The formula is well chosen. It echoes the vocabulary used in the 19th century. Russia was built as an empire at the expense of Ukraine before claiming itself as such when Peter the Great opted for the imperial title. Then, by extending towards the South Seas to conquer the Muslim peoples, it became a colonial power.
It remained so until 1917, when Lenin declared the Marxist-Bolshevik government anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist. He then promotes the right of peoples to self-determination and insists on the rights of non-Russian peoples federated with the Soviet Union: Ukraine has the right to conduct a foreign policy and joins the UN in 1945. This position becomes an argument of soft power and propaganda, so that it was, until recently, taboo to speak of the Soviet Union as a colonial empire.
A defensive ideology
Of course, behind this discourse, there is a much more brutal reality vis-à-vis Ukraine, the Baltic countries or even Afghanistan, with the illusion of socialist brotherhood that hides the interests and the Russian exploitation inside and outside the Soviet Union. Today, Russia technically remains a federation with imperial accents: it is a multi-ethnic federation, with 80 administrative subjects, many of whom are neither Russian nor Slavic.
So there is a long-lasting legacy and continuity between the Russian Empire, the Soviet Empire and today’s Russia. Vladimir Putin recreated this imperial ideology, first Russian, Slavic and autocratic in the 19th century, then Soviet and internationalist, and which there refocuses on the defense of Russia, with this feeling of fragility, of territorial threat. The difference with the past is that there is no longer any projection ideology. It is a defensive ideology that underlies the argument for the war in Ukraine: we attack before others attack us. Today, it is not a question of reconstituting the USSR or the Russian Empire, but of securing, by this system of “thick border”, the Russian heart of power.
A historical legacy
What the use of the formula shows “colonial imperial power” by Emmanuel Macron, is that the historical heritage is truly part of the current power struggles. It should not be forgotten that the adjective “colonial” is used deliberately in an African context.
The French president thus gives a pledge to Ukraine, which, since 2014, has reconstructed a historical discourse insisting on the colonial dimension of Russia. Putin poses as the heir to the emancipatory Soviet Union and sends France back to its badly digested colonial past in Africa. He skillfully uses this past by highlighting the fact that Russia has never legally or officially colonized Africa. For its part, France voluntarily uses this formula to describe the war in Ukraine as an invasion that does not say its name.