BALTIC states and "realism"
Tapani Hietaniemi
> Let's talk realism.
Here I agree, let us really talk realism! I have, though, to comment
every sentence to show where I agree and where I disagree.
> The Baltic States are small weak countries
> entirely at the mercy of Russia
Correct: the Baltic countries are weak. For example, the Estonian
army can not offend anyone.
Incorrect: They are not "entirely at the mercy of Russia". They have
been recognized and accepted to have a membership in United Nations
and in CSCE. If Russia tries to suppress the freedom of these countries,
it must confront the whole developing new security system in Europe.
Russia would get also an inimical Nordic block against it. The prize
is not negligible.
> - it doesn't pay to offend your
> powerful neighbours
Here I agree, this is Realpolitik.
(by doing stupid things like taking away the
> Russians' voting rights).
Which they have not done, as you should know. See my posting:
"occupation and citizenship".
> The Finns learned this lesson - you might
> call their plicies after WWII cowardly, but I call them brilliant -
> the Finns were able to retain their independence to a far greater
> extent than any other Soviet neighbour
If Stalin had occupied Finland, we would be now facing an exactly
similar situation as the Baltic states are.
But I agree that the Baltic states should develop a foundation
for stabile politics with Russia as Finland has managed to do.
But - you need two in tango. As the Estonian president Meri said:
the decisive factor in Russo-Estonian relations is what Russia
will be like in the future.
> For states who really have no
> historic basis (the inter-war period was just an artificial structure
> stemming from that idiot Wilson's 'fourteen points'),
What "historical basis"? Estonians have been dwelling in the area
four thousands of years and the Estonian republic was recognized
by the League of Nations. Only some Chauvinist Russians deny
this. Besides, this has nothing to do with "realism". "No historical
basis" is just Stalinist ideology.
> Latvia and
> Estonia are playing a very dangerous game (see Poland 1938-39).
The only danger and violence will come from one direction. From
the east. The game played in Moscow is the most dangerous one.
> As to how I will react if Russians occupy the Baltics, I'll just say
> "it was inevitable".
Russia can decide, whether it occupies the Baltics or not. Or do you
disagree? I see you have made the decision to support such a move,
because you are legitimizing it as "inevitable".
> The Baltics shouldn't try to offend anyone,
> unless they are prepared to militarize to the same extent as Israel.
To protect themselves from the offender, I am afraid they have now
a great initiative to strengthen their defense. What happened in 1940
will not repeat itself.
thinks
the observer
Tapani Hietaniemi
Vladimir Zhivov
Your arguments are fine, except that you seem to see everything as
either black or white. According to you, not offending the Russians
means means being their slaves; the Balts seem to think that way too -
that is the problem. As I pointed out, the Finns managed to exist for
40+ years without offending Russian/Soviet sensibilities and retained
their full independence.
The fact that the Baltic states have huge Russian minorities seems to
support my argument, especially now that nationalism in Russia is
becoming more and more prevalent.
- Vladimir
Jonne Henrikki Kolima
Yes, well, Finns did manage to destroy *few* soviet armies in the process
of second world war, and generally fought with such tenaciousness that
the soviets were, from time to time, in a lot of trouble. Maybe this
convinced Stalin and the rest of the old boogers that occupying Finland
would not be worthwhile.
Just my 0.00002 $ worth
--
-jhk-
Markku T. Keinanen
> that is the problem. As I pointed out, the Finns managed to exist for
> 40+ years without offending Russian/Soviet sensibilities and retained
> their full independence.
Although I'm a Finn, I do not agree about that "full"
independence. Actually the soviet-russian government was pressing Finland
whole the time.
Now there is some pause, but I do not myself believe,
that the all is completely over. The relations between Russia and the
Baltic states will be a good indicator about the future development.
I do not accept the all details of the nationality policy of the
Baltic states.
However, I am astonished that somebody in Russia could
make this as a reason to use military power against the balts. It shows,
that Russians would need a little bit of "Vergangenheitsbew{ltigung" -
i.e. They should recognize that they were, like the Germans,
indirectly responsible of the evil deeds of their government and
their duty is now to help the re-established baltic states.
This is an important thing specially for the Russians, because it will
show, can their state be a respected member of the European community
before the year 2100.
Markku
--
Markku T. Kein{nen
Korkeavuorenkatu 2a B 28B mtke...@cc.helsinki.fi
00140 Helsinki 14, Finland tel. 358-(9)0-669520
Misha Verbitsky
>Yes, well, Finns did manage to destroy *few* soviet armies in the process
>of second world war, and generally fought with such tenaciousness that
>the soviets were, from time to time, in a lot of trouble. Maybe this
>convinced Stalin and the rest of the old boogers that occupying Finland
>would not be worthwhile.
Definitely so. I recently read an interview with the
Byelorussian General Secretary, Politbyuro
member 1940-1957 (dates could be wrong). He was very
close to Stalin, naturally. He wrote that after WWII Stalin
often complained that he could not seize Finland.
He believed he should do so because Finland was a part
of Tzarist Empire, but Finns' resistance was too strong.
Well, personally I praise Finns for their heroism,
but they got swamps, little hills and all kinds
of natural obstacles to the troops. Baltics got
nothing of this kind, while they got a strong 5th
column - Russian-speaking diaspora.
Nota that if Russian speakers support Baltics
independency, the seizure would be impossible.
Russian troops never would agree to fight Russian
speakers. Now, as Baltics got Russian-speaking majority
on some territories, the secession of these terriotories
to Russia could be made to look almost legitimate
"by the will of majority". If Russian-speakers will
be dissatisfied with Baltics' independency and
nationalists of any kind will come to a power in Russia,
Baltic independency will fail. Now, nobody
doubts that nationalists will come to power in Russia,
and Baltic Russian speakers are on the way to revolt.
Conclusion. Some territories of Latvia and Estonia
will secede. This will be accompanied by a war or
be peacefully. In the first case, Baltic independency
will fail. This is just a sober analysis, I don't favour
nationalism of any kind over nationalism of other kind.
Misha.
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
>Correct: the Baltic countries are weak. For example, the Estonian
>army can not offend anyone.
>
>Incorrect: They are not "entirely at the mercy of Russia". They have
>been recognized and accepted to have a membership in United Nations
>and in CSCE. If Russia tries to suppress the freedom of these countries,
>it must confront the whole developing new security system in Europe.
>Russia would get also an inimical Nordic block against it. The prize
>is not negligible.
The price is negligible for people who possibly will
run Russia. Look at Serbia. All UN sanctions only alienate
Serbs instead of beating them into submission. I believe
that Panic was not elected partially because Serbs felt
that his attitude is too compromising.
If nationalists will come to a power in Russia and the same stupid
UN sanctions will be enacted against Russia, the result will be
the same as in Serbia. Death over submission.
So this is you who are incorrect.
>The only danger and violence will come from one direction. From
>the east. The game played in Moscow is the most dangerous one.
Tapani, you really *should* read scs billboard
instead of *only posting*. Quite recently an American,
Larry Loan or some such, wrote that Latvian hate
Russians and they have got a right to do so.
There are no games played from Moscow. The local
Russian-speaking population got hysterical. Moscow
just repeats what they tell. Repeats it milder than
they, mind you.
>Russia can decide, whether it occupies the Baltics or not. Or do you
>disagree? I see you have made the decision to support such a move,
>because you are legitimizing it as "inevitable".
I don't support the possibly occupation of Baltics.
I believe that if the Baltics politics towards
Russian speakers will not change Russia possibly will
occupate Baltics. I disapprove it, surely, because
I believe that if Balts hate Russian speakers so much Russian
speakers should go away instead of staying.
If they hit one cheek, let them hit other one, love your enemies
etc. Still, there are people who say that if they hate us,
we will hate them back. Those are who will attack Baltics.
>To protect themselves from the offender, I am afraid they have now
>a great initiative to strengthen their defense. What happened in 1940
>will not repeat itself.
Don't be stupid. "the fly has a great initiative to strengthen
its defense against an elephant". Ack.
Misha.
Tapani Hietaniemi
> Nota that if Russian speakers support Baltics
> independency, the seizure would be impossible.
The Russian-speaking citizens of Estonia (like in Narva) were not for the
Stalinist occupation of 1940 but supported the Estonian independence. Still,
the aggression was possible.
> Russian troops never would agree to fight Russian
> speakers.
This remains to be seen. If Russia will be divided, the situation would
look different.
> Now, as Baltics got Russian-speaking majority
> on some territories, the secession of these terriotories
> to Russia could be made to look almost legitimate
> "by the will of majority".
Here I agree, "it could be made to look almost legitimate" in the eyes of
some Russians. But I do not think that the majority of Estonian
Russian-speakers are for the secession. This is confirmed by the new
surveys. Besides, most of the Russian-speakers in Estonia are in
Tallinn. Would Tallinn "secede", according to your opinion?
> If Russian-speakers will
> be dissatisfied with Baltics' independency and
> nationalists of any kind will come to a power in Russia,
> Baltic independency will fail.
Here I agree totally: if the both conditions are fulfilled, there would be a
confrontation, most probably a violent one. At least, we agree on something.
> Now, nobody
> doubts that nationalists will come to power in Russia,
I think that this is not inevitable, but possible. If you think it is
inevitable, substantiate it.
> and Baltic Russian speakers are on the way to revolt.
I don't see a sign of "revolt" in Estonia. Support your premise
with some evidence.
> Conclusion.
If the premises involved are suspect, the conclusion can not be accepted.
> Some territories of Latvia and Estonia
> will secede.
It can't be ruled out that the North-East Estonia could secede in the
future. But at this moment it would be disastrous for the local
population. I am inclined to think that the economic development is the
decisive factor in this issue. But, if Russia continues it's customs politics
and trade war that mostly hurts the population of the North-East Estonia,
it might be equal, on which side of the border they are starving.
> This will be accompanied by a war or
> be peacefully. In the first case, Baltic independency
> will fail. This is just a sober analysis, I don't favour
> nationalism of any kind over nationalism of other kind.
You must still substantiate your suspect premises, if the sober analysis
is meant to be credible.
However, I think that it's mostly up to internal politics of Russia
whether it will use aggression againts the Baltic states or not.
There's not much the Baltic states could do. The best way to support the
democrats in Russia is to make the Baltic states model states, legally
and economically, as the president Meri said couple of weeks ago.
Tapani Hietaniemi
> In article <1993Mar2.2...@klaava.Helsinki.FI> thie...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Tapani Hietaniemi) writes:
>
> >Correct: the Baltic countries are weak. For example, the Estonian
> >army can not offend anyone.
> >
> >Incorrect: They are not "entirely at the mercy of Russia". They have
> >been recognized and accepted to have a membership in United Nations
> >and in CSCE. If Russia tries to suppress the freedom of these countries,
> >it must confront the whole developing new security system in Europe.
> >Russia would get also an inimical Nordic block against it. The prize
> >is not negligible.
>
> The price is negligible for people who possibly will
> run Russia. Look at Serbia. All UN sanctions only alienate
> Serbs instead of beating them into submission. I believe
> that Panic was not elected partially because Serbs felt
> that his attitude is too compromising.
>
> If nationalists will come to a power in Russia and the same stupid
> UN sanctions will be enacted against Russia, the result will be
> the same as in Serbia. Death over submission.
>
> So this is you who are incorrect.
I am not incorrect, because the prize is not negligible. Of course there
could be Russian rules that think it is, as you are inclined to think.
Those you think that imitating the Serbian government is reasonable,
are incorrect.
> >The only danger and violence will come from one direction. From
> >the east. The game played in Moscow is the most dangerous one.
>
> Tapani, you really *should* read scs billboard
> instead of *only posting*. Quite recently an American,
> Larry Loan or some such, wrote that Latvian hate
> Russians and they have got a right to do so.
The only danger and violence will still come from the east,
regardless of your interpretation of Larry Loan's postings.
> There are no games played from Moscow. The local
> Russian-speaking population got hysterical. Moscow
> just repeats what they tell. Repeats it milder than
> they, mind you.
It is partially the other way around: the Russian nationalists try
to organize provocations in Russian areas of Estonia. I got some
evidence of it in Narva.
> >Russia can decide, whether it occupies the Baltics or not. Or do you
> >disagree? I see you have made the decision to support such a move,
> >because you are legitimizing it as "inevitable".
>
> I don't support the possibly occupation of Baltics.
Here we agree. Still I am afraid that there will be an inevitable
"but..." in the following lines.
> I believe that if the Baltics politics towards
> Russian speakers will not change Russia possibly will
> occupate Baltics.
What concrete changes do you propose, then?
> I disapprove it, surely, because
> I believe that if Balts hate Russian speakers so much Russian
> speakers should go away instead of staying.
"Balts"? That is, Latvians and Lithuanians. I limit my detailed
comments to Estonians. They do not hate "Russians" en bloc. It's
a mixed culture.
> >To protect themselves from the offender, I am afraid they have now
> >a great initiative to strengthen their defense. What happened in 1940
> >will not repeat itself.
>
> Don't be stupid. "the fly has a great initiative to strengthen
> its defense against an elephant". Ack.
This is ancient wisdom in the bad sense of the term. Welcome to the new
Europe with it's new international security organizations. The Baltic
defense is based on them.
I promise to post more information on the Baltic defense strategies when I
have the time necessary for it.
with the best regards
Tapani Hietaniemi
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
>This is ancient wisdom in the bad sense of the term. Welcome to the new
>Europe with it's new international security organizations
...which proved itself in heroic defense of Bosnian Muslims against Serbs.
>. The Baltic
>defense is based on them.
Too bad for Baltic defense.
Yury M.
Tanel Tammet
>In article <1993Mar6.1...@cs.chalmers.se> tam...@cs.chalmers.se (Tanel Tammet) writes:
>
>>Don't be ridiculous. The absolute majority of noncitizen residents live
>>in new houses. Property claims are mostly directed to old houses
>>inhabited by citizens.
>
>So, again, are those property claims being granted? What happens to those
>citizens who inhabite claimed houses?
As you can imagine, the problem of restoring pre-WWII property rights
is extremely complicated. Look at the German case, for example.
The basic principles in Estonia are the following:
1) Any nationalized-by-force property after WWII should in principle
be compensated.
2) IF the property to be compensated is in private hands AND is obtained
without direct guilt (like the farm director nationalizing some
house for himself), this property is not returned, but is compensated
by other means from the state-owned property.
Thus, in no cases is any current owner of the house or apartment
or farm or land frightened with the perspective of losing his/her property,
except when he/she got that by criminal means.
Eg, land is compensated by giving pieces of land of the
analogous value from the state-owned land mass, preferrably
in the neighbourhood of the nationalized land.
3) If the property is NOT in private hands, it should be returned.
For example, state-owned factory buildings, etc. In most cases
there arise incredible complexities with trying to determine the
added value (if any) to the property.
4) In many cases the compensation is symbolical: eg cattle taken by the
collective farm will probably be compensated for a smaller than
actual value. There is a dispute over how it should actually
be formalized.
The deadline for property claims has passed, and lots of bureaucratic
machinery is currently in work with presented applications.
Processing all of them will take years.
Regards,
Tanel Tammet
Tanel Tammet
>In article <1993Mar6.1...@cs.chalmers.se> tam...@cs.chalmers.se (Tanel Tammet) writes:
>>
>>followers of pre-war republics (as the body of citizens would have
>>been different),
>
>Body (and soul:) ) of citizens _is_ different if not de jure, then de facto
>for sure. I do not see how you can deny this.
First, citizens older than 54 were mostly born in the free Republic of
Estonia, and their bodies have in some sense remained the same :-).
Second, the main point, the set of citizens in Estonia is determined
by the LAW of citizenship coming from pre-WW Estonia. Eg, the
children of Estonian citizens are also Estonian citizens by Estonian
law, despite the fact that it was technically impossible to distribute
Estonian passports in Estonia during Soviet occupation. BTW, a certain number
of Estonian passports (recognized by USA, UK, etc) was distributed
by the operational Consulate of the Rep. of Estonia in USA.
>>3) due to the demographical situation created by the national policy
>>of USSR, the dangers to the Estonian and Latvian culture would be
>>much stronger, provoking extremely nervous, unsecure feelings among
>>Estonians and Latvians. The continuous existence of these republics
>
>So you prefer nervous, unsecure feeling among Russian. Let me assure it
>that this creates much graver danger for continuous exestence of these
>republics. And it definetely already led to most nervous political climate.
The political nervousness you can observe in Estonia consists mainly of the
feeling of danger coming from Russia. You cannot observe major
nervousness among Russians, though. Their main problems are economical,
of course, and quite curiously Russia is actually trying to deepen the
economical crisis of the mostly-immigrant companies tied to the
Russian market in order to use the economical hardships amongst Russians for
political blackmail.
If Russia decides to invade, the feelings of the noncitizen residents
of Estonia and Latvia will be neither a cause nor an obstacle. It
is perfectly obvious that Moscow does not care at all. Does it care
about Russians in really unsecure places like Central Asia (firmly
under Russian control) or Russian army (the center of Russian control)?
No, if necessary, they'll construct a "reason" for invasion. In the
meantime they are brainwashing the public by the endless ungrounded
claims about "violating the human rights of Russians in Baltics",
in Baltics with tens of thousands of armed-to-teeth Russian military
(refusing to leave) and the more-than-50%-Russian police force.
Yes, in Estonia it is still not required that policemen were
citizens or spoke Estonian! The requirement of speaking Estonian
will be enforced after a year (several years ago it was decided
that it will be enforced in 1993, but then it was postponed). As
for citizenship, it is only required that policemen must have
been APPLIED for the citizenship.
>>The situation with noncitizen residents is not exactly as
>>"welcome" or "go away". They are already IN, they are not
>>"waiting at the door". And it is very clear that there are no
>
>But they are. Even those who applied, have not been eccepted or rejected
>yet. What else are they doing, without clear idea of what they citizenship
>is/will be.
The situation is absolutely clear. The choice is with each particular
person.
>>
>>You are pretty emotional, I'd say :-)
>
>Who cares about me being emotional. You better care about emotions of those
>non-citizens. You and Tapani would form a very picturesque qroup, if those
>emotions will overfill: staying at the border by passing tanks and yelling:
>"It's not legal, it's not reasonable". Of course maybe Estonian and Latvian
>gov. are skillfull enough and can keep emotions at the brink, good for them,
>then.
Exactly, that is what the govs are bound to do. Offering the
citizenship without any language test won't necessarily warm up
the feelings of recent immigrants. It is basically economics anyway.
Regards,
Tanel Tammet
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
>> Note that if Russian speakers support Baltics
>> independency, the seizure would be impossible.
>The Russian-speaking citizens of Estonia (like in Narva) were not for the
>Stalinist occupation of 1940 but supported the Estonian independence. Still,
>the aggression was possible.
The Stalinist aggression was bloodless. There were no
fighting Russian speakers could possibly participate in.
Anyway, I am not sure if they were too willing to do so.
In Latvia and Bessarabia Russian-speaking minority
welcomed Soviet troops.
>> and Baltic Russian speakers are on the way to revolt.
>
>I don't see a sign of "revolt" in Estonia. Support your premise
>with some evidence.
Narva troops were avidly participating in the most recent
conflicts in Abkhazia and Moldavia. I guess they would be even
more happy to fight at home.
>However, I think that it's mostly up to internal politics of Russia
>whether it will use aggression againts the Baltic states or not.
You are wrong. Baltic problem is a great agrument in
Russian internal politics. The "democrats" like Kozyrev
are being accused in lack of attention to the Baltics.
I guess that if Kozyrev falls this is due to his position
towards Baltic problem.
>There's not much the Baltic states could do. The best way to support the
>democrats in Russia is to make the Baltic states model states, legally
>and economically, as the president Meri said couple of weeks ago.
You will never make the country "model" fighting
the guerilla war...
Misha.
Tapani Hietaniemi
There is a difference that makes a difference. The Baltic states are
from 1991 on recognized members of international community and their
borders are securted by CSCE conventions. This was not the case when
Yugoslavia was split into Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The recognitions and international conventions came in awkward manner,
randomnly and coincidentally. Protecting the Estonian sovereignity and
borders has a clear foundation in European conventions, instead.
with best regards
Tapani Hietaniemi
Tapani Hietaniemi
> In article <1993Mar7.1...@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
> >The Russian-speaking citizens of Estonia (like in Narva) were not for the
> >Stalinist occupation of 1940 but supported the Estonian independence. Still,
> >the aggression was possible.
>
> The Stalinist aggression was bloodless.
You are more Soviet than you would like to accept. The free world does
not agree with your facts. You did not even read the Encyclopedia
Britannica article I posted. According to it:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the first 12 months of
Soviet occupation more than 60,000 persons were killed or
deported: more than 10,000 were removed in a mass deportation
during the night of June 13-14, 1941.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have posted severe disinformation.
> >I don't see a sign of "revolt" in Estonia. Support your premise
> >with some evidence.
>
> Narva troops were avidly participating in the most recent
> conflicts in Abkhazia and Moldavia. I guess they would be even
> more happy to fight at home.
How many volunteers there were, I thought only about a dozen? But here I might
have enough information. Correct me, if necessary!
asks
the observer
Tapani Hietaniemi
University of Helsinki
Misha Verbitsky
thie...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Tapani Hietaniemi) writes:
>Mikhail S. Verbitsky (ver...@brauer.harvard.edu) wrote:
>> In article <1993Mar7.1...@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
>> >The Russian-speaking citizens of Estonia (like in Narva) were not for the
>> >Stalinist occupation of 1940 but supported the Estonian independence. Still,
>> >the aggression was possible.
>> The Stalinist aggression was bloodless.
[ Tapani deleted: There were no fighting citizens could
possibly participate in ]
Note that by deletion of what I wrote you severely changed
the meaning. I hope this was not intentional.
>You are more Soviet than you would like to accept. The free world does
>not agree with your facts. You did not even read the Encyclopedia
>Britannica article I posted. According to it:
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>In the first 12 months of
>Soviet occupation more than 60,000 persons were killed or
>deported: more than 10,000 were removed in a mass deportation
>during the night of June 13-14, 1941.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>You have posted severe disinformation.
And you have posted a severe bullshit. I wrote about annexion of Baltics,
which was bloodless (even comparing with the annexion of Poland by Nazis),
when your Encyclopedia wrote about consequental deportations and
executions. Don't mix different things to create a confusion.
Everybody knows about the deportations, there is no sense
in repeating that to counter irrelevant points.
Misha.
Tapani Hietaniemi
> In article <1993Mar8.1...@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
> thie...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Tapani Hietaniemi) writes:
>
> >Mikhail S. Verbitsky (ver...@brauer.harvard.edu) wrote:
> >> In article <1993Mar7.1...@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
>
> >> >The Russian-speaking citizens of Estonia (like in Narva) were not for the
> >> >Stalinist occupation of 1940 but supported the Estonian independence. Still,
> >> >the aggression was possible.
>
> >> The Stalinist aggression was bloodless.
>
> [ Tapani deleted: There were no fighting citizens could
> possibly participate in ]
>
> Note that by deletion of what I wrote you severely changed
> the meaning. I hope this was not intentional.
1940 the Estonian government decided not to resist the aggression by fighting
to reduce the human sacrifices. It did not work: mass terror
accompanied the occupation, as I wrote:
> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >In the first 12 months of
> >Soviet occupation more than 60,000 persons were killed or
> >deported: more than 10,000 were removed in a mass deportation
> >during the night of June 13-14, 1941.
> >---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >You have posted severe disinformation.
>
> And you have posted a severe bullshit. I wrote about annexion of Baltics,
> which was bloodless (even comparing with the annexion of Poland by Nazis),
> when your Encyclopedia wrote about consequental deportations and
> executions. Don't mix different things to create a confusion.
> Everybody knows about the deportations, there is no sense
> in repeating that to counter irrelevant points.
I am inclined to think that the mass executions of Estonian officers were
an integral part of the annexion. Claiming that "annexion of Baltics was
bloodless" creates confusion, not my postings.
The facts I am emphasizing are crucial. Even during the eighties many
Baltic dissidents (= majority of population) were imprisoned because
they tried to reveal facts on the Mototov-Ribbentrop-pact, the
occupation and the deportations. They have not yet become "common
knowledge" in Russia.
Tapani Hietaniemi
Pardon me, but what is the exact status of these "basic principles"?
Is there a legislation concerning these issues (I suppose there isn't)
or are these the main outlines of principles designated by the sitting
government?
I must admit - studying these property restoration debates gives
me a headache. It's hopelessly complicated, it has a poor coverage in press
and the legislation seems to change every month...
with best regards
Yury M. Mukharsky
>randomnly and coincidentally. Protecting the Estonian sovereignity and
>borders has a clear foundation in European conventions, instead.
Tapani, you reminds me Californian pedestrians who often cross the street
without checking for cars. They no, that law is on their side. Well, when
driver is lucky, he has five years in jail. When he is not licky he is
bound to pay the cripple all his life.
Yury M.
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
>>
>
>Soviet occupation more than 60,000 persons were killed or
Aggretion and occupation are different worlds, aren't they? Soviet agression
lasted couple of days. Soviet occupation lasted a little longer.
Yury M.
Sergei Borodin
>Tapani, you reminds me Californian pedestrians who often cross the street
>without checking for cars. They no, that law is on their side.
Not concerning Tapani's bulshitting, but the law is not
on the pedestrain's side. They have a right of way *only*
at marked crosswalks, and no way in the middle of a block.
> Well, when
>driver is lucky, he has five years in jail. When he is not licky he is
>bound to pay the cripple all his life.
Right, but it has nothing to do with the law, but
rather with its interpretation. Finally, the lawyer
is a true winner.
>Yury M.
S.B.
Tapani Hietaniemi
Is Russia prepared to challenge the CSCE conventions and possibly even
inimical NATO? At least, aggression against the Baltics would denote an
abrupt end of development aid from the West.
That is the question.
wit best regards
Tapani Hietaniemi
Tapani Hietaniemi
You belong to very small group people that deny that the executions of 1940
were a part of the Soviet aggression.
Jonne Henrikki Kolima
>Tapani, you reminds me Californian pedestrians who often cross the street
>without checking for cars. They no, that law is on their side. Well, when
>driver is lucky, he has five years in jail. When he is not licky he is
>bound to pay the cripple all his life.
>
>Yury M.
'Licky'? Well, anyway, everyone knows the Russians are pathetic losers.
Go read a history book and while you're at it, get a life.
--
-jhk-
Tanel Tammet
>
>> Nota that if Russian speakers support Baltics
>> independency, the seizure would be impossible.
>
>
>The Russian-speaking citizens of Estonia (like in Narva) were not for the
>Stalinist occupation of 1940 but supported the Estonian independence. Still,
>the aggression was possible.
Exactly.
It is absolutely blue-eyed and naive to think that if Russia is
again going to take military control of the Baltic countries, this
will have something to do with the attitudes of ethnic Russians in Estonia.
First, Russia does not care about its own people in Russia
(eg conscripts in the Army, etc etc) and really hot places like
Central Asia and Caucasus, as long as these areas are under firm
Russian military control.
Second, if Russia decides to invade, it is for reasons of inner politics.
The public in Russia is being constantly brainwashed to make
them agree to the invasion, should Moscow ever go for this.
It is a pity to observe that some netters completely fail to understand
real politics and go for the innocent lines of thought like:
"Well, Estonian citizens perhaps have a formal right to avoid giving
automatic citizenship unconditionally to all residents, but
surely this would be still be a nice and generous and righteous thing
to do, and surely this would create positive feelings amongst
those new citizens, and thus there would be no reasons for Russia
to invade Estonia".
A side remark: Russian foreign policy does NOT differentiate
at all between ethnic Russians who have a citizenship of some
other country (eg Estonia) and those who have a citizenship
of Russia or some CIS country. They treat them all together
as "Russians" or "Russian speakers" whom Russia should have
a right to "protect". By ignoring the concept of citizenship
this policy is nationalistic (ethnicist? :-) in the worst sense.
Even some netters have a hard time to grasp that the differentation
of people by citizenship is something different to differentation
by ethnicity or culture: the first is an automatic consequence
of the fact that there are many different countries in the world,
the second is ...
I am quite certain that for Russian attacks there would be no
principal difference if ethnic Russians in Estonia are Estonian
citizens or not. For Russia it is and will be all the same.
It is completely naive to think that if all Russians in Estonia
would be Estonian citizens and not Russian citizens, Russia
would not use the claims of "protecting the rights of Russians".
Of course they will, if their inner politics begs for new conquests.
>> Russian troops never would agree to fight Russian
>> speakers.
OK, the absolute majority of Russian speakers will remain just
passive and discuss the aggression at their homes. It is not
an obvious decision to tackle tanks bare-handed or with some
kalaschnikovs and a few bazookas.
Moreover, the front-line units to take control of crucial
objects will be hard-trained special forces ready to kill
anybody. You cannot use ordinary conscripts, scared shitless
and afraid of blood, for commandos-style ops.
>> Now, as Baltics got Russian-speaking majority
>> on some territories, the secession of these terriotories
>> to Russia could be made to look almost legitimate
>> "by the will of majority".
>
>Here I agree, "it could be made to look almost legitimate" in the eyes of
>some Russians. But I do not think that the majority of Estonian
>Russian-speakers are for the secession. This is confirmed by the new
>surveys.
Again, it is the point. The claims that Russian-speakers are for
the secession and feel very bad about Estonia are completely
ungrounded: it is propaganda spread by Russia. There is
evidence that Russia is trying to make the life of the mainly-Russian
companies in Estonia oriented to the Russian market harder, though,
to create unemployment and potential dissatisfaction. Extreme
nationalist forces in Russia are also trying to provoke conflicts
and radical anti-Estonian demonstrations, with no success.
As long as the economical situation in Estonia is better than in
Russia, there is very little incentive for mainly-Russian territories
to secede. Take the people in Narva, for example. They get their
salary in a stable, convertible currency, and the salary is normally
higher than in the neighbouring Russian city, Jaanilinn-Ivangorod,
where they go shopping, as the prices are lower. So they have the best
of both worlds :-)
Now, the events would take a different turn if the majority of
Russians in Narva lost their jobs. And there is no guarantee
against that in case the companies they work in are oriented to the
Russian market: Russia could block all trade, is she wants to.
And it would be naive to think that this would backfire by making
the fired Russians think negatively about Russia: as they are
fairly well controlled by the Russian media, they'll blame
the country they live in.
Such games with trying to manipulate the attitudes of Russians in
Estonia are meant only for chances of political blackmail in
peacetime. In case of aggression, I repeat, the attitudes of
local Russians will have no importance.
>However, I think that it's mostly up to internal politics of Russia
>whether it will use aggression againts the Baltic states or not.
>There's not much the Baltic states could do.
I agree 100%.
Regards,
Tanel Tammet
M. Bickis
from talk.politics.soviet etc. Most of the postings are concerned with
rather acrimonious debate about how badly the Russians treated the
Estonians/Latvians or vice-versa. Can we leave the political haranguing
to the talk.politics groups, and leave soc.culture.baltics for
*cultural* issues?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>bic...@math.usask.ca<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mik Bickis \,,, .*#*. \ University of Saskatchewan
Department of \,,, ^\\|//^ ```\ Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Mathematics & Statistics \ )|( ```\ Canada S7N 0W0
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<S|A|S|K|A|T|C|H|E|W|A|N|>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Tapani Hietaniemi
> The newsgroup soc.culture.baltics seems to be inundated with crosspostings
> from talk.politics.soviet etc. Most of the postings are concerned with
> rather acrimonious debate about how badly the Russians treated the
> Estonians/Latvians or vice-versa. Can we leave the political haranguing
> to the talk.politics groups, and leave soc.culture.baltics for
> *cultural* issues?
1 Why don't you create the group talk.politics.baltics?
2 Why don't *you* post something on culture?
3 Besides, the group is called soc.culture.baltics. I think soc. stands
for society, which does not exclude politics.
with best regards
Tapani Hietaniemi
with an interest on Baltic politics
Sergei Borodin
>M. Bickis (bickis@skmath3) wrote:
>> The newsgroup soc.culture.baltics seems to be inundated with crosspostings
>> from talk.politics.soviet etc. Most of the postings are concerned with
The newsgroup soc.culture.soviet seems to be inundated with
crosspostgs from soc.culture.baltics ....
>3 Besides, the group is called soc.culture.baltics. I think soc. stands
Look at "Newsgroups" line first. I'm reading this bashing
in soc.culture.soviet.
>Tapani Hietaniemi
S.B.
Mark Shneyder 432-4219
>
>Still one more. All emigrants, who were given asylum to escape Soviets.
>Should they be stripped their USA/German/... citizenship? After all, Baltic
>countries are there and behave as if nothing was happening to them since 1940.
Maybe you should be stripped of your "green card" or US citizenship because
for someone who studies/works at Berkley you can't even put two words
together and come across like a blabber mouth dork who should have stayed
in his naitive country...
-Mark
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
lwl...@rchland.vnet.ibm.com writes:
>Oh, come now, Misha. You are introducing a very artificial boundary.
I don't. I was forced to participate in this idiotic
discussion by Tapani. I just wrote that there were
no fighting between Estonian and Russian troops in 1940
where Russian-speakers of Estonia could participate.
That's all. Now, this idiot Tapani cut *one* my sentence
from a context and started a stupid discussion
using arguments from Encyclopedia Britannica
to prove absolutely irrelevant points. What he
was saying is so trivial it does not need an answer.
Everybody knows that there were depportations, what's
the point?
I wrote: there was no armed resurgence.
He wrote: there were deportations.
There is no shade of contradiction between these.
>When I read most history books, I find that most would consider the deportations
>that follow a military occupation as all part of the same action.
You are right. My point was that there was
no fighting.
> What is
>the point of your separation? Did the military not participate in the
>deportations? Was there something virtuous in the annexation because
>they waited a while before they started deporting and killing lots more
>people? Were the deportations not part of the planned follow-up to the annexation,
>that is, the establishment of a puppet government not of the people's choosing?
>Or, do you claim that the Soviets moved in with no plan for the future and then
>magically came up with the idea to do all this stuff afterward?
>Surely, you can do better. I would say they were very much the same thing.
Surely they are the same thing. I got involved in this
pedantic demagoguery not by my own will.
Misha.
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
>> The newsgroup soc.culture.baltics seems to be inundated with crosspostings
>> from talk.politics.soviet etc. Most of the postings are concerned with
>> rather acrimonious debate about how badly the Russians treated the
>> Estonians/Latvians or vice-versa. Can we leave the political haranguing
>> to the talk.politics groups, and leave soc.culture.baltics for
>> *cultural* issues?
The same is true abotu soc.culture.soviet. Due to overabundance
of posters who care about nothing but interethnic flamewar
nobody posts about culture in scs. As a result, scs now
is just a list of interethnic flamewars, where 1/2 of stuff
is getting crossposted in talk.politics.soviet. In tps,
*everything* is getting crossposted to scs, so this newsgroup
became redundant.
>1 Why don't you create the group talk.politics.baltics?
There is talk.politics.soviet. It does not help.
>2 Why don't *you* post something on culture?
Why, I did. Most people I know don't read scs
because of interethnic bashing. As for now,
the culture is forgotten.
>3 Besides, the group is called soc.culture.baltics. I think soc. stands
> for society, which does not exclude politics.
And why talk.politics.soviet was created, then?
At least in Russia the popular belief (which I don't
subscribe to) is that culture has nothing to do
with politics.
In fact, I have had a heated e-mail discussion with Tapani some
time ago. I stated it by politely requesting him to post
his "News From Estonia" and other politics-related stuff
(which i skip, actually) to talk.politics.soviet.
I got a rude one-line answer. Replying back, I learned
that Estonia has some CULTURE, in politics and other walks of
life that could be edifying for Russians (verbatim), and
the level of scs is so low that the concern about
irrelevant crossposting is ridiculous. After some
more discussion, Tapani agreed to stop crossposting
irrelevant articles. This did not last for long,
though: the News from ESTONIA start popping here
and there as ever. Ditto for the fragments of
the Soviet history textbook of 1973 (surely
supplied by Estonian Ministry of Propaganda).
I hope very much that crossposting of political
stuff in scs will be restricted.
Misha. "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK
I sleep all night and I work all day."
Tapani Hietaniemi
> In fact, I have had a heated e-mail discussion with Tapani some
> time ago. I stated it by politely requesting him to post
> his "News From Estonia" and other politics-related stuff
> (which i skip, actually) to talk.politics.soviet.
>
> I got a rude one-line answer.
I refuse to deal with personal discussions in public as Misha Verbitsky
seems to prefer. I think it is against the rules of the game.
Verbitsky's alleged "politeness" can be observed from his public postings
by anyone.
Besides, I have no reason to have any personal quarrels. But if direct
questions are posed to me and my name is mentioned, not to speak of
putting words into my mouth, I am compelled to reply. But I would like to
to discuss the politics and cultural and economic development around
the Baltic sea without personal attacks. If they are necessary, send
them through e-mail, please.
Tanel Tammet
There is at moment SOME legislation covering several aspects.
Intricate details will be tackled by courts, I presume, since
there will always be cases when law remains vague.
I do not, unfortunately, know the situation as to which laws exactly
are in existence and which laws are in the final stage of preparation, etc.
I have understood that the point 3) above seems to be formalized
already, but I am not 100% sure.
I am sure that there are some laws prohibiting any trade with state
property for which claims have been filed: that is, this
property either will go to the claimer, if the court decides that
the claim is valid, or it will remain state property if all
claims turn out to be bogus, in which case it can be finally
privatized. This law is of course extremely important: otherwise
state (eg some state-owned farm) could just sell all property for
which claims have been filed (eg some forest) and no one could
get anything back.
It seems that possible violation of the last law was amongst the
reasons why some chiefs of Estonian Treuhand were sacked last year.
As for the generality of these principles, I have been under impression
that there is some kind of consensus over these, and it is not just
the private set of principles of the sitting government.
>I must admit - studying these property restoration debates gives
>me a headache. It's hopelessly complicated, it has a poor coverage in press
>and the legislation seems to change every month...
This legislation does not seem to change so often: I have the
impression that mostly it is just that new laws are added (and not
every month, unfortunately :-) to cover previously uncovered ground,
not that already accepted laws are overruled.
As you can imagine, discussion over the restoration of property
rights is fierce :-) and it is hard to fish out actual data from
the discussions in press.
Regards,
Tanel Tammet
Tanel Tammet
>>
>>First, citizens older than 54 were mostly born in the free Republic of
>>Estonia, and their bodies have in some sense remained the same :-).
>
>residents (unless they will jump from their skin from dissapointment :) ).
>
>>
>>The situation is absolutely clear. The choice is with each particular
>>person.
>
>Baltics.
if you would be a noncitizen resident of Estonia, you would have a
personal choice: to register as a Russian citizen, apply for Estonian
citizenship or do nothing and wait that somebody will decide for
you (nobody will :-).
It is true that the necessity to choose can make people nervous.
It is a consequence of freedom: no one will choose for you.
> Even if I applied for citizenship, it still has not been considered.
There are clear laws for obtaining Estonian citizenship. If you fulfill
the requirements, there is no way you could be refused the citizenship.
>Now deadline for application for Russian citizenship draws close. What should
>I chose? Granted Russian citizenship, and become "resident alien" with all
>disadvanages of not being citizen (including unability to influence state's
>politics for those who care and inabilities to buy real estate (i.e. house)
>for those who not) or apply for cotizenship and risk being person without
>one if application will be rejected?
Should it be rejected for unclear reasons, you can go to court.
I do not see any possibility that the requirements would be tightened
during the next few years. I contrary, they have been loosened already
this year. In particular, all residents who registered themselves
as appliers to the Estonian citizenship before the Congress of
Estonian Citizens (and appliers!) was formed in late eighties,
will have to fulfill NO further requirements (eg NO language test).
There was quite a campaign to get people to register as appliers back
then, and everybody who wished, could easily do that. So, a set
of clear supporters of Estonian independence will get the citizenship
with no further questions asked.
>One more thing. I personally now several people, whose parent(s) came from
>Baltic states. They apparently not going to some back to Baltics, from Russia.
>What should be their fate?
I could not understand your question, unfortunately. Please
reformulate.
>Still one more. All emigrants, who were given asylum to escape Soviets.
>Should they be stripped their USA/German/... citizenship? After all, Baltic
>countries are there and behave as if nothing was happening to them since 1940.
??? Here I do not catch your line of thought. Please clarify.
Regards,
Tanel Tammet
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
<>One more thing. I personally now several people, whose parent(s) came from
<>Baltic states. They apparently not going to some back to Baltics, from Russia.
<>What should be their fate?
>
>I could not understand your question, unfortunately. Please
>reformulate.
I probably should say: who came from Baltic state to other repeblics, and
now where given the ctizenship of these republics and do not want to come
back.
>
<>Still one more. All emigrants, who were given asylum to escape Soviets.
<>Should they be stripped their USA/German/... citizenship? After all, Baltic
<>countries are there and behave as if nothing was happening to them since 1940.
>
>??? Here I do not catch your line of thought. Please clarify.
There were considerable number of people who fled the Soviet invasion.
They were given asylum in various countries. Now Baltic republics are back
and pretend that they were around all these years. Should not the countries who
gave asylum say: "OK, guys you are free to come home. Do it."
If you say, well, they now have a new home, their children were born in other
countries and they do not want to come back to Estonia. I'd say, so what?
Who cares? Why should we (German, Americans etc...) care about you Estonians
more than you care about Russians? Well, maybe you may stay as resident alien,
we are kind, we will strip you of you citizen right. If you are not happy,
you have your country, go there, it 's nice and democratic now.
Does it sound familiar?
Yury M.
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
>Not one person has LOST his/her Estonian citizenship during last
>few years. You are perfectly well aware that resident aliens in Estonia
Indeed they did not not, because there were nothing to lost. But they
did lost their citizenship, and have got nothing in return.
>have NEVER HAD an Estonian citizenship. Why try to draw fake parallels?
Likewise everybody else. There were no such notion as Estonian citizenship,
except some purely symbolic citizenship given by consulates of non-existent
republic to persons, who no doubt have other citizenships as well.
If you do not agree give me an example, somebody or better some group
of people, who lived under the status of Estonian citizen 10 years ago.
>The same phenomenon of dishonesty. You know perefectly well that NO
>permanent resident of Estonia, citizen or not, has been pressured
>to leave Estonia, nor is there any danger of such a pressure.
Exactly, that fell in the same analogy I'm going to draw: "We have no
reason to give you citizenship, we are so nice, that we will give you
status of resident alien (in whisper to the side: espessially considering
the fact that we can not kick your ass out)"
>Any resident can stay & work as long as he/she pleases, disregarding
>whether he/she ever applies for Estonian citizenship or not.
>
>If you think that Estonia ought to also give citizenship immediately
>to any resident without any conditions whatsoever, just say so and
>do not, for example, pretend that this is a common international
>practice.
Just do not try to pretend that situation in Estonia can be dealt in
terms of common international practice, and we will be OK. Empires does not
split every year. Otherwise I may call you dishonest as well.
But again, all this dicussion of fair/not fair is pure bullshit. What
is not bullshit is that it is dangerous to discriminate in any way,
even based on most fair principles 1/3 of population. Just dangerous
and plain stupid. Concept of fairness rarely gives any positive results
in history. Espessially the concept of fair revenge.
Yury M.
Jarmo Ryyti
:
: But again, all this dicussion of fair/not fair is pure bullshit. What
: is not bullshit is that it is dangerous to discriminate in any way,
: even based on most fair principles 1/3 of population. Just dangerous
: and plain stupid. Concept of fairness rarely gives any positive results
: in history. Espessially the concept of fair revenge.
Russia is in a very good situation to show how she treats her minorities.
I think for instance the Ingrians would be happy, not to mention such
like Russia Finns living in Karelia, Karelians, Vepsians,Votians, Letts
living in Russia (I recently red that there is no Latvian schools in Russia
for the Latvian speaking minority in Russia. One should ask why Russia
has not arranged them, when they are demanding similar services for
the Russians in Latvia!)
Is it so that the Russians are good on demanding and arrogance is like
a part of the menthality. When the things should go other way round
the Russians quickly "forget" the principles of fair play.
Just yesterday Mr. Kozyrev,foreign minister of Russia?,
was attending a meeting at Baltic Sea Council and the comment of his
statements were that he came just to demand from the others.
But when some wanted to speak about the minorities in Russia he changed
the topic quickly.
When reading the statements the Russian fellows write on the net I am
really waiting now an exemplary politics from the Russians towards
all the minorities on the Russian soil. Russia should give an exemple
for us the rest to follow. How they can advice the others if they
do not follow their own principles in mainland Russia? Funny people!
If the Russians in the newsgroup represent the general attitudes among
the Russians I have to make a conclusion; the Russians have douple standards
depending on whether the Russians are themselves as a minority and when
the Russians are as a majority in a particular geographical area.
I think the Russians should not demand outside Russia anything before
they show an exemplary minority policy in their own country.
I am waiting for the examples of that policy in Russia from the Russians in
the newsgroup. (You have been advicing the Balts on the net for so long
time that it is time for you to make a long list!)
Respectfully:-
jarmo
Tanel Tammet
>In article <1993Mar18.0...@cs.chalmers.se> tam...@cs.chalmers.se (Tanel Tammet) writes:
>>
>>Not one person has LOST his/her Estonian citizenship during last
>>few years. You are perfectly well aware that resident aliens in Estonia
>
>Indeed they did not not, because there were nothing to lost. But they
>did lost their citizenship, and have got nothing in return.
>
>>have NEVER HAD an Estonian citizenship. Why try to draw fake parallels?
>
>Likewise everybody else. There were no such notion as Estonian citizenship,
>except some purely symbolic citizenship given by consulates of non-existent
>republic to persons, who no doubt have other citizenships as well.
>If you do not agree give me an example, somebody or better some group
>of people, who lived under the status of Estonian citizen 10 years ago.
I guess you are quite right here: 10 years ago there were only very
few people whose ONLY citizenship was Estonian. Most people had
an additional (practial) one, either USSR, Sweden, Canada, etc etc.
As far as I know, there were still some people with the Estonian
citizenship as a single one, although I do not remember any names
except the Estonian consul in USA Ernst Jaakson. And I have learned
that the Estonian passports issued by this consulate were usable
for international travel.
However, notice that the citizenship of USSR was forced to most Estonian
citizens, they had no means to reject it. The awareness of the
situation was widespread, and it was definitely not the case that
most Estonian citizens had forgotten the fact of being Estonian
citizens or were satisfied with the incorporation of Estonia into USSR.
Thus, from their perspective, Estonian citizenship was not just symbolic.
You cannot sensibly say that Estonian citizenship was or is symbolic
since you personally or most people in the world knew nothing about it.
It would be a little like saying "Estonia (or put any country X here)
is a purely symbolic country, since we have technical means to destroy
it at any moment we prefer".
>>The same phenomenon of dishonesty. You know perefectly well that NO
>>permanent resident of Estonia, citizen or not, has been pressured
>>to leave Estonia, nor is there any danger of such a pressure.
>
>Exactly, that fell in the same analogy I'm going to draw: "We have no
>reason to give you citizenship, we are so nice, that we will give you
>status of resident alien (in whisper to the side: espessially considering
>the fact that we can not kick your ass out)"
As I thought: you indeed have a rather good understanding of the
situation.
Now, an additional very important detail: you write "We have no reason
to give you citizenship, ...", but the case is of course that IT IS
possible to get an Estonian citizenship, and the requirements are
rather liberal: 2 or 3 years of residency and a language test, requiring
the ability to express oneself in Estonian (all kinds of errors are
allowed :-).
The language requirement does not hold for several categories of
people, eg. disabled, very old, those who studied at schools with
Estonian as a language of teaching, those who applied for the Estonian
citizenship before the Congress of Estonian Citizens was elected, etc.
>>Any resident can stay & work as long as he/she pleases, disregarding
>>whether he/she ever applies for Estonian citizenship or not.
>>
>>If you think that Estonia ought to also give citizenship immediately
>>to any resident without any conditions whatsoever, just say so and
>>do not, for example, pretend that this is a common international
>>practice.
>
>Just do not try to pretend that situation in Estonia can be dealt in
>terms of common international practice, and we will be OK.
I do agree that it is not a very common case.
There are analogies, though, like the Kuwait case, but they
are really far analogies. I am not aware of any cases which could
be copied for practical handling of the Estonian and Baltics case.
Still, I stick to the claim that accepting the fact that the
independence of Baltic countries was RESTORED is a component
of any sensible practical solution. If you disagree on that point,
you are either not willing to accept a "sensible" solution and
think that the reinvasion would be sensible too, or you are
not especially well informed of the political realities in and
around Baltics.
> Empires does not
>split every year. Otherwise I may call you dishonest as well.
>
>But again, all this dicussion of fair/not fair is pure bullshit.
I do prefer discussing the pragmatics instead of fairness, so we
basically agree here.
>What is not bullshit is that it is dangerous to discriminate in any way,
>even based on most fair principles 1/3 of population. Just dangerous
>and plain stupid.
Be careful when saying that something is "plain stupid". What does it mean?
I'd argue that it would have been extremely stupid to give Estonian
citizenship immediately and automatically to all residents.
Speaking about "stupidity" is no less pure bullshit, to use your
terminology, than speaking about fairness.
As for danger: yes, it is dangerous. The actual justification for this
danger is that, IMHO, giving immediate and unconditional citizenship
to all residents would have been much more dangerous. It is a question
of minimizing the danger (incl. the danger of any violence). If you
cannot see the dangers arising from your preferred solution, I am willing
to explain it in detail over email (I have explained it several times
on USENET).
I agree that it would be extremely dangerous and hardly justifiable
to refuse giving Estonian citizenship to current alien residents.
Somehow you still try to hint as if this were the case. As you very
well know, it is not the case, and the naturalization law is rather
liberal. I would not personally mind if it were even more liberal,
although I do not think this would make a big political improvement.
In a few years the percentage of residents who do not have Estonian
citizenship is going to be MUCH lower than the current percentage,
as by this time a large number of current resident aliens will
be naturalized. Of course, it can never happen that all 100% have
an Estonian citizenship, as some residents do not want to get an
Estonian citizenship.
As far as I understand, your position is: "Immediate and unconditional
citizenship to all residents or nothing". I repeat that if it would
have been put to practice, the consequences would have been severe
and the political situation would have been much more nervous and
dangerous, IMHO.
> Concept of fairness rarely gives any positive results
>in history. Espessially the concept of fair revenge.
You are stuck in your mindset of revenge. Who speaks about revenge
in Baltics? As far as I know, only some extreme groups of Russian nationalists
speak about revenge for Baltic countries breaking out of the empire.
Regards,
Tanel Tammet
Boris A. Veytsman
ago. Now I see it is in a dead end. Everybody repeats his/her arguments
ad infintum. Sometimes in such situations a joke helps.
One side in this discussion points out that the current practice with
respect to 'migrants' is dangerous. You cannot deny citizenship rights
to 1/3 or more of the population without risking a civil war and/or an
occupation by the powerful (yes, still powerful) neighbor. The other
side argues, that this is a common international practice, that Russia
occupied Baltics and has right to restitution, that its opponents are
Russian Nationalists (of Jewish origin, BTW), and that Russian (or
Swedish, or USA) politics with respect to migrants is worse. (Have I
forgot something?)
So this guy goes to the doctor and the doctor says 'You have a high
level of sugar in you urine. If you'll not limit you sugar consumption,
you'll have diabetus and a lot of trouble'.
The guy answers:
a) The doctor is a sugar-hater and he (the guy) is a little but proud
fellow. He will not bend to these demands
b) It's a common and legal practice to eat sugar. In fact, a lot of very
respectable neighbors eat a lot of sugar. He has every moral and legal
right to eat sugar.
c) Several years ago he was treacherously robbed of all his supplies of
sugar. Until restitutions will be made no sugar limiting may be
discussed. Yes, the guy knows that some of the robbers are now dead, and
some are in the custody for lifting the nearby jewelry shop. But he
thinks that until all robbers, their descendants, friends and some
passerbyes made statements that the robbery of sugar was a revolting
crime, - he has a right to eat as many sugar as he pleases.
d) He has information that in the doctor's family some people are drug
addicts. It is evident that drug addiction is much more revolting than
the sugar consumption.
Do you see my point?
Good luck
-Boris
Jarmo Ryyti
: In article <1oak0v$d...@agate.berkeley.edu> muh@physics2 (Yury M. Mukharsky) writes:
: >In article <1993Mar18.0...@cs.chalmers.se> tam...@cs.chalmers.se (Tanel Tammet) writes:
: You are stuck in your mindset of revenge. Who speaks about revenge
: in Baltics? As far as I know, only some extreme groups of Russian
nationalists speak about revenge for Baltic countries breaking out
of the empire.
You are right. As far as I have followed the discussion in the net
and in the press it is the Russian nationalists who want a revenge.
For their imaginatory pride is too difficult that those who they considered
being "lower" them now start to dictate the rules of the game when
they just were accustomed to dictate the rules in Estonia.
Just two years ago they dictated which language was "an official language"
in Estonia.
How those people can convert in over-night? They start playing
martyrs and whine about their bad treatment. The arrogance of the Russians
is immense,in Latvia they demand Latvian state to start paying pensions
for the Red-Army officers living in Latvia! The objects of the occupation
had to start paying pensions for their occupants! Only Russian arrogance
can create such humour. This kind of news create great anthipathy towards
Russians in Finland.(A neighbour country of Russia)
I think when reading about the politics of Russia there is very little
symphaty to find for the Russians any more in Finland. It is a quite general
feeling among ordinary people that the Russians had gone too far.
(The politicians are more diplomatic)
The Russians are rapidly loosing the good will, the more they send such
stupid foreign ministers like Kosyrev and amabassadors like Deryabin to
Finland the more likely it is that a general dislike just rises towards
the Russians as people.
People are just fed up with the imperialistic minded Russians.
I think it is the case in the Baltic,Central-Asia,Moldova...you name
the places...
jarmo
Yury M. Mukharsky
>Yury M. Mukharsky (muh@physics2) wrote:
>
>If the Russians in the newsgroup represent the general attitudes among
>the Russians I have to make a conclusion; the Russians have douple standards
>depending on whether the Russians are themselves as a minority and when
>the Russians are as a majority in a particular geographical area.
Who on this net, at least, was speaking about Russian schools in Latvia?
As far as I know Latvians can become Russian citizens without dificulties,
if they were permanent residents of USSR (not Russia, but USSR). They
may build they own schools or lobby for financing such a school by state,
whatever they want.
Yury M.
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
>You cannot sensibly say that Estonian citizenship was or is symbolic
>since you personally or most people in the world knew nothing about it.
>It would be a little like saying "Estonia (or put any country X here)
>is a purely symbolic country, since we have technical means to destroy
>it at any moment we prefer".
No, my statement was diffrent: it was more like:
Estonia is purely symbolic, since we have absolutely no means to destroy
it. :)
>
>I do agree that it is not a very common case.
>There are analogies, though, like the Kuwait case, but they
>are really far analogies. I am not aware of any cases which could
>be copied for practical handling of the Estonian and Baltics case.
I would suggest Austro-Hungary, but somehow most of you people prefer
Great Britan or France.
>As far as I understand, your position is: "Immediate and unconditional
>citizenship to all residents or nothing". I repeat that if it would
>have been put to practice, the consequences would have been severe
>and the political situation would have been much more nervous and
>dangerous, IMHO.
I do not understand this idea of nervousness: those Russian are still
there and they are nervous. If they will want to separate from Estonia,
they can do it, citizens or not. Moreover I bet you $1, that this will
be accepted by international community if not immidiately, than in few
years.
If they would be granted citizemship,. they will be there, much calmer, much friendlier
and much less willing to separate. I do not understand why this will
make Estonians nervous.
Yury M.
Karlis Cerans
>In article <1993Mar19.0...@jyu.fi> ry...@jyu.fi (Jarmo Ryyti) wrote:
>>
>>If the Russians in the newsgroup represent the general attitudes among
>>the Russians I have to make a conclusion; the Russians have douple standards
>>depending on whether the Russians are themselves as a minority and when
>>the Russians are as a majority in a particular geographical area.
>
>Who on this net, at least, was speaking about Russian schools in Latvia?
>As far as I know Latvians can become Russian citizens without dificulties,
>if they were permanent residents of USSR (not Russia, but USSR). They
>may build they own schools or lobby for financing such a school by state,
>whatever they want.
>
Yes, I could imagine that Latvians in Russia can obtain the Russian
citizenship without any substantial difficulties (still, don't you think
that allmost all of them would be able to pass simple tests on being able
to express themselves in Russian - so, the Russian government does not need
these tests, they have the results of them for free).
Clearly, Russia can also afford almost unconditional granting of its
citizenship to all its residents - that does not introduce any additional
risk for Russian nation and culture - just otherwise around - one could hope
that people with Russian citizenship will be easier to assimilate into
Russian society, so making the society even stronger in a sense. Clearly
also that this is not the case with either Latvia or Estonia, so neither
Latvia nor Estonia should not be blamed for that they are not exploiting the
same citizenship legislation principles as Russia.
Even more important point on the situation of minorities in Russia,
is that the right to obtain citizenship in a country of residence is not the
ONLY right which a person could have as being resident outside a country of
its origin. There are many other rights which a person could want to enjoy
(at least a person from a small nation) - eg. keeping and maintaining its
national identity (what is practically very hard in Russia - indeed, there is
no Latvian school in Russia). If a person living in Russia is eligible to,
say, Latvian citizenship, it would be very hard to live with this citizenship
in Russia, since, eg. you would have to pay taxes to Russia in hard currency.
Clearly, not just that could be said about the minorities in Russia. May be the
first thing to be done would be to stop the war (if that's possible at all).
Why I don't like politics is because the politicians use to claim very strongly
certain PRINCIPLES to be satisfied, but the choice of the appropriate
principles to be required depends on the actual political plans wrt concrete
societies and people, and may change to ones having an oposite effect (which
also may sound quite sensible), if applied to a different situation. Why not
to try to look what REALLY the concrete people need for their lives - that
will not turn out to be certain ideology except for people willing to control
others by this ideology. Not that I'd want to blame especially any of these
newsgroups, there are a lot of good posts also appearing, just very general
remarks ...
>Yury M.
Regards,
Karlis Cerans.
Erland Sommarskog
>You cannot deny citizenship rights
>to 1/3 or more of the population without risking a civil war and/or an
>occupation by the powerful (yes, still powerful) neighbor.
That is maybe why Estonia are not denying Russians in Estonia
citizenship.
But apart from that the predictions about civil war mainly
seems to come from Russian commentators on Usenet. The actual
situation in Estonia seems to be somewhat different. (Particularly,
as seen from the data Tapani posted, there is not a homogeneous
attitude among the Russian-speaking population in Estonia in either
directions.)
--
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - som...@enea.se
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
(Karlis Cerans) writes:
>There are many other rights which a person could want to enjoy
>(at least a person from a small nation) - eg. keeping and maintaining its
>national identity (what is practically very hard in Russia - indeed, there is
>no Latvian school in Russia).
Is there any need in "keeping and maintaining someone's
national identity"? I believe that the national identity
is essentially evil. It divides people instead of keeping
them together, and as end result, causes wars and other
bloodshed. Moreover, the national identity divides people
on arbitrary manner, making this feeling even more evil
than, say, identity based on color and on sexual preference.
This is just one more needless discrimination.
For example, Jews from Russia or Latvia have very
hard time now coping with these newly-born nationalist
feelings. They use Russian language and essentially
belong to the Russian culture. They consider themselves
to be cosmopolitic, and many of them strongly dislike
Israeli policy based on Jewish national identity.
Note that they have almost nothing to do with Jewish
culture, raised on Russian books/theatre/music etc.
Now, Russian nationalists don't like these Jews because
they are too cosmopolitic and not Russian ethnically,
and Latvians are trying to establish their national
identity effectively preventing these Jews to acquire
Latvian citizenship least they want to learn Latvian
and confirm to Latvian national identity. I think
that this is terribly unjust - people are harmed
by someone's wish to "keep and maintain someone's
national identity".
This is just an example to show that the idea
of "keeping and maintaining someone's national
identity" is unjust, evil and plain repulsive.
Misha.
Erland Sommarskog
>I do not understand this idea of nervousness: those Russian are still
>there and they are nervous. If they will want to separate from Estonia,
>they can do it, citizens or not. Moreover I bet you $1, that this will
>be accepted by international community if not immidiately, than in few
>years.
>
>If they would be granted citizemship,. they will be there, much calmer,
>much friendlier and much less willing to separate. I do not understand
>why this will make Estonians nervous.
I don't know, but I have the feeling that you are talking about
another planet, because I don't recognize much of what you are
talking about. You make it sound as there are enormous tensions
in Estonia - there is not.
Granting citizenship to each and everyone indiscriminantly would
not necessarily be any improvement - in such case you would also
give citizenship to people who don't want to have it. But there is
also another aspect: would what the attitude be among the Estonians?
Very negative, I am afraid.
I'm not entirely satisfied with the path taken. Specifically I am
disturbed by the fact that people who have lived in Estonia all
their life from day one, still have to pass a language test to
get citizenship in their home country. But Estonia has clearly
demonstrated it is not driving this law in absurdum. Au contraire,
there are several categories who do not have to pass the test
to get the citizenship, including those who have learnt Estonian
in school.
There have been netters who have suggested that the language tests
in Estonia would be like the infamous "literacy" test in the American
south where an academic could be disapproved if he was black. Looks
like they were wrong. But it is quite typical for this debate, too
many of the participants, mainly on the Russian side, doesn't care
to check out the facts - maybe because it would undermine their
argumentation.
Larry Loen
What's unjust about it? The idea that I have different ideas from
you is eventually inevitable, even if you and I shared the same culture.
What's the difference, here, other than scale? How are you "harmed" by the mere
fact that some people think differently and inhabit your city? I agree it
leads to trouble (New York City immediately comes to mind), but it
doesn't necessarily lead to a need for a messy political/military
solution (New York City again comes to mind). Even with all of the
crime over here, our body count doesn't _begin_ to equal that of
Stalin. Conformity seems to require an awfully high body count, at
least as the Communists practice it (in old USSR, China, Cambodia).
|> This is just an example to show that the idea
|> of "keeping and maintaining someone's national
|> identity" is unjust, evil and plain repulsive.
|>
|> Misha.
OK, Misha. You have exposed the disease of nationalism. So far so good
But, unless you wish to revive Stalinism, whose solution to the problem was an
at least equally repugnant force-feeding of (mainly) Russian culture to
everyone in the area, you'll need a better solution than simply stating that
there are too many cultures (and religions) in the vicinity. Surely you don't
imagine that the "Soviet" ideal could be reconstructed and made palatable to
any but Russian nationals? I don't see the Poles and the Hungarians trying
to revive Communism, for example.
Certainly, after the last fifty years, you must agree that even if
the non-Russian nationals agree with you that a common nation-state must be
forged, that they would almost certainly wish for a different nationality than
Russian or Soviet to replace it if they are to give up their own cherished
culture. (One presumes you wish this bloodless, right?).
Therefore, I expect to see you picking some neutral nationality; perhaps
Polish, Austrailian, or Japanese so that _everyone_ has to abandon their
own native culture and, possibly, their religion. A great cure for the
nationalist virus! Maybe it could be made to work. So far as I know, it
has never been tried.
But, I think I await in vain for you to take it up. What I expect to see
is for you telling me how practical that choice of Russian nationality is,
since a majority in the area already subscribe to it. But, if you do,
you are advocating the disease, not the cure, for nationalism. That's the
idea set that got us here, remember?
--
Larry W. Loen | My Opinions are decidedly my own, so please
| do not attribute them to my employer
Erland Sommarskog
> This is just an example to show that the idea
> of "keeping and maintaining someone's national
> identity" is unjust, evil and plain repulsive.
Of course it is evil to some people that some people don't want to
have a Russian national identity, but that says more about you than
it says about them.
Larry Loen
>Yury wrote:
>|>
>|> Now, Russian nationalists don't like these Jews because
>|> they are too cosmopolitic and not Russian ethnically,
>|> and Latvians are trying to establish their national
>|> identity effectively preventing these Jews to acquire
>|> Latvian citizenship least they want to learn Latvian
>|> and confirm to Latvian national identity. I think
>|> that this is terribly unjust - people are harmed
>|> by someone's wish to "keep and maintain someone's
>|> national identity".
>|>
>What's unjust about it? The idea that I have different ideas from
>you is eventually inevitable, even if you and I shared the same culture.
>What's the difference, here, other than scale? How are you "harmed" by the mere
>fact that some people think differently and inhabit your city? I agree it
>leads to trouble (New York City immediately comes to mind), but it
>doesn't necessarily lead to a need for a messy political/military
>solution (New York City again comes to mind). Even with all of the
>crime over here, our body count doesn't _begin_ to equal that of
>Stalin. Conformity seems to require an awfully high body count, at
>least as the Communists practice it (in old USSR, China, Cambodia).
I meant, what is unjust about trying to keep one's national identity in
response to the general remarks made just preceding this paragraph quoted above.
If the Lativans (or, anyone else) are putting barriers in front of
Jewish people, that is not just. I believe in freedom of religion (as
my tounge in cheek remarks later in my prior posting should make clear).
Perhaps my confusion arises out of the fact that a recent posting by a
Jewish gentlemen stated that they are reviving (without opposition,
as I remember the posting) Jewish culture in Lativa. If there are problems
with citizenship, I've not heard that before.
Force-feeding a mono-culture is wrong no matter who is doing it, of course.
But, I'll await evidence of that from a more objective source.
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
lwl...@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Larry Loen) writes:
>In article <1993Mar21.2...@husc3.harvard.edu>,
ver...@coolidge.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:
>|> Is there any need in "keeping and maintaining someone's
>|> national identity"? I believe that the national identity
>|> is essentially evil. It divides people instead of keeping
>|> them together, and as end result, causes wars and other
>|> bloodshed.
[ deletions ]
>|> For example, Jews from Russia or Latvia have very
>|> hard time now coping with these newly-born nationalist
>|> feelings.
[deletions ]
>|> Now, Russian nationalists don't like these Jews because
>|> they are too cosmopolitic and not Russian ethnically,
>|> and Latvians are trying to establish their national
>|> identity effectively preventing these Jews to acquire
>|> Latvian citizenship least they want to learn Latvian
>|> and confirm to Latvian national identity. I think
>|> that this is terribly unjust - people are harmed
>|> by someone's wish to "keep and maintain someone's
>|> national identity".
>|>
>What's unjust about it? The idea that I have different ideas from
>you is eventually inevitable, even if you and I shared the same culture.
>What's the difference, here, other than scale?
>How are you "harmed" by the mere
>fact that some people think differently and inhabit your city?
I wrote that, you have missed. Just above,
"Latvians are trying to establish their national
identity effectively preventing these Jews to acquire
Latvian citizenship least they want to learn Latvian
and confirm to Latvian national identity."
>|> This is just an example to show that the idea
>|> of "keeping and maintaining someone's national
>|> identity" is unjust, evil and plain repulsive.
>|>
>|> Misha.
>Certainly, after the last fifty years, you must agree that even if
>the non-Russian nationals agree with you that a common nation-state must be
>forged, that they would almost certainly wish for a different nationality than
>Russian or Soviet to replace it if they are to give up their own cherished
>culture. (One presumes you wish this bloodless, right?).
>
>Therefore, I expect to see you picking some neutral nationality; perhaps
>Polish, Austrailian, or Japanese so that _everyone_ has to abandon their
>own native culture and, possibly, their religion. A great cure for the
>nationalist virus! Maybe it could be made to work. So far as I know, it
>has never been tried.
>
>But, I think I await in vain for you to take it up. What I expect to see
>is for you telling me how practical that choice of Russian nationality is,
>since a majority in the area already subscribe to it. But, if you do,
>you are advocating the disease, not the cure, for nationalism. That's the
>idea set that got us here, remember?
You misunderstood me. I don't propose to abolish the
nationalities and create a new nation-state as you
think. This is a senseless idea. I am just stating
that the national identity is evil. This is evil
we cannot destroy, as many evils are. The impossibility
to destroy it does not make it less repulsive.
Misha.
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
lwl...@rchland.vnet.ibm.com Larry Loen writes:
>I wrote:
>>Yury [I am Misha, you confused me with someone] wrote:
>>|> Now, Russian nationalists don't like these Jews because
>>|> they are too cosmopolitic and not Russian ethnically,
>>|> and Latvians are trying to establish their national
>>|> identity effectively preventing these Jews to acquire
>>|> Latvian citizenship least they want to learn Latvian
>>|> and confirm to Latvian national identity. I think
>>|> that this is terribly unjust - people are harmed
>>|> by someone's wish to "keep and maintain someone's
>>|> national identity".
>If the Lativans (or, anyone else) are putting barriers in front of
>Jewish people, that is not just. I believe in freedom of religion (as
>my tounge in cheek remarks later in my prior posting should make clear).
Well, most people there are atheists :) Even US
Constitution does not equal atheists in rights
with religious people.
>Perhaps my confusion arises out of the fact that a recent posting by a
>Jewish gentlemen stated that they are reviving (without opposition,
>as I remember the posting) Jewish culture in Lativa. If there are problems
>with citizenship, I've not heard that before.
This posting was a pure lie and propaganda. In fact,
many Jewish people in Latvia were persecuted on various
ways. For example, the (Jewish) chief director of one of Riga's
best theatres, and the Jew-run Riga's schools were
variously discriminated. The director ("regissoire",
sorry for misspell) was expelled, the theatre was
closed or totally revamped by the Latvian Ministry
of Culture. This story made a big noise in xSU theatre
circles. About some Jews-run Riga mathematical school
there were several postings some time ago, basically,
its teachers were harrassed and emigrated to Israel
because of the local authorities' pressure.
I hope that someone could repost that.
From me, I partially repost the article by the famous
Soviet dissident writer, Vassily Aksionov,
who is by no means a nationalist. Note that
Aksionov even writes in English now, and is
a Jew by the Jewish law.
Aksionov writes:
[ some parts deleted ]
I write about the Dubulti because it reflects a lot of the current
ambivalence, distrust and long-suppressed animosity toward Russians. Latvians
certainly have reasons to dislike the Russians. In 1940, the Red Army crushed
their fledgling independence and replaced the 19-year-old Latvian state with
the monstrous Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic run by the local Communist
stooges.
The identity of the small Baltic nation was always a painful question. Riga
was a cosmopolitan seaport with a mixed German, Swedish, Polish, Jewish and
Russian population. During the Soviet decades, the city turned into a
predominantly Russian-speaking place. Today, as you walk along a Riga street,
you can't help catching a sense of alienation: a German-looking town with its
Gothic spires; a Russian-speaking crowd of former Soviet subjects; Latvian
signs and billboards incomprehensible to many. Latvia, in fact, is a small
country with a big capital that has an extraordinary cultural influence on the
rest of the nation.
Meanwhile, Russians in Latvia are nervous, uncertain and angry. Under the
new "Law of Citizenship," only those who can prove Latvian residency before
1940 will become legitimate citizens - which will make aliens out of virtually
the entire Russian population. The press makes it clear that the exodus of the
"migrants," i.e., one million souls, will be the only solution.
Yet at a busy intersection, people hardly spoke Latvian unless they were
the zeme sarsis, the camouflage-uniformed members of a new paramilitary group.
Russians were all around, working in the city's industry, transportation,
public services, culture, trade - in all fields except the Latvian National
Opera and the government. The nationalist circles hope that the Russians will
be replaced by the Latvian repatriates from the West.
The Russians whisper: Haven't you heard, they've started selling arms to
all Latvians and refuse to do so to Russians? Fear has huge eyes, says a Russian
proverb. The rumors keep spreading: All Russians who failed to pass Latvian
language exams will be immediately fired. The authorities will issue special
car plates for ethnic Russians. The latter rumor, by the way, came true in
neighboring Estonia.
To be sure, what we are seeing today is a reaction to an accumulation of
offenses. Some 15 years ago I witnessed an ugly scene in a Riga department
store: A young Latvian dared to address a saleswoman in Latvian. The heavy-set
matron refused to answer. "Speak a human language, man!" she barked back. A
crowd jeered.
Not surprisingly, the Latvians began to develop a certain mentality; they
saw themselves as a small, cultured European nation occupied by the caddish
Russian hordes. In truth, they were ruled by their own Latvian Red Guards -
puppets of the Kremlin. And paradoxically, the Russian intelligentsia were
among the strongest supporters of liberation; the independence of the three
Baltic states was always included in the context of their anti-totalitarian
struggle.
Yet freedom brought bitterness as well as triumph. "I always believed that
we're playing on the same team," says one Russian writer. "In January 1991 I
was on the barricades guarding Riga Old Town. I was ready to fight to the
bitter end . . . . Today I realize that many of my Latvian friends of those
days still consider me closer to the `occupants' than to themselves."
Not long ago, authorities shut down one of the most innovative and
courageous acting companies in the former U.S.S.R. - Riga's Young Spectator
Theater. Says one dramatist of mixed Russian-Latvian origin: "I remember their
performance of a Vladimir Nabokov's play in 1988. It stirred up scandal. Some
people sitting now in the highest rank of the republic were in charge of the
ideology. They were frightened by the possibility of Moscow's angry reaction .
. . . The most striking part of this case is that the order to close the Young
Spectator came from the newly appointed minister of culture, a Latvian jazz
composer Raimond Paulus."
Vassily Aksyonov, the Russian novelist and essayist, teaches creative
writing at George Mason University.
Copyright 1992 The Washington Post
--------------------------------------------------------------
Life in Freedom
Eesti Vabaks Bri/vu Latviju Lietuva Laisva
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
>Perhaps my confusion arises out of the fact that a recent posting by a
>Jewish gentlemen stated that they are reviving (without opposition,
>as I remember the posting) Jewish culture in Lativa. If there are problems
>with citizenship, I've not heard that before.
>
>Force-feeding a mono-culture is wrong no matter who is doing it, of course.
>But, I'll await evidence of that from a more objective source.
Basically, the antisemitism in Baltics (all xSU, in fact)
is very common. I repost there the LIFE article, which was often
discussed on this net. From what I know, this article
is true, but I can be mistaken, of course. Note the
similarity between the antipathy to Jews displayed in Latvia
and Russia and the hatred to Gypsies in Romania.
Forwarded from BALT-L list
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subj: text of LIFE article
Soon They Will Come For Us
by Edward Barnes
Five decades after the Nazi massacres, a resurgent anti-Semitism
is forcing the Jews of Latvia to run for their lives.
In late November of 1941, the woods near Latvia's capital, Riga,
became a killing ground. There, in a place called Rumbula, over the
course of two appalling weeks, 30,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto were
marched, forced to strip before open pits and machine-gunned to death.
In no other country of Europe was the extermination of the Jews so
thorough. Of the 85,000 who lived in Latvia, only 500 survived the war.
Mira Beylina was six years old then. With her parents, her brother,
her aunt and her uncle, she took the last train to Russia in the middle
of the night. They rode in an open boxcar while German fighter planes
roared overhead and strafed the train below. Nine of her relatives
missed the train; all of them died in the war, all but three at the pits
of Rumbula.
When Mira and her mother and father returned to Latvia after the
war, they didn't know what they would find amid the rubble of their
country. Without money, without family, they didn't know where they
would live or what they would live on. But they believed that their
fear and flight were over; they thought they would never be forced out
again.
They were wrong. In September of this year, Mira, now 57, and her
daughter and son-in-law packed what they could carry into six suitcases.
Their three-bedroom apartment--a testament to Mira's success as a
pharmacist and to her late husband's as an engineer--was nearly empty.
The white walls core the ghostly outlines of dressers and credenzas.
The dining room table had gone to a cousin, the lamps to a former
coworker. And Mira was waiting for other friends to take away what was
left. In two days she and her daughter, Leah, and son-in-law,
Alexander, would be taking the Moscow-bound train that had saved her
life half a century before. She would be taking it for the same
reason--because she is a Jew.
"I am running once again," she said. "In the old Soviet Union,
there were always people who hated the Jews, but it was always latent.
Today everything is changed. Everything--all politics--is ethnic, and
soon they will come for us."
"In Latvia, as in much of the former Soviet empire, the word "they"
is once again an innocent word with a sinister implication. "They," in
the case of Latvia, are a group of former Nazis and newly emboldened
ultra-rightists who share a shocking desire to "purify" the population.
Now longer constrained by the Soviet Union, "they" are battling in the
nation's parliament to get the Russians out of the country--and, less
openly, the Jews along with them. In the last year or so "they" have
exerted so much pressure that nearly 15,000 of the country's 23,000 Jews
have already left. In contrast to Germany, where the neo-Nazi movement
is a fringe group that manipulates racial violence to make itself appear
more powerful than it is, Latvia's ethnic prejudice has become
mainstream political thinking. While many Latvians are clearly appalled
by that is happening, recent polls suggest that the groups favoring
racial purity represent up to 40 percent of the ethnic Latvian
population. Carpets decorated with swastikas hang openly in downtown
stores, and it is not uncommon to see men on the streets of Riga wearing
the Iron Cross. Says Alfred H Moses, president of the American Jewish
Congress: "Unless the world wakes up to this problem, fascism may once
again stalk Europe."
Latvia is a small country, with just 2.6 million people, and a
bitter, confusing past. Established as an independent nation in the
aftermath of World War I, it had been a sovereign state for only 21 years
when the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact gave Poland to the Germans and
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to the Russians. Two years later the
treaty broke down, the Russians fled, and the Germans invaded. During
the war, Latvia saw the Soviet Union as its enemy, Germany as its
liberator. But with the Allied defeat of the Nazis, Latvia was
reannexed by Moscow.
Because of its critical position on the Baltic, Latvia soon became a
center for Soviet industry, with Russians imported as workers, soldiers,
police and government officials. By 1992 when Latvia and the other
Baltic states broke free from the Soviet Union, Latvian-speaking
citizens had nearly become a minority in their own country. With the
collapse of communism, old hatreds that had long simmered became
virulent and are now on the brink of becoming official policy. Says
Janis Riba, head of a renascent paramilitary group, the Aizsargi:
"Latvia must be for Latvians."
It was just a year ago that Mira and her friends and family began to
sense that there would be trouble. On November 24, 1992, the 50th
anniversary of _Blutsonntag_, the "Bloody Sunday" that started the
massacre at Rumbula, Anatolijs Gorbunovs, a former communist official
and now president of the country, visited the site to make a speech.
His words that day were not reported in the press and did not become
part of any official record. But according to Mira's son-in-law,
Alexander, "The speech swept like a wind through the Jewish community.
Within hours, everyone knew what he had said." Standing before a
predominantly Jewish crowd--many of whom were expecting a long-awaited
public reckoning with Latvia's bloody past--Gorbunovs insisted that the
Jews of Latvia had supported the communist party and thus had themselves
to blame for their deaths.
Not long after the Rumbula speech, Gorbunovs reportedly went a step
further. According to the former head of the Latvian national press
office, Gorbunovs, in an interview, endorsed Latvia's new system of
ethnic separation. Under this system, already enacted by parliamentary
resolution, Latvian citizenship will be granted only to those people who
can pass a Latvian language test and can show that their parents or
grandparents held citizenship as of June 17, 1940, the day of the Soviet
invasion. For everyone else (roughly half the country's population),
the new restrictions may ultimately make it illegal to own property or
open a bank account, and all but impossible to hold a job or get a
university education. Specifically aimed at forcing Russians to return
to Russia, the measures would also disenfranchise an estimated 95
percent of the nation's Jews, most of whom came to Latvia after 1940:
There are, for example, only 22 remaining survivors of the Riga ghetto
in the country.
Already, all the country's inhabitants are lining up at government
offices to show their identification. Throughout the nation, well-known
Jews--the Chief cardiologist at Riga's main hospital, the director of
the state children's theater--are rumored to have been forced out of
their jobs. Every Wednesday several hundred Jews leave Latvia for
Israel on the weekly flight to Tel Aviv. Others, interring their
memories in their wish for safety, are fleeing to Germany. There,
adding irony to irony, former Latvian soldiers have successfully
applying for their German Army pensions, while the Latvian Jews who
survived the Holocaust have consistently been denied reparations.
Even the Parliament does not expect half the population to leave
either quickly or quietly. Anticipating violence--especially from the
Russian speaking police force--the government has established and armed
the Latvian-speaking Zemisargi, or Home Guard. Among its 15,000 members
are two units composed of "Old Warriors," former members of the Waffen
SS who are eager for the chance to put on their uniforms again and sing
the old songs. Some of them have been training in the farm country
outside Riga. For six weeks this summer they lived together in a
dormitory and filled their days with marching, target practice, was
stories and new politics.
The Old Warriors are indeed old. Their marching is labored, their
marksmanship is dulled by failing vision, and their uniforms no longer
fall straight and stiff from their shoulders. But their newfound
fraternity seems to be rejuvenating them. For the nearly five decades
of Soviet rule, they were unable to meet--much less carry a gun--for
fear of arrest. Now they have found one another, and their
conversations are bright and animated. One of the men ends a story and
breaks into a stiff-armed Nazi salute. His body goes as rigid as it
must have when he was 20, and a smile of glee and satisfaction lights
his face. Equally chilling to the Jews of Latvia has been the sight of
the Aizsargi, the paramilitary group that helped the Nazis in the Riga
roundup and conducted Jewish pogroms of its own. The Aizsargi already
claim some 14,000 members. They patrol the streets, march in rallies
and are illegally rearming themselves, sometimes from hidden arms caches
left behind nearly five decades ago by retreating Germans.
Says one local historian flatly: "The original Aizsargi formed the
nucleus of the Schutzmannschaften, the dreaded killing squad." Says Dr.
Bernhard Press, a Latvian pathologist living in Germany who recently
came back to visit: "We are aghast at seeing the same Aizsargi as were
killing us walk proudly around today. They are the same kind of men who
were in the Aizsargi before. It was the Aizsargi that made the
Holocaust in Latvia the most thorough. The Germans didn't know a
Latvian Jew from a Latvian. It was the Aizsargi that told them and
helped round up Jews by the thousands."
Current nationalists flatly reject the view that the Aizsargi helped
at Rumbula, let alone initiated violence of their own. In keeping with
the prevailing prejudices, they say that Latvians joined the German Army
only because they were fighting Russians. "Not one Latvian was involved
in killing Jews," a nationalist leader angrily proclaims when questioned
about the past.
The war museum in Riga is a study in questionable history. Once a
monument to the defeat of the Nazis, the 13th century gunpowder turret
now celebrates Latvia's fight against Russia during World War II. The
war museum exhibits, while bristling with images of Nazis and swastikas,
barely mention the role of the Nazis in the war against Russia, though
the photographs consistently show Latvian and German soldiers fighting
together. On the third floor, one display about Latvia's prewar air
force honors Herbert Cukurs, a pilot who helped found the force. What
the exhibit doesn't mention is that Cukurs was an infamous was criminal,
a leader in an Iron Cross mobile death squad that killed thousands of
civilians. Or that he had a reputation for personally killing children.
Or that he was ultimately murdered in 1965, his body found with a note
reading, "This was done by those who can never forget." Many Latvians,
apparently, have chosen to forget.
History is being revised, too, for Latvian children. A newly
published history book for 12-year-olds deals with the Holocaust in one
chillingly short sentence: "It is a shame that women and old people were
killed." In a section titled "The Horrible Year," the book states that
"the Soviet KGB came to Latvia and began oppressing the people of
Latvia. Their leader was the Jew Simons Schustins." A children's
magazine has just reissued an old Latvian primer. The letter Z (which
in Latvian carries a Y sound) is accompanied by a grotesque caricature
of a man--identified as a "Yid"--with a bulbous red nose.
The anti-Semitism is more than insidious. Personal confrontations
have already before rife. One Jewish teacher--who does not want his
name published--says he had saved for several years to enter a
sanatorium in a Baltic Sea resort renowned for its medicinal baths. He
had hoped the waters would cure the arthritis that had crippled him for
nearly a decade. When he finally arrived at the spa, though, he found
it filled with a contingent of Old Warriors. "For three weeks," he
says, "I took my treatments with them, ate at common tables with them
and sat in the lobby during leisure time with them. In all that time,
no one spoke a word to me. They sang their old war songs and talked and
drank. But every other word from their mouth was 'Yid, yid, yid.' I
would just sit in the lobby and listen. Then, one day, one of the group
came over and handed me a piece of paper. It was a flier saying 'Get
out of Latvia.' "
Sitting in a cramped but tidy apartment, part of a row of
identically ugly Soviet-built buildings, he is worried and desperate.
"The right is clearly going to take over, and when they do, no one will
be safe," he says. "I have worked my entire life and expected that the
state would never let this happen. Now the state is gone." He begins
to weep. "It is all ethnic hatred now."
According to a mathematics professor at the University of Riga, the
right has already begun to mark its targets. "I returned home one day
to find fliers placed on several mailboxes in my building," she says.
"The fliers were unequivocal: 'You must leave Latvia's territory because
you are here illegally. You will have to leave sooner or later. If you
stay, you will provoke the forces of Latvia that are ready to solve the
decolonization question by violent methods.' "
Mira's daughter, Leah, had an equally frightening experience. "I
was on a bus," she recalled the day that she was packing to leave.
"The conductor began screaming at me, 'Yid, you should all be killed,
you must get out of Latvia!' And then he pushed me, and I fell against
some seats. No one on the bus even tried to help me. They just let him
push me. I couldn't believe it. When he passed by, I saw that he was
wearing the pin of an Old Warrior.
"I went home in tears. I asked my mother, 'How do they know who we
are?' "
At the large Jewish cemetery in Riga, the superintendent says she
received between 300 and 400 inquiries a month from families planning to
leave who are seeking long-term care for their plots. When Mira's
departure day came, she went alone to the cemetery with flowers for the
graves of her husband and other relatives. Earlier in the week, Leah
and Alexander had trimmed the bushed and watered the headstones around
the family plot. They had paid the superintendent to see to future
care. Now Mira knelt down by her husband's gravestone and told him that
she would never return.
At the train station, she huddled with friends on the platform, as
far as she could from the crowds. There were tears and some laughter.
Everyone in Mira's group had made this trip before, with other friends.
Mira said it was not as terrifying as the train trip she had taken when
she was six years old. But when the train pulled in, she had many of
the same feelings. Around her and Leah and Alexander were their six
bags, which friends carried to the door of the train. There her legs
buckled, and she held on for strength.
In the berth, she looked out with tears in her eyes, and she touched
the glass. Her friends touched it too, from the other side. When the
train pulled out, they followed it. When it disappeared, there were
more tears. Then her friends stood silently, brooding on their loss,
until one of them turned to face the group and ask, "Well, which one of
us will be next?" ###
-----------------------------------------------------
This text was distributed on my responsibility as BALT-L editor but with
the strong urging of Latvian organizations in the USA who believe it essential
that as many people as possible are aware of what is being said.
See messages BALT:3028, :3040, : 3042, : 3049 and 3056 for partial
commentaries.
Edis
Yoghurt (Tapio Vorlund)
>
>the Latvian-speaking Zemisargi, or Home Guard. Among its 15,000 members
>are two units composed of "Old Warriors," former members of the Waffen
>SS who are eager for the chance to put on their uniforms again and sing
>the old songs. Some of them have been training in the farm country
>outside Riga. For six weeks this summer they lived together in a
>dormitory and filled their days with marching, target practice, was
>stories and new politics.
And now, in case someone thinks that these Waffen SS guys have
something to do with gas-chambers and such --- They have nothing
to do with concentration camps. They were soldiers.
German army had some Waffen SS units that consisted of voluntary
foreigners. Among them were many nationalities, including Finnish
and Swedish, btw.
It is not so weird that Germans got voluntary soldiers from Baltic
countries. And I don't think that they were all nazies either. More
likely, their motive was resistance against communism and hope for
independence. And some of them continued the recistance even after
the "peace" came.
In a free country, every people have the right to have their own
clubs and such. Don't russian veterans of the "great patriotic war"
ever gather together and recollect old memories ? These people had
too their own "great patriotic war" - they just fought on the other
side than Russians.
Lets see.. if they were 18 in 1945, they are now 66 years old.
And propably most of them are over 70
A huge threat to human kind. indeed
And here comes the .signature
..... . ..... . ..... . . :...: ..... . . . . . ...
: ... :...: : : : . . : : :...: : : : ::. : : :
: . . : : :...: . :...: : : :.... :...: : ::: :..:
Serdar Argic
> Basically, the antisemitism in Baltics (all xSU, in fact)
> is very common. I repost there the LIFE article, which was often
> discussed on this net. From what I know, this article
"LIFE article"? You sound like the criminals/forgers of the ASALA/SDPA/ARF
Terrorism Triangle. Enjoy it.
Professor Stanford J. Shaw, 'The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the
Turkish Republic,' New York University Press, New York (1991).
page 187:
<<...the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire which had been going on
for a century was disastrous for Ottoman Jewry. This was the age of
nationalism among the Christian subjects of the Sultan, starting with
the Greek Revolution early in the nineteenth century, which, based on
the Megali Idea, or Great Idea, sought to add to Greek kingdom Istanbul
and large portions of Anatolia, union of which with Greece was felt to be
the 'dream and hope of all'. The success of the Greek national movement,
provided more in fact by the intervention of the Great Powers than by the
efforts of the Greeks themselves, stimulated similar uprisings among the
other subjects in Southeastern Europe who had long been oppressed, not so
much by the Ottomans but, rather, by the Greek religious hierarchy which
dominated the Orthodox millet, leading first to pressure for religious
independence, granted to the Bulgarian Orthodox Exarchate in 1870, to the
Serbian Church in 1879, and to the Rumanian Church in 1885, with subsequent
aspirations for, and achievement of, political independence following...>>
page 188:
<<...They [new nationalist leaders] were greatly assisted in their
campaigns against the Ottomans both by the diplomatic and consular
representatives of the major Powers of Europe and also by Christian
missionaries, who emphasized feelings of Christian superiority and
hatred for Muslims and Jews which fortified the religious as well as
ethnic bases of their pursuit of independence.
Christian nationalism, based as much on religious as on ethnic identity,
soon resurrected the medieval bigotries which had devastated both Jews
and Muslims and consequently had driven them together in the past.
Vicious anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic movements developed, involving
large-scale persecutions and massacres carried out by invading armies,
by the independent states that resulted, also by Christian subjects
who remained within the Empire, particularly because of Jewish and Muslim
support for Ottoman integrity in fear of their fate in the emergent
nationalist states of Southeastern Europe. The results were explosive
and damaging.
The invading armies of Russia and Austria as well as the revolting
nationalists and, later, successfully established independent Christian
states, committed systematic genocide against Jews and Muslims throughout
the nineteenth century, despite Great Power admonitions to the contrary
in the treaties of Paris (1858) and Berlin (1878),...>>
page 188:
<<...As the peoples of Southeastern Europe achieved their independence,
their Muslim and Jewish minorities were systematically persecuted and
massacred, and those who survived were driven beyond the ever-shrinking
boundaries of the retreating Ottoman Empire in a kind of slaughter which
had not been seen since the dispersal of the Jews from Palestine centuries
earlier.
This sort of genocide had begun as long before as the late sixteenth
century, with the Rumanian Principalities taking the lead, as united
Rumania did subsequently during the later years of the nineteenth
century. In 1579 the ruler of Moldavia, Peter the Lame, banished its
Jews because of their competition with its Christian merchants. When
Prince Micheal the Brave revolted against the Ottomans in the Rumanian
principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 1593, he ordered the massacre
of all the Jews as well as Turks in Bucharest.>>
page 189:
<<The slaughter continued well into the nineteenth century. When the
Greeks revolted against Ottoman rule many Greek volunteers coming from
Russia and the Principalities to join in the effort slaughtered and
plundered the Jewish communities along their paths as they went through
Moldavia and Wallachia toward Greece.>>
page 190 (second paragraph):
<<When Venice occupied the island of Chios in 1694, its Jewish population
was either massacred or deported and all Jewish communal and personal
property was stolen by the native Greek population, leaving those Jews
who returned in utter poverty and reduced to begging, no longer able to
compete with the Greeks in trade or commerce.>>
page 190 (third paragraph):
<<Jews living in Greece and the Rumanian principalities suffered terribly
because of their support for Ottoman rule. When the Greek nationalist
movement Philike Etairia started its uprising in Wallachia and Moldavia
during the spring of 1821, hundreds of Jews and Muslims were killed by
the Greeks who lived there as well as by native Wallachs [14]. During
the height of the Greek revolution, five thousand Jews were massacred
in Morea along with most of the Muslim population, numbering about
twenty thousand in all [15]. In Tripolizza alone 1,200 Jews were
massacred along with uncounted Turks [16]. Reverend John Hartley,
after describing the carnage, concluded 'Thus did Jewish blood, mingled
with Turkish, flow down the streets of captured city. The sons of Isaac
and the sons of Ishmael, on this as well as on every occasion during the
Greek Revolution, met with common fate. Their corpses were cast out of the
city, and, like the ancient sovereign of Judah, they received no burial
superior to that of an ass.' [17] Jewish communities on the islands of
Sparta, Patras, Corinthos, Mistra, and Argos were wiped out by bands of
Greek rebels along with those of Thebes, Vrachori, Attica and Epirus [18].
The surviving Jews fled to the island of Corfu, where Jews who had fled
from Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula had lived in peace and prosperity
under the Venetian rule since the twelfth century, though divided into
rival Greek and Italian communities. It was not long, however, before
it too fell victim to the Greek Revolution, leading to savage repression
and massacres of Jews, forcing the surviving members of the two communities
to come together for self-defense for the first time. Throughout the years
of Greek revolution, Greek nationalists went from town to town on the
mainland and from island to island in the Agean, exterminating all the
Jews and Muslims they could find, many along the roads as they desperately
fled to safety in what was left of the Ottoman Empire. Contemporary
accounts relate that the Greeks left the murdered Jews and Muslims lying
exposed so their bodies could be torn apart by the buzzards [19]. Most of
the Jews who survived these massacres fled across the Agean in small boats
to Izmir, thus starting its rise as one of the leading centers of Ottoman
Jewish life during the nineteenth century. Only in Northern Greece,
particularly in the areas of Janina and Salonica, were the Jews and the
Turks able to successfully resist the Greek assaults, thus saving their
populations from massacre as well [20]. During the remainder of the 19th
century, particularly during the Greek-Turkish war in 1897, those Jews
who remained in Greece in the areas of Athens, Chalkis, Larissa, Corfu
and Crete suffered severe persecution and massacre, forcing thousands
more to emigrate into Ottoman territory, particularly to Salonica and
Izmir [21].>>
page 193 (last paragraph):
<<The inclusion in the Treaty of Berlin of stipulations providing
protection for the Jewish and Muslim minorities in Southeastern Europe
stimulated more popular anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hysteria in all
the countries involved, with blood-libel accusations once again being
used as pretexts for attacking and ravaging Jewish quarters as well as
for new tactics for boycotting Jewish shopkeepers, merchants and
professionals, a movement which was quickly adapted by the Christian
millets in the major cities of the Ottoman Empire. Because the Bulgarians,
Rumanians and Greeks correctly regarded the Jews as supporters of the
Turks, both Jews and Turks were expelled from these countries in equally
atrocious and brutal manners. Their property was plundered and their
homes and shops taken over without compensation, while the survivors
fled in desperation to Edirne and Istanbul. While official statements
subsequently were issued granting equal rights to Jews, little was done
in fact and they continued to be persecuted regularly well into the
twentieth century.>>
page 194 (last paragraph):
<<Things were not much better elsewhere in Southeastern Europe or the
Greek islands of the Agean and the eastern Mediterranean. In 1891 the
Jews on Corfu were subjected to severe persecution by local Greeks due
to the revival of the old ritual murder accusations [26]. Many of
those who survived found refuge in Ottoman territory with the help of a
popular subscription drive carried out in Istanbul under leadership of
the Banque Camondo. In 1881 and 1884, and again in 1892 and 1903,
thousands of Jews came to Ottoman territory as a result of pogroms
in Russia which went on between 1881 and 1921 with only slight periods
of respite. In 1899 Jewish families arrived in Istanbul in flight from
persecution in Vidin, in independent Bulgaria.
The conquest of Ottoman Thrace and Macedonia by Greek and Bulgarian
forces during the Balkan Wars (1912-13), including Salonica, Corlu,
and Edirne, was followed by general attacks on Jews, their synagogues,
homes and shops, in both countries [27], resulting in a renewed exodus
toward Istanbul and beyond. Two reports from Salonica graphically
described the situation caused by the invading armies:
'All the self-interested justifications of the newspapers of Europe,
all the lies which they have used to cover up the truth, can never
destroy the impression of the terrible anguish which has marked the
entry of the Greeks in Salonica. A week of terror and horror one can
never easily forget. The Hellenes now cruelly feel today all the
damage that the explosion of hatred by the (Greek) population has done
to their cause. The mob has shown itself odious and the government
weak...The incompetence of the Greek administration and the horrors
inflicted by the soldiers has put them in a terrible situation. The
consuls guaranteed the absolute safety of the Muslims, but sixty of
them were massacred in a single night....'[28]
'It wasn't only irregulars (Comitacis) who massacred, pillaged and
burned. The soldiers of the Army, the Chief of Police, and the high
civil officials took an active part in the events at Serres. Out of
6,000 houses, 4,000 were burned. Almost 1,200 shops were consumed by
flames and destructive bombs. The (Jewish) population lost all, and
without even anything to wear is in despair. Everyone wants to
emigrate...'[29]
page 196:
<<As a result of these assaults, massacres, and forced deportations from
the independent countries of Southeastern Europe, the Ottoman Empire
received literally thousands of Jewish refugees who joined the Muslims
who survived the persecution, flooding into the Empire...>>
[14] Shlomo Rozanes, Korot Hayehudim Beturkiyah Vebeartzot Hakedem:
Hadorot Haachronim (Jerusalem, 1945), pp.42-44, cited Yitzchak Kerem,
'The Influence of Anti-Semitism on Jewish Immigration Patterns from
Greece to the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century', pp.2, 14.
[15] Maxime Raybaud, Memoires sur la Grece, pour servir a l'histoire de la
Guerre de l'Independence (2 Vols, Paris, 1824), pp.5-19; Galante,
Turcs et Juifs (Istanbul, 1932), 76-77.
[16] Rev. T.S. Hughes, Travels in Greece and Albania (2nd edn, 2 vols,
London, 1830), II, 194-95.
[17] Rev. John Hartley, Researches in Greece and the Levant (London, 1831),
207, quoted in Yitzchak Kerem, 'Jewish Immigration Patterns from Greece
to the Ottoman Empire in the Nineteenth Century', published paper
delivered at the Comite International d'Etudes Pre-Ottomanes et Ottomanes,
VIII Symposium, 'Decision-Making and the Transmission of Authority
in the Turkic System', University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, 14-19 August 1988, p.4.
[18] Hartley, ibid., pp.206-7, William Martin Leake, Travels in Northern
Greece (2 Vols, London, 1835) II, 231-32, 609; Errikos Sevillas,
Athens-Auschwitz (Athens, 1983), p.ix, quoted in Kerem, ibid., p.14.
[19] Documented in Kerem, ibid., pp.14-19. Pearl L. Preschel, The Jews
of Corfu (Greece), Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New York University,
1984. Goerge Finlay, History of the Greek Revolution (London, 1861),
172, 179-86; See also 'Greece', EJ VII, 876-77.
[20] Yoannina Vasdraveli, Ee Thessaloniki: Kata Ton Agona Tis Aneksantizias
(Salonica, 1946), pp.19-35; Yitzchak Kerem, An Outline of the History
of Jews of Selonica (in Hebrew) (Museum of Kibbutz Lahoma, Getaot, 1985),
p.21, quoted in Kerem, ibid., p.15.
[21] Kerem, ibid., pp.8-12, 'The Persecution of the Jews', Times (London),
16 May 1891; A. Ablagon to AIU, 19 October 1898, AIU, Grece VIII.B.34,
Schaki (Larissa) to AIU, 23 August/4 September 1893, BAIU, Grece,
Deuxieme Serie, no.18, 1er et 2e Semestre, 1893; Elia Fraggi (Larissa)
to AIU, 5 June 1874, AIU Grece, I.C.22; Larissa AIU represantatives
to AIU, 23 June/5 July 1897, AIU, Grece II.B.16; Jewish Community of
Canea leaders in Samos to AIU, 3 March, 1897, AIU, Grece VIII.B.35.
[26] Pearl L. Preschel, The Jews of Corfu (Greece), Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, New York University, 1984.
[27] Leon Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica: Portrait of an Era (New York, 1946);
Edgar Morin, Vidal et les Siens (Paris, Seuil, 1989), 55-67; Paul Dumont,
'The Social Structure of the Jewish Community of Salonica at the end of
the nineteenth century', Southeastern Europe V (1979), 33-72; Galante,
Turcs VIII, 18-21; Rodrigue, pp.178-80.
[28] A. Cohen, Ecole Secondaire Moise Allatini, Salonica, to AIU, Paris,
no.7745/7, 4 December 1912, in AIU Archives I C 49.
[29] Mizrahi, President of AIU at Salonica, to AIU (Paris), no.2704/3,
25 July 1913. In AIU Archives (Paris) I C 51.
( AIU = Alliance Israelite Universelle, Paris. )
Serdar Argic
'We closed the roads and mountain passes that
might serve as ways of escape for the Turks
and then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
(Ohanus Appressian - 1919)
'In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists
a single Turkish soul.' (Sahak Melkonian - 1920)
Serdar Argic
> German army had some Waffen SS units that consisted of voluntary
> foreigners. Among them were many nationalities, including Finnish
> and Swedish, btw.
Before you move on, let me tell you just a few things. In April 1942,
Hitler was preparing for the invasion of the Caucasus. A number of Nazi
Armenian leaders began submitting plans to German officials in spring
and summer 1942. One of them was Souren Begzadian Paikhar, son of a
former ambassador of the Armenian Republic in Baku. Paikhar wrote a
letter to Hitler, asking for German support to his Armenian national
socialist movement Hossank and suggesting the creation of an Armenian
SS formation in order
"to educate the youth of liberated Armenia according to the
spirit of the Nazi ideas."
He wanted to unite the Armenians of the already occupied territories
of the USSR in his movement and with them conquer historic Turkish
homeland. Paikhar was confined to serving the Nazis in Goebbels
Propaganda ministry as a speaker for Armenian- and French-language
radio broadcastings.[1] The Armenian-language broadcastings were
produced by yet another Nazi Armenian Viguen Chanth.[2]
[1] Patrick von zur Muhlen (Muehlen), p. 106.
[2] Enno Meyer, A. J. Berkian, 'Zwischen Rhein und Arax, 900
Jahre Deutsch-Armenische beziehungen,' (Heinz Holzberg
Verlag-Oldenburg 1988), pp. 124 and 129.
Altogether 30,000 Nazi Armenians served in various units in the
German Wehrmacht, according to Ara J. Berkian. 14,000 in predominantly
Armenian army units, 6,000 in German army units, 8,000 in various working
units and 2,000 in the Waffen-SS.[1]
A number of these Nazi Armenians were volunteers from France,
Greece, Rumania and Bulgaria who had chosen to commit
themselves to the German war effort. Derounian says that
"Dashnag Armenians from France bore the mark 'Legion
Armenienne.'"[2]
That Nazi Armenians like Dro 'the Butcher' and Nezhdeh sided
with the Germans probably had an impact on the decision of
Armenians who overwhelmingly opted for armed service.
[1] Enno Meyer, A. J. Berkian, 'Zwischen Rhein und Arax, 900
Jahre Deutsch-Armenische beziehungen,' (Heinz Holzberg
Verlag-Oldenburg 1988), pp. 118/119.
[2] John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian), in 'The Armenian
Displaced Persons,' ibid., p. 19.
Simon Streltsov
I could not find any in my RELCOM maps.
Please, e-mail directly,if you can,
'cause I'm [re]tired of reading this.
Thanks,
Senya
Karlis Cerans
> that people are being forcefed with someone's
> national identity. I don't propose to abolish
> nations (or to abolish syphilis), but the idea
> of "keeping and maintaining someone's national
> syphilis.
>
> Misha.
Sorry, Misha, but don't you admit that others could find unacceptable and
plain repulsive your way of drawing parallels between so unrelated things?
Couldn't that be taken as an offence by people which consider important to
know their nation history, speak their language, keep and develop their
culture and traditions?
Karlis Cerans
...
> In fact,
> many Jewish people in Latvia were persecuted on various
> ways. For example, the (Jewish) chief director of one of Riga's
> best theatres, and the Jew-run Riga's schools were
> variously discriminated. The director ("regissoire",
> sorry for misspell) was expelled, the theatre was
> closed or totally revamped by the Latvian Ministry
> of Culture. This story made a big noise in xSU theatre
> circles.
What were the reasons for closing the theatre? Wasn't the economical
difficulties one of the most important reasons? (I'm not an expert in
theatre, but I always have had the feeling that other theatres in Riga
were better, I may be mistaken). After all, dont you think that most of
the cultural institutions in Latvia nowadays are in very difficult
situation, which does not exclude also their cease to exist? If so, is it
fair to pick just the one organization which was run by a Jew and try to
generalize on that?
> About some Jews-run Riga mathematical school
> there were several postings some time ago, basically,
> its teachers were harrassed and emigrated to Israel
> because of the local authorities' pressure.
> I hope that someone could repost that.
> From me, I partially repost the article by the famous
> Soviet dissident writer, Vassily Aksionov,
> who is by no means a nationalist. Note that
> Aksionov even writes in English now, and is
> a Jew by the Jewish law.
>
>Aksionov writes:
>
I'll put some brief comments on that.
> [ some parts deleted ]
>
> I write about the Dubulti because it reflects a lot of the current
>ambivalence, distrust and long-suppressed animosity toward Russians. Latvians
>certainly have reasons to dislike the Russians. In 1940, the Red Army crushed
>their fledgling independence and replaced the 19-year-old Latvian state with
>the monstrous Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic run by the local Communist
>stooges.
>
Not exactly. A lot of people were coming from other regions of USSR with
certain orders of CPSU, they had a lot of real power (most of positions of
directors in factories, not only that ..). Btw, I want to call these people
real OCCUPANTS of Latvia, not others who came to Latvia in hope of a somewhat
higher life standards.
> The identity of the small Baltic nation was always a painful question. Riga
>was a cosmopolitan seaport with a mixed German, Swedish, Polish, Jewish and
>Russian population. During the Soviet decades, the city turned into a
>predominantly Russian-speaking place. Today, as you walk along a Riga street,
>you can't help catching a sense of alienation: a German-looking town with its
>Gothic spires; a Russian-speaking crowd of former Soviet subjects; Latvian
>signs and billboards incomprehensible to many. Latvia, in fact, is a small
>country with a big capital that has an extraordinary cultural influence on the
>rest of the nation.
>
> Meanwhile, Russians in Latvia are nervous, uncertain and angry. Under the
>new "Law of Citizenship," only those who can prove Latvian residency before
>1940 will become legitimate citizens - which will make aliens out of virtually
>the entire Russian population. The press makes it clear that the exodus of the
>"migrants," i.e., one million souls, will be the only solution.
>
Wrong. A lot of Russians are already getting Latvian citizenship; there will
be more after the change of the citizenship legislation (after the first
democratic elections in June). Speaking about the exodus of "migrants" is a
pure propaganda.
> Yet at a busy intersection, people hardly spoke Latvian unless they were
>the zeme sarsis, the camouflage-uniformed members of a new paramilitary group.
>Russians were all around, working in the city's industry, transportation,
>public services, culture, trade - in all fields except the Latvian National
>Opera and the government. The nationalist circles hope that the Russians will
>be replaced by the Latvian repatriates from the West.
>
??????
> The Russians whisper: Haven't you heard, they've started selling arms to
>all Latvians and refuse to do so to Russians? Fear has huge eyes, says a Russian
>proverb. The rumors keep spreading: All Russians who failed to pass Latvian
>language exams will be immediately fired.
Who is interested to spread these rumours?
>The authorities will issue special
>car plates for ethnic Russians. The latter rumor, by the way, came true in
>neighboring Estonia.
>
>To be sure, what we are seeing today is a reaction to an accumulation of
>offenses. Some 15 years ago I witnessed an ugly scene in a Riga department
>store: A young Latvian dared to address a saleswoman in Latvian. The heavy-set
>matron refused to answer. "Speak a human language, man!" she barked back. A
>crowd jeered.
>
> Not surprisingly, the Latvians began to develop a certain mentality; they
>saw themselves as a small, cultured European nation occupied by the caddish
>Russian hordes. In truth, they were ruled by their own Latvian Red Guards -
>puppets of the Kremlin. And paradoxically, the Russian intelligentsia were
>among the strongest supporters of liberation; the independence of the three
>Baltic states was always included in the context of their anti-totalitarian
>struggle.
>
> Yet freedom brought bitterness as well as triumph. "I always believed that
>we're playing on the same team," says one Russian writer. "In January 1991 I
>was on the barricades guarding Riga Old Town. I was ready to fight to the
>bitter end . . . . Today I realize that many of my Latvian friends of those
>days still consider me closer to the `occupants' than to themselves."
>
I believe that placing themselves clearly against the OCCUPANTS (see above)
would help many ethnic Russians not to be considered as such themselves.
> Not long ago, authorities shut down one of the most innovative and
>courageous acting companies in the former U.S.S.R. - Riga's Young Spectator
>Theater. Says one dramatist of mixed Russian-Latvian origin: "I remember their
>performance of a Vladimir Nabokov's play in 1988. It stirred up scandal. Some
>people sitting now in the highest rank of the republic were in charge of the
>ideology. They were frightened by the possibility of Moscow's angry reaction .
>
>. . . The most striking part of this case is that the order to close the Young
>Spectator came from the newly appointed minister of culture, a Latvian jazz
>composer Raimond Paulus."
>
See above.
> Vassily Aksyonov, the Russian novelist and essayist, teaches creative
>writing at George Mason University.
>
>Copyright 1992 The Washington Post
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------
>Life in Freedom
>Eesti Vabaks Bri/vu Latviju Lietuva Laisva
Regards,
Karlis Cerans
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
>In article <1993Mar21.2...@husc3.harvard.edu> ver...@coolidge.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:
>
>> Is there any need in "keeping and maintaining someone's
>> national identity"? I believe that the national identity
>> is essentially evil. It divides people instead of keeping
>> them together, and as end result, causes wars and other
>> bloodshed. Moreover, the national identity divides people
>> on arbitrary manner, making this feeling even more evil
>> than, say, identity based on color and on sexual preference.
>> This is just one more needless discrimination.
>The fact that some people have abused other people wishes to keep
>their national identity (religious, racial, whatever) does not imply
>that this identity is essentially evil.
You misunderstood me. Problem is, people (eg Nazis) abused
*their own wishes* to keep and maintain their own national
identity. They abused other peoples's wishes *to live*.
If Latvia will repeat this scenario, more people will
be killed.
>I could admit that you are feeling that your Jewish national identity
>is evil (though I'm not sure about that), still you are not convincing
>me that I should abandon my Latvian identity.
Why, I am rather proud of my ethnicity, or identity.
I don't convince you to abandon your own. I object
to the wish to "keep and maintain it", which in most
practical cases degenerates to the street-level racism,
especially in post-Communist countries.
The cultures often merge or change, and this is often a natural
process. Latvian gov't wishes to stop it with artificial
means. There is nothing bad with being Russian or Latvian
or Jewish, but if some particular nationality becomes privileged
this is racism, and just unpleasant.
>Even if there were no
>other reasons, actually only by being Latvian people can keep, maintain and
>develop Latvian national language, culture and traditions. And I believe
>this IS important, and important not only for Latvians, but also on a much
>larger scale.
I am not sure. The world would be better off if nobody
had a national identity. Nationalism causes wars and
genocide. Look at Yugoslavia - do you think CIS
will be in better state soon?
>As you surely now, due to the demographical developments of the 2nd half
>of 20th century, the Latvian culture has become under the risk of disappearing
>(I'll not analyze the reasons, you know them perfectly well), therefore I
>suppose that you will not object that one of the current aims of the renewed
>Latvian state is to create some guarantees for survival of the Latvian nation
>and culture.
Lots of Baltic cultures disappeared already. Prusses, Livs,
some others. They were not strong enough culturally.
I am not sure the descendants of Prusses (now Germans)
feel much loss from becoming Germans.
And the survival of Latvian culture is badly defined
sentence. The culture cannot be Latvian, or Russian, or
Jewish. It belongs to people, and will survive as long
as people do. This means that the measures taken
by Latvian state serve other end - they diminish
the possibility of survival of people (which is, I
have to admit, low enough anyway).
>
>As for situation of Jews in Latvia, not only bad signals are being observed,
>I somehow have an opinion that it is better at least in cultural sense than,
>for example, in Russia. Some time ago I posted a letter (which has come
>through BALT-L) which painted the situation even as being in some sense
>flourishing.
Could you please repost it? Most stuff about Jews in
Baltics posted on tps is a Soviet-style propaganda.
>I hope that I have supplied some arguments why keeping Latvian national
>identity is not only evil and plain repulsive. Let me also repeat that I
>do not agree with abuses of the national identity idea (usually by some
>politicians trying all possible ways, how to get to the power - they will
>not succeed in Latvia).
You are completely right. Still, these politicians
succeeded to get the power in all x-Yugoslavia, Georgia,
Moldavia and elsewhere. I have no reason to think
that they will not succeed in Russia and Baltics.
Misha.
Karlis Cerans
>In article <1993Mar24.1...@cs.chalmers.se> kar...@cs.chalmers.se (Karlis Cerans) writes:
>>In article <1993Mar21.2...@husc3.harvard.edu> ver...@coolidge.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:
>>
>>> Is there any need in "keeping and maintaining someone's
>>> national identity"? I believe that the national identity
>>> is essentially evil. It divides people instead of keeping
>>> them together, and as end result, causes wars and other
>>> bloodshed. Moreover, the national identity divides people
>>> on arbitrary manner, making this feeling even more evil
>>> than, say, identity based on color and on sexual preference.
>>> This is just one more needless discrimination.
>
>>The fact that some people have abused other people wishes to keep
>>their national identity (religious, racial, whatever) does not imply
>>that this identity is essentially evil.
>
> You misunderstood me. Problem is, people (eg Nazis) abused
> *their own wishes* to keep and maintain their own national
> identity. They abused other peoples's wishes *to live*.
> If Latvia will repeat this scenario, more people will
> be killed.
Latvia is certainly NOT going to repeat the "scenario" of Nazis.
>
>
>>I could admit that you are feeling that your Jewish national identity
>>is evil (though I'm not sure about that), still you are not convincing
>>me that I should abandon my Latvian identity.
>
> Why, I am rather proud of my ethnicity, or identity.
> I don't convince you to abandon your own. I object
> to the wish to "keep and maintain it", which in most
> practical cases degenerates to the street-level racism,
> especially in post-Communist countries.
>
> The cultures often merge or change, and this is often a natural
> process. Latvian gov't wishes to stop it with artificial
> means.
Which "natural process"? Colonization of Latvia during last five decades
of years?
> There is nothing bad with being Russian or Latvian
> or Jewish, but if some particular nationality becomes privileged
> this is racism, and just unpleasant.
>
In a national state the people belonging to the main nation of the state
are normally privileged just, say, by the ability to use their mother tongue
in their everyday social life. This privilegy (and a number of others of the
same kind) is natural to a national state, and I certainly don't think that
to be racism. I'd rather think that it is unpleasant that a certain nation
does not have the teritory in which to enjoy these natural privilegies.
Clearly, there are basic human rights which should not be violated for any
reason (perhaps a compromise should be made in a conflict of rights of equal
fundamentality). However, I don't think that restoration of a national state
in Latvia necessarily involves any basic human right violations.
>>Even if there were no
>>other reasons, actually only by being Latvian people can keep, maintain and
>>develop Latvian national language, culture and traditions. And I believe
>>this IS important, and important not only for Latvians, but also on a much
>>larger scale.
>
> I am not sure. The world would be better off if nobody
> had a national identity. Nationalism causes wars and
> genocide. Look at Yugoslavia - do you think CIS
> will be in better state soon?
>
Don't you think that politicians wouldn't find other reasons for making
people fight each against other? Striving for power and money causes wars.
As to different national cultures, I still feel that destroying small ones
which are not able to defend themselves by armed force is not a good idea.
>
>>As you surely now, due to the demographical developments of the 2nd half
>>of 20th century, the Latvian culture has become under the risk of disappearing
>>(I'll not analyze the reasons, you know them perfectly well), therefore I
>>suppose that you will not object that one of the current aims of the renewed
>>Latvian state is to create some guarantees for survival of the Latvian nation
>>and culture.
>
> Lots of Baltic cultures disappeared already. Prusses, Livs,
> some others. They were not strong enough culturally.
> I am not sure the descendants of Prusses (now Germans)
> feel much loss from becoming Germans.
>
But the world has lost lots of Baltic cultures. A sad thing, in my opinion.
> And the survival of Latvian culture is badly defined
> sentence. The culture cannot be Latvian, or Russian, or
> Jewish.
Latvian folk songs (Latvju dainas), for instance. Isn't that a part of
just LATVIAN culture?
> It belongs to people, and will survive as long
> as people do.
And therefore the survival possibilities should be guaranteed for people
representing all cultures (preferably having national states, or at least
regions of states for not sentencing culture to slow disappearance).
> This means that the measures taken
> by Latvian state serve other end - they diminish
> the possibility of survival of people (which is, I
> have to admit, low enough anyway).
This I don't understand at all. Couldn't I ask you to explain it in more
detail, or at least, in other way?
[some deletion, to appear in my next posting]
>
>>I hope that I have supplied some arguments why keeping Latvian national
>>identity is not only evil and plain repulsive. Let me also repeat that I
>>do not agree with abuses of the national identity idea (usually by some
>>politicians trying all possible ways, how to get to the power - they will
>>not succeed in Latvia).
>
> You are completely right. Still, these politicians
> succeeded to get the power in all x-Yugoslavia, Georgia,
> Moldavia and elsewhere. I have no reason to think
> that they will not succeed in Russia and Baltics.
>
The Latvian national radicals are hard to get 4% citizens of Latvia supporting
them in the pre-electional period. The situation can change, of course, until
June, but I strongly believe that not drastically in favour of these fources
(4% is the electional barrier (or how is called that) for parlamentary
elections it Latvia)
> Misha.
Regards,
Karlis Cerans.
Karlis Cerans
>In article <1993Mar24.1...@cs.chalmers.se> kar...@cs.chalmers.se (Karlis Cerans) writes:
>
>>
>>As for situation of Jews in Latvia, not only bad signals are being observed,
>>I somehow have an opinion that it is better at least in cultural sense than,
>>for example, in Russia. Some time ago I posted a letter (which has come
>>through BALT-L) which painted the situation even as being in some sense
>>flourishing.
>
> Could you please repost it? Most stuff about Jews in
> Baltics posted on tps is a Soviet-style propaganda.
>
Fortunately, I had it kept in my files, so everyone can find it appended
below. I can not comment on various activities of Jewish community described
in the letter, but what I know, is that the building in Skolas iela 6
was indeed returned to them.
I also have heard that Latvia was the first in xSU where various national
minorities, including Jewish, have got their national schools. Of course,
I do not have any documents at hand to support these facts.
Regards,
Karlis Cerans.
-----------------(begin reposted letter)----------------------------------
From BALT-L%UBVM.CC.B...@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Fri Mar 5 13:11:18 1993
From: EDIS BEVAN <A.E.B...@OPEN.AC.UK>
Subject: BALT:3349 the Jewish renaissance in Latvia -"Forward" article
To: Multiple recipients of list BALT-L <BAL...@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu>
Status: RO
Broadcast to list 5 February 1993
Original Sender ENGBOB@UBVMS
Here is the complete text to the Baltic article in the Forward--Feb. 26, 1993
LETTER FROM RIGA
6 School Street
On a crisp Sunday evening, children are sledding in the dark down the
snow-blanketed hillocks at Bastejkains and Esplanade parks, near Riga's old
city. Meanwhile, at nearby Scholas lela--School Street--their Jewish
counterparts present a revue, in Hebrew and Yiddish, on the stage of what was
until 1940 Riga's Jewish theater.
The theater building, returned several years ago to Riga's Jews by the Latvian
government, now serves as the main address for the Riga Jewish community. The
government in the past few years has also given back a Jewish school, hospital
and synagogue to the community, which is seeking the return of 10 other
buildings--including another school and synagogue--among the more than (?) which
belonged to public Jewish organizations before World War II.
*****
To date, no other Jewish community among the former Soviet republics has access
to such an impressive facility as the former Jewish theater at 6 School Street,
which has just about become the central, all-purpose YMHA of the Baltics. The
imposing five-story building is home to a Jewish library, cultural center,
document and Holocaust study center, ghetto survivor's group and veterans
group, the Rachamim charity society, a Maccabee sports club, a Yiddish club, a
youth group, the Kinor musical ensemble and an aliya office. It also features a
cafe that provides meals for the elderly and classrooms for students enrolled
in Jewish primary school and in the Open Jewish University.
Latvian Jewry numbers about 18,000--down from about 190,000 before World War I
and 93,479 just prior to World War II--and by all accounts, Jewish life in
Latvia is flourishing, with much of it based at the community center. On a
Saturday night earlier this month, 20 young men and women from the 200-strong
Latvian Union of Jewish Students gathered in the rooms of their attic digs to
talk and drink tea.
"These are our rooms, and we come here to celebrate Shabbat. We come here
because we are Jewish and because we want to know about it," said Ilana Miller,
age 19.
"We have many friends, and we all heard about the youth group, so we all come
here. We've known each other for a long time; we know everybody's brothers and
sisters and mothers. In the summer, we went to camp together in Jurmala [a sea
resort 30 minutes from Riga], and it was a wonderful time.
"Boys? We don't come here to meet boys. We come to speak, to discuss our
problems, our Jewish problems, our culture, our studies," Miss Miller told the
Forward.
***
The following Sunday evening, the toga-clad raven-haired Miss Miller, along
with many of her friends, could be seen on the third-floor stage of the Jewish
center, performing songs in Hebrew and Yiddish to a packed house that included
in the audience the vice-president of the Latvian Parliament, Valdis Birkavs,
and the Israeli charge d'affaires, Naomi Ben Ami, both of whom addressed the
gathering. Riga's Channel 3 television broadcast the performance, which
included break dancing to a Yiddish rap-song and soulful renditions of classic
tunes from "Yidl mitn Fidl," live underneath a 40-candle, fading-gilt
chandelier the size of a small fountain at Versailles.
On the walls and balcony, the plaster moldings--a Magen David in the center of
the theater and hammer and sickles embedded in relief among books and
globes--betray the building's odd history. The Jewish theater, which also
housed the Jewish Club of Riga, opened on this site in 1926; Jewish theater
groups including Carmel, a musical drama group, and the Peretz Club, run by the
Bund, performed here; the Zionist Bialik club held performances in Perses
Street. According to "The Jews in Riga," by the documentation center director,
Marger Vesterman, a "number of prominent directors, including Julius Adler,
Rudolf Saslavsky and Menachem Rubin worked" in the theater.
In the summer of 1940, "everything Jewish was stopped by the Soviets except the
synagogue. Then came the deportations to Siberia. On June 14, 1941, 20,000
people were deported to Siberia by Stalin in one night; about 5,000 of therm
were Jews," said Grigory Krupnikov, co-chairman of the Riga Jewish community
and a Riga city councilman.
"About 33% of those who were deported survived the war; of the 75,000 who
stayed, most of them were killed by the Nazis; about 1,000 of them survived the
war," Mr. Krupnikov told the Forward.
After the war, the Jewish theater building served briefly as a home for the
state committee for radio broadcasting in Latvia. It housed the University of
Marxism-Leninism and later became the House of Political Education of the
Communist Party of Latvia.
"Feel at home in the Communist center of Latvia," joked Mr. Krupnikov as he
gave a visiting delegation a tour of the premises.
In the years after the war under the Communist occupation of Latvia, a few
Jewish activists worked quietly, but Jewish life was essentially repressed.
Then, with the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost--openness--the
Jewish community in 1988 began to come back to life.
"In the summer of 1990, this building was returned to us by what Life magazine
terms the 'nationalist anti-Semitic independent government of Latvia,'" Mr.
Krupnikov said, poking fun at a piece in the magazine that raised fears of
open, pervasive, government-sanctioned anti-Semitism in Riga, fears that he
says were largely unfounded. "The head of the Ministry of Culture, the
composer Raymonds Pauls, gave back the building three years ago; it was the
first thing he did as culture minister as soon as Latvia became independent,"
he recalled.
Indeed, the Riga Jewish community--which numbered 43,672 in 1935 and about 150
in 1944--has literally reconstructed itself out of its ashes. To erect a
fitting memorial to the Jews who were burned alive in July 1941 in the largest
and most beautiful synagogue in Rgia, Die Greise Hor Shul, the Big Choral
Synagogue, ghetto survivors and other Riga Jews literally dug through several
feet of dirt and ashes to find the original bricks out of which they
reconstructed the synagogue's basement.
"We quit our regular jobs for 4-1/2 months and worked at this site for more
than 12 hours a day to create this memorial. We could not and did not want to
reconstruct the whole synagogue; so the decision was taken to reconstruct the
cellar where the Jews were hiding at the time the building was set on fire and
part of the walls," said Raphael Barkin, vice chairman of the ghetto survivor's
group, who said that he and his family hid for three years during the war "in a
hole in the ground" in Eastern Latvia.
The open foundations and quarter-walls of light-red bricks with stone floral
decorations and partial archways provide physical evidence of the tragedy that
befell Riga's Jews. The Soviets had tried to obliterate all traces of the
incident by razing the remains of the synagogue and turning the land into a
park for "Communist Hero Workers," complete with plaques honoring laborers in
different fields. Now, "our second Wailing Wall," as Mr. Krupnikov calls it,
offers visible proof of the history of the Choral synagogue, a synagogue that
had boasted renown cantors whom Latvians as well as Jews came to hear on the
Jewish holidays and an outstanding choir.
With a Jewish hospital and day school now in their community, Riga's Jews are
looking to the future as well as reconstructing the past. And next June, the
first world gathering of Latvian Jews will meet at Riga's community center. Mr.
Krupnikov said he expects at least 150 people from the association of Latvia and
Estonian Jews in Israel, more than 100 from New York's Jewish Survivors of
Latvia, as well as Latvian Jews from England, Australia, South Africa and
Sweden to attend the event.
The energy and industry of Riga's Jews might provide a model for the
reconstruction of Jewish communities in the former Soviet republics.
"Is a community possible? Isn't it too late already to build a community? How
Jewish are we? Are we ready to go back to being Jewish culturally, religiously
and linguistically?" mused the director of Riga's Jewish sociological research
group, Abraham Klotskin.
"The vast majority of the Jewish population in the post-Communist period is
almost completely assimilated," he added. "They feel Jewish because they were
persecuted as Jews. We have to help those Jews who have decided to become Jews
again, and we are following this path in Latvia."
--Natasha Singer
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
>Therefore, I expect to see you picking some neutral nationality; perhaps
>Polish, Austrailian, or Japanese so that _everyone_ has to abandon their
>own native culture and, possibly, their religion. A great cure for the
>nationalist virus! Maybe it could be made to work. So far as I know, it
>has never been tried.
As far as I know, it was rather succesfully tried in at least one country.
Surprising that you have not noticed this. The country is USA. There was no
total success, but still it is quite remarkable. Germans, Poles, Russians,
Estonians you name it, gladly abandoned their own native culture and
,possibly, their religion. A great cure for nationalist virus, indeed.
It was almost done in other country: USSR. I can say for sure about Ukrain
at least. Siccess was more moderate, but it was success. And it all collapsed
overnight, because bunch of politicians succeded in fueling of nationalism
by anti-communism.
Yury M.
Yury M. Mukharsky
>their national identity (religious, racial, whatever) does not imply
>that this identity is essentially evil.
This is true, of course, but somehow theregions, where people did care much about their
national indentity did not live in piece very long (Europe is one example).
USA, where people does not give a dime for n.i. enjoy long piece (I would
call USA participation in world wars a real wars, it was _participation_
in other people's wars, in a sense even war with Japan).
Erland Sommarskog
> From me, I partially repost the article by the famous
> Soviet dissident writer, Vassily Aksionov,
>Aksionov writes:
>...
> Meanwhile, Russians in Latvia are nervous, uncertain and angry. Under the
>new "Law of Citizenship," only those who can prove Latvian residency before
>1940 will become legitimate citizens - which will make aliens out of virtually
>the entire Russian population.
Either the author does not know what he is talking about, or he is
a plain liar. None of them honors him.
A signficant part of the Russian population in Latvia were, or
ancestors of, citizens of Latvia in 1940.
Erland Sommarskog
And in another article:
>I find it repulsive that people are being forcefed with someone's
>national identity.
It is repulsive, yet it is to natural.
Or could it be that when people are forcefed with Russian culture
it's a "merge" and "natural", but when people want to preserve their
Latvian identity it is forcefeeding and repulsive? Nah, doesn't
make sense, does it?
Erland Sommarskog
>As far as I know, it was rather succesfully tried in at least one country.
>Surprising that you have not noticed this. The country is USA. There was no
>total success, but still it is quite remarkable. Germans, Poles, Russians,
>Estonians you name it, gladly abandoned their own native culture and
>,possibly, their religion. A great cure for nationalist virus, indeed.
Sure. See what is happening with "English Only" movements and similar
junk.
Besides all were immigrants for whom it was easier to abandon their
original culture. But to make it a little easier they didn't adapt
the native culture where the came as well but rather forced their
culture mix on the natives instead.
>It was almost done in other country: USSR. I can say for sure about Ukrain
>at least. Siccess was more moderate, but it was success. And it all collapsed
>overnight, because bunch of politicians succeded in fueling of nationalism
>by anti-communism.
Only a Russian nationalist or a misguided communist could call such a
progress a "success".
The fact that its collapsed has nothing to with a "bunch of politicians"
or "nationalism", but that the fact that the perverse system was a rotten
from inside and out.
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
>Sure. See what is happening with "English Only" movements and similar
>junk.
And what happening? I really do not know.
>
>Besides all were immigrants for whom it was easier to abandon their
>original culture. But to make it a little easier they didn't adapt
>the native culture where the came as well but rather forced their
>culture mix on the natives instead.
Whom do you mean by natives? Do you mean that Polish emigrants in 190x
forced their culture on natives? I have not seen many Polish-speaking
folks here, neither Ukrainian or Russian.
>
>>It was almost done in other country: USSR. I can say for sure about Ukrain
>>at least. Siccess was more moderate, but it was success. And it all collapsed
>>overnight, because bunch of politicians succeded in fueling of nationalism
>>by anti-communism.
>
>Only a Russian nationalist or a misguided communist could call such a
>progress a "success".
You may say what you want, since you have no idea about what was a life
like in USSR. If you want to hear only to guys yelling about nationalities
opression, you will not understand it ever. I can tell you that there was no
much ethnic hartred in USSR, at least not Ukraine or Belorussia, to be still
more precise, not in Eastern Ukraine. I call it some success. I do not discuss
other aspects of the life in USSR.
Boy, when you guys in Western countries will learn that "communism is wrong" statement
goes for granted among 99% of Russians with at least minimal brain activity.
Nobody is going to discuss this fact. It's like discussing the fact that sky
is blue. Discussing some color shades on the sky is something more interesting.
Espessially for those who have seen the sky. Not so interesting for those who
all their life saw the sky through colored glass of media.
Yury M.
Dragon Fly
> Mikhail S. Verbitsky (ver...@brauer.harvard.edu) writes:
>> From me, I partially repost the article by the famous
>> Soviet dissident writer, Vassily Aksionov,
>>...
>>Aksionov writes:
>>...
>> Meanwhile, Russians in Latvia are nervous, uncertain and angry. Under the
>>new "Law of Citizenship," only those who can prove Latvian residency before
>>1940 will become legitimate citizens - which will make aliens out of virtually
>>the entire Russian population.
>
> Either the author does not know what he is talking about, or he is
> a plain liar. None of them honors him.
On the contrary, sommarskogging events around newly-fascist Latvia & Estonia
means calling racist hatemongering as "national self-conscience",
ethnic cleansing as "decolonization", and nationalist dictatorships
in Estonia and Latvia as "Baltic democracies".
> A signficant part of the Russian population in Latvia were, or
> ancestors of, citizens of Latvia in 1940.
Ah, I forgot to mention that lies now are being called "counter-Russian
propaganda measures".
Serega
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
(Karlis Cerans) writes:
>In article <1993Mar25.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
ver...@coolidge.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:
>Latvia is certainly NOT going to repeat the "scenario" of Nazis.
You seem to be sure. Why? It could be that all
Europe, starting from post-Communist countries,
is going to repeat this scenario.
>> The cultures often merge or change, and this is often a natural
>> process. Latvian gov't wishes to stop it with artificial
>> means.
>Which "natural process"? Colonization of Latvia during last five decades
>of years?
Colonisation is ended now, while Latvia is not
going to be much more democratic.
>In a national state the people belonging to the main nation of the state
>are normally privileged just, say, by the ability to use their mother tongue
>in their everyday social life. This privilegy (and a number of others of the
>same kind) is natural to a national state, and I certainly don't think that
>to be racism. I'd rather think that it is unpleasant that a certain nation
>does not have the teritory in which to enjoy these natural privilegies.
>
>Clearly, there are basic human rights which should not be violated for any
>reason (perhaps a compromise should be made in a conflict of rights of equal
>fundamentality). However, I don't think that restoration of a national state
>in Latvia necessarily involves any basic human right violations.
I agree. Anyway, I think that there will be
human rights violations in any case. In a national
state, there will be one more reason for violations.
What is more important, there is a hatred between different
nations, and if some nation is given dominance, this
hatred escalates.
>Don't you think that politicians wouldn't find other reasons for making
>people fight each against other? Striving for power and money causes wars.
>
>As to different national cultures, I still feel that destroying small ones
>which are not able to defend themselves by armed force is not a good idea.
I am not a big fan of small cultures :)
Some small cultures happen to survive,
and they are stronger than "big" ones.
For example, Iceland culture. Some are
clearly redundant, don't produce anything,
and will assimilate in bigger ones - the example
of numerous Germanic, Slavic, Finnish and African
cultures comes to mind.
Both processes (survival and assimilation)
are natural, and don't need help.
Finally, Latvian culture will be destroyed
by armed force only if Russia attack Latvia,
which can happen in the case of armed resurgence of a local
Russian speaking population. Like it happened in
Moldavia and in x-Yugo republics, where the
local Serbian population was uprising.
>But the world has lost lots of Baltic cultures. A sad thing, in my opinion.
Why? Isn't some great Germans (Nietzsche, etc)
Balts by ancestry? They were hardly able
to get similar resonance remaining restricted
by the small community.
You are sad about the folk dances lost by
the assimilation, but IMHO that there appeared
people like Nietzsche instead of dances is
rather good.
>
>> And the survival of Latvian culture is badly defined
>> sentence. The culture cannot be Latvian, or Russian, or
>> Jewish.
>Latvian folk songs (Latvju dainas), for instance. Isn't that a part of
>just LATVIAN culture?
Well, as long as it is CULTURE it is not just
LATVIAN culture. Say, Gypsy music or Jewish
songs from Odessa are part of Russian culture
because they were a source of a constant inspiration
for Russian songwriters and poets from Vysotsky
and Novikov to Appollon Grigoriev and Pushkin.
This is CULTURE - not especially Gypsy or Jewish
one.
On the other hand, the Gypsy traditions of selling horses
are died with assimilation of Gypsies. These were
GYPSY entirely, but I would not call that culture.
>> This means that the measures taken
>> by Latvian state serve other end - they diminish
>> the possibility of survival of people (which is, I
>> have to admit, low enough anyway).
>
>This I don't understand at all. Couldn't I ask you to explain it in more
>detail, or at least, in other way?
Well, don't you think we shall all be nuked
by everybody's nuclear weapons in the nearest future?
>> You are completely right. Still, these politicians
>> succeeded to get the power in all x-Yugoslavia, Georgia,
>> Moldavia and elsewhere. I have no reason to think
>> that they will not succeed in Russia and Baltics.
>>
>The Latvian national radicals are hard to get 4% citizens of Latvia supporting
>them in the pre-electional period.
You don't consider that in all xYugo republics
national radicals are *currently* getting low votes.
This implies nothing, of course - just that the most
radical people get less votes than the less radical ones.
Naturally, people believed to be less nationalistic start
behaving more nationalistic when the situation
changes. This goes for Yeltsin as well: he was
elected not as a nationalist, but he can turn nationalist
any day now.
Misha.
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
Too bad. You are just ignorant.
The problem is, you need to have *both* of your parents
to be Latvian residents before 1940 to get citizenship.
One is not enough, even if you know Latvian.
Now, these Russian speakers are most part descendants
of a mixed line (one parent Latvian resident before 1940,
other one not). Even ones who are not from a mixed
marriage could possibly miss citizenship by the
misknowledge of Latvian. All these requirements
effectively prevent Russian speakers (even half-Latvians)
from getting citizenship. Cf some Alex Goykman posting
of old times.
Misha.
P. S. If someone does not know who Aksionov is,
he never read books on Russian postwar culture.
Not that this is such a big thing, but I strongly
suspect my adversary is virtual illiteracy.
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
>>The cultures often merge or change, and this is often a natural process.
>
>And in another article:
>>I find it repulsive that people are being forcefed with someone's
>>national identity.
>
>It is repulsive, yet it is to natural.
>
>Or could it be that when people are forcefed with Russian culture
>it's a "merge" and "natural", but when people want to preserve their
>Latvian identity it is forcefeeding and repulsive? Nah, doesn't
>make sense, does it?
Don't be ridiculous. The forceful Sovietization
of Baltics is repulsive. Still, Russian-speakers
and Baltics-speakers have had equivalent rights in
times of old. Now this changed *in the name
of preserving Baltics national identity*. That
is, people are denied citizenship if they don't
want to conform in the local culture. This means,
people are denied citizenship in the name of
forcefeeding them with Baltic culture.
Now, who forcefed whom with Russian culture?
How it happened? When I support this?
You make me feel as I am answering Mudlu
article. Where is your 2.5 millions
of massacred Balts? You are just a schmuck.
Misha.
Edgar T Kalns {regular}
|>
|> As far as I know, it was rather succesfully tried in at least one country.
|> Surprising that you have not noticed this. The country is USA. There was no
|> total success, but still it is quite remarkable. Germans, Poles, Russians,
|> Estonians you name it, gladly abandoned their own native culture and
|> ,possibly, their religion. A great cure for nationalist virus, indeed.
|> It was almost done in other country: USSR. I can say for sure about Ukrain
|> at least. Siccess was more moderate, but it was success. And it all collapsed
|> overnight, because bunch of politicians succeded in fueling of nationalism
|> by anti-communism.
|>
|> Yury M.
From whose perspective is this "success" seen? Stalin's forced
collectivization resulted in the deportation/death of millions.
Seems "logical" that those who survived this horrific event gladly
abandoned their freedom and nationality to live in peace and
harmony with their newfound "friends."
Perhaps the nationalities which suffered grievously under the Soviet
system simply desire to see a little Russian humility. Something to
the effect: "On Russian soil, a system was born which enslaved,
starved, torturted, maimed, executed millions of its citizens. We
understand why these nationalities are more than a little angry."
Edgar Kalns
Tapani Hietaniemi
> I also have heard that Latvia was the first in xSU where various national
> minorities, including Jewish, have got their national schools. Of course,
> I do not have any documents at hand to support these facts.
The Estonians proudly claim that they were the first ones... But there
is no need to quarrel on this. The most important thing is to note that
the cultural rights of minorities were an integral part of the demands
of Baltic popular movements which were leading the struggle for
independence.
We could discuss the case of Finns or any other minority, but I just
note that the Jewish schools in Estonia were closed during the Soviet
era. They and other minority schools were re-opened first in 1989.
The Baltic countries are real multi-cultural societies. Especially
Estonia has a tradition of minority autonomy that was exceptional
before the WW II.
with best regards
Tapani Hietaniemi
Larry Loen
>Boy, when you guys in Western countries will learn that "communism is wrong"
>statement
>goes for granted among 99% of Russians with at least minimal brain activity.
>Nobody is going to discuss this fact. It's like discussing the fact that sky
>is blue. Discussing some color shades on the sky is something more interesting.
>Espessially for those who have seen the sky. Not so interesting for those who
>all their life saw the sky through colored glass of media.
We'll stop, Yury, when you stop sounding like an old-line communist.
Whether you know it or not, most of what you write sounds to those of us
in the West like an appology for the ancient regime.
Expect us to react accordingly.
And, it's not like communism has gone away. There's still plenty of true
believers. Maybe you can tell me what the percentage really is, if we include
the brainless as well as the brainy. As I recall, Communism didn't win the
day last time because of the brilliance of intellect. It doesn't take wit
to install a communist state. A few of us still think that it might, just might,
make one last bloody comeback. After all, the Khmer Rouge haven't given up,
either, have they?
Larry Loen
> Finally, Latvian culture will be destroyed
> by armed force only if Russia attack Latvia,
> which can happen in the case of armed resurgence of a local
> Russian speaking population. Like it happened in
> Moldavia and in x-Yugo republics, where the
> local Serbian population was uprising.
I agree that this could happen. But, you're being simplistic to the
point of being incorrect.
This is wishful thinking of the worst order. Latvia has been
invaded a lot of times in its history for no reason whatsoever except
that someone (Russians, Germans, probably even the Swedes when they did
it) wanted the excellent warm-water port Riga provides. I could even
imagine it being invaded just to distract attention from internal
difficulties in post-Soviet Russia. It would take very little to trump
up a local uprising (it needn't be big). On the other hand, the tanks
might roll in without bothering with this at all. Last time, recall,
the Soviet claim was that Latvia _asked_ to be invaded. No one took it
seriously, but Latvia disappeared for 50 years.
If they want to claim something bad is happening to Russian nationals,
they don't really need to provide proof. All's they need is the guts to
roll the tanks and accept the international repercussions, which mostly
would be a cut-off of aid. There are politicians being quoted today who
would be quite happy with such a trade-off.
History is chock-full of big countries invading little countries with
no serious justification whatever and for every imaginable reason and
even very preposterous official explanations. Which, sometimes, it seems
you are trying to help provide.
Jan Eric Larsson
viz...@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu (Dragon Fly) writes:
>On the contrary, sommarskogging events around newly-fascist Latvia &
>Estonia means calling racist hatemongering as "national
>self-conscience", ethnic cleansing as "decolonization", and
>nationalist dictatorships in Estonia and Latvia as "Baltic
>democracies".
Neither Estonia nor Latvia are fascist or dictatorships. They are
democracies, while the Soviet Union was the worst dictatorship ever.
When you talk about racist hatemongering and ethnic cleansing, that is
what the Soviet Union has been guilty of, not Estonia or Latvia. You
are simply using the old propagandistic trick of blatant lies and
truth reversal.
So who pays you? Or are you yet another of Lenin's good idiots?
Jan Eric Larsson Jan...@Control.LTH.Se +46 46 108795
Department of Automatic Control
Lund Institute of Technology "We watched the thermocouples dance to the
Box 118, S-221 00 LUND, Sweden spirited tunes of a high frequency band."
John Cornett
>
>And, it's not like communism has gone away. There's still plenty of true
>believers. Maybe you can tell me what the percentage really is, if we include
------------------------------------------
The impression I have is that it is mostly replaced by a form of nationalism,
but not a healthy one. It is like I respect my family= I don't respect yours.
When Serdar Argic sends his posts, it is in that spirit. He cares about the
men, women, and children unfairly hurt if they are of his ethnic group, but
does not wish to discuss the others, or even admit their humanity.
Our KKK here displays the similar attitude when they show the patriotism to
U.S. and love for the "White" people, but when it goes to the other group,
there is little respect. Hitler showed this when he patted German children
on the head, while thinking it fine if Russian children suffer.
My grandmother on mother's side was granddaughter to slave-holding family,
I know this way of thinking very well indeed; and it wasn't so long ago
when the saying here was "The only good Indian is a dead Indian". I think
we are the worst of all; but we fought these things here, and are trying
hard to improve. I think we should stand beside the people of Ex-Soviet
Republics and help them against this beast, which is killing them now.
In addition, U.S. people too often stand aside and gripe, "You Bolsheviks
did the bad thing". Well, they are not Bolsheviks now, and I would like to
ask any U.S. person listening in, where is our friendship? What kind of
friends are we? We stand by, we gripe, we offer a lot of stupid advice,
and say "Too bad" when the people suffer. What kind of people are we?
There was a time when we would extend a helping hand to people in need,
we showed respect to the neighbor, we would help him get on his feet.
Then when we needed the help, he might give us a hand. What has happened
to us? I am going on too much and will stop here.
Sincerely,
John Cornett
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
>Whether you know it or not, most of what you write sounds to those of us
>in the West like an appology for the ancient regime.
That is exactly what I'm saying about shades of color. If I'm saying that part
of the sky is bright yellow or white, I'm just noticing sun or cloud. I'm
not claiming that sky is white or yellow. Same, when I say that there were
good thing under communism, I'm not saying that communism is good. I can even
see that this good things or at least process of their establishment was direct
result of things i srongly dislike. It's just said to see how good things, even
established in bad way are being destroyed. Or maybe I'm just a little homesick.
Pardon me, but it's you, guys who paint everything blue or red sound to me
like followers of ancient ideology.
Yury M.
Serdar Argic
> You make me feel as I am answering Mudlu
> article.
We all wished you could have...
Now, please provide us with your corrections.
Source: "From Sardarapat to Sevres and Lausanne" by Avetis Aharonian. The
Armenian Review, Vol. 16, No. 3-63, Autumn, Sep. 1963, pp. 47-57.
p. 52 (second paragraph).
"Your three chiefs, Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian are the ringleaders
of the bands which have destroyed Tartar villages and have staged
massacres in Zangezour, Surmali, Etchmiadzin, and Zangibasar. This is
intolerable. Look - and here he pointed to a file of official documents
on the table - look at this, here in December are the reports of the last
few months concerning ruined Tartar villages which my representative
Wardrop has sent me. The official Tartar communique speaks of the
destruction of 300 villages."
p. 54 (fifth paragraph).
"Yes, of course. I repeat, until this massacre of the Tartars is stopped
and the three chiefs are not removed from your military leadership I
hardly think we can supply you arms and ammunition."
"...it is the armed bands led by Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian who
during the past months have raided and destroyed many Tartar villages in
the regions of Surmali, Etchmiadzin, Zangezour, and Zangibasar. There are
official charges of massacres."
Tapani Hietaniemi
> Yury M writes:
> > Finally, Latvian culture will be destroyed
> > by armed force only if Russia attack Latvia,
> > which can happen in the case of armed resurgence of a local
> > Russian speaking population. Like it happened in
> > Moldavia and in x-Yugo republics, where the
> > local Serbian population was uprising.
>
> invaded a lot of times in its history for no reason whatsoever except
> that someone (Russians, Germans, probably even the Swedes when they did
> it) wanted the excellent warm-water port Riga provides. I could even
> imagine it being invaded just to distract attention from internal
> difficulties in post-Soviet Russia. It would take very little to trump
> up a local uprising (it needn't be big). On the other hand, the tanks
> might roll in without bothering with this at all. Last time, recall,
> the Soviet claim was that Latvia _asked_ to be invaded. No one took it
> seriously, but Latvia disappeared for 50 years.
Correct. I must only remind everyone of one minor fact: why would
Russia "invade" a country which it is occupying?
asks
the observer
Tapani Hietaniemi
Tapani Hietaniemi
> Yury M writes:
>
> >Boy, when you guys in Western countries will learn that "communism is wrong"
> >statement
> >goes for granted among 99% of Russians with at least minimal brain activity.
> >Nobody is going to discuss this fact.
- According to some sociological surveys, the majority of Russians are
against large-scale foreign investments in Russian economy.
- The majority of kolhoz workers does not support the privatization of
agriculture.
- It remains to be seen whether even the president Yeltsin gets a majority
support in referendum.
- It remains to be seen when/whether the Russians will organize real
multi-party elections.
> We'll stop, Yury, when you stop sounding like an old-line communist.
>
> Whether you know it or not, most of what you write sounds to those of us
> in the West like an appology for the ancient regime.
>
> Expect us to react accordingly.
I would like to see the day Russia joined in the ranks of European
states. One condition is that the majority of Russians would
support the respective reforms. The Baltic states have made their
clear decision for reforms. Russia has not, unfortunately.
Boris A. Veytsman
thie...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Tapani Hietaniemi) says:
>
>
>
>- According to some sociological surveys, the majority of Russians are
>against large-scale foreign investments in Russian economy.
>
>- The majority of kolhoz workers does not support the privatization of
>agriculture.
>
>- It remains to be seen whether even the president Yeltsin gets a majority
>support in referendum.
>
>- It remains to be seen when/whether the Russians will organize real
>multi-party elections.
>
>
>
>
>states. One condition is that the majority of Russians would
>support the respective reforms. The Baltic states have made their
>clear decision for reforms. Russia has not, unfortunately.
>
Dear Tapani:
What you say is:
According to some sociological surveys citizens of Russia
are Communist-minded and generally barbaric comparing with
civilizied Baltic citizens.
May you substantiate your claim? Say, give us references, who
how and why made those surveys?
And what is the proof that Baltic citizens made their decision?
Are there surveys? By Tapani Gallup Institute, I think
It never pays to portrait Russia as a country of morons and
Communists - the trend too widespread now.
Good luck
-Boris
Dragon Fly
> viz...@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu (Dragon Fly) writes:
>
>>On the contrary, sommarskogging events around newly-fascist Latvia &
>>Estonia means calling racist hatemongering as "national
>>self-conscience", ethnic cleansing as "decolonization", and
>>nationalist dictatorships in Estonia and Latvia as "Baltic
>>democracies".
>
> Neither Estonia nor Latvia are fascist or dictatorships. They are
> democracies,
you forgot to add "baltic" before "democracies". Surely
if you did, your statement would resemble truth considering
that "baltic democracies" == "nationalist dictatorships".
But unfortunately you didn't, so your allegation is just
trivial lie, not smarter than one of Tapani Hientaniemi.
> while the Soviet Union was the worst dictatorship ever.
Not worst (at least on my lifetime). Estonia and Latvia are
gonna be worse. Now they are on the level of USSR a la 1984
and keep degrading further.
> When you talk about racist hatemongering [sic national self-conscience]
> and ethnic cleansing [sic "decolonization"] , that is
> what the Soviet Union has been guilty of, not Estonia or Latvia.
But Estonia & Latvia will surely surpass their former
masters, won't they ?
> You are simply using the old propagandistic trick of blatant lies and
> truth reversal.
truth rehearsal, darling. Learn English.
> So who pays you? Or are you yet another of Lenin's good idiots?
If you mean those Red Latvian Riflemen, then certainly
I'm not one of them. BTW, Latvia should pay for the
crimes of Latvian bolsheviks against Russia.
Serega
Karlis Cerans
>>A signficant part of the Russian population in Latvia were, or
>>ancestors of, citizens of Latvia in 1940.
>
> Too bad. You are just ignorant.
>
> The problem is, you need to have *both* of your parents
> to be Latvian residents before 1940 to get citizenship.
> One is not enough, even if you know Latvian.
>
There must be some misunderstanding. When I registered as a citizen of
Latvia last August, it was sufficient to show only that one my grandmother
already has registered (I registered before my father did). I don't think
that for people who do not speak Latvian these requirements differ (of
course, there could be local clerks wishing to irritate someone).
Unfortunately I don't have the election law at hand, but I can check it
during a few weeks (I have a pretty strong opinion that there are no other
differences based on nationality, may be except granting citizenship to
ethnic Latvians who emigrated from the teritory of Latvia around 1914, but
I'm not sure also about this - I don't remember, whether Latvian Supreme
Soviet passed to include this).
Doesn't anybody has a statistics at hand how much of non-Latvian population
in Latvia has already registered as citizens?
> Now, these Russian speakers are most part descendants
> of a mixed line (one parent Latvian resident before 1940,
> other one not). Even ones who are not from a mixed
> marriage could possibly miss citizenship by the
> misknowledge of Latvian. All these requirements
> effectively prevent Russian speakers (even half-Latvians)
> from getting citizenship. Cf some Alex Goykman posting
> of old times.
>
Certainly too strong "criticism".
> Misha.
>
Regards,
Karlis Cerans.
Karlis Cerans
>(Karlis Cerans) writes:
>
>>In article <1993Mar25.1...@husc3.harvard.edu>
>ver...@coolidge.harvard.edu (Mikhail S. Verbitsky) writes:
>
>>Latvia is certainly NOT going to repeat the "scenario" of Nazis.
>
> You seem to be sure. Why? It could be that all
> Europe, starting from post-Communist countries,
> is going to repeat this scenario.
>
of people. I do not see any possiblity that something like this could happen,
unless Russia decides to re-invade Latvia. (Latvians are of a nordic
temperament). I don't even think that one needs external garants for preventing
racial genocide with killing people in Latvia. Still, such garants exist in
the contemporary world.
>>> The cultures often merge or change, and this is often a natural
>>> process. Latvian gov't wishes to stop it with artificial
>>> means.
>
>>Which "natural process"? Colonization of Latvia during last five decades
>>of years?
>
> Colonisation is ended now, while Latvia is not
> going to be much more democratic.
>
Colonization has not ended yet. People which has come to Latvia with
instructions from CPSU, and their co-workers, are still politically
very active, and economically perhaps dominating.
At the same time, Latvia IS more democratic than USSR was. I don't think
I need to provide evidence for that.
>
>>In a national state the people belonging to the main nation of the state
>>are normally privileged just, say, by the ability to use their mother tongue
>>in their everyday social life. This privilegy (and a number of others of the
>>same kind) is natural to a national state, and I certainly don't think that
>>to be racism. I'd rather think that it is unpleasant that a certain nation
>>does not have the teritory in which to enjoy these natural privilegies.
>>
>>Clearly, there are basic human rights which should not be violated for any
>>reason (perhaps a compromise should be made in a conflict of rights of equal
>>fundamentality). However, I don't think that restoration of a national state
>>in Latvia necessarily involves any basic human right violations.
>
> I agree. Anyway, I think that there will be
> human rights violations in any case. In a national
> state, there will be one more reason for violations.
>
> What is more important, there is a hatred between different
> nations, and if some nation is given dominance, this
> hatred escalates.
>
Yes, one must be very careful in order not to get too far. In Latvia this
would mean one should not let pro-Communist forces go to the power,
because they are escalating the hartred. Paradoxically, as I have posted
in other article, most of Russian ethnic citizens of Latvia are going to
vote for pro-Communists.
>
>>Don't you think that politicians wouldn't find other reasons for making
>>people fight each against other? Striving for power and money causes wars.
>>
>>As to different national cultures, I still feel that destroying small ones
>>which are not able to defend themselves by armed force is not a good idea.
>
> I am not a big fan of small cultures :)
> Some small cultures happen to survive,
> and they are stronger than "big" ones.
> For example, Iceland culture. Some are
> clearly redundant, don't produce anything,
> and will assimilate in bigger ones - the example
> of numerous Germanic, Slavic, Finnish and African
> cultures comes to mind.
>
> Both processes (survival and assimilation)
> are natural, and don't need help.
>
> Finally, Latvian culture will be destroyed
> by armed force only if Russia attack Latvia,
> which can happen in the case of armed resurgence of a local
> Russian speaking population. Like it happened in
> Moldavia and in x-Yugo republics, where the
> local Serbian population was uprising.
>
Also it would be destroyed, in a "purely democratic" way, if Russians were 70%
of population in Latvia, they would got 70% of seats in a parliament, and
voted by 2/3-majority to forbid Latvian language, schools, printing books in
Latvian, etc.
>
>>But the world has lost lots of Baltic cultures. A sad thing, in my opinion.
>
> Why? Isn't some great Germans (Nietzsche, etc)
> Balts by ancestry? They were hardly able
> to get similar resonance remaining restricted
> by the small community.
>
> You are sad about the folk dances lost by
> the assimilation, but IMHO that there appeared
> people like Nietzsche instead of dances is
> rather good.
>
Wasn't Nietzsce one of the "ideological sources" for Nazism? Probably not,
as you are giving this example (pardon me my ingnorance, please).
As to folk dances, it is not the only thing lost by assimilation. It is a
possible way of organizing life, from which also others could learn
something. Why people are traveling around - just to see other kind of
nature - I think that people and their way of living is important.
>
>>
>>> And the survival of Latvian culture is badly defined
>>> sentence. The culture cannot be Latvian, or Russian, or
>>> Jewish.
>
>>Latvian folk songs (Latvju dainas), for instance. Isn't that a part of
>>just LATVIAN culture?
>
> Well, as long as it is CULTURE it is not just
> LATVIAN culture. Say, Gypsy music or Jewish
> songs from Odessa are part of Russian culture
> because they were a source of a constant inspiration
> for Russian songwriters and poets from Vysotsky
> and Novikov to Appollon Grigoriev and Pushkin.
> This is CULTURE - not especially Gypsy or Jewish
> one.
>
It has been found very difficult to translate Latvian folk songs into
other languages because most of the message carried by a 'daina' is not
contained explicitly in its text. It is to be understood from the context
of typical Latvian life and culture of that time. Still, 'dainas' are a
source of inspiration for many Latvian poets (and hopefully will deserve
even more attention in the future).
[some deletions]
>>The Latvian national radicals are hard to get 4% citizens of Latvia
>>supporting them in the pre-electional period.
>
> You don't consider that in all xYugo republics
> national radicals are *currently* getting low votes.
> This implies nothing, of course - just that the most
> radical people get less votes than the less radical ones.
> Naturally, people believed to be less nationalistic start
> behaving more nationalistic when the situation
> changes. This goes for Yeltsin as well: he was
> elected not as a nationalist, but he can turn nationalist
> any day now.
>
> Misha.
I have not found any call for national hartred among other right-wing
politicians in Latvia. And also, if the right wing (read anti-Communists,
this includes Social-Democrats, I hope, though I'm not sure) will succeed
in the elections, the majority will be possible only by having a very
broad coalition of all possible non-Communist forces. There is no space
for calling for nationalist hartred. I tend to believe, that most of
right-wing politicians also do not want to call for nationalist hartred,
but of course, this is not argument for an opponent.
Regards,
Karlis Cerans.
Karlis Cerans
>>
>>Or could it be that when people are forcefed with Russian culture
>>it's a "merge" and "natural", but when people want to preserve their
>>Latvian identity it is forcefeeding and repulsive? Nah, doesn't
>>make sense, does it?
>
> Don't be ridiculous. The forceful Sovietization
> of Baltics is repulsive. Still, Russian-speakers
> and Baltics-speakers have had equivalent rights in
> times of old.
What were the times of old? I hope that you do not mean Soviet times, when
constitution was very democratic, but the real life showed completely other
relations? In particular, a discriminating politics against Balts (keeping
native people in Baltics away not only from leading jobs (unless they agreed
to become communist), but also from the newly-built apartments which were
distributed among "migrants", etc. etc.).
> Now this changed *in the name
> of preserving Baltics national identity*. That
> is, people are denied citizenship if they don't
> want to conform in the local culture.
For holding citizenship, an obvious condition is being loyal to the state.
In the case of Baltics this means some loyality to the local
culture, not necessarily conforming with it.
> This means,
> people are denied citizenship in the name of
> forcefeeding them with Baltic culture.
>
> Now, who forcefed whom with Russian culture?
> How it happened? When I support this?
>
If that were culture, may be it would be not so bad. It was a destroying
power, and it was carried into Baltics under the control of political
forces of Russia. And it was history of Russia which was substituted into
the schoolbooks instead of history of Latvia, these were both Russian folk
songs and Soviet-time Russian songs which Latvians were required to sing during
their song festivals. The list is endless ...
And if you will object, that also some (many - I'll not say so) ethnic
Latvians were involved in the local de-culturalization and russification
activities, I'll answer beforehand that they would not be able to do any
dirty job of this kind without constant support from Moscow.
> You make me feel as I am answering M---u
> article. Where is your 2.5 millions
> of massacred Balts?
If we start to count, how much less that would be?
Massacres during 1940-1941, deportations, local prisons?
From the viewpoint of these small nations on could add also WWII on both
sides - people not fighting for their own interests, but for some "superpower".
We should not forget these people.
>
> Misha.
Regards,
Karlis Cerans.
Yury M. Mukharsky
>
>For holding citizenship, an obvious condition is being loyal to the state.
?????????????????????????????????
Sorry, in most countries this is _not_ the requirement for _being_ a citizen.
Moreover, it's considered to be human right to be unloyal to the state you
are citizen of. I new one country who used to strip their citizen of citizenship
due to lack of loyality.
Yury M.
>If that were culture, may be it would be not so bad. It was a destroying
>power, and it was carried into Baltics under the control of political
>forces of Russia. And it was history of Russia which was substituted into
>the schoolbooks instead of history of Latvia, these were both Russian folk
>songs and Soviet-time Russian songs which Latvians were required to sing during
>their song festivals. The list is endless ...
Should I send you a children score-book (noty) published in Soviet times with Latvian folk
song in there? And Estonian, French, Ukrainian ... Maybe this will give
you some comfort? I vaguelly remember learning some folk dances in scholl
years. Not only Ukrainian or Russian.
>
Yury M.
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
>Karlis Cerans (kar...@cs.chalmers.se) wrote:
>> I also have heard that Latvia was the first in xSU where various national
>> minorities, including Jewish, have got their national schools. Of course,
>> I do not have any documents at hand to support these facts.
>The Estonians proudly claim that they were the first ones... But there
>is no need to quarrel on this. The most important thing is to note that
>the cultural rights of minorities were an integral part of the demands
>of Baltic popular movements which were leading the struggle for
>independence.
All of them are, naturally, bullshitting, as all the
bullshitting fascists usually bullshit.
After WWII, one of the first Jewish school on the
USSR territory was Moscow school #57 (organized in 1972),
where I was studying. There were earlier Jewish schools: Moscow
school #2 and others. But #57 was the most Jewish one.
Misha.
>We could discuss the case of Finns or any other minority, but I just
>note that the Jewish schools in Estonia were closed during the Soviet
>era. They and other minority schools were re-opened first in 1989.
There were several Jewish schools in Moscow and Leningrad
which were closed in 30-ies.
Mikhail S. Verbitsky
>Larry Loen (lwl...@rchland.vnet.ibm.com) wrote:
>> Yury M writes:
This was me who wrote this, not Yury
>> > Finally, Latvian culture will be destroyed
>> > by armed force only if Russia attack Latvia,
>> > which can happen in the case of armed resurgence of a local
>> > Russian speaking population. Like it happened in
>> > Moldavia and in x-Yugo republics, where the
>> > local Serbian population was uprising.
>> This is wishful thinking of the worst order. Latvia has been
>> invaded a lot of times in its history for no reason whatsoever except
>> that someone (Russians, Germans, probably even the Swedes when they did
>> it) wanted the excellent warm-water port Riga provides. I could even
>> imagine it being invaded just to distract attention from internal
>> difficulties in post-Soviet Russia. It would take very little to trump
>> up a local uprising (it needn't be big). On the other hand, the tanks
>> might roll in without bothering with this at all. Last time, recall,
>> the Soviet claim was that Latvia _asked_ to be invaded. No one took it
>> seriously, but Latvia disappeared for 50 years.
Larry, you should somehow raise your logic and reading
comprehension. I wrote that Russia can attack
Latvia if the local Russian-speaking minority
(45% or some such) will start a guerilla war.
I have not written that Russia will not attack Latvia
if the locals would not start a guerilla, as you
think I wrote. I believe that it probably seize Latvia
anyway, but in the case of armed resistance from
all Latvian population, including Russian-speakers,
Russia will probably fail. Just like SU failed
to get Finland in 1939 - the patriotism can
work wonders against outsider oppression.
Misha.
>Correct. I must only remind everyone of one minor fact: why would
>Russia "invade" a country which it is occupying?
Because you are a bag of shit
Tapani Hietaniemi
YOUR country is illegally occupying the Baltic states and YOU are partly
responsible of it. It is interesting to see you have invented a good reason
for it. But stop calling all other people "fascists", please.
John Cornett
>>For holding citizenship, an obvious condition is being loyal to the state.
>
----------------------------------
Yury M. Mukharsky writes:
>Sorry, in most countries this is _not_ the requirement for _being_ a citizen.
>Moreover, it's considered to be human right to be unloyal to the state you
>are citizen of. I new one country who used to strip their citizen of
>citizenship due to lack of loyality.
------------------------------------
There may be a misunderstanding on the meaning of "loyalty to state".
If this means to avoid any public expression of views dissenting with
state policy, then I strongly agree with Mr. Mukharsky. Surely, the
people residing in Baltics should have a right to peacefully express
political views, as long as there is no violence, threat of violence,
or advocacy of violence.
For example, I may wish for my community, Sunspot, New Mexico, to
break away from U.S. I may write letters, speak out as I please, to
the media or other sources if anyone is interested to hear me, and
try to persuade the majority of U.S. people that my idea is good.
Where the line is drawn is with the violence. If I run to the hills
with the gun, or threaten to do this, or advocate this to others, or
ask Mexican Army to liberate Sunspot by force...such things, then I am
in big trouble with U.S. government. Then I cannot get the citizenship
no matter how hard I try, and will be criminal. If this is the meaning
of "loyalty to state", then I agree with Mr. Cerans.
It occurs to me this may be a key to solution of the controversy now
in Baltic states. Surely, there is no harm if a person loves Russia
and longs for his country to unite with his ancestral homeland. The
requirement should be to adhere to peaceful democratic way.
There must be the acceptance that, if one cannot persuade the majority
of the people in the country to the idea, then he will accept the will
of majority and remain faithful to the democratic process.
It has been said that there is fear among native people in some Baltic
states that Russian ethnic residents may democratically out-vote natives
to return to foreign rule; yet my view is, this is much more manageable
than the fear of civil unrest and new invasion.
Embracing the people freely, opening to them, giving them great respect,
wins their hearts to you. Then they are proud to be Baltic citizens in
the new Baltic Nations, not the old ones-- neither the old under Soviet
occupation, nor more ethnically homogeneous Baltics before occupation.
It is the new era, there is no need to go back to the old ways.
My view is, this approach might break the cycle of suspicion, show a
strong example to others, and bury the old fears once and for all.
This is such a difficult problem, I just wish all the best.
Sincerely,
John Cornett
Alexander Mihai Popovici
|> In article <1993Mar31.2...@cs.chalmers.se> kar...@cs.chalmers.se (Karlis Cerans) writes:
|> >
|> >For holding citizenship, an obvious condition is being loyal to the state.
|>
|> ?????????????????????????????????
|>
|> Sorry, in most countries this is _not_ the requirement for _being_ a citizen.
|> Moreover, it's considered to be human right to be unloyal to the state you
|> are citizen of. I new one country who used to strip their citizen of citizenship
|> due to lack of loyality.
|> Yury M.
Maybe that's the Russian way. In the US when you become a citizen you
take an oath of allegiance to the US. You give up allegiance to any
foreign country and promise to support the Constitution and laws of the US.
Mihai
Yury M. Mukharsky
Improve your reading skills. Maybe then you will notice
holding and being
as opposite to
recieving or becoming.
Yury M.
John Cornett
In previous article, Yury M. Mukharsky writes:
>Improve your reading skills. Maybe then you will notice
>
>holding and being
>
>as opposite to
>
>recieving or becoming.
I missed this point too. As I understand it, to become
U.S. naturalized citizen, one must swear allegiance to
laws and constitution of U.S. and be prepared to join
U.S. military in time of war.
Upholding the laws and constitution of U.S. means we
can protest, for example, the Viet-Nam war, but we
cannot legally hit anyone, break a window, or even
block the traffic. If called to serve in military,
we can apply as conscientious objector, or to the
Peace Corps, and so on; but cannot flatly refuse.
We can complain about the taxes all we want, but
we must pay the taxes.
If we attain the citizenship then go outside the laws
and framework of our democratic process, we do not lose
citizenship, but get fined or go to prison. It is not a
citizen's right to step outside this framework. I hope
I say this right, others may know it better.
John
Alexander Mihai Popovici
|> <|> >
|> <|> >For holding citizenship, an obvious condition is being loyal to the state.
|> <|> ?????????????????????????????????
|> <|>
|> <|> Sorry, in most countries this is _not_ the requirement for _being_ a citizen.
|> <|> Moreover, it's considered to be human right to be unloyal to the state you
|> <|> are citizen of. I new one country who used to strip their citizen of citizenship
|> <|> due to lack of loyality.
|> <|> Yury M.
|> <
|> >Maybe that's the Russian way. In the US when you become a citizen you
|> >take an oath of allegiance to the US. You give up allegiance to any
|> >foreign country and promise to support the Constitution and laws of the US.
|> >Mihai
|>
|> Improve your reading skills. Maybe then you will notice
|> holding and being
|> as opposite to
|> recieving or becoming.
|>
|> Yury M.
The original context was of *becoming* a citizen. Improve your neuron
preserving ability. Here is the context:
>> Now this changed *in the name
>> of preserving Baltics national identity*. That
>> is, people are denied citizenship if they don't
>> want to conform in the local culture.
>
>For holding citizenship, an obvious condition is being loyal to the state.
Tuomas Viljanen
>>Mikhail S. Verbitsky (ver...@coolidge.harvard.edu) writes:
Sorry, I just couldn't resist...
> You make me feel as I am answering Mudlu
> article. Where is your 2.5 millions
> of massacred Balts? You are just a schmuck.
Divide the # by 10 and you get close the number of inhabitants Estonia alone
lost due to the Commies after WWII. Turkey has more than tenfold the amount
of inhabitants than the Baltic countries alone. BTW, Mutlu has an inbuilt
flamethrower set continulosly on the ON-mode, which Sommarskod doesn't have.
Still discriminating the Russian population in the Baltic countries is under-
standable, yet stupid. Hasn't people learned anything ? Supposedly no.
> Misha.
--++ Tuomas Viljanen ++ For a battle like Crecy, you do ++
++ Lahderanta 20 A 19 ++ not need a military genius like ++
++ SF-02720 Espoo FINLAND ++ Edward III. All you need is an ++
++ 358-0-592175 or c34...@saha.hut.fi ++ idiot like Duke of Alencon. ++
Juha Siltanen
Not worst (at least on my lifetime). Estonia and Latvia are
gonna be worse. Now they are on the level of USSR a la 1984
and keep degrading further.
Right down to the level of Stalin`s Soviet Union?
That`s going to take a lot of effort.
Yury M. Mukharsky
Yeah, they have to concuer Siberia all the way to Magadan first.
Yury M.
Serdar Argic
>> You make me feel as I am answering Mudlu
>> article. Where is your 2.5 millions
>> of massacred Balts? You are just a schmuck.
>Divide the # by 10 and you get close the number of inhabitants Estonia
>alone lost due to the Commies after WWII. Turkey has more than tenfold
>the amount of inhabitants than the Baltic countries alone. BTW, Mutlu
A "Genocide" is a "Genocide" regardless of the numbers.
"We closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as
ways of escape for the Tartars and then proceeded in the work
of extermination. Our troops surrounded village after village.
Little resistance was offered. Our artillery knocked the huts
into heaps of stone and dust and when the villages became untenable
and inhabitants fled from them into fields, bullets and bayonets
completed the work. Some of the Tartars escaped of course. They
found refuge in the mountains or succeeded in crossing the border
into Turkey. The rest were killed. And so it is that the whole
length of the borderland of Russian Armenia from Nakhitchevan to
Akhalkalaki from the hot plains of Ararat to the cold mountain
plateau of the North were dotted with mute mournful ruins of
Tartar villages. They are quiet now, those villages, except for
howling of wolves and jackals that visit them to paw over the
scattered bones of the dead."
Ohanus Appressian
"Men Are Like That"
p. 202.
Karlis Cerans
Certainly not.
Because the history of Latvia was not in the school books, where it should
have been. It was forbidden.
As to songs, it is OK to sing those of other nations, but this must be free
choice to do that, which that was not, as you surely know.
>I vaguelly remember learning some folk dances in scholl
>years. Not only Ukrainian or Russian.
>
I don't see the relation to the discussion topic.
>Yury M.
Regards,
Karlis Cerans.
Karlis Cerans
>In article <1993Mar30.0...@klaava.Helsinki.FI> thie...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Tapani Hietaniemi) writes:
>>Karlis Cerans (kar...@cs.chalmers.se) wrote:
>
>>> I also have heard that Latvia was the first in xSU where various national
>>> minorities, including Jewish, have got their national schools. Of course,
>>> I do not have any documents at hand to support these facts.
>
>>The Estonians proudly claim that they were the first ones... But there
>>is no need to quarrel on this. The most important thing is to note that
>>the cultural rights of minorities were an integral part of the demands
>>of Baltic popular movements which were leading the struggle for
>>independence.
>
> All of them are, naturally, bullshitting, as all the
> bullshitting fascists usually bullshit.
> After WWII, one of the first Jewish school on the
> USSR territory was Moscow school #57 (organized in 1972),
> where I was studying. There were earlier Jewish schools: Moscow
> school #2 and others. But #57 was the most Jewish one.
>
> Misha.
>
OK, perhaps the notion of a "first Jewish school" is differently
understood by different people, and I have no reason to think that your
view in this question is any worse than the view of some politicians in
Latvia.
Still, I suppose that you noticed also the sentence Tapani posted
>>The most important thing is to note that
>>the cultural rights of minorities were an integral part of the demands
>>of Baltic popular movements which were leading the struggle for
>>independence.
and you will not have anyting against it.
And I do not think that someone has got right to call other people fascists
motivating that just by disagreement on some "by the way" posted facts
without principal nature.
Regards,
Karlis Cerans.