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True, and some deportations are ways to execute genocide. Some are not. That's what I was trying to explain. You seem to focus on "well, akshually, you should use a different word" instead of focusing on the substance. The substance is that under Stalin, there were multiple cases there whole ethnic groups were rounded up and moved to remote areas, leading to the death of some of them and destruction of their traditional way of life for all of them, in the service of soviet national policy. Which specific words you use to describe it may be an entertaining academic exercise, but it doesn't change the substantial point. Which is - the soviet modus operandi included using mass casualty actions on entire ethnic groups to further their political goals.
That is a good point, that there is a way of defining Russian national identity which does not make the actions of soviets "Russian", and in fact, the Russian national identity, when defined in that way, suffered as much - maybe even more - than other national identities under soviet rule. For example, the White movement (not the skin-color Whites, but the Whites who were opposed to Blosheviks about 100 years ago, those Whites) would have a good claim on that identity, and some people are still keeping it. However, one must also realize this way of viewing Russian national identity is not only a minority view, but a tiny minority view, endorsed by no official institution and only by a tiny part of Russian population. For the official Russia, and for vast majority of it population, Russian Empire, USSR, and current RSFSR are largely the same, whether it concerns the culture, the official succession or the political goals. Average Russian is an imperial Russian, and he sees USSR national policy as a natural continuation of Russian Empire's national policy, and current Russia's policies as the natural continuation of those both. If for an average Lithuanian the soviet era was an era of occupation by foreign power, for average Russian - for almost every Russian, excluding a tiny minority I described above - the soviet era had been what "we" were doing, not what had been done "to us". It doesn't mean they would endorse everything that happened - surely, mistakes were made here and there - but it is still part of historical succession that most of Russians feel. For them, "the Soviets" doing something and "the Russians" doing something is virtually one and the same. The Westerners, in their common speech, follow the same pattern, USSR essentially had always been "the Russkies" - which could be attributed to ignorance, except that virtually nobody in Russia would object it either. For them, as for the Westerners, the Soviets are the Russkies. They assumed that identity and are completely comfortable with it - so there's no reason to deny them something that they believe to be true. Of course, as a logical consequence of it, that identity also includes shared responsibility for all the actions committed by the Soviets. You can't be proud of "our space program" without being also accountable for "our purges". Most normies, of course, are much more willing to talk about the former than the latter, but it comes as a package.
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