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The informal term "Soviet Empire" is used by critics of the Soviet Union and Russian nationalists〔"The borders of the Russian World extend significantly farther than borders of Russian Federation. I fulfill a historic mission in the name of Russian nation, super-ethnos, unified by the Orthodox christianity. Just as in Caucasus, I'm fighting in Ukraine against separatism – this time not Chechen, but Ukrainian one. Because there is Russia, Great Russia, Russian Empire. And now Ukrainian separatists in Kiev are fighting against Russian Empire.", Alexander Borodai, in: 〕 to refer to that country's perceived imperialist foreign policy during the Cold War. The nations said to be part of the "Soviet Empire" were officially independent countries with separate governments that set their own policies (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the country), but those policies had to remain within certain limits decided by the Soviet Union and enforced by threat of intervention by the Warsaw Pact (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Poland 1980). Countries in this situation are often called satellite states. ==Characteristics== Though the Soviet Union was not ruled by an emperor and declared itself anti-imperialist and a democracy, critics〔Beissinger, Mark R. 2006 "Soviet Empire as 'Family Resemblance,'" Slavic Review, 65 (2) 294-303; Dave, Bhavna. 2007 Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, language and power. Abingdon, New York: Routledge.〕 argue that it exhibited tendencies common to historic empires. Some scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states.〔 It has also been argued that the USSR practiced colonialism as did other imperial powers, Maoists argued that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade. The other dimension of "Soviet imperialism" is cultural imperialism. The policy of Soviet cultural imperialism implied the Sovietization of culture and education at the expense of local traditions.〔Natalia Tsvetkova. Failure of American and Soviet Cultural Imperialism in German Universities, 1945-1990. Boston, Leiden: Brill, 2013〕 Overall, the Soviet Empire was a political-military construct. Its hub, Russia, was hardly a colonial state in the classical sense, which exploited its colonies' natural resources. The economies of various parts were both diversified and interrelated. For example, while Uzbek SSR may has been viewed as a typical example of monoculture country producing cotton, its capital, Tashkent has become a major industrial centre, and Russia itself was a major supplier of raw materials for all its "colonies". The penetration of the Soviet influence into the "socialist-leaning countries" was primarily of political and ideological kind: rather getting hold on their economic riches, the Soviet Union pumped enormous amounts of "international assistance" into them in order to secure the influence,〔Dmitri Trenin, “Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011. (p. 144-145 )〕 eventually to the detriment of its own economy. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when Russia declared itself successor, it recognized $103 billion of Soviet foreign debt, while claiming $140 billion of Soviet assets abroad.〔 Part of contemporary Russian nationalism considers the USSR to be a continuation of the Russian Empire and thus considers geographical and political expansion of the Soviet Union as continuation and further achievement of the Russian ethnos.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Soviet Empire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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