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The Documentary Podcast

Assignment: Decolonising Russia

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is Russia Europe’s last empire? Is its invasion of Ukraine a “colonial war”? Is “decolonising” the country the only way of ensuring it stops being a threat to its neighbours and world peace?

Since last year, “decolonising Russia” has become a buzz-phrase in Ukraine and other former members of the soviet union, among many Western strategists and politicians, Russian studies experts – and Russia’s own liberal opposition and ethnic minorities.

And that’s triggered a vigorous debate about whether the term “decolonisation” is really relevant to Russia – and what it means. Is it about challenging the “imperial mindset” of its rulers – and perhaps of every ordinary Russian? Or perhaps it means dismembering the country itself?

In “Assignment: Decolonising Russia” Tim Whewell dissects a new and vital controversy with the help of historians, policy makers and activists in the former Soviet Union, the West and the Global South.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Thanks for downloading this documentary podcast from the BBC World Service.

0:04.3

This is a slightly unusual edition of assignment.

0:07.2

There are lots of places and people in it.

0:09.4

But it's not about a journey, it's about an idea, about really the nature, the identity of Russia, and how maybe

0:17.0

that should change. I wanted to make it because Russia's a country I've studied and loved

0:22.4

in many ways for most of my life.

0:25.0

And what's puzzled and troubled me in the last two years

0:28.0

is the way that the reaction among many people, non-Russian and Russian,

0:32.0

to the war against Ukraine, has been not just to condemn Vladimir Putin

0:36.3

and his government, but also to start questioning and even rejecting many other aspects of Russia, Russian music, Russian literature and so on.

0:46.4

What's that all about?

0:47.8

My podcast, called Decolonizing Russia, tries to make sense of it. My name is Sargillana Kondakova.

0:55.0

I was born and raised in a small polar village near the Arctic Ocean.

1:00.0

In the Republic Sakyaquiuti, it's the largest region of the Russian Federation.

1:06.0

My ancestors they were reindeer herders. I'm not ethnic Russian, but my mother told me that when

1:18.8

they were children they were

1:25.0

opened by the Russian.

1:28.0

in the history books that our lands were opened

1:30.0

by the Russian explorers.

1:33.0

How can you open the land if there are indigenous peoples living there for thousands of years?

1:40.0

But many people still have a colonial mindset.

1:44.6

We believe that the Russian big brother is right in everything.

...

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