By tracing these parallel stories of defiance, we see that today’s war is not an isolated conflict, but the latest chapter in a centuries-long battle against imperial domination.
The history of Ukraine’s struggle for independence, culture, and language over the centuries is one of the most vivid examples of resistance to Russian colonialism.
However, this struggle is not the only one. It is part of a broader context — political, cultural, demographic, and economic resistance that arose among many peoples within the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the modern Russian Federation.
Thus, Ukraine’s fight is not an isolated case but one of the most prominent patterns on the body of the empire’s great defeat.
It also counters the popular but false narrative that this war is merely a conflict “between white people” — Russians against Ukrainians. On a deeper level, this war is a continuation of racial and cultural oppression by the Russian center against colonized societies.
Below there are some resistance movements against Russian colonialism:
1. Tatarstan: The Sovereignty Movement in the 1990s
Tatarstan, like Ukraine, had all the objective prerequisites to become a union republic rather than just an autonomous one: in terms of territory size, population, and its level of socio-political development.
However, under Stalin, Soviet national policy added one key condition for union republic status — a direct border with the outside world. Ukraine had this border; Tatarstan did not.
Therefore, after the USSR collapsed, Kyiv was able to lead an independent state, whereas Kazan, despite all aspirations, remained within the Russian Federation.
In the 1990s, after the USSR's dissolution, Tatarstan became one of the most active republics in pursuing sovereignty.
On August 30, 1990, the Supreme Council of Tatarstan adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, and on March 21, 1992, it held a referendum, in which 62% (61,4%) of the population supported the republic’s sovereignty. At that time, Tatarstan had its own president, constitution, elements of economic self-governance, and international contacts.
However, by the early 2000s, under Putin, this sovereignty was almost entirely dismantled. In 2017, Moscow canceled the power-sharing treaty between Russia and Tatarstan, effectively ending Tatar political autonomy.
Since then, we have seen active russification of education: in 2018, the Russian Duma amended the federal law "On Education," making the study of national republics’ state languages non-compulsory in general education. This reflects the same logic used in Ukraine during imperial and Soviet times.
Moreover, starting from January 1, 2023, Tatarstan was forced to abolish the position of "President" of the republic. The federal center insisted on this change for a long time. Now the title is "Head of the Republic of Tatarstan."
Deputies have also removed all mentions of sovereignty from the republic’s constitution — previously, the word appeared four times.
2. Two Wars and One Exile: The case of Ichkeria
One of the most tragic episodes of the 20th century was the mass deportation of Chechens in 1944 on Stalin’s orders. Under the operation “Chechevitsa” (Lentil), the entire Chechen people were deported to Central Asia.
Over 400,000 were forcibly relocated, and tens of thousands died during transit or from hunger and disease. The official reason was alleged collaboration with Nazis, but the real motive was to tighten Soviet control over the Caucasus and turn it into a military outpost.
After Chechens returned in 1957, conditions did not improve — the republic remained impoverished and controlled by Moscow. The real surge of resistance came after the Soviet collapse.
In 1991, Chechnya declared full independence as the Republic of Ichkeria. Moscow did not recognize this and launched the First Chechen War in 1994.
Despite superior numbers, Russian troops suffered devastating defeats in urban warfare. After the Khasavyurt Accord in 1996, Chechnya achieved de facto independence.
But the Kremlin sought revenge. In 1999, under the pretext of fighting “Islamist terrorism,” Russia launched the Second Chechen War — leading to the destruction of Grozny, mass killings, ethnic cleansing, disappearances, torture, and cultural repression.
The idea of independent Ichkeria was physically crushed but survived in exile. Chechnya was taken over by a pro-Moscow administration led by Akhmat, and later Ramzan Kadyrov.
Today’s Chechnya is a police colony with totalitarian control, a cult of personality, forced loyalty to Putin, and persecution of any Chechen identity.
Nevertheless, resistance continues. Part of Ichkeria's political elite lives in exile, including a government-in-exile in Europe led by Akhmed Zakayev.
Activists and journalists from the diaspora are fighting for the recognition of the Chechen genocide, reporting on ongoing repression, and supporting underground initiatives.
3. Sakha / Yakutia: Colonialism in the North
The Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is one of Russia’s largest regions, rich in diamonds, gold, and gas. The Yakut people have faced centuries of exploitation from the imperial center.
In the 19th century, Russian authorities resettled peasants to Yakut lands, displacing indigenous communities. Under the Soviet regime, Yakutia was turned into a raw materials colony, and local languages were marginalized. In the 1930s, Latin script was first introduced, but later forcibly replaced with Cyrillic.
In the 1990s, Sakha also adopted a declaration of sovereignty (1990). While it didn’t demand full independence, there were calls for economic autonomy and control over natural resources. Today, however, the Russian state restricts the use of the Yakut language in schools, and Sakha’s diamonds — through the ALROSA corporation — continue to be exploited without the involvement of local communities.
From the abovementioned cases we can aggregate the main methods of Russia’s policy.
Russia’s Colonial Methods
Russian policy has always relied not only on military power but also on systematic destruction of the identities of subjugated peoples. The imperial project operated not only through annexations and repression but also through control over food, language, culture, and history.
At its core, this was a war against the ability of nations to be themselves — to have memory, language, land, and a future. Key methods included man-made famines, russification, elite purges, and cultural erasure.
Famine as Policy
The Holodomor of 1932–33 in Ukraine is now recognized as both a major humanitarian disaster and a targeted act of genocide. But fewer people know that similar logic — organized food confiscation, suppression of traditional lifestyles, and starvation as a tool — was also used against other subjugated peoples.
In Kazakhstan, the 1930–33 famine caused by forced collectivization killed between 1.3–1.5 million people — more than a third of the Kazakh population. The main target was the nomadic way of life, which the Soviet regime sought to destroy.
American scholar Sarah Cameron, in The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan (2018), calls this an “ethnocide” — the deliberate destruction of the foundations of national existence (p. 5).
Cameron argues that Soviet modernization rhetoric masked policies of violence and expropriation similar to those used in Ukraine: grain confiscation, suppression of “kulaks,” and destruction of national elites. Like the Holodomor, the Kazakh famine targeted national sovereignty.
Another example is the famine in the Volga region in 1921–22, which heavily affected Tatar and Bashkir populations. It was caused by violent food requisitioning during the period of War Communism.
These tragedies were not "natural disasters" or planning mistakes — they were tools of radical imperial transformation. Famine was used to subdue nations that never fit into the Soviet model.
In all these cases, it was part of a systemic effort to destroy national identities — through food confiscation, repression, elite purges, and closure of cultural institutions. Soviet famine was not only a socioeconomic catastrophe but a colonial project built on violence and silence.
Russification
Russification was a core ideology of the Russian imperial project — from tsarist times through the Soviet era. It wasn’t just about promoting the Russian language, but about structured, long-term attempts to displace and destroy national languages, education, culture, and political subjectivity.
It was a mechanism of assimilation and cultural erasure. Examples from Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania clearly demonstrate a common logic: repression, bans, forced linguistic displacement, and the destruction of intellectual elites.
In Ukraine, this began in the 19th century with the infamous tsarist decrees. The Valuev Circular of 1863 banned the publication of religious and educational literature in Ukrainian.
It stated that “there never was, is not, and cannot be any separate Little Russian language” — outright denial of linguistic autonomy. The Ems Ukaz of 1876 halted Ukrainian-language publishing entirely, even banning imports of Ukrainian books from abroad.
After a short period of Ukrainization in the 1920s, Soviet authorities reversed course in the 1930s, purging most of the Ukrainian intelligentsia — artists, linguists, teachers. Between 1937–38, more than 1.7 million people were sent to camps.
In the 1970s, russification took subtler forms: Ukrainian was marginalized in higher education, science, and media, while Russian was framed as the language of “progress” and “science.” As Ivan Dziuba wrote in Internationalism or Russification? (1965), the policy was never declared but continued in practice at every level.
Belarus suffered a similar fate. In the 1920s, there was a policy of Belarusization, but this ended in the 1930s. Most of the country’s intellectual core was repressed. As in Ukraine, Belarusian was relegated to rural or secondary use.
In Lithuania, russification took the form of a script policy: in 1865, the tsarist regime banned the Latin alphabet — the traditional script for Lithuanian — and mandated the use of Cyrillic. The ban was lifted only in 1904, triggering a cultural revival.
Across all three cases, the pattern is the same: whenever the imperial regime saw the political potential of language-based identity, it turned to repression. Thus, russification was not merely a linguistic policy — it was a colonial tool to destroy identities by disarming them linguistically.
Conclusion
Ukraine is not merely fighting Russia — it is dismantling the imperial idea. It shows others that liberation is possible. A Ukrainian victory could spark a post-colonial awakening among the indigenous peoples of Russia — Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, Sakha, Buryats, Kalmyks, Erzya, Komi, Ingrians, and dozens more.
This publication was compiled with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. It’s content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.
