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| Anatol Țăranu | |
At all times colonial powers went to new countries to oppress these and enrich themselves at the expense of invaded peoples. To achieve this goal, the colonialists resorted to mass violence in the seized territories. They were simultaneously concerned with implanting various myths in the consciousness of oppressed peoples, presenting themselves as a great nation that goes to save primitive savages. So did all colonialists without exception, including the promoters of Russian-Soviet colonialism.
Different, but identical
Unlike the great European colonial powers that developed as overseas empires, Russian colonialism was characterized by its metropolitan, continental quality. Even if the empire of the Russian tsars, which along the way turned into the Soviet empire, differed from the colonial empires in the classical sense, it nevertheless fully appropriated the main characteristics of colonial policy by establishing military-political power, economic oppression and the imposition of Russian culture and language in the occupied territories. The Soviet Union added to the colonialist mythological arsenal the myth of brotherhood among peoples, within which there is the elder brother who brings liberation, civilization and technological progress.
A detailed analysis of how colonizers act demonstrates that at the first stage the colonized population feels oppressed, experiencing hatred and aggression towards its oppressors. But the manifestation of these states of protest and resistance becomes very dangerous because the colonialist always imposes power through violence. And the colonized, after several resistance attempts, in most cases realize all their helplessness and develop assumed obedience, conforming to the state of victim. And once started, the colonialists’ propaganda machine produces profound brainwashing effects, which psychologically transform the reaction of hatred and aggression of the oppressed into a form of admiration for the colonizers. Gradually, the invaded population really begins to believe in the myth imposed by the colonizers, accepting that these really brought liberation, culture, science, civilization.
Objectives of all colonies
In relation to colonialism, it is important to understand the true goals of the colonizer, who never pursues the goal of developing the colonized countries. This only wants to become rich, to grab material and human resources. To achieve this goal, the colonizer uses brute force against any resistance, but also colonizes the brains of the local population to effectively colonize the territory. In order to control the collective mentality of the colony’s population, the colonizer takes sustained measures to deprive the local population of its own identity. The spoken language lies beneath any national identity. Namely the language shapes a person’s uniqueness and self-identification. The language is the first factor that outlines the uniqueness of national cultures, the specific worldviews of each people. After losing its language following the processes of denationalization, the oppressed population begins to see itself through the eyes of a colonialist
The easiest way to colonize the mind is to deprive a person of the capacity to communicate in his/her language, jeopardizing the natural process of development of the language of the oppressed population, thus imposing lapidary, primitive, colorless communication because a developed language is the basis of communication, the way people build their worldview, the way they communicate with the beloved ones, with ancestors. A person whose culture, identity and language were taken away becomes nobody and no one’s. They can be sent to any war, to any hard construction works as they become easily manipulated human material and will have no reason to resist as they lack identity.
Myth of colonizer’s greatness
The myth of the colonizer’s greatness is the most important myth that the colonizers bring with them to conquered countries. This is done because, if the culture of the colonizer is very great, then another culture automatically becomes primitive. As a result, the efforts made by colonizers over time produce the effect when people subjected to the colonization process begin to believe that their native language is an undeveloped, primitive one, in which it is impossible to render the full multicolored range of reality. This is when the colonized begin to look at themselves through the eyes of a colonizer —they talk about themselves in the way the colonizers implanted their view on the realities around them in their brains during many years.
All the characteristics of colonialism presented above can be easily found in the history of Russo-Soviet colonial practices applied over two centuries in Moldova eastward the Prut. In order to justify the occupation of Bessarabia in 1812, the tsarist colonial administration established an iron curtain on the Prut line, thus limiting the cultural contacts of the population of the region with the body of the Romanian culture. Isolated from the fellow citizens across the Prut, the Romanians on the left side of the river were imprisoned in a kind of cultural ghetto in which any development of the national culture and language was drastically restricted and reduced to primitive forms of manifestation at the rural level. In parallel, there was profound denationalization of the national elites, their material and caste survival being conditioned by the renunciation of culture, language and national identity by accepting total Russification.
From harsh to harsher
The colonial denationalizing practices at the times of the USSR were even harsher. The Soviets extensively applied identity deconstruction methods, turning the natives of Transnistria, and after 1940 those of Bessarabia too, into Moldovans distinct from the Romanians. The Soviet identity deconstruction produced a phenomenon that was never met elsewhere in the world, when the historical community of Romanian-Moldovans was divided into two different identity groups – Romanians and Moldovans. In the merriment of colonial madness, they came to the aberration that there were two distinct languages – the Romanian, spoken in Moldova from the right side of the Prut River, and the Moldovan language, spoken in Moldova from the left side of the river. And this aberration continues today to animate the minds of a certain contingent of the population of the Republic of Moldova, which remained hostage to the precepts of colonial propaganda and thus demonstrating that the mind can remain colonized even after the colonialist leaves.
Hence the importance of developing the national language and culture of the former oppressed peoples, without which the process of effective decolonization of the former colonies cannot begin. At the same time, it is necessary to realize that colonization is a powerful propaganda machine, which must be countered through sustained efforts at the level of state policies. The purpose of such policies lies in the ingraining in collective mentality of the understanding that no culture can be greater than another. Every national culture is exceptional for its people. Someone else may not like it. It may be incomprehensible. It may seem different, but for each person their culture is authentic, unique and unrepeatable.
“At what cost”?
When it is claimed that the Russo-Soviet colonialist offered us access to the Russian language and the great Russian culture, we read and appreciate Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, praise Tchaikovsky’s music and we must ask ourselves at what cost?! And the cost was the prevention of the people from knowing and learning their own culture and language by unilaterally introducing the culture, traditions and customs of one people chosen to be an imperial nation, whose domination could only be established by repressing the culture, customs and traditions of the local population. Liberation from the colonial cultural yoke cannot happen without overcoming propaganda clichés about the great and powerful Soviet Union, which in reality was a colonialist power, an aggressor that caused countless economic and environmental disasters, famine, and ruined the lives of generations of our compatriots.
Definitive decolonization
Effective decolonization cannot happen without the return of the dominant status in society of the national language and culture. This is the first and most important condition for the definitive breaking of the chains of the colonial yoke. In Moldovan society, the anticolonial cultural awakening is complicated due to the vitality of the myth of anti-Romanian Moldovenism of colonial origin, which is deep-rooted in collective mentality of a still substantial part of the natives, perpetuating the state of colonized mind when the colonizer already left.
The mood based on the cultural precepts of anti-Romanian Moldovenism presents itself as the main obstacle on the way to the effective decolonization of the Republic of Moldova, while the enthronement of the Romanian identity of the majority population is the most accurate indication of definitive overcoming of the harmful influences of the colonial past.
IPN publishes in the Op-Ed rubric opinion pieces submitted by authors not affiliated with our editorial board. The opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily coincide with the opinions of our editorial board.