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The Soviet Union was made up of many countries and many ethnicities. Yet a lot of impressive stuff including winning WW2 is attributed to Russia and Russians. U
by rat87 4y ago
The Soviet Union was made up of many countries and many ethnicities. Yet a lot of impressive stuff including winning WW2 is attributed to Russia and Russians. Ukraine is often brought up these days for obvious reasons but there were many countries and even more ethnicities who get overlooked
Ukraine was the second most populous (accounting for 18 percent of the population whole Russia accounted for 51 percent) and contained a lot of the manufacturing plants. It looks like these particular ships were built in Russia (although I don't know where engineers grew up or what their ethnicity was or if they might have hesitated to identify with Russia) but for instance the head of the Soviet space program Korolev was Ukranian (sort of he was born in Ukraine with Ukranian, Russian, Belarusian, etc ancestry and I've seen claims that he claimed both Russian and Ukranian ethnicity/nationality at different times) also take the flagship Moskva that Ukraine sank that was built in Ukraine as well as the recently memed Soviet Treasure Island (which was made by a studio in Kyiv). Often the west identifies something made in the Soviet Union as Russian even if it's not or if it's more complex to assign it to a modern country. Also part of the way that people think about identity of people like Korolev is based on Russia's and Putin's attempt to rehabilitate the atrocities and weaponize nostalgia about the few good bits. Korolev was sent to the Gulag due to fake accusations, some say he died due to physical injuries from that time preventing quick medical treatment.