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Ukraine

andysays said:
To use the example of the Welsh language, this would be like imagining that Wales became independent from the UK, then deciding that Welsh was to be the only national language, and defending that decision on the basis of the actions of Edward 1.

And any English speakers can be "repatriated" to England...
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IF Wales ever became independent I would agree with this totally. However that's a big if.

Plus any person can move quite freely between Wales and England now, I'm sure some would quite appreciate a similar repatriation package that the Russians offered to ethnic Russians living abroad. You do realise that any repatriation back to Russia is entirely voluntary and was an initiative of the Russian government. Strange that so many people didn't take them up on the offer isn't it?
 
Fuchs66 said:
IF Wales ever became independent I would agree with this totally. However that's a big if.

Plus any person can move quite freely between Wales and England now, I'm sure some would quite appreciate a similar repatriation package that the Russians offered to ethnic Russians living abroad. You do realise that any repatriation back to Russia is entirely voluntary and was an initiative of the Russian government. Strange that so many people didn't take them up on the offer isn't it?
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Why should people who have either chosen to live somewhere when the official languages included theirs, or whose families have lived there for generations, possibly since pre-Soviet times, have to move to another country so that their language is recognised as one of the current official languages?

Oh yeah, because Stalin...

The implication of your position is that Russian speaking Ukrainians should all be "repatriated" to Russia I suppose. I'm sure you'll find plenty of support that that on the streets of Kiev...
 
I think you have a very one-eyed view of this, Fuch66. How do you think that referendum result looked when viewed through the eyes of a Russian-speaker?
 
Russian speakers in these places aren't exactly living it up, it's hardly like the wealthier parts of the west bank
 
and nationality is so tied up with ethnicity as well, political issues rapidly get racialised as well so austerity programmes are promoted as being "anti-communist" (anti-russian)
 
frogwoman said:
Russian speakers in these places aren't exactly living it up, it's hardly like the wealthier parts of the west bank
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But they were Stalin's occupation force. Surely they were given all the best bits...

Oh wait. Perhaps calling them an occupation force misses rather a lot of points.
 
They were settled in lativa and the other baltic states when uncle joes suggests moving to latvia would be a good idea you pack and oh look some nice lativan family moved to siberia so you'h have somewhere to stay wasnt that kind of them?:facepalm:
Lativas been free just over twenty years you know allowed to use latvian language in public etc
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I think you have a very one-eyed view of this, Fuch66. How do you think that referendum result looked when viewed through the eyes of a Russian-speaker?
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How do you think the annexation of Crimea looks to Latvians? I can't see it helping the cause of ethnic Russians getting their kids taught in Russian anywhere along the borders of Mother Russia, to be honest.
 
According to this source, which quotes the Latvian National Archive, some 15,000 people were deported from Latvia by Stalin, a significant number of them Russian-speakers. A heinous crime, yes, but not the reason most Russian speakers moved in. Not a 'population exchange', as has been suggested. And many were allowed back later on by Khrushchev.

I suggest that certain people are falling for a national myth here in their telling of this history.
 
andysays said:
Why should people who have either chosen to live somewhere when the official languages included theirs, or whose families have lived there for generations, possibly since pre-Soviet times, have to move to another country so that their language is recognised as one of the current official languages?
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Most didn't choose to live there but were moved there by the Soviet authorities, but I think the general idea is if you move to another country it's a good idea to learn the language of that country. The ethnic Russians got away without having to do that for a long time as they were the top dogs in a foreign country. Now that the Latvians have their country back I would say its about time the ethnic Russians caught up.
andysays said:
yeah, because Stalin...
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Again, the actions of the Soviet Union still have a bearing on the present situation, not however the only factor.
andysays said:
implication of your position is that Russian speaking Ukrainians should all be "repatriated" to Russia I suppose. I'm sure you'll find plenty of support that that on the streets of Kiev...
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I have never said ethnic Russians "should" be repatriated as you suggest, I merely pointed out that they have this option if they feel their ties with Russia are stronger than with the country they are currently living in. Again as I mentioned before the repatriation deal was an initiative from the Russian government and for some reason did not meet with a lot of interest. The deal is/was open to ethnic Russians in all foreign countries so I'm sure the Ukrainian Russians could have taken advantage of it if they had so desired.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I think you have a very one-eyed view of this, Fuch66. How do you think that referendum result looked when viewed through the eyes of a Russian-speaker?
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Not very good I would assume, but I'm sure there are a few things that stick in the throats of ethnic Russians now that their big brother in the East can't be so active in pushing their interests in a foreign country.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
But they were Stalin's occupation force. Surely they were given all the best bits...

Oh wait. Perhaps calling them an occupation force misses rather a lot of points.
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So what would you call the mass influx of Russians (and Ukrainians and Belo Russians) during the Soviet time? Supported by the military might of the Soviet Union that was so well illustrated when other States got a bit cheeky.
 
Fuchs66 said:
So what would you call the mass influx of Russians (and Ukrainians and Belo Russians) during the Soviet time? Supported by the military might of the Soviet Union that was so well illustrated when other States got a bit cheeky.
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In the case of Latvia, mostly economic migration. Latvia has a higher proportion of Russian-speakers than the other Baltic states because it saw greater industrialisation in this period, hence greater immigration.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
According to this source, which quotes the Latvian National Archive, some 15,000 people were deported from Latvia by Stalin, a significant number of them Russian-speakers. A heinous crime, yes, but not the reason most Russian speakers moved in. Not a 'population exchange', as has been suggested. And many were allowed back later on by Khrushchev.

I suggest that certain people are falling for a national myth here in their telling of this history.
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and I suggest you should read things a bit more carefully, the 15000 deported refers to one single mass deportation between 13th and 14th June 1941 and yes there were a few Russians (aswell as Jews, Germans and others) amongst them but the vast majority were Latvians. The deportations were an ongoing process and many more thousands were deported during the Soviet time.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
In the case of Latvia, mostly economic migration. Latvia has a higher proportion of Russian-speakers than the other Baltic states because it saw greater industrialisation in this period, hence greater immigration.
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So the population of the occupying force was allowed to take advantage of the occupied country?
 
Fuchs66 said:
and I suggest you should read things a bit more carefully, the 15000 deported refers to one single mass deportation between 13th and 14th June 1941 and yes there were a few Russians (aswell as Jews, Germans and others) amongst them but the vast majority were Latvians. The deportations were an ongoing process and many more thousands were deported during the Soviet time.
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You're right. My bad. That is just one wave. Interesting to me that there are more than 'a few' Russians - 5 percent, where by population, you'd expect double that.Jews are over-represented - I don't know how many of them would have been Russian-speaking too - perhaps the percentage of Russian-speakers is not so different from what you'd expect if they were represented fully among the deported.

However this does nothing to explain the differences in numbers across the Baltic states. Industrialisation does.
 
Fuchs66 said:
Most didn't choose to live there but were moved there by the Soviet authorities, but I think the general idea is if you move to another country it's a good idea to learn the language of that country. The ethnic Russians got away without having to do that for a long time as they were the top dogs in a foreign country. Now that the Latvians have their country back I would say its about time the ethnic Russians caught up.

Again, the actions of the Soviet Union still have a bearing on the present situation, not however the only factor.

I have never said ethnic Russians "should" be repatriated as you suggest, I merely pointed out that they have this option if they feel their ties with Russia are stronger than with the country they are currently living in. Again as I mentioned before the repatriation deal was an initiative from the Russian government and for some reason did not meet with a lot of interest. The deal is/was open to ethnic Russians in all foreign countries so I'm sure the Ukrainian Russians could have taken advantage of it if they had so desired.
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Whether some of them chose to move there or were forced by the Soviet authorities is really beside the point.

The real point is that it is not the natural order of things that each state should have one official language, that every who lives in that state should speak that language and (what's often added in) that all speakers of a language should live within the same state.

This kind of linguistic nationalism has been used again and again, to divide populations and to justify slaughter - the history of the 20th century is dominated by it.

I can understand the Latvians and the Ukranians being nervous about the intentions of the Russian state, given both its history and its present actions, but I suggest they need to find a way of dealing with that which doesn't involve viewing their Russian-speaking populations as potential fifth columnists and effectively denying them full civil rights by refusing to give their language equal status.

And suggesting that if they don't like being second class citizens, they can fuck off "back" to Russia is really no solution.
 
andysays said:
I can understand the Latvians and the Ukranians being nervous about the intentions of the Russian state, given both its history and its present actions, but I suggest they need to find a way of dealing with that which doesn't involve viewing their Russian-speaking populations as potential fifth columnists and effectively denying them full civil rights by refusing to give their language equal status.
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and I'm sure when Latvians and Ukrainians stop seeing ethnic Russians behaving like 5th columnists they will be a lot cooler about the whole situation. As it is actions speak louder than words and the actions that have been visible in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova etc etc speak volumes.
andysays said:
suggesting that if they don't like being second class citizens, they can fuck off "back" to Russia is really no solution.
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But they aren't second class citizens and have access to the same rights as any other Latvian citizen, it's just some refuse to accept them.
 
co-op said:
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".
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As far as I'm aware, Stalin never went for full-on assimilationist policies, and indeed was against it (both pragmatically and theoretically, although I won't pretend to be familiar with Austro-Marxism). The 'indigenisation' of earlier years was never completely done away with.

There was a process of Russianisation with limits because it was recognised that for a centralised multi-national state to function well, the various branches of that state and its bureaucracies required it, and what was seen as the objectively progressive role of pre-socialist Russians in the old Empire, justifying them as being the first among equal Soviet nationalities.

The purges (or at least a part of them in both the 1920s and 30s) were of the old Muslim 'National Communists,' weren't they? 'Sultangalievism' etc described as a deviant 'bourgeois nationalist' tendency, at least in the Stalinese.
 
Fuchs66 said:
and I'm sure when Latvians and Ukrainians stop seeing ethnic Russians behaving like 5th columnists they will be a lot cooler about the whole situation. As it is actions speak louder than words and the actions that have been visible in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova etc etc speak volumes.

But they aren't second class citizens and have access to the same rights as any other Latvian citizen, it's just some refuse to accept them.
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I think I'm going to stop banging my head (at least for the time being) against the brick wall of your inability to distinguish between the Russian state and all people who speak Russian.
 
andysays said:
I think I'm going to stop banging my head (at least for the time being) against the brick wall of your inability to distinguish between the Russian state and all people who speak Russian.
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I'm sure when the ethnic Russians living outside of Russia and the Russian government can make that distinction then we will all be a lot happier.
 
Fuchs66 said:
I'm sure when the ethnic Russians living outside of Russia and the Russian government can make that distinction then we will all be a lot happier.
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Wow, this is getting pretty racial sounding
 
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