Ukraine

[Johnny Canuck3]

Russians not being very good at capitalism (understandable, it is not within living memory for them),.

The pre-1989 Eastern Bloc countries had huge black markets, which is a form of capitalism that most of the people dealt with on a regular basis.

 

[co-op]

Nationalities, under socialism (according to the Stalinists), were here to stay for a long time, perhaps even after the final of 'victory' of socialism across the surface of the earth, not just within the Soviet Union. The fusing of all peoples on a world scale would occur even further into the future. You're aware of 'national in form, socialist in content'? The conditions of that would change of course as what they saw as the progressive role of Russian leadership and a long experience of state centralisation would take hold in place of the previous Great Russian imperialist dominance of Tsarist times, although seen as qualitatively different.

My god, I had completely forgotten this stuff - I am so aged that I studied Soviet politics when the USSR still existed and - honestly! - I used to know slogans like 'national in form, socialist in content' but they have sunk to the depths, you are not going to learn much from me now. The 'NIF,SIC' era was what I was talking about when I spoke of the relatively benign period for the minority nationalities in the first period of the USSR, although my memory is tat it didn't last that long? It could be argued as quite a pragmatic solution to the problem of keeping the peripheral nationalities on board when the new Moscow regime was still fairly weak and didn't have the ability to just impose its will - and of course there was a genuine desire to replace Czarist Russian Imperialism with something more consensual, if the USSR was going to work then it couldn't just be the Russian Empire in disguise. But Stalin was pretty early on attacking nationalism, and I remember he replaced the (latinised) Tartar alphabet with a cyrillic one, and various of the -istans CPs had purges based on their "bourgeois nationalist" behaviours during the 30s. I thought Russianisation was only suspended briefly in reality whatever the theory was. In a sense, Stalin was able to get away with it because he wasn't a Russian, so it was quite hard to accuse him of "Russian Chauvinism".

 

[TomUS]

SIMFEROPOL, UKRAINE—Following yesterday’s referendum in which 97 percent of voters cast ballots in favor of seceding from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation, Crimean citizens expressed their excitement Monday at participating in the democratic process one final time. “It brought me such great personal joy to head to the polls and, for the last time ever, have my vote tallied and actually mean something,” said local businessman Sergei Petrov of his vote in support of annexation by Russia, echoing the enthusiasm of hundreds of thousands of his fellow Crimeans who proudly took part in their final opportunity to assert their collective will at the ballot box.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/crimean-voters-excited-to-exercise-democracy-for-l,35548/?ref=auto

 

[Fuchs66]

um..the right sector leader is walking into council offices openly brandishing a Kalshnikov . Arms depots have been looted all over the place . Literally thousands of weapons have now fallen into nazi hands .The other night the nazis shot 2 dead and wounded 14 others after they attacked an anti Kiev demonstration . Dimitry Yarosh and other nazi leaders being incorporated into the states security apparatus . The nazi footsoldiers are being incorporated into a Ukranian National Guard . Theyre being armed to the fucking teeth .


So while my sympathy for the Baltic Russians is limited

you fucking hate russians , lets not be shy about it.

The statement was that right wing groups are being armed i.e. someone is supplying them with weapons, not that certain groups are helping themselves to available weapons in the chaos that has resulted. And they still seem to have a lot less then those hastily formed self defence militias on the other side of the argument.

I spend a lot of time in Russia and I have a few Russian colleagues, I have some good Russian friends, I hate a couple of arseholes there but generally when it comes down to individual Russians I like more of them than I hate. What I do hate is the politics of expansion that the Russian government practices, using the transplanted Russian populations in former Soviet states as an excuse.

 

[Fuchs66]

A significant majority of Latvian-speakers voted no. They voted to replace the suppression of their culture with the suppression of Russian culture. They voted to be no better than the Soviets.

Forgive me if I am more than a little disappointed by such a vote. Do Latvians themselves not think that they can do better than this? I certainly think they can do better.

This is an aggressive form of nation-building that has been done many times in the past in various places. You speak Russian, but your children will be educated in Latvian. They will speak Latvian at school and then at work. They will speak Russian at home with you, but their children will not. Their children - your grandchildren - will grow up speaking Latvian at home. Within two generations, your language will be gone.

That is the project. It is more or less explicit. If you and your Latvian friends support that, at least be honest about what it is that you are supporting.

Hardly suppression of the Russian culture by making Latvian the official language of Latvia i.e. reversing the shit imposed during the Soviet times and its not likely to stop Russians speaking Russian considering the amount of cultural support the language gets, it just means there will be more pressure for ethnic Russians to be bi-lingual and actually speak the language of the country they are living in. Not exactly a negative thing IMO.

Aggressive nation building? Just like the Soviets/Russians did? Give me a break, when ethnic Russians start getting shipped off in their thousands to a Baltic equivalent of the Gulag, to be replaced by Latvians in the seized property, then you can start talking about aggression.

I would be prepared to bet money on the fact that the majority of ethnic Russians will still be speaking Russian in 3 generations time if not further into the future.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

'It's not as bad as what Stalin did.'

A fine defence.

 

[Idris2002]

It's a hangover from the cold war. Putin is likely the world's most evil leader -

You reckon?

 

[Fuchs66]

'It's not as bad as what Stalin did.'

A fine defence.

It's a long way from what Stalin did but what happened during the Soviet era is the basis for what is going on now and I think the actions by the Latvian government, backed by the majority of the population are perfectly understandable and acceptable. Unless you know of any outrages imposed against the ethnic Russian that I don't know about.

Russian language rights are very simply defined. Official recognition of the language as one of the national languages and the right, for instance, to have your children taught in that language. The kind of minority language right that many people across the world have battled for, including the Welsh here in the UK. But because they're ethnic Russians, somehow it doesn't count?

Missed this yesterday: Welsh is a language native to the British Isles and as such has a protected status within the UK (whatever I think of the practicalities of it). Russian while being spoken by many ethnic Russians within Latvia does not have that history and while there are no bans on the language there is also no reason why it should be made an official language either.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's a long way from what Stalin did but what happened during the Soviet era is the basis for what is going on now and I think the actions by the Latvian government, backed by the majority of the population are perfectly understandable and acceptable. Unless you know of any outrages imposed against the ethnic Russian that I don't know about.

I don't. No outrages, but marginalisation, yes.

This is precisely the bit I have a problem with: 'what happened during the Soviet era is the basis for what is going on now'. Instead of looking at what the country is now, at how to go forward from where they are now. Do Latvian-speakers really want more than a third of the population (half the urban population) to fuck off? What effect would that have on the place? If they don't, and I would think that there must be many who realise that such a thing would be pretty disastrous for Latvia, then they need to admit Russian-speakers into the new national identity.

 

[Fuchs66]

I don't. No outrages, but marginalisation, yes.

This is precisely the bit I have a problem with: 'what happened during the Soviet era is the basis for what is going on now'. Instead of looking at what the country is now, at how to go forward from where they are now. Do Latvian-speakers really want more than a third of the population (half the urban population) to fuck off? What effect would that have on the place? If they don't, and I would think that there must be many who realise that such a thing would be pretty disastrous for Latvia, then they need to admit Russian-speakers into the new national identity.

And the marginalisation is to the large part self imposed.

No the Latvian speakers don't want the ethnic Russians to fuck off anywhere (this is something I have never said and never heard from any Latvians), what they want is for them to recognise that the Soviet Union no longer exists and that they are living in Latvia, as over half of the ethnic Russians have already done.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Missed this yesterday: Welsh is a language native to the British Isles and as such has a protected status within the UK (whatever I think of the practicalities of it). Russian while being spoken by many ethnic Russians within Latvia does not have that history and while there are no bans on the language there is also no reason why it should be made an official language either.

The reason for making it an official language is very simple. Somewhere between 35 and 40 per cent of Latvians (and here I include those Russian-speakers who are currently stateless) speak Russian as a first language. It is possible to choose to recognise Russian-speakers as a minority within a pluralistic Latvia without that being a threat to the majority.

 

[rekil]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/crimean-voters-excited-to-exercise-democracy-for-l,35548/?ref=auto

That's a piss poor Onion article. Another one I suspect by the daily mash pricks judging from the lousy writing style.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And the marginalisation is to the large part self imposed.

No the Latvian speakers don't want the ethnic Russians to fuck off anywhere (this is something I have never said and never heard from any Latvians), what they want is for them to recognise that the Soviet Union no longer exists and that they are living in Latvia, as over half of the ethnic Russians have already done.

And in return? In return, they vote to refuse to recognise Russian as an official language? This cuts both ways.

 

[Fuchs66]

And in return? In return, they vote to refuse to recognise Russian as an official language? This cuts both ways.

But where does this right that Russian be made an official language come from? Nobody is banning the language, the majority of Latvians just don't want it as an official language and recent events haven't done much to make them change their minds.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

But where does this right that Russian be made an official language come from?

Where does the right come from? It comes - or ought to come - from the people of Latvia.

 

[Fuchs66]

Where does the right come from? It comes - or ought to come - from the people of Latvia.

And the people of Latvia have spoken so why don't you accept their wishes?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And the people of Latvia have spoken so why don't you accept their wishes?

A majority denying a minority rights is not something anybody ought to accept. It is a thing to be campaigned against.

 

[Fuchs66]

A majority denying a minority rights is not something anybody ought to accept. It is a thing to be campaigned against.

But what "rights" are they being denied?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

But what "rights" are they being denied?

I've already said. eg the right to have your children taught at school in Russian.

If you think it is right that such things should be denied, say so. Don't hide behind a referendum result as if that justifies it.

 

[Fuchs66]

I've already said. eg the right to have your children taught at school in Russian.

But that isn't a right in anywhere, where Russian isn't the official language! They can have their kids taught in Russian schools and there do exist plenty of them in Latvia but there are elements of the national curriculum that they have to follow, why is that a problem?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

You do get that it's possible to have more than one official language, yes? And in this case we have a country where there is a roughly 40-60 split between two languages.

Am I wrong in saying that there is a legal requirement that at least 60 per cent of all classes in state secondary schools must be taught in Latvian?

Here's a UNHCR link.

 

[Fuchs66]

But when 1 of those languages is spoken by the remnants of what was in effect an occupying force you might understand the reluctance to do so, but again what are these rights of the ethnic Russian population that are being trampled on?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So they're not Latvians? They're remnants of an occupying force.



There is no good way forward from such a position.

 

[Fuchs66]

Oh and all the data I've seen show that the ethnic Russians to represent around 27% (and that includes non-Latvian passport holders) of the population. Where are you getting 40% from?

 

[Fuchs66]

So they're not Latvians? They're remnants of an occupying force.



There is no good way forward from such a position.

They are Latvians if they choose to accept citizenship with all its rights and responsibilities, but that doesn't change the way that the majority ended up being there.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

They are Latvians if they choose to accept citizenship with all its rights and responsibilities, but that doesn't change the way that the majority ended up being there.

Moving there to work in the new factories?

Calling them an 'occupying force' is a very loaded way of putting that.

btw the majority ended up being there for a very simple reason. They were born there.

 

[Fuchs66]

While deporting a significant percentage of the indigenous population, many of whom never returned, dying as they did in their thousands in the Gulag. How would you term that neat exchange of populations?

I'd say during the Soviet era occupying force was a very mild way of putting it.

 

[Idris2002]

My god, I had completely forgotten this stuff - I am so aged that I studied Soviet politics when the USSR still existed and - honestly! - I used to know slogans like 'national in form, socialist in content' but they have sunk to the depths, you are not going to learn much from me now. The 'NIF,SIC' era was what I was talking about when I spoke of the relatively benign period for the minority nationalities in the first period of the USSR, although my memory is tat it didn't last that long? It could be argued as quite a pragmatic solution to the problem of keeping the peripheral nationalities on board when the new Moscow regime was still fairly weak and didn't have the ability to just impose its will - and of course there was a genuine desire to replace Czarist Russian Imperialism with something more consensual, if the USSR was going to work then it couldn't just be the Russian Empire in disguise. But Stalin was pretty early on attacking nationalism, and I remember he replaced the (latinised) Tartar alphabet with a cyrillic one, and various of the -istans CPs had purges based on their "bourgeois nationalist" behaviours during the 30s. I thought Russianisation was only suspended briefly in reality whatever the theory was. In a sense, Stalin was able to get away with it because he wasn't a Russian, so it was quite hard to accuse him of "Russian Chauvinism".

I can't access this article, but this abstract is intriguing:

Not Some British Colony in Africa: The Politics of Decolonization and Modernization in Soviet Central Asia, 1955-1964
Artemy M. Kalinovsky
From: Ab Imperio
2/2013
pp. 191-222 | 10.1353/imp.2013.0044

Abstract
Summary:

This article examines the way that de-Stalinization and Soviet engagement in the Third World provided Central Asian elites with an opportunity to redefine the terms of their republics' cultural and economic participation in the Soviet Union. Drawing on archival materials, memoirs, and interviews, the article traces the careers of a number of key figures and examines their efforts to negotiate cultural and economic modernization by positioning themselves as Khrushchev's allies in de-Stalinization and the struggle for the Third World. The wave of decolonization occurring beyond the USSR's borders provided the impetus to complete the "decolonization" of the Central Asian republics within a Soviet framework.

 

[J Ed]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/crimean-voters-excited-to-exercise-democracy-for-l,35548/?ref=auto

I know this is satire but honestly I'm not sure this situation differs that hugely from the situation in a lot of Western European countries including Britain. Within the current system it doesn't matter who you vote for, you get the same policies with minor variations.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

While deporting a significant percentage of the indigenous population, many of whom never returned, dying as they did in their thousands in the Gulag.

Yes, alongside a great number of Russians. Stalin's reign of terror extended across the Soviet Union. There is no denying the historical baggage, but that does not have to mean that you deal with it by marginalising the Russian-speakers and somehow tainting them as agents of Stalin.