You're just showing you don't know what "imperialism" is. The USSR never engaged in resource exploitation or unequal exchange with other countries, its terms of trade were always comparatively fair, especially if you compare those to the terms of trade of the western world.

The USSR didn't have any imperialist ambitions. For fucks sake, the literal first thing the Bolsheviks did in 1917 after the October Revolution, was to implement a constitution which gave the full right of self-determination and unilateral secession to all peoples of the former Russian Empire, it's literally how Poland gained independence, as well as many other countries like Finland or Ukraine. What did Poland immediately do: invading Ukraine and modern Belarus and attacking the RSFSR during the Russian Civil War because of its expansionist nationalist desires of going back to Polish-Lithuanian borders. Maybe that helps explain why the USSR didn't trust Poland not to join the Nazis, especially after 10 years of Poland, France and England rejecting to form military alliances with the USSR against Nazis? Finns, after the winter war, quite literally joined the Nazis in the continuation war, going all the way to participating in the siege of Leningrad.

After the war, most of these countries that the USSR invaded went back to being their own countries as the USSS retreated all its troops. Such imperialism, amirite? The influence of the USSR in the politics of Eastern European countries after WW2, isn't any greater than the influence of the US in western Europe, so unless you're claiming that the US was carrying out imperialism in western Europe (and would have carried it in Eastern Europe too if it weren't for the USSR), then no, the USSR didn't carry out any imperialism.

immediately started spewing whataboutism

You literally have no idea what "whataboutism means, I gave a detailed explanation on why calling the Molotov-Ribbentrop a "deal with the Nazis", and stopping there without further context, is revisionist and honestly very close to Nazi propaganda. You're just saying "whataboutism whataboutism" because you're actually incapable of refuting anything I've said.

[–] kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago

I'd say the "exchanges" they had with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland etc. were quite unequal. Expanding your territory through force is the purest form of imperialism, no matter what color your flag is.

That declaration wasn't worth the paper it was written on, as the USSR immediately turned around and tried to forcefully annex these newly independent states (and when it failed tried again some years later).

Yes Finland joined forces with the nazis after the winter war, but the USSR started the winter war attempting to conquer Finland. To blame them for joining forces with the enemy of their enemy after being invaded and losing territory is just wild.

So the argument is that the USSR was so scared of Poland joining the nazis that they made a deal with the nazis to invade it together and divide it between them? How does that make any sense?

The USSR didn't withdraw their troops from the baltic states until the 90s, a good 45 years after the end of WWII.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a deal between the USSR and nazi Germany detailing who would get what parts of eastern Europe. The existence of other deals and treaties that you think are worse does not change that reality.

If the USSR had been the staunch defender of the slavic peoples from nazis aggression that you claim they were, they would have entered into a defensive pact with the eastern states, not invaded them.

Talk of freedom and brotherhood means nothing when cooperation is gained at the barrel of a gun.