If you follow the definition literally, then yes. Yet, Russia always was very careful with the culture of the colonies, way more careful than Britain, France and Westerners in General.
> But these are different topics.
No, actually not. Russia is always disproportionately blamed for being a cultural oppressor, however as an Empire, USSR needed a single unifying culture and language. In that respect, Russians were much less oppressing and arrogant than the British, Spaniards or French.
You can try to spin it anyway you want. Stalin, as Georgian, had no, absolutely no feeling towards Ukranians, as for example Finnish people have zero feelings towards Portuguese. There was no desire to eradicate Ukranians as ethnicity, in a way Hitler tried to eradicate Jewish people. There was no desire to destroy Ukranian culture. In fact, Khruschev , no matter what official sources say, was widely considered to be Ukranian, has always been seen wearing Ukranian ethical closing, and was instrumental in moving Crimea to Ukraine from Russia. Ukranian writers, such as Gogol, Shevchenko were considered extremly important part of Soviet culture,and no matter what was the resublic you lived at it was taught in the schools.
Nothing close to the treatment of Native Americans, Asians and Blacks in the post-war United States.
Have you ever been to the former USSR? I am not sure about what you mean by "forced russification" - 15 republics of ex-USSR had two state languages one Russian, one local. Almost every product, produced for local consumption had bilingual package (much like in Canada), (industrial goods manuals however were purely in Russian). Parents could choose if they want their children to be taught in their native languages or in Russian. Every document was bilingual. universities were bilingual (and still are in some republics with significant Russian minorities). Local artist, writers and poets who wrote in local languages were kept in a high regard, received bonuses, medals and all that things.
Overall, "forced russification" was about as bad as "forced Anglification" in Canada. Most of the republics of USSR were similar to Quebec in terms of being dominated by the language and culture of the majority.
Have you seen Spanish-teaching universities in the USA? I have not.
There was atrocities during Stalin times true. However they were purely ideological by nature; not against ethnicities, cultures etc (those were in fact actively preserved) - Stalin himself was from a tiny minority nation of Georgians. USA, OTOH, eradicated native Americans on a large scale, brought slaves with destroying their culture. USSR after Stalin was far, far less racist than USA, up until its fall in 1990s.
It was not directed against Ukranians as ethnos, period. USSR was not a Russian supremacist country. Remember, Stalin, during whose reign Holodomor happened was a Georgian, Khruschev was Ukranian, Brezhnev - Ukranian, Andropov - Russian, Chernenko - Ukranian, Gorbachev - half Ukranian. So most of supreme leaders of USSR were at least partially Ukranians.
If you are from a Baltic country there is no point to argue with you, because the sentiment against Russia and everything Russian, for whatever reason, is so strong, that people celebrate Nazis as heroes, just because they against Russia. Holodomor was not a genocide against Ukranians, it was ideologically charged event, so it is not comparable to genocide gainst Native Americans, or lynching. "And you lynching Negroes" is more applicable to you line of argumentation than to mine; the way minorities were treated in post-Stalin USSR and America of 40-50-60s is absolutely incomparable, not even close. I myself grew up in former republic of USSR and can attest that Russian and the local language (let say Azerbaijani; may be it was a different one) had equal representation with Russian and all the position of local power were stuffed by the local ethnicities.
On the other hand, Soviets/Russians did not kill the native population of the republics on massive scale, did not have "sits only for white" in the public transit, had 15 republics where native languages had equal representation with Russian. Everything is relative.
The purpose of high minimal wage is to decrease inequality. It cannot become equal tax on everybody, unless you inject money into the system. The ones who are at very bottom would gain a lot, a lot more than increase in the cost of a latte. For example, for an apartment to become less affordable for a software developer, it has to become more affordable to a janitor. I am not even talking about the goods from Targets and Walmarts, which cost exactly same across the country.
There was massive amount of questionavle mergers lately: Altera + Intel, Fairchild + Onsemi, now this. We stepping into the age of monopolies, dear readers.
Quartz oscillators are usually made in at leas 10th of kHz range, for whatever reason. Second most stable oscillators are LC and would require large coils for lower frequencies.
> EU countries are as a rule quite far ahead on the curve of progress, see: abortion
EU (esp. Scandinavia) has much, much more tight regulations of abortion, compared to English world, esp. Canada, which has none. As a socially conservative I consider this good.