Not no claim. Just... No legal claim.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

So they’re admitting that without this nullification, Chrimea is part of Ukraine and Russia has no claim to it?

Its a bunch of formalizing of what has already been achieved militarily. Hardly the first time a military occupation has shifted a national border. That's the story of 90% of the United States and 70% of the UK.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

100% correct. This is the shoot first ask questions later variant of stealing land.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Shoot first, make a law retroactively making shooting legal later.

Drop dissenter from a window

[–] [email protected] 53 points 8 months ago

This is explicitly banned under the No Backsies rule.

[–] [email protected] 101 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Does this mean Russia should lose the USSR's permanent seat on the UN security council?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Believe it or not, they still use the .SU top Domain Name. Which they got just before shit inploded in 1991. So just based on that fact they will say ",нет товарищ or no comrade"

[–] [email protected] 53 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Yep. And it should go to Ukraine.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Lmao. As a firm supporter of Ukraine in this conflict, the sentiment is nice but giving them a permanent seat on the world security council is ridiculous. Neither their economic nor military power warrants that, many much more powerful and influential countries don’t get a permanent seat.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Could be wrong, but I assumed it was a joke

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I'm german, we don’t do so well with humor.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

German humour is no laughing matter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

To be fair, it's easy to miss sarcasm and dry humour in text. I do it all the time =)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Nice sentiment, but that would be a pretty absurd choice. It would be nice to have a South American or African permanent member, or perhaps India.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Id say give India a few years before deciding. Modi isn't steering them in the best direction as of late.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I suggested them not because I'm a Modi stan but because there's a much stronger case for their geopolitical importance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

The AU just got a seat on the G20, just sayin

[–] [email protected] -5 points 8 months ago

Pfft lol

It would be more absurd not to give it to Ukraine

[–] [email protected] 69 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They've also made noises about the sale of Alaska to the United States by imperial Russia being illegal. Good luck with that, shitheads.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Trump would give them Alaska if Putin asked...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Idk he might have enough sense to get something out of it. Likely personally, but I don't think even that guy could give it away

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Of course, Trump's companies would benefit, same as when they were paid off by the Saudis, but the US wouldn't get anything.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

They can have the Palin family

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago

So Ukraine should get the Soviet nukes back that they have up, right? Right?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Are there any other Soviet-era territorial changes that took place under similar conditions, that might threaten the integrity of other former Soviet republics based on this precedent?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The entire countries of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were autonomous republics within the Russian SFSR for the first ~16 years

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This whole things seems fascinating

If you don't mind, could someone take only thirty seconds, or one minute, to give me a little historical background?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't know enough about this specific topic to give you more info than Wikipedia could, but:

  • The Russian empire goes into WW1 controlling more or less the post-WW2 borders of the Soviet Union. It has Finland and eastern Poland as well, plus a few other diffferences, but you get the idea.
  • Russia collapses in the war, several years of civil war ensue, the Bolsheviks win and name the new version of Russia "the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic". It should be noted that the civil war was not at all just a "rebels vs government" deal, the list of different factions is utterly ludicrous. There was an enormous heap of different groups in the former empire and basically every European country was backing at least one of them.
  • The RSFSR does not control all of the former Russian empire, only most of it. Several parts did their own thing during the civil war and are currently independent, often fighting their own ongoing civil wars. The RSFSR begins a bunch of wars to try to regain all of the former territory, losing some and winning others.
  • The RSFSR regularly backs allied factions in the various national struggles, such as backing the Bolshevik-aligned Ukrainian Socialist Republic against the also-socialist but German-backed Ukrainian People's Republic, the anarchist Makhnovshchina movement, and the also-German-backed but not-socialist Ukrainian State.
  • In the cases that the Bolshevik-allied factions won, you now have a bunch of Bolshevik-aligned states outside of the RSFSR.
  • Delegates from the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian soviet republics (Transcaucasia is today Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) get together at the end of 1922 for the First All-Union Congress of Soviets and agree to make a sort of country-of-countries. Something a bit like the EU, but communist and with more power centralised in the new government. This new thing is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Nominally all four "union republics" are equal, although Russia remains enormously more powerful in practice than the others.
  • One of the early principles of the Bolsheviks was equal rights for the various nationalities in the new state that they envisioned. To this end, they had a Commissar for Nationalities even before the revolution, a position whose job it was to make sure the nationalities got represented. This position was held by none other than Joseph Stalin.
  • Over the next twentyish years, a number of regions in the four SSRs are broken off into new SSRs for different nationalities - Turkmen, Tajik, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, and more out of Russia, Trancaucasia gets split into Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia etc. Several conquered countries like the Baltic states also become union republics. I have no idea what logic was used when deciding which ones got to be their own republics and which just got to be autonomous parts of the RSFSR. A policy called korenizatsiya is implemented, under which people are meant to be able to run their lives in their own languages.
  • The Kazakh and Kyrgyz SSRs stand out because they were autonomous regions of the RSFSR for quite a while before becoming their own SSRs. Their Central Asian neighbours in the Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek SSRs became union republics pretty quick, and others like the Bashkirs and Tatars stayed part of the RSFSR until the Soviet Union collapsed. It was only really those two that were somewhere in the middle.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago
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