He’s got a point:

The only former USSR republic never referred to as “post-soviet” or “former soviet” is russia. The other 14 countries are not just called that but always framed in their relations with russia. @maniamakash

What he’s talking about is the intellectual tradition among Western political analysts and journalists to describe as “former Soviet” any country that 40 years ago was part of #USSR (e.g. Ukraine) or even in Eastern Bloc (e.g. Poland, Romania). But they never describe Russia as “former Soviet republic” even if what today makes #Russia was in USSR literally called “Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic” (RSFSR) 🤷

@kravietz @maniamakash And even worse, some people (hardly professional analysts and journalists though) use the adjective “Soviet” when referring to the Communist era in countries like the former Yugoslavia. Which as far as I know is unhistorical in two senses. Especially Yugoslavia was not that close to the Soviet Union, and the path to Communist dictatorships outside the USSR did not necessarily involve soviets (“councils”), did it? Or am I wrong?

@tml

It is a complex semantic formula, which also changed over time. Certainly, in early 20th century the Bolshevik revolution was seen as the hope by communists and socialists globally, and social-democrats were in retreat because in public perception Bolshevik (Marxist-Leninists, revolutionary socialists) managed to perform a qualitative change (the revolution) and social-democrats (followers of the evolutionary SPD model) didn’t.

But according to Marx teachings, the revolution was expected to happen globally because, as he claimed, it was not some human-induced happening but an outcome of “iron laws of history”, so a world revolution should logically follow the one in Russia. Of course, it didn’t, because Marx “iron laws” were nonsense. This is where Bolshevik started to modify the theory - first Lenin introduced NEP, and then Stalin reverted it claiming “socialism in one country”. Then there was the split with Trotskyism.

Bolshevik revolution certainly didn’t trigger the world revolution, but Soviet Union definitely tried - it massively invested in various revolutionary movements worldwide, from Asia and Africa to America. Most “socialist” countries there started with Soviet support, including China.

But then they started drifting away - China ended up almost at war with USSR, with its own Maoism, which after Mao’s death ended up as a hybrid system with largely capitalist economy but hardline authoritarian political system. North Korea ended up with its own Juche ideology etc.

So today the semantics are quite mixed up and correct usage of terms such as “communist”, “Communist”, “Soviet” etc requires pretty good knowledge of history, otherwise it can be confusing :)

@maniamakash

@kravietz @maniamakash @tml
I sometimes use the term "former Eastern Bloc countries": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc
Which is I think correct and I find it useful — to indicate that the countries economic system transitioned away from what it was in times of the USSR.
And I use ex-Soviet sometimes when speaking about countries which were part of USSR formerly.
Neither can be applied to Yugoslavia though.
And yes, of course you can't say "post" about Russia itself — as it never transitioned away.

@kravietz @maniamakash @tml
There was a time of turbulence, but now it's back to the way it was before, I find the term "state capitalism" itself part of the newspeak that was common in USSR. We all know that these "private" companies aren't independent entities — go against the state and you might get exiled, jailed or even assassinated. There are no economic liberties and as we can clearly see now — no private property either (which never really existed in Russia).