UN General Assembly
1960

192. It may be said that it is easy for the Soviet Union to advocate the liquidation of the colonial system, since the Soviet Union has no colonies. Yes, that is so. We have no colonies and no capital in other countries. But there was a time when many of the nationalities inhabiting our country suffered the bitter oppression of Tsarism, of the landlord-bourgeois system. Conditions in remote areas of the Tsarist empire hardly differed from those of colonies because their populations were cruelly exploited by the autocracy, by capitalism. Whereas the autocracy looked upon the peoples of Central Asia and Transcaucasia, and other nationalities inhabiting the Russian Empire, as a source of profit, after the October revolution, when these peoples obtained complete freedom, they quickly improved their economic, cultural and social condition.