What’s Fueling Russia’s Ethnic Tensions? The Shocking Truth

Russia's "unity" is a lie. Discover the truth behind its hidden ethnic conflicts and tensions.

Everything you've heard about Russia's "brotherhood of nations" is a carefully constructed myth. Behind the patriotic posters and slogans lies a harsh reality of suppression, forced Russification, and hidden tensions among more than 100 ethnic groups. Join me, Elvira Bary, an author born in the USSR, as we uncover the unsettling truth about how Russia maintains its fragile unity—revealing a complex web of propaganda, cultural erasure, and resistance that continues to shape the country's turbulent identity today.

Video Chapters:

00:00 Russia’s Myth of Unity
00:59 The Basics of Ideology
03:45 The Expansion of the Russian Empire
06:52 Forced Russification as a Tool of Control
10:48 The Resistance
12:42 The Pale of Settlement
15:03 National Policy in the USSR
18:24 The Illusion of Unity
19:31 Chauvinism
21:53 A Glimpse into Russian History

MY RUSSIAN TREASURES BOOK SERIES

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[ERG]

My Favorite joke about the USSR was about a man who wanted to buy a car.
He filled out a huge number of forms, and on completion the salesman said
"Congratulations, you are now the owner of a new car and it will be delivered in ten years' time.
The buyer asked, "will this be morning or afternoon" The salesman said "what does it matter it's ten years away"
To that he explained, "Well I have the plumber coming in the morning" .

[edwardsong]

Here is a joke: Why are Russian cars so terrible? Because no matter what gear they get Putin, they always seem to be Stalin.

[lenski]

A joke from late 1970's to early 1980's, about the Soviet Union from the U.S perspective...

A siberian tiger in the Moscow zoo died (natural causes, old age, whatever), and the authorities wanted another tiger; so they assigned the task of finding one to three people:

A an engineer, a philosopher, and a KGB agent.

The engineer built a complicated trap for a tiger, and soon after setting the trap, a tiger came along and was captured.

The philosopher traveled out to the steppe, and sat down on a fallen log in the forest. A tiger came along, and the philosopher asked the tiger to have a conversation about the comfort of zoo life; free food, shelter, and comfort. Not a bad deal, the tiger and philosopher returned to Moscow.

The KGB agent headed out to the forest, and within a week came back to Moscow, with a rabbit. The zoo keepers asked "where's the tiger"? The agent replied that he found a small tiger that kept claiming that it was a rabbit, but under KGB enhanced interrogation, finally admitted that it was actually a siberian tiger.

[brownhat]

Here's a Russian joke for you: An old peasant woman went to the Moscow Zoo where for the first time in her life she saw a camel. "Oh, my God - she cried out- look at what the Bolsheviks have done to that poor horse!"

[Dawnandy-ic]

An angel approaches a Russian and says "You can have anything you ask for. But your neighbour will recieve twice as much." The Russian answers "Take out my eye."

[Delgwah]

Thank you Elvira,
Someone asks a Russian “ How is work?” To which the Russian replies “ Can’t Complain “

[ronaldderooij]

A westerner living in Moscow, needed a refrigerator. He asked a Russian neighbour what make was good quality. The Russian neighbour recommended one and he bought it. A week later, the refridgerator broke down. So the westerner complained to his neighbour about the quality of the refridgerator and his recommendation. The Russian neighbour said: It is good quality because it is easy to repair.

[JayGodseOnPlus]

One more from one of my Polish emigré friends:

A Polish peasant lived near the eastern border of Poland. As he walked through his farmer's field, he stumbled on something and fell. It was, of course, a Middle Eastern oil lamp. The peasant promptly rubbed it and a genie came out:
Genie: Thank you! For freeing me from 1000 years of captivity in this lamp, I grant you 3 wishes.
Polish Peasant: For first wish I would like all people of China to march to Polish eastern border, greet the people of Poland and then march back to China.
Genie: Your wish is granted. It will happen next month.
Polish Peasant: For second wish I would like all people of China to march to Polish eastern border, greet the people of Poland and then march back to China.
Genie: Your wish is granted. It will happen in 3 months.
Polish Peasant: For third wish I would like all people of China to march to Polish eastern border, greet the people of Poland and then march back to China.
Genie: Your wish is granted. It will happen in 5 months.
Polish Peasant: Thank you.
Genie: You had 3 wishes and you asked me for the same wish 3 times, where the people of China march to the Polish border, greet you, and then march back to China. Why would you ask something so strange 3 times?
Polish Peasant: Because it means that all people of China would have to march across Russia 6 times.

[peterhumphrys]

Russia is a unified brotherhood only as long as there is only one BIG brother in charge of his lesser siblings!

[carstenhansen]

Why does Putin keep quoting the Soviet Union?
Because empires don’t die — they rot, and he's just rearranging the corpses.

[aspieanarchist]

Elvira, the work you do on exposing how Russia controls its people and others through disinformation and revisionist history is so important. Keep up the good work.

[SandorFule]

A hungarian joke, from the soviet era:

A shop puts a sheet of paper on the door, written on it: THE NEWEST SOVIET COLOR TV'S ARRIVED!
An excited customer enters the shop, says, he would like one soviet color tv. The clerk asks him: Which color? We have red and yellow...

[AmorosoGombe]

Your intellectual honesty is refreshing.

[Artificer-gw]

Thanks! Very informative for both old history of Russia and current political climate.

[JayGodseOnPlus]

20:48 - OK Elvira. Here is your Russian joke:

At a medical convention of national medical experts, there were 3 doctors explaining to each other why they were the most famous surgeons in their country.
English doctor: I became the best surgeon in England by performing a frontal lobotomy on a patient, who then went on to become a PhD in computer science from Oxford.
French doctor: I became the best surgeon in France by performing the repair of a septal defect in the heart of an 18 week old fetus in-utero. She went on to gestate fully, and now she is a healthy 10-year-old girl.
Russian doctor: I became most famous surgeon in Russia by performing tonsillectomy.
English doctor: Tonsillectomy? This the most basic surgery in England. How could that make you famous?
French doctor: Zat ees right. Ze tonsillectomy is simple. We practice tonsillectomy on ze cadavers in first year medical school. How could zat make you famous?
Russian doctor: You don't understyand. In my country pyeople are dyeathly afraid to open mouth. I khad to approach from other angle.

[Shimmer-mz]

Russian imperialism (under any brand, not just Putin) is overlooked by Westerners because Russia is a land empire unlike the UK, Holland, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Germany.
Unlike how Russian propaganda treats Ukraine and Belarus as by-products of Russia, Muscovy (properly Zalissia/Zalesye before Vladimir-Suzdal) was a colony of Rus. Modern Russia was at war with the Rus for centuries.
Chechen independence leader Dzhokhar Dudayev knew about the Slavic brand perfectly well because Ukrainians will never accept Russification. While Serbia saw Russia as a Slavic Orthodox ally before WWI, Russia saw Serbia as a product for expansion. Turkey joined NATO in 1952 because as a secular state, the Turkish government knew perfectly well about the Kremlin’s intentions to conquer Istanbul under the “Third Rome” brand, accusing them of persecuting Orthodox Christians. Russia’s exploitation of Orthodox Christianity is evident with the legacy of Ukrainian Cossack Hetman Ivan Mazepa. The Patriarchate of Constantinople treats the Russian Orthodox Church’s anathema of Ivan Mazepa as politically motivated. Russia’s usage of violence and excommunications to protect the “Holy Rus”, which the Kremlin is at war with, is inconsistent with Prince Volodymyr’s covenant in 988. The Muscovite princes learned violence and domination from their Mongol overlords.
To maintain control, the Russians resorted to Russification. Many Ukrainians, Chechens, Belarusians, Tatars, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Jews, Chuvash, Yakuts, Buryats were forced to know Russian to live under Russian rule. Yet the Russians don’t know their languages.
A Russian word describes the paranoia of ethnic tensions perfectly well: razchlenit - meaning disintegration of the Russian Empire into ethnic states. Russian leaders used terror to manage their empire. In the 1700s, Poles and Lithuanians still called the Russians “Muscovites”. In 1939, some Ukrainians under Polish and Czechoslovak rule still identified as “Ruthenian/Rusyn”. During Operation Barbarossa, many Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Tatars, Chechens, and Germans naively welcomed the Germans as liberators under the illusion that Hitler’s armies would chase the Russians back to Moscow.

[joijpj]

Lithuanian, Latvia and Estonia, against the odds, manage to escape axes of evil. Particularly Eastern Europeans should remember freedom is not free. Support the heroes of Ukraine who are dying in the trenches for our freedom 😢

[ivansaenz]

Lenin said : "communism equals soviet power plus electrification of the nation "
So... What is soviet power ? It equals communism minus electrification of the nation.

[SKozakMedia]

Another great video. One thing I had seen for years from vintage Soviet propaganda in russia but never really picked up on until recently is something you find in almost every depiction of the "Friendship of Peoples." You know when they show a group of people from all parts of the USSR? Note that every nationality is in their national costume except one- the Muscovite russian. They will typically be depicted wearing a Western-style suit. The implication is that all these other peoples are backward, rural, traditional, but the Muscovite is the bringer of modernism, science, and technology.

[AuthenticDarren]

An American and a Russian were talking, the American says "In the USA we are free, I can go and stand in front of the White House and shout, "Trump is a tyrant!" and nothing will happen to me". The Russian replies "In Russia we are free too, I can go and stand in front of the Kremlin and shout, "Trump is a tyrant!" and nothing will happen to me either.".