β€œFriendly Foes”: Art as a Soft Power of Russian/Soviet Colonialism πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦

If asked to name colonialism’s dominant trait, I’d say it is unification. An empire is a patchwork, with each piece having its distinct cultural, political, and administrative features and mindset. A colonial repressive mechanism promotes the illusion of a homogeneous space where everything is common: the language, the cultural norms, the traditions. Every feature, once forced upon a given group of people, must be taken by that group as something primordial and familiar.