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Comment by Tommstein | Hacker News Reader

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Ok? What's so bad about speaking Russian? English isn't my first language, I have no attachment to it. If Russian had become the lingua franca of the world I'd have learned that instead.

> What's so bad about speaking Russian?

Forcing Russian language and culture upon conquered nations was and remains one of the main methods of extermination of conquered peoples. There's even a word for it, Russification.

Your question is the same as asking what was so bad about "speaking English" in the context of American native population and European settlers. Most of modern-day Russia is a land conquered from natives the same way European settlers conquered the Americas and wiped out native population using a wide range of tools from direct massacres to forced cultural assimilation.

The question is culturally as insensitive and uneducated as asking a black person in the Americas what's so bad about working on a plantation, or why they're not happy with sitting at the back of the bus - does it rock too much there or what's the problem?

Buddy, I'm from South America and I had to learn English and move away from my continent in order to have a chance at a good life. I've already been colonized by the USA. Don't tell me to be thankful because Russian would have been worse.

Nowhere did I tell you to be thankful. But I do find it hypocritical how oblivious and dismissive you are of the similar suffering caused by other countries, in even wider scale, over a longer time, in other parts of the world.

You're literally dismissing the fact that the USA executed a coup in my country because I didn't acknowledge that it would be bad if Russia did the same thing.

Nope. Unlike you, I am very sympathetic to people who have suffered from countries with imperialistic behaviour. I just don't restrict the list of such countries to only one entry.

If you want to educate yourself on how Eastern Europe suffered in the 20th century, then I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465031471

> Ok? What's so bad about speaking Russian? English isn't my first language, I have no attachment to it. If Russian had become the lingua franca of the world I'd have learned that instead.

whoosh

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