In writing a paper last year on Soviet disasters and starting to collect sources for writing another paper on ecological disasters brought about through industrialization - the nuclear waste and heavy-metal pollution in the Kola Peninsula, the desalination of the Aral Sea in part due to over-irrigating for cotton, the decades of nuclear incidents at the Mayak facility, and not to mention Chernobyl - I was caught by how much these incidents were covered up by Soviet high command or deemed to be a necessary sacrifice to make way for industrialization. What was the overall responses in Soviet command to these incidents as they occurred/got worse? Is there any signs that these incidents altered Soviet (or Russian) law regarding environmental regulations, and if so, is there any sign these are actually being followed?

Also, tangential question/request: If people know of any other big Soviet ecological incidents, please feel free to name/cite them, even if they aren't relevant to your response. Soviet ecological disasters isn't a topic that seems to be widely taught or written on from what I've found, and adding in the general Soviet//Russian policy of sweep embarrassing incidents under the rug as much as able and...yea. Additional sources/directions to search would be appreciated.

Understanding the execution of assimilation relates to the enacting of measures of cruelty as talked about in the last installment by /u/commiespaceinvader here. As noted:

A central tenet of historians dealing with cruelty is that there is always a larger social, ideological, and political dimension to it.

This is also true of the act of assimilation. Assimilation, being propagated under the terms "civilizing" and "Christianizing," was a manifestation of "an imperial ideology" that "generally ignored native customs and beliefs during internal colonization" (Sabol, 2017, p. 209). This tool of colonization, the work of an imperial ideology, has lost much of the connotation it carried throughout the days it was applied to the "Indian Problem." However, for the historian who observes the use of this tool, it is important to understand how it works and how it influences the actions of society, both past and present. Even more important is for all of us to understand and acknowledge the harm done to those who have undergone forced assimilation and why for a targeted demographic this can very detrimental.

##"Nation of Immigrants"

From the perspective of a governmental body, one imbued with political leanings; cultural values; and standardized policies, assimilation of foreign and/or minority populations is an element extrapolated among the statistical data of demographics. A contemporary understanding of assimilation has resulted in the formulating of several theories. Most notably, segmented assimilation theory "argues that there are many possible pathways of assimilation for immigrant to follow" (Greenman, 2011, p. 30). Three avenues are then listed as being the most common for immigrant families:

• Traditional assimilation - Assumption that immigrant families will settle among and assimilate into the native middle class.

• Segmented assimilation - An immigrant family, even if they assimilate, may be incorporated into the class of those that surround them, such as an urban underclass.

• Selective acculturation - An acceptance of a degree of assimilation, but involving a deliberate preservation of the original culture and values.

Unfortunately, this approach to theorizing about assimilation lacks a review of the praxis involved. Assimilation, particularly as a matter of policy, has involved harsh treatment that excuses the desires of a targeted group. Since the 1960s, minority groups in the United States have been subjected to "a narrative of progress" pinned to historical events of social change. Indeed, even for American Indians, this notion that the United States is a "nation of immigrants" has worked to whitewash the colonial practices.

Key to understanding the motives behind acts of assimilation, at least when discussing the United States, is to study settler colonialism, a process that involves initial immigration of a group and the eventual rooting of said group to a new area occupied by original inhabitants.^1 Commenting on this, Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) says:

Indeed, the revised narrative produced the "nation of immigrants" framework . . . merging settler colonialism with immigration to metropolitan centers during and after the industrial revolution. Native peoples, to the extent that they were included at all, were renamed "First Americans" and thus themselves cast as distant immigrants (p. 13).

When a dominant group consists of settlers or descendants of settlers who have inherited control of a land base, those outside of the dominant group are typically portrayed as the "Other." In this case, they are framed as immigrants. From an ideological perspective of settler colonialism, even Indigenous groups and descendants are disconnected from their origins in order to frame the colonization. In order to effectively perpetuate this disconnection, it needs to be instilled into those who dissent. For the dominant group, assimilation is one of the many methods that can be utilized which can then be used in different modalities.

##"Education is to be the Medium"

Education has become a primary means of assimilating a deemed foreign demographic and has been for many years (Lampe, 1976, p. 228). As Commissioner Morgan would later present to the Lake Mohonk Conference:

Education is to be the medium through which the rising generation of Indians are to be brought into fraternal and harmonious relationship with their while fellow-citizens, and with them enjoy the sweets of refined homes, the delight of social intercourse, the emoluments of commerce and trade, the advantages of travel, together with the pleasure that come from literature, science, and philosophy, and the solace and stimulus afforded by a true religion (Prucha, 1990, p. 178)

The United States has long held a policy of using the education system(s) as a means to enforce assimilation and nationalization. Combining these efforts resulted in "Americanization" efforts throughout schools.

This nationalism resulted in the educational principle that schools should pursue the inculcation of patriotism--love and respect for America, its ideals, its history, and its potential (Pulliam & Van Patten, 2007, p. 137).

Vital to this education (or rather, "re-education," as Indigenous peoples had their own institutions of education among their respective groups) was the tactic of removing the children from their families, cultures, and places. Indian children were notorious for running away from these schools when given the chance and would trek back to their home communities if they were nearby. Because of this, the U.S. government sought to develop a model of Indian schools. Grande (2015) highlights the reasons for this:

Federal planners were weary of the established day school model, which "afforded Indian students too much proximity to their families and communities." Such access was deemed detrimental to the overall project of deculturalization, making the manual labor boarding school the model of choice. The infamous Carlisle Indian School (1879-1918)^[*] was the first of its kind in this new era of federal control (p. 17).

This policy was further developed and codified by another Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Francis Leupp. Churchill (1997) provides the further information about this policy:

Officially entitled "Assimilation," the goal of the policy was, according to Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis Leupp, to systematically "kill the Indian, but spare the man" in every native person the United States, thus creating a "great engine to grind down the tribal mass." The express intent was to bring about the total disappearance of indigenous cultures--as such--as rapidly as possible. To this end, the practice of native spiritual traditions were universally forbidden under penalty of law in 1897. A comprehensive and compulsory "educational" system was put in place to "free [American Indian] children from the language and habits of their untutored and often savage parents" while indoctrinating them not only in the language but in the religion and cultural mores of Euroamerican society. This was accomplished through a complex of federally run boarding schools which removed native students from any and all contact with their families, communities, and cultures for years on end (p. 366FN).

These boarding schools, as they would come to be known, worked to systematically eradicate the cultures of the Indigenous students who were forced to attend them. These children were torn away from their families for years on end and if they made it back to their communities without dying, they were effectively cutoff from their cultural connections. Children would be separated by missionaries or Indian Agents and sent hundreds of miles away to prevent them from running away. This was the plan of the U.S. government--the civilizing of the "savage" and "animal" Indian who was framed as an "immigrant;" a "foreigner;" a "heathen."

##"Only Through...the English Tongue"

Indian Affairs Commissioner J.D.C Atkins articulated his arguments for use of English in Indian education exclusively in 1887. To him, he argued, the Indians were "in an English-speaking country" and therefore "must be taught the language which they muse use in transacting business with the people of this country (Prucha, 1990, p. 175). Despite the fact that the country of English speakers developed out of settler colonialism and thus the descendants of immigrants, the Commissioner, along with many of his contemporaries, found it necessary to force the English language on American Indians in order to further civilize and Christianize them. This, again, occurred through the use of the education system.

His directives for this policy are as follows (pp. 175-76):

In all schools conduct by missionary organization it is required that all instructions shall be given in the English language. - December 14, 1886

. . .The instruction of the Indians in the vernacular is not only of no use to them, but is detrimental to the cause of their education and civilization, and no school will be permitted on the reservation in which the English language is not exclusively taught. - February 2, 1887

You are instructed to see that this rule is rigidly enforced in all schools upon the reservation under your charge. - July 16, 1887

Despite the fact that some of these children would be returned to their homes and their communities, their language were intentionally targeted, banned, and even beaten out of the children. The impacts of this policy have now resulted in the loss of many Native languages, the loss of cultural connections to those who do speak their languages, and the loss of an overall identity for those who suffered in these institutions. Targeting the very language of a people compromised the health of their cultures.

The policy as laid out by those in charge of formulating it makes it clear: Americanizing such targeted populations through assimilation via the means of education was deliberate and intentional. The process was to cause a loss of cultural connection in order to separate future generations of children from their families and communities and to wipe away their ways of doing things in order to "civilize" them and give them a proper understanding of the world brought by the colonizers. While the separation of children was enough to constitute an act of genocide (Churchill, 1997, pp. 364-68), the added factor of the aggressive erasure of Indigenous languages works to constitute *cultural genocide,*^2 an act that ultimately results in the death of a people.

##Conclusions

From my personal experiences, I've heard people throw the words "assimilation" and "assimilate" carelessly, as though those words have no meaning or power. It often saddens me because those I have encountered doing so often lack an understanding of what exactly that process entails. Assimilation, Americanization, Christianizing, civilizing... For me and my people, these words have been used to our detriment. They have been used to demean, belittle, and erase us, even from our own histories. These words represent an attempt to prevent me from being who I am. These terms are used to prevent other people from being who they are.

Assimilation as a tool of colonization is a vital acknowledgement for those who study history. If we choose to disconnect ourselves from the humanity possessed by others, even those of the past, we lose the ability to empathize and relate. When studying history, the people we read and hear about were--and are--real people. The type of assimilation endorsed by those who set the standards, as noted in this post, is not pretty. It is not kind. It is even deadly.

This acknowledgement helps us to contextualize the situations we study in the past and understand how they relate to our current affairs. It informs our understanding the world and reality around us while providing an understanding processes, patterns, methods, and the thinking of peoples. When we reflect on the use of assimilation, whether by policy or as a social process, we should critically analyze the motives behind such attempts and work toward avoiding, even preventing, the conduct demonstrated in the past. The examples provided in this post relates a point of view that has largely been ignored and that culminates in a distancing of understanding between groups. When we lack understanding, people become more prone to acting in harmful ways. This becomes manifested in xenophobia, racism, sexism, and even violence. When these elements are in play, any assimilation that comes forth will be bound to inflict harm on those deemed to be the "Other."

Footnotes

*For transparency, my great-great grandmother was sent away to Carlisle Indian School. Thankfully, she did not suffer like some others had.

Notes

^1 - Colonialism “refers to both the formal and informal methods (behaviors, ideologies, institutions, policies, and economies) that maintain the subjugation or exploitation of Indigenous Peoples, lands, and resources” (Wilson & Yellow Bird, 2005, p. 2). Settlers colonialism includes the rooting of a foreign entity within Indigenous lands and the settling of that group there for permanent or semi-permanent occupation.

^2 - "Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next."

References

Churchill, W. (1997). A little matter of genocide: Holocaust and denial in the Americas 1492 to the present. City Lights Books.

Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Beacon Press.

Grande, S. (2015). Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought. Rowman & Littlefield.

Greenman, E. (2011). Assimilation Choices Among Immigrant Families: Does School Context Matter? International Migration Review, 45(1), 29-67.

Lampe, P. (1976). Assimilation and the School System. Sociological Analysis, 37(3), 228-242.

Prucha, F. P. (Ed.). (1990). Documents of United States Indian Policy. University of Nebraska Press.

Pulliam, J. D. & Van Patten, J. J. (2007). History of education in America (9th ed.). Columbus, Ohio: Pearson Education.

Sabol, S. (2017). Assimilation and Identity. In "The Touch of Civilization": Comparing American and Russian Internal Colonization (pp. 205-234). Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado.

Nicholas Burns, a former NATO ambassador from the US, said that "Trump is the first president since Truman to not think NATO was necessary to American national security interests." Here is the politico article for reference: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/15/trump-nato-europe-history-dependence-219011

Trump aside, my question is, Truman was president when NATO was founded. What is the background of his views toward it?