I guess I was assuming that the same could happen in Europe: in many cases, it seems to me that existing regional borders would be sufficient just as they were in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet Union, with exceptions. Purely an assumption.
You are overlooking and forgetting Transdnistria, North and South Osetia, Abkhazia, Nagorny-Karabakh, Crimea (there was a lot of angst over that one when Ukraine became independent)
Thanks for pointing these out. I was indeed not aware of these, with the possible exception that I had read that South Ossetia was seeking independence from Georgia (but did not understand that there had been actual violence.) Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
In Spain: Regional borders Provincial borders Comarca borders Municipalities Districts
Where do you draw the line? Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
Good point. Which made the relative non-violence of the break-up (at least, what appeared to be non-violent to me) all the more remarkable, and consequently encouraged my belief that these independence movements can succeed peacefully. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
The Chechens, though, again rose up against Soviet rule during the 1940s, resulting in the deportation of the Chechen population to the Kazakh SSR (later Kazakhstan) and Siberia during World War II. ... The Chechens were allowed to return to their homeland after 1956 during the de-Stalinization which occurred under Nikita Khrushchev.
So when we, Russian people, saw how the Chechens and Ingushs (they are actually the one nation) had tortured the people, mostly children and almost none of them were Russian or Slavonic but the other way around belonged to the very close ethnic group because they wanna independency from us, Russians... well, for many of us, they overdid Hitler. Literally. Once and forever.
I suppose, however, that their cruelty has been learned(and not genetic) and polished for almost 300 years under Russian protectorate. And the first who suffered from it was their own elites because they were ...er... how to say, not immune to corruption and could sell their tribal freedom for russian rubles so they got rid of them - as i realise this is the mostly lefties site i think you may find it interesting as an example of the truly egalitarian rather secular society with a zero level of corruption (before Yeltsin times that is) and complicated tribal rules and rituals.
Is that what most of you are dreaming about? The UK with their now reviving and flourishing druidry and witchcraft and medieval courtship and paganism and obsession with natural healing has already made that "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" (funnily enough it may probably be the same response of the tiny ones towards the same stimuli of the giantic ones, i.e. the Chechens' response towards Russia is similar to the British towards the USA)
So, back (the first and the last time) to Chechens. They fought every outer governing betraying it - that was with Tsarist Russia (many Chechens welcomed revolution), than it was with Soviets (many Chechens greeted fascistic army in WW2), than it was pro-western Yeltsin and isolationist Putin. They will betray everybody. I personally, would a) get rid of them as soon as possible (give them their independency) and b) not allow any Chechen to enter Russia for at least a hundred years.
Stalin, being a Georgian dictator chose to deal with Chechens by sending all of them to Siberia (if Stalin could, i think, he would have been sending there almost everybody of us apart a few millions, i.e. the biggest number a person born in a very small country could manage comfortably without getting paranoic in the endless Russia). Being the people who grew in the smaller countries you no doubt guess who's to blame for Stalin's actions. Well, Chechens have always blamed Russians and why not?
PS My responses are well off-topic but so do Migeru's (to answering the Q How many nations etc he starts listing the numerous evils did by Stalin (read: evil Russians, read: those who're bigger, read: those who'll do the same to me because i am so tiny and lovely and they are so huge and nasty)
PPS Those who're interested in Chechens history may try to find a link to the Sakharov centre - the best suitable for a western mind articles are there (only in Russian though)
On Chechnya, I mostly agree with you. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
The UK with their now reviving and flourishing druidry and witchcraft and medieval courtship and paganism and obsession with natural healing has already made that "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind"
Huh?
fter Beslan i prefer not to talk about Chechens at all... So when we, Russian people, saw how the Chechens and Ingushs (they are actually the one nation) had tortured the people... not allow any Chechen to enter Russia for at least a hundred years.
Can you separate out individuals from groups of people at all?
(And if Chechens and Inhushs are the same, do you believe in Panslavism too? Which Slavs are proper Slavs?)
They fought every outer governing betraying it
How can an outer government that wasn't respected in the first place be betrayed? (How did that outer government came there?) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
The wholesale removal of potentially trouble-making ethnic groups was a technique used consistently by Joseph Stalin during his career: Poles (1934), Koreans (1937), Ukrainians, Jews, Romanians (1939-1941 and 1944-1953) Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (1940-1941 and 1945-1949), Volga Germans (1941), Balkars, Chechens, Ingushs (1944), Kalmyks (1944), Meskhetian Turks (1944), Crimean Tatars (18 May 1944). Large numbers of kulaks regardless their nationality were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. ... In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev in his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, asserting that the Ukrainians avoided such a fate "only because there were too many of them and there was no place to which to deport them." His government reversed most of Stalin's deportations, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Crimean Tatars, Meskhs and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and they are still a major political issue - the memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in Tatarstan, Chechnya and the Baltic republics.
...
In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev in his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, asserting that the Ukrainians avoided such a fate "only because there were too many of them and there was no place to which to deport them." His government reversed most of Stalin's deportations, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Crimean Tatars, Meskhs and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and they are still a major political issue - the memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in Tatarstan, Chechnya and the Baltic republics.
I would have to read up on the rest of the internally displaced peoples you list to see in which cases countries that consisting mainly of them emerged with some violence, and how stable the resulting countries are.
It seems to me that all the displacements in the Soviet Union would make the break-up of that country into multiple independent states more likely to be quite violent and prolonged. Although I acknowledge the cases you and DoDo brought up involving violence, I would still take a look at the entire range of countries that came out of the ex-Soviet Union and how many did so fairly peacefully and quickly. If Stalin had not displaced so many peoples, it seems to me that perhaps there would have been even less violence than there in fact had in been. Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
That's exactly the very popular western point of view which will never be accepted in the modern Russia because it shows the extreme level of hypocrisy and dishonesty i.e. what we call triple standards of Yer Ole Bitch Europe. The USA you lot so like bitching about has double standards. Quelle horreur! And you - have triple!
What about Russia? Didn't Stalin (being a Georgian-born and grown and somehow educated) had his ugly paws all over Russia first and foremost? Did that one of my parents who was born in Gulag or my numerous relatives who died there really asked for the bloody revolution, for being ruled by the international bunch of murderers? How about the Polish twat Felix Dzerzhinsky, the notorious founder of CheKa (KGB) who is personally responsible for the death of the best of the old Russian elite? How about other two Georgians at the top of communistic power - sexual maniac and murderer Lavrenty Beria and Sergo Ordzhonikidse? They all started as revolutianaries in Tsarist Russia which was oh so cruel that sometimes sent them to Siberia (just the cosy conditions they had lived in were in no way comparable with those nightmarish ones which the millions of RUSSIAN people experienced there later) so guess which nation had the better chances to die in the very beginning of the massacre, 1917-1920 or as you put it for starters??? Georgians during the Stalin's era were the most priviledged nation, in fact they so got used to be the superior bullies that still may think we have to thankful them for him and his cronies.
Yes, later the rest of the countries which were under the Russian Empire protectorate experienced the same - Gulags, torture, agony and death - first it was their elites, less numerous than the Russian one and even more later - in 30s when the simple folk irrespectively of their nationality all over USSR realised at last that somehow they live much worse that it'd been in the previous era with Russian Tsar and nobility then the big chistka (cleansing) started. And again, why it is so difficult to understand that it wasn't the ethnic cleansing but quite international (with a big tormenting bias towards the ex-ruling russian nation) - those who didn't manage to demonstrate enough belief in the beautiful communistic future were sent to the hell of Gulag or just killed?
I DON'T know a single russian family here in St Petersburg who didn't lose at least one relative in a Siberian Gulag (or what was a prelude to it in early-mid 20s, not so centralised) or wasn't killed by the local CheKa. Do you really expect us to apologise for what the Soviets did to Georgians, Ukrainians, Latvians (quite a lot of them joined the Red Army and CheKa and with such ardour confiscated the nobility's property her in St Pete and killed and tortuted its ex-owners)?
It was brunoken who used the breakup of the Soviet Union as "evidence" that self-determination in the EU should be expected to be a peaceful business. DoDo and I are throwing out bit and pieces of Soviet history in an attempt to disabuse him of that notion. He mentioned the way Russians are second-class citizens in the Baltic republics. What I meant by "Stalin's ugly paws in Ukraine" is not only the Holodomor but also the fact that Stalin gave Ukraine a chunk of Russia in his top-down border rearrangements and from that comes a lot of the current trouble within Ukraine (we've had some detailed discussions of the minority language status of Russian for instance) and between Russia and Ukraine. It's neither the fault of the Russians nor of the Ukrainians ultimately, but as you say of "the Georgian dictator".
Back in 1991 I was appalled at the glee with which "the West" watched and even encouraged the breakup of the Soviet Union. It could have been done in a less rushed way, maybe? I don't know. Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides
So if you haven't heard of them, I must supplement my and Migeru's information in that most of the mentioned conflicts were armed conflicts at some stage or the other, and none were truly settled. Maybe the conflict over Nagorny-Karabakh was/is the worst in terms of losses of life and connected misery. A different kind of ugliness is Abkhazia. I suspect blackhawk will protest, but what I read was that that region had not much of a separate identity, with 85% of the population having been ethnic Georgian, but back in the Yeltsin era, the local clan of a former apparatchnik took over and chased away the Georgians, relying on cover from Russia. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I have to admit I am surprised, I always had the impression that you are rather well-informed about every region of the Earth and in particular Europe.
I am flattered, but at the same time embarrassed, by that impression, because my own ignorance is all too obvious to myself -- and grows the more so the longer I spend on EuroTrib.
On the contrary, that's one of the things I am really appreciative of on ET: it's a forum where you can learn a lot through dialectic, where assumptions, presumptions and expectations can be altered, corrected, enriched, etc., if you are open to that. In particular, I am grateful to people like you and Miguel and so many others who are patient enough to inform and educate on matters which may seem elementary. It's like getting admitted into a club full of PhD's and post-docs with only a (barely obtaine) undergrad degree.
So if you haven't heard of them, I must supplement my and Migeru's information in that most of the mentioned conflicts were armed conflicts at some stage or the other, and none were truly settled.
I'm not sure if other people who lived in the U.S. during the break-up of the Soviet Union would agree, but my impression from the public presentation in the U.S. of these independence movements was that they occurred with little significant violence. I don't know if that is my own mistaken impression or if the U.S. mainstream media had an agenda in portraying things that way. So it does come as a bit of surprise to learn about the extent of the violence of these secessions (though I guess in retrospect the bigger surprise -- mistaken, it turns out -- had been that so many countries could become independent in such a short period of time so peacefully.) Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.
I wouldn't call it an agenda (others may disagree), just believing and reporting according to a (simplistic, optimistic) narrative. My favourite example for this is my comparison of what I read in different papers when the Oslo peace process was still in a roll over a decade ago: Newsweek and Time reported all positive things and outbreaks of friendship, Der Spiegel also wrote about the distrust, the struggles of leaders; and correctly analysed why Barak is incapable of brokering peace before he was even elected party leader.
the extent of the violence of these secessions
Note about the Soviet disintegration: that happened in form of an agreement of the leaders of the Republics (e.g. chiefly driven by politicians with power aspirations), and violence was either already present or broke out only later in time. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
