Why Doesn’t the Global South Sympathize With Ukraine?

There is something odd about how so many countries in the “Global South” – especially the many that were former colonies and protectorates of European colonial powers (the vast majority) – do not sympathize with Ukraine in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. Russia, after all, was also a European colonial power. Unlike the West European powers which acquired colonies overseas, Russia acquired its colonies over land. But colonies they were nonetheless. Just as European empires conquered and ruled non-European nations, the Russian empire conquered and ruled non-Russian ones – including Ukraine.

Like the European colonial powers did from the 1940s through the 1970s, Russia gave up most (though not all) of its colonies when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and 14 non-Russian republics became independent. For Russia to forcibly seize part of Ukraine in 2014 and then launch an attempt to conquer much more of it beginning in 2022 is the equivalent of Britain attempting to forcibly retake control over the Persian Gulf emirates or France trying to take back Algeria.

Just as the Global South would condemn any European effort to retake any colony in Asia, Africa, or Latin America that became independent years ago, so should they condemn Russian efforts to retake large parts of Ukraine and replace the government of what remains.

Many in the Global South, however, reject this argument. In discussions that I and other Western scholars have had with them, interlocutors from the Global South vehemently disagree that Russia was a colonial power or that Ukraine should be considered a former colony similar to Europeans ones in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. They cite several reasons, including:

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• Whatever Europeans do to other Europeans is not colonialism like Europeans inflicted on non-European nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
• While Tsarist Russia was a colonial power, the Soviet Union was “different” and that interethnic relations within the USSR were largely harmonious, just like Soviet propaganda used to claim.
• The Soviet Union aided anti-colonial national liberation movements in what was then known as the Third World, thus it was not a colonial power itself. Further, the Russian Federation, as the successor to the Soviet Union, continues to support the Global South against the West, and so post-Soviet Russia is not at all like a colonial power.

All three of these arguments, of course, are false. Britain exercised colonial rule over Ireland, Sweden over Norway, Austria over the many non-Austrian nations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Russia over Finland, Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine, and other territories inhabited by non-Russians. The Muslim Ottoman Empire ruled over several Christian nations in Europe, as did Muslim Arabs over Christian Spain and Portugal. Many European nations, then, also suffered under colonial rule by other European or even non-European states. Thus, the Global South cannot claim to be the unique victim of European colonialism, or even that nations based in what is now the Global South did not engage in colonialism themselves – including in Europe.

Further, the Soviets did establish a supposedly federal system with numerous ethnically based “union republics” (which had the theoretical right to secede but were not allowed to exercise it until 1991) and “autonomous republics” (which, like Chechnya, neither Soviet nor post-Soviet Russia were willing to allow become independent). After being promised various freedoms by Lenin, though, the non-Russian regions of the USSR were treated with great brutality by Stalin – who often appointed ethnically Russian communists to rule over them. Non-Russian Communists gradually gained control over the affairs of their republics under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, but did so within the Soviet system. They worked with Moscow to suppress non-Russian nationalist sentiment until it uncontrollably burst forth under Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost (openness) despite Gorbachev’s efforts to suppress it.

Finally, it is true that the Soviet Union did supported anti-colonial movements in the Third World and Putin now claims that Russia is aligned with the Global South against the West. The Soviet Union, though, maintained Russian rule over most of the non-Russian (and in the Caucasus and Central Asia, non-European) colonies acquired by the tsars. Putin suppressed non-Russian nationalism in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Muslim North Caucasus, and has retaken by force the Crimea and eastern Ukraine where there was a mixed Russian and Ukrainian population (and which Ukrainians have fled from in great numbers).

Those in the Global South, though, do not want to acknowledge any of this. Indeed, it is emotionally very difficult for many there to do so. For if they did, it would amount to admitting that while the Soviet Union was aiding anti-colonial movements in the Third World, it was at the same time suppressing non-Russian nations within the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, then, did not support national liberation out of principle, but only out of geopolitical expediency when it was directed against Western powers.

Tens of thousands of students from the Third World studied in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. While there, they were undoubtedly made aware of the Soviet Union’s ethnic pecking order in which Russians were at the top and non-Russians – especially Soviet Muslims – were at the bottom. Acknowledging this, however, would mean admitting that they knew this, but were willing to accept Soviet help anyway because they themselves benefited from it.

Similarly, Putin’s aligning with the Global South against the West is occurring at the same time as he is maintaining or attempting to reimpose Russian colonial rule over non-Russians both within and outside the Russian Federation’s borders. And while many governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America voted to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the UN General Assembly, they don’t wish to acknowledge the colonial nature of Putin’s policy as this would put Ukraine’s struggle on the same moral plane as their own anti-colonial struggles (which in many cases did not actually involve much struggle at all). It would also mean that Western powers that opposed national liberation struggles in the past now support it in Ukraine. And so they repeat Russian propaganda about how the expansion of NATO and even the EU somehow forced Russia to invade Ukraine and thus justifies their own continued (often quite lucrative) cooperation with Russia despite what Putin is doing in Ukraine.

Many in the Global South, in my view, are unlikely to ever acknowledge the colonial nature of Russia’s war in Ukraine since doing so would not only mean that they could no longer justify their continued lucrative trade with Russia, but would undermine their much cherished narratives about how the Soviet Union “selflessly” supported anti-colonial movements and post-Soviet Russia has righteously supported the “just cause” of the Global South against an iniquitous West. To do so would be to acknowledge that Moscow supported first the Third World and then the Global South not out of principle, but geopolitical expediency. They would also have to acknowledge that despite their past anti-colonial struggles against the West, they are now helping Russia resurrect its own colonial empire built by the tsars and maintained by the Soviets. And that is something that all too many in the Global South may not just be unwilling, but unable to do.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.