AskHistorians

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The original was posted on /r/askhistorians by /u/corn_on_the_cobh on 2023-10-06 21:29:43.

For instance, their invasions of Poland, Armenia, Ukraine, Estonia, etc. and their involvement in the Finnish Civil War. I know there were two competing factions within the Soviet Union at the time (internationalism vs nationalism), but how could they justify continuing their domination of countries that wanted to be free from Russian/Slavic rule, by restoring the old borders of Russian imperialism as much as possible? Were there any dissenters who didn't mind there being so many independent states around Soviet Russia? What was the political calculus for this decision (or rather, these decisions, as I guess it wasn't a cohesive policy)?