>>2771174>It was precisely the opposite, the Slavs were absorbed into the orbit of the Romans because more sophisticated, settled, literate, and urbaized cultures always absorb less sophisticated ones. The Manchu speak Mandarin, sure, but the Bulgarians speak a Slavic language now, not a Thracian langauge. So obviously these are not the same situation.
>Their language, way of life, and religion would have been totally unrecognizable to the original Slavic tribes that migrated across Eastern Europe nearly 1000 years earlier. But they were still of the same civilizational lineage, just as modern China has a language unintelligible with the Chinese spoken during the Shang Dynasty, and Oracle bone is unreadable for those only taught modern characters, and their current society is far evolved from the ancient economic basis. But they still share the civilizational essence they had. The Shang Dynasty is uncontroversially a "Chinese" dynasty, and we understand "Chinese" as being of the Chinese civilization.
>Then why was it not given to the Lithuanian or Latvian SSR?Why would it be given to Latvia? It wasn't given to Lithuania because they refused it. And it was primarily populated with East Slavs because they were understandably seen as more trustworthy to safeguard the restored territory. Just think, if Lithuanians populated it, it would be a bulwark of NATO now. Seems that they were correct in understanding that the Russians were the most trustworthy in upholding the Russian civilization.
>You haven't even been able to define what a "civilization" is. Do I also need to define what a state is? Any genuine Marxist analysis in the modern day accepts civilizations as materially existing.
>The Balts really seem to disagree pretty hard about that. Sure, the reactionaries who love Jonas Noreika disagree. They want their country to be an outpost of German imperialism into Russian lands, as the "independent" Baltic states were before WWII, the collaborator Reichskommissariats were during WWII, and the modern republics have been since the dissolution of the USSR. But any progressive movement in the Baltic will necessarily have to embrace its Russian history.
Post too long. Click here to view the full text.