Colonialist Comrades

Picture: Vano Shlamov/Getty Images

In an article by Strangers Guide, Kira Brunner Don explores the complicated legacy of colonialism, and how it continues to shape both global policies and daily lives.

Every one of us is a carrier of a colonial legacy, either as a victim or the beneficiary—or sometimes both. Colonialism is the system of oppression that our world is built on. As we obsess with decolonizing everything from our schools to industries and corporations, it is useful to remember how easily our understanding of colonialism can be manipulated unless we first decolonize ourselves. 

My story is both typical and telling. My parents may have cherished Georgia’s freedom from Moscow, but somehow I had still bought into a widely accepted myth that the Soviet Union was an anti-colonial power. Both at my Soviet school, and later at university in the United States, I was taught that colonialism was something that Western countries did to Africa, Asia, and the Far East. It was only when I went to Senegal and stumbled upon the depth and ease with which I was able to relate to the anti-colonial part of the West African identity that I began to realize that I, too, was a product of “colonialism.” Until then, the struggle of non-Russian Soviet republics for independence was compartmentalized in my mind as something qualitatively different from the plight of formerly colonized people elsewhere.