You can read the report with all the polls here.
Of note:
- Slovakia is the “Russophile” outlier.
-
Results are very largely the same for a conflict putting the US against China (pp. 10)
Macron is currently making some moves to normalize EU-Russia relations, which hasn’t been covered much because the MSM would much rather blast “Putler puppet” Trump and the now-departed Salvini for it.
The actual explanation is a lot more banal. It has nothing to do with Russophilia, and a lot to do with arresting Russia’s growing partnership with China – the true long-term threat to Western hegemony.
Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
This would explain Beckow’s senile Sovok ramblings. I’m quite surprised by Czechia. It is essentially a complete inversion of Slovakia and much more in line with major Western countries. Seems to be a cultural decoupling between them in terms of foreign policy. Zeman is likely the last Russophile politician you’d see coming out of Czechia for a long time.
Nevertheless, I’m quite pleased that “neither” is by far the most popular choice. Europe should not get involved in these conflicts and in my view should strive to decouple from the US as much as possible. The long-term goal of politically re-integrating Russia into Europe should remain an openly stated goal, or at the very least to balance relations with Russia to that of the US. The major problem in doing so is that Russia is an economic midget compared to the US and the distance is increasing, not decreasing.
LOL
I think it is a matter of different histories and different historical experiences. Post 1000 AD, the Czechs actually had their own sovereign state in a total time period of many hundreds of years, while the Slovaks didn’t. The Slovaks were ruled over by Hungarians and then Austrians/Habsburgs with immediate succession for almost 1000 years.
Of course, the Czechs and Slovaks were together in the state of Czechoslovakia both after WW1 and WW2 but it was only the 2nd one which was ruled by the Soviets whom, obviously, Czechs perceive as Russians. My impression is that the Czechs were obviously much more resentful of the Russians for crushing the Prague Spring of 1968 than Slovaks were as Czechs hoped for large amounts of autonomy, sovereignty and freedoms. Also, Slovaks were less dominant than Czechs in Czechoslovakia due to size and numbers which means they could’ve felt comfortable with Russian dominance as it would’ve been a means to counter Czech power. In general, Slovaks have for centuries hoped to simply preserve their cultural identity and physical integrity as a people against aggressive Magyar and German assimilation and colonialist policies, rather than to exist as a sovereign people, since they are simply not capable of being sovereign due to their small numbers and geography.
I know that Czechs get butthurt when you say that they are “East European”. They are really serious about being “Central Europeans”. That is, of course, because East Europeans = Russians, apparently. Something the Poles also get hot and bothered about.
The way I see it, if Russia and US go to war, it will be fought in Eastern Europe, I cannot think of anywhere else. It looks like Poles and Romanians expect that American soldiers will fight for them, while they hide under a rock or something.
I don’t understand that either, the industrialized Czech regions must have been most pro-communist in pre-1948 Czechoslovakia, whereas Slovakia was backwards and had an at least semi-fascist regime during WW2 which actually sent troops to fight against the Soviet Union. If anything one would expect the opposite of the poll results.
Agree with you about the need to break off from America as much as possible.
I do wonder what these numbers might look like under three different scenarios. If nothing ideological changed (not the politicians, etc.), but various economic indicators for the US and Russia were switched: total population, GDP, and GDP per capita.
My theory is that globalists have an automatic attraction to the bigger. Additionally, GDP is a significant indicator of the ability to export culture.
I’m somewhat surprised by Denmark and Czechia’s homosexuality. Does anyone have any insight as to why they’re so pro-US?
If you just look at those Europeans that hold opinions of either pro-US or pro-Russia, the former register a little over 70% whereas the later 30%, which indicates that more than 2 to 1 that aren’t neutral favor the US in such a hypothetical conflict. Where would the neutrals end up if such a scenario were to escalate, notwithstanding globo-homo Macron’s views?
You’re missing the point, those results are remarkable if one considers that all the surveyed countries except Austria are in NATO, that is in an actual military alliance with the US. Most Europeans probably don’t like or trust Russia much, but clearly there’s a widespread sense that US foreign policy isn’t in the genuine interests of Europeans either.
I think this is the critical factor. Whenever the Prague Spring uprising & subsequent invasion anniversary comes up on /r/Europe, you get thousands of upvotes and the seething hatred among Czech commenters against Russians is really palpalable, even for a neoliberal echochamber like that place. By the same token, I’ve noticed that Slovak commenters tend to be quite neutral during those threads (even though the invasion was technically of their country, too). I think your point about the dimished political stature of Slovaks during the period also helps explain why they were, and perhaps still are, a bit more lackadaisical about the events of ’68 than the Czechs.
None of this was preordained. Czechs were strongly in favor of communists in the immediate aftermath of WWII, which was a talisman for Russophilic sentiments. Sympathies were strong due to the fact that the Germans behaved like complete animals during their very brutal occupation. But Russians basically wasted any goodwill with the hysterical reaction to the Prague Spring. Seems any warm feelings Russians may have towards Czechs is pretty one-directional.
This looks like cowardice to me, as in refusal to carry your burden. Just another sign of European degeneracy I guess.
No, I get it, and really can’t blame most Europeans in wanting to stay clear of any possible US/Russia confrontatons. Even still, more than 2 to 1 have a strong opinion that’s pro-US, and you missed the point of my question – what do you think?
India seems to me to have been punching well above its weight culturally compared to China, which seems to be underperforming in that regard despite a far bigger economy. I think neither country is a cultural giant, but the soft power of India (bollywood, dance, yoga, spirituality, curry/food, music etc) is certainly far, far stronger than China’s at least in Europe. I think it has to do with Indians being much more extroverted and emotional as a people, which makes it easier for others to connect. Chinese are more shut up, sit down and work hard. Great for growth but probably less great for social interactions.
What ‘burden’? Europe already overspends on defence. If all of Europe spent at least the NATO-mandated 2% on defence we wouldn’t know what to do with all the tanks, planes and ships. And that is precisely the point. “Humanitarian interventions” are ZOG’s speciality and Americans are getting tired of sacrificing their sons. So why not let Europe pick up the slack for others’ dirty wars?
The reality is that the US is not needed. We don’t need their prescence. The talking point of “Europe wants American defence so they can have a welfare state” is bunk. Even at current spending, Europe’s combined defence budget would be second highest after the US. We could do with half that and still make do.
Remember that “defence” is really a misnomer. The US doesn’t need 700+ billion USD on an annual basis to defend their homeland. They probably barely even need 70 billion, if even at that. All that extra cash is spent on imperial adventures and similar nonsense. TPTB understands this too, which is why a bloated EU defence budget would be deployed for overseas adventures in Africa, Middle East and other places. The excuses used would be the same claptrap about “defending democracy” and “saving human rights” or “stopping tyrants” that is used in the US whenever a country is about to invaded and destabilised.
BTW, aren’t you a diaspora LARPer living in the US? Go back to Russia if you’re so proud.
If there’s a war, Europeans will get drawn into it anyway, those polls will be meaningless then.
I also think it depends on the scenario…if Russia invaded the Baltic states, I would be in favor of a military response as well, and I suppose many people who would otherwise want to stay out of a conflict, feel the same.
iirc Felix Keverich is an actual Russian nationalist living in Russia.
Agree with the rest of your comment.
I wasn’t talking about military spending however, I meant European preference to remain neutral in a hypothetical US-Russia conflict, which could only take place in Eastern Europe. It’s hilarious!
Really? Why?
Few facts:
– in free elections after WWII Czechs voted 40% for communists, Slovaks 30%
– most victims of communist purges in early 50’s were Jewish Czech communists and Slovak nationalists
– the leader of Prague Spring was a Slovak – Alexander Dubcek, lifelong communist
– post 1968 invasion Czechoslovakia was run by Gustav Husak, top leadership was disproportionally from Slovakia
– one of the main reason for 1993 split was that Slovaks understood that Vaclav Havel was a moron about 10 years sooner than Czechs – maybe we have more common sense.
There was no “Prague Spring uprising” – it was a political movement by reform communists, no uprising took place (have you been watching Hollywood again?)
In the above poll the difference between Czechia and Slovakia is 10-15% – that is roughly the extra weight of liberal Prague-Brno. Once you get outside the big metropolitan areas it is about the same. Prague has been ultra-liberal since around 19th century, just like Paris or London. My guess is that in any conflict most Czechs and Slovaks would do what they always do: stay home and drink some beer (Czechs) or wine (Slovaks). We don’t fight for others if we can avoid it.
In summary, your speculation is embarrassingly uninformed.
The curry is always stronger than the egg foo young.
Because it would be a March 1939 moment (that is going well beyond what could be seen as reasonable or legitimate Russian interests imo), or even worse since it would be a direct attack on NATO and an attempt to break the alliance apart by showing it to be a paper tiger. I don’t care much for NATO and would like to see it replaced by some European security structure (probably an idle dream), but as long as there’s no replacement for it one has to take alliance commitments for the defense of existing members seriously.
Besides, going out in a nuclear war would be a much cooler end than being slowly swamped and replaced by Muslims and negroes.
Poles are eager to host black soldiers in their land to defend them against other whites, it’s a bastion of cuckservatism, so hardly a surprise that they take the number one slot for brown nosing America.
If… is a big word in this context.
Let’s think it through:
– Estonia decides to ban Russian language in schools (why not?)
– Narva in eastern Estonia is 90% Russian and 3rd city of Estonia, locals start an uprising
– Estonians bring artillery and start bombing Narva (yes, just like Donbas)
– Russian government can no longer stand the public pressure at home and occupies Narva to ‘protect human rights of Russian speakers‘ (yes, just like Kosovo)
– Nato invokes mutual protection clause and bombs Russians in Narva
– Russians shoot back
– …then somebody says ‘f..ck it‘!!! and we will never even find out who it was.
Isn’t it a great story? Because some punks refused to speak Estonian in their school, we can get a whole new reformatted planet, or at least its European portion. But of course we are all ‘in favor of military response‘, how else. When institutions cease to act impartially, it is a long way down.
By the way, we would replaced by negroes in this scenario too, as Merkel said, we can do this…
Well sure, blowing everything up because of Estonia would be kind of irrational, but on the other hand, you have to be willing to do irrational and even self-destructive things to maintain deterrence.
Or maybe one could tell Estonians to cool it and not ban languages? That might even be formally what EU stands for.
But what the hell, why don’t we just blow it up.
China is definitely underperforming, especially if you consider how influential HK cinema was, despite Hong Kong’s small size. And I consider this to be a significant political problem for the Chinese.
Recently, I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that even Nigerian, Turkish, and Mexican soap operas might have value, in so far as they are effluent that flows at least partly against the main current of the Hollywood stream.
Lots of opinions of Europeans. Now, when did the US overlords ask Europeans about their opinions? The US issues marching orders, and the vassals are free to squirm, but have to follow those orders.
As to Macron, he is a nobody with a dream of being somebody. As French say, Macron wants to be like Putin, but the leash gets in the way. That describes him 100%.
If the war between grown-ups starts, Baltic vaudeville states would disappear in the first 15 minutes. Important thing is, neither side would even notice it.
Or maybe Russia could respect other nations’ sovereignty and not use every minor “insult” to its “diaspora”–which in actuality they don’t care at all about and are simply a pretext to seize power–as an excuse to invade yet another neighbor?
In EU banning a language of a minority is not a ‘minor’ issue. Try it in Romania or Spain and see EU reaction. Why should Russian minorities be treated differently?
With Bluestan, yes. It is Hollywood, Wall Street and the Universities that are contributing to subversion.
But Redstan needs all the allies it can get, and its treated as a near-Third World country in the rather contemptuous international press.
I think the EU system is more concerned about Russia launching its own “colour revolutions” by backing the souveranist parties.
Is there even a lick of evidence for this outside of Crimea and Donbass?
I find the concept of “Brexit riots” to be amusing, but this is the pretext the West used in Ukraine.
In the US we are told we can’t use the National Guard to stop illegal immigration. The Guard is only for protecting Baltic borders.
The diaspora would be the first victims. I hope they know. I don’t ask them because it’s embarrassing.
Because hypocrisy is EU middle name.
It would be a tactical nuke so you might get spared. But you’d have to react fast, somehow. Who knows in what condition their nukes are in. During the Cold War it was supposed to be Czechs who were going to storm westwards in a kamikaze like mission. These days it might be one big silence.
What is more interesting though is how prepared Felix is for mobilization. Because that’s what it might take in case of a conventional war – at least a partial mobilization.
Your guys’ dads must remember from the 80s, Afghanistan, the feeling when the povestka came. Although they wouldn’t reveal where they’d take you. And more recently in Ukraine, of course, when mothers had to hide their sons.
Those are some interesting facts. I never bothered to truly understand the dynamics of Czechoslovakia in much detail when I was in school, or ever since then, really. As a matter of curiosity, would you care to explain how Slovaks view Czechs and their opinions of Czechoslovakia including the one from 1918-1938 and the one from 1945-1993?
In 1968, Soviet tanks moved into Prague in order to suppress a political movement. Of course, the Czechs did not try to resist violently, so technically you would be correct since the word uprising implies violent resistance.
Listen to what you’re saying. You’re talking like a neocon.
A person in Europe who can be manipulated to support a war with Russia over some Baltic statelets can be manipulated to support anything, including occupation of Iran. I still believe that Europeans’ innate cowardice will stop them from pursuing any such endeavor. Just look at how quickly UK backtracked when they tried to seize Iranian tanker. Their attempt to set up European “defense force” in the Gulf went nowhere.
Calling Baltic statelets “sovereign” is like calling Juan Guaido Venezuela’s president. Even if every Western government agrees on this issue, it’s still an obvious lie, and Westerners are not prepared to die for it.
I don’t think that Putin and Russia would respond with military force against Estonia if it banned Russian language in its schools. In fact, I think that the Russian state would counsel ethnic Russians there to not begin an armed uprising or some other kind of organized violence. It would simply be way too geo-politically reckless for the Russians to start a war with the USA/NATO, potentially nuclear, by attacking the Baltic states just because of a language law. The only scenario in which I could see Russia attacking the Baltics would be if the Balts decided to mass murder and genocide hundreds of ethnic Russians. Even then, countries which are weaker but have their ethnos in a foreign and neighboring country openly mistreated through pogroms or mass murders simply tend not to respond with force due to their weakness. The Greeks and the many Turkish pogroms and mass murders of ethnic Greeks in Constantinople post 1922 come to mind as an example of this.
In general though, the ideal and best solution for the Baltic-Russia tension would actually be a complete demilitarization of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with a complete subsidized repatriation of the ethnic Russian population there back to Russia. This would be along the lines of internationally recognizing the Baltic states as militarily neutral countries like Switzerland, and Austria post WW2, with NATO troops withdrawn not to provoke Russia. Importantly, many great powers, most notably the USA/NATO, Russia, and maybe even China, India and Brazil as well, would all be obliged to give security guarantees to protect those states regardless of who could potentially attack them to ensure security. The guarantees would obviously be self-contradictory and seem paradoxical, but they would work well precisely because of this. Since the EU and Western countries spend millions (even billions?) on welfare for third world migrants, it’s hard to imagine why they wouldn’t be able to spend a decent amount of money to smoothly repatriate the many hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians in the Baltic states back to Russia. This repatriation would be done, of course, in order to remove any ethno-territorial claims or other pretexts Russia could possibly have to invade the Baltic states. Such a solution is absolutely practical, but it would take time to negotiate, and the biggest problem would be a lack of incentive to negotiate and good faith from the USA/NATO.
Of course, I know some will accuse Russia of having a lack of incentive and good faith to negotiate about this, because “evil Putler” and so on. This is ridiculous because the only reason that the Baltic states are of any value to Russia is because of their ethnic Russian population. Literally, the Baltic states would be completely useless and irrelevant to Russia without that population. The hysteria about Russians invading the Baltics is deeply bizarre and pointless since NATO is a hollow deterrent as everyone knows that Russia can overrun all 3 Baltic states between 24-48 hours in the case of a real war anyway. Only the USA and NATO’s nuclear weapons are the real deterrent there. If I were some kind of Balt, say an Estonian, I would be much more bothered by the fact that my declining tiny population of 1 million people is projected to disappear by around 2050, let alone 2100.
Whether or not they have value for Russia depends on how the hypothetical future war of the Baltic Sea will be fought.
As long as Russia believes it can can block most sea traffic from Kaliningrad/St. Petersburg, there is little need for Baltics. If not, aquiring the whole Eastern coast is of enormous value. In that sense being in NATO can be detrimental to their own security – if neutral, Russia could simply ignore them during conflict (as long as the supply lines to Kaliningrad are secured) but as long as they are in hostile alliance, they will be the first to be crushed.
The reason anyone has had interest in Baltic territories has always being strategic – starting from Eastern Crusades, Great Northern War, WWI, WWII.
Lol, jewrope doesn
t have two divisions to rub together. Or airpower. Or artillery. Or operational experience. Or any kind of fighting spirit at least. Im all for murricans getting the hell out of Heartland to their 56% hellhole, but this delusion where a single say sweacuck goes to die for a polecuck on a battlefield somewhere needs to end.No, Soviet Union would have provided the armoured thrust divisions equipped with T-64B, T-72A/B, T-80B/U
Warsaw Pact would have supplied T-55 and T-72M (monkey model) exploitation and mass formations which would pour through gaps the Soviet front formations created.
Ukraine was a giant warehouse and staging ground for third echelon troops.
NATO top brass war perfectly aware that NATO would lose badly in a conventional war. Especially once it was revealed that 105 and even early 120 APFSDS were ineffective against frontline Soviet tank models.
There is Russian dark humor expression “what you fought for has befallen you”. Similar to English “be careful what you wish for, your wish might be granted”.
Not just technically, it simply wasn’t an ‘uprising’. When morons like that Thulean thing claim it, they display shallow ignorance. Prague Spring was a communist reform movement, the ‘communist’ part is the key – West likes to claim it without acknowledging that.
It was very similar to Gorbachev reforms in the late 80’s, and similarly badly thought out and incompetent, trying to square a circle. But from what I hear it was a lot of fun, the last hurrah of idealistic leftism.
It is probably the closest alliance and friendship in Eastern Europe, we are basically the same people with different dialects and only slight cultural differences. The split was unpopular, never voted on, and in practise didn’t change too much – but it made it better, because it is cleaner now: there is a second capital and Prague intellectuals can more successfully pretend that they are ‘Central Europe‘ (yes, an obsession for them, one wonders why). Nationalists got a shorter anthem and twice the number of ambassadors.
Could others learn from us, life is good, why take that away? What kind of retards enjoy telling others what language to use, or have revenge dreams about history? (looking at you Latvians, Ukrainians and Poles)…
You suggest a piece of enforceable paper and telling about 1 million people to move somewhere else. That is both unrealistic and slightly immoral.
Neutrality is not declared, it is earned by living it for a long time. Swiss have done it, and probably the Austrians – but it took them a long time. Belgium and Norway tried to declare it – nobody cared. Paper is just paper, and by the way after 1991 Baltics were already ‘demilitarized‘ and there were some vague agreements. What happened? Now we have people marching up and down Russian borders there, last time I checked, Albanians! What the f…k are Albanians doing there? Did they get lost on their way to do some pimping in Germany?
Baltics are already underpopulated and population is dropping dramatically. If you remove about quarter of the population there (Russians), who would replace them? Oh, I see, I forgot, the Nigerian brain surgeons and Indian IT bottom-feeders have graciously offered to help. Call Merkel, I am sure she would pay for the population transfers (“we can do this!“)…
Guys:
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/article/huawei-calls-the-us-intel-communitys-bluff/
The key point is this:
“China never planned to steal everyone else’s data. On the contrary, China offered technology that would stop the United States from stealing everyone else’s data, a critical setback to a US intelligence community that spends most of its $80 billion annual budget on signals intelligence (SIGINT).”
It should be obvious to all that the enemy is not Moscow, Beijing, or anywhere else. But that the enemy is within us.
Mr. Trump, Drain that Swamp!
My solution is realistic and it is in fact the best solution possible as far as maintaining genuine peace and regional stability in the Baltics is concerned (It would be completely moral if those people were compensated and genuinely accepted it themselves), but it will not happen because the USA, NATO and the EU are not good faith actors. So yes, not much will change in the Baltics for the immediate future.
LOL but true.
Well, whether the Balts prefer to have “Nigeran brain surgeons” or “Indian IT bottom-feeders” instead of ethnic Russian populations in their country is their problem. In fact, Russians maybe should actually accept the population transfers just to spite the Balts by making room for 3rd world migrants lol.
Yes, because we Western Europeans are always confusing Iran with the Baltic states. lol
Can you find those Baltic states on the map? What about Iran? As an American joke puts it, “what’s the correct spelling, Iran or Iraq?” CNN journos on live TV placed Ukraine somewhere in Pakistan. But they are vehemently for protecting it from evil Russia.
If US and Russia went to war, it would be nuclear. Without the missiles and launchers, Poland and Romania wouldn’t even be touched. They US has successfully set them up as patsies, wherein more Russian nukes falling on EE means fewer falling on the CONUS.
Redstan has given like bush, bolton ,breitbart ziocons and all sorts of assorted retards. Why would they be any better from a European viewpoint. I concur with German Reader.
France has nukes.
Can you find those Baltic states on the map?
Yes. I’ve been to all three.
What about Iran?
I haven’t been to Iran but I’ve no trouble finding it on a map.
As an American joke puts it, “what’s the correct spelling, Iran or Iraq?” CNN journos on live TV placed Ukraine somewhere in Pakistan. But they are vehemently for protecting it from evil Russia.
What does any of this have to do with Western Europeans, the Baltics, and Iran?
The point, which I thought was obvious, is that Europeans make a major distinction between the Baltic states and Iran. The former are racially, culturally, religiously, and geographically closer to us than the latter. That a Russian like Felix would lump them together is astonishing to a European, but evidently not to a Russian like yourself. Maybe you guys are Asiatics after all.
Spain’s lurch towards GloboHomo and hatred of Russia is very interesting.
Have you seen spanish polls? It is becoming a libtard country.
“Maybe you guys are Asiatics after all.” – Maybe.
OK, so Europeans are better educated than woefully ignorant Americans. Good to know.
Note that 95% of Americans (including most of American Presidents) can’t find on the map even bigger places than handkerchief-sized Baltic “states”, or even Iran (which is many times greater than the three of them put together, both in population and territory; not to mention that it has ~10 times longer history).
As a matter of fact, I’ve been to two out of three, Estonia and Latvia, back in Soviet times. They had a huge inferiority complex back then, same as now. I guess congenital defects can’t go away.
FYI, Iranians are white Caucasians (in fact, whiter than most Italians or Spaniards), and Persian language is Indo-European. Calling them Asians only attests to caller’s ignorance.
It really doesn’t matter what the people think as anyone with half a brain should know. It matters what the controlling elite of the country thinks.
If the US and Russia had a nuclear war it would not matter where you are on the planet anymore than it mattered to the dinosaurs where they were on the planet 65 million years ago. An ensuing nuclear winter would cause world starvation and death on a similar scale to what happened to the dinosaurs. All of the nuclear bombs on the planet would not equate to that asteroid in energy, but that asteroid did not have anywhere near the levels of radiation that nuclear bombs do. Radiation not only kills it causes clouds to form. When the earth has been bombarded by extreme cosmic radiation, which occurs when the solar system moves through a spiral arm of the galaxy, the result is an ice-house earth. That would be in addition to all of the debris in the atmosphere that would last decades.
So the solution is to just let Russia do anything it pleases to “defend its interests” i.e. do whatever it wants?
Yes.
That’s the definition of ‘national sovereignty’, by the way. (I know that independence and sovereignty is a foreign concept to eurocuck eurogays, but bear with me.)
P.S. In principle you could replace ‘Russia’ here with any other country. But like I said, you wouldn’t understand.
There is a difference between actions within and without one’s own borders. All the difference in the world, actually. Rejecting Nazi imperialism was not a rejection of German sovereignty, to use the most obvious example.
Russians seem perplexed at the increasingly negative reputation they have in Europe. Of course they will probably just ascribe it to American influence (even though European opinions on America have been tracking downwards for at least the last few years), but the reason(s) why people don’t trust you is on full display in this very comments section: arrogance, chauvinism, “might makes right,” and the attitude that smaller countries have no right to exist, or exist only at the pleasure of whichever neighborhood bully happens to reside nearby.
“arrogance, chauvinism, “might makes right,” and the attitude that smaller countries have no right to exist, or exist only at the pleasure of whichever neighborhood bully happens to reside nearby.”
Fake on so many levels.
“Smaller countries” around Russia were all once part of the Soviet Union that was dissolved voluntarily in 1991. The key word here is voluntarily.
Why would Russians contemplate being expansionist towards something that they “got rid of” themselves in the first place. Unless, these smaller countries are used as tools in a conflict (not necessarily military) imposed on RF, in which case, RF must react to protect itself (only to be accused of aggression).
Another case of “inverted accusations” is the construction of natural gas pipes by-passing Ukraine. It makes perfect economic sense to build, under present circumstances, undersea gas pipes like Nord and South Stream. The advantages are obvious: no gas syphoning, no transit fees, no endless transit fees negotiations and blackmailing, no possibility of unwarranted third party interference for its strategic considerations etc.
This would result in smaller costs and consequently cheaper gas for gas customers.
Had Ukraine not engaged in all of the above, I am sure there was not going to be any need to build the “streams”. Instead, the existing pipelines would have been refurbished which would have been a win-win for everyone.
And yet, Russia is accused of by-passing Ukraine because it is being “aggressive”.
The Soviet Union was a paper tiger.
Actually, it was.
Germany did not regain sovereignty until 1990 and even afterwards restrictions continued to exist.
Sure thing, Sarmatian. Though in any case the 21st century will be an “Asiatic” one, so not clear why that would reflect badly on us.
PS. Anyone ever notice that it is generally the least historically accomplished European countries that tend to make a big deal of their supposed Europeanness?
Makes sense, because the very concept of ‘Europeannes’ is fake and gay.
There’s lots of things that made Western Europe Western Europe, but none of them fall under the umbrella of ‘Europeanness’, whatever that is.
Yea, Scythians. Blok described it well more than a century ago (here is the link to the translation: https://allpoetry.com/The-Scythians)
English translation (although in the original language it is a lot more impressive, like all good poetry):
You are but millions. Our unnumbered nations
Are as the sands upon the sounding shore.
We are the Scythians! We are the slit-eyed Asians!
Try to wage war with us—you’ll try no more!
You’ve had whole centuries. We—a single hour.
Like serfs obedient to their feudal lord,
We’ve held the shield between two hostile powers—
Old Europe and the barbarous Mongol horde.
Your ancient forge has hammered down the ages,
Drowning the distant avalanche’s roar.
Messina, Lisbon—these, you thought, were pages
In some strange book of legendary lore.
Full centuries long you’ve watched our Eastern lands,
Fished for our pearls and bartered them for grain;
Made mockery of us, while you laid your plans
And oiled your cannon for the great campaign.
The hour has come. Doom wheels on beating wing.
Each day augments the old outrageous score.
Soon not a trace of dead nor living thing
Shall stand where once your Paestums flowered before.
O Ancient World, before your culture dies,
Whilst failing life within you breathes and sinks,
Pause and be wise, as Oedipus was wise,
And solve the age-old riddle of the Sphinx.
That Sphinx is Russia. Grieving and exulting,
And weeping black and bloody tears enough,
She stares at you, adoring and insulting,
With love that turns to hate, and hate—to love.
Yes, love! For you of Western lands and birth
No longer know the love our blood enjoys.
You have forgotten there’s a love on Earth
That burns like fire and, like all fire, destroys.
We love cold Science passionately pursued;
The visionary fire of inspiration;
The salt of Gallic wit, so subtly shrewd,
And the grim genius of the German nation.
We know the hell of a Parisian street,
And Venice, cool in water and in stone;
The scent of lemons in the southern heat;
The fuming piles of soot-begrimed Cologne.
We love raw flesh, its color and its stench.
We love to taste it in our hungry maws.
Are we to blame then, if your ribs should crunch,
Fragile between our massive, gentle paws?
We know just how to play the cruel game
Of breaking in the most rebellious steeds;
And stubborn captive maids we also tame
And subjugate, to gratify our needs…
Come join us, then! Leave war and war’s alarms,
And grasp the hand of peace and amity.
While still there’s time, Comrades, lay down your arms!
Let us unite in true fraternity!
But if you spurn us, then we shall not mourn.
We too can reckon perfidy no crime,
And countless generations yet unborn
Shall curse your memory till the end of time.
We shall abandon Europe and her charm.
We shall resort to Scythian craft and guile.
Swift to the woods and forests we shall swarm,
And then look back, and smile our slit-eyed smile.
Away to the Urals, all! Quick, leave the land,
And clear the field for trial by blood and sword,
Where steel machines that have no soul must stand
And face the fury of the Mongol horde.
But we ourselves, henceforth, we shall not serve
As henchmen holding up the trusty shield.
We’ll keep our distance and, slit-eyed, observe
The deadly conflict raging on the field.
We shall not stir, even though the frenzied Huns
Plunder the corpses of the slain in battle, drive
Their cattle into shrines, burn cities down,
And roast their white-skinned fellow men alive.
O ancient World, arise! For the last time
We call you to the ritual feast and fire
Of peace and brotherhood! For the last time
O hear the summons of the barbarian lyre!
It is not about Russia defending its interests; it is about the US defending its interest. It is not in the interest of the US to have another cold war or another arms race with Russia or a new one with China. It is not in the interest of the US to have the Israeli foreign policy it has. Whether Israel exists or doesn’t is not a US concern. Whether Brexit happens or not is not, is not a US concern. Same for all of the countries in the middle east. Our interventionist foreign policy is diametrically opposed to the advice of George Washington who counseled against foreign entanglements. Unfortunately, we have seldom if ever heeded his sage advice.
That poem is absolutely appalling.
What the heck is that supposed to be based on? Sounds almost like the resentment of some ex-colonial persons of color today, as if Russia had been a colony, not a huge empire herself.
I get the impression this Alexader Blok was some kind of commie…fitting he died of malnutrition in 1921.
R1a Saka Sarmat Alan for lyfee
Germany did not regain sovereignty. It remains occupied 74 years after the war. The only country that ended occupation was Soviet Union in 1992. The US never followed suit.
No, he was not a commie. That’s why he did not get enough food in 1921. I’d rather the commissars died of hunger, and he lived, but history has no subjunctive mood. I guess he is referring to traditional Western European delusions of grandeur, the habit of considering everyone else beneath them. In fact, in the original this sounds somewhat different. But the main thrust is correct in translation: we protected you for a long time, you never appreciated this, so we won’t protect you any more.
I just reread Blok’s “The Scythians” and found that some of his lines are eerily prophetic. As some Russian commenters say, “Europe, RIP. We are gonna miss you”.
Maybe Russia’s empire was more tolerant and not as racially exclusive as many European ones, but still, delusions of grandeur don’t seem like something alien to Russians themselves imo. In fact I’d say Blok’s poem is also suffused with them, I sense a strange messianic undercurrent, mixed with thinly veiled threats, about Russia’s special role for the redemption of mankind, somehow different from rotten Europe with its materialism and imperialism.
Protect from what? The Tartars? The potential impact of steppe nomads in Western Europe was always limited by simple ecology.
In fact, from the perspective of many Europeans Russia herself, with her vast territory, sense of special mission and retrograde systems of government, has often seemed like a major threat. Maybe that perception wasn’t entirely fair (and in the case of Hitler’s Germany it morphed into racist beliefs and murderous actions which can’t be condoned), but it wasn’t entirely without basis in reality either.
Those are also the ones that are least likely to volunteer their countries to be new Algereas or Pakistans.
However it is funny. In the USA, if a store is labeled as “European” it is inevitbly Polish, or Ukrainian, or even Armenian.
You haven’t read it before? It’s very famous.
I wouldn’t call it appalling, but it reflects messianism and Russia’s mood at that time. I think it’s a powerful poem.
Kosovo.
What the hell was Kosovo then? Europeans directly and blatantly started a murderous war inside a sovereign country to force independence for an unhappy province. How is that any different than Crimea or Donbas? And Crimea was peaceful and happened AFTER Kosovo precedent.
And spare us the ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ platitudes. If Kosovo was wrong, maybe Western leaders should say so and hold themselves accountable. Until then you just look like a preachy hypocrite.
You’re behind the times, that’s actually what European values are supposed to be about nowadays, Poland, Hungary etc. are already framed as unEuropean, “bad” Europeans etc. in Western media.
It wouldn’t be that clean. And if Riga ends up full of Afro-surgeons and Paki ‘businessmen’, somehow it will blamed on Russia. When you deal with adolescents, it is better not to do any deals.
Asian nomadic raiders, Ottomans, and today from a flood of south Asians and Chinese who would easily penetrate Europe if there was no Russia barrier. Something like US southern border with Latin America – remote land borders are hard to guard.
The worst impacted in the past and today would actually be the eastern European countries. But as we know they are only a wait-station on the way to Germany or UK.
I agree that there is a messianic strain in Russia’s culture, but they have had enough trouble to just protect what they already have (and it is a lot), so it is mostly in poetry and rhetoric.
The idea that Russia would invade Poland or France, occupy it and try to force onto it some crazy ideology is itself crazy. They are not diligent enough for that. Regarding Ukraine and Baltic it all seems to be about mistreatment of local Russian minorities or speakers. A simple solution would be not to mistreat them. If EU was actually European, it would say so to the unhinged nationalist dreamers in Kiev and Riga. And all would be well.
Instead, Brussels busies itself with inventing ‘human right’ for Africans and Middle Easterners to settle in Europe, and get one’s culture subsidised and promoted. It is upside down and the build-up in hostility towards anything Russian looks like an intentional distraction. When you start falling for the ‘we must act against Russian aggression’ rhetoric you are already half-way neutralised. If you say A, you will eventually say B…and of to another stupid confrontation we go.
That’s a bit like saying interwar Czechoslovakia should just have stopped mistreating its German minority, and everything would have been fine, no potential for any trouble whatsoever.
I agree that something like Estonia’s attempts to restrict Russian-language education is problematic, but given some of your other comments I find it rather funny that you seem to have so little understanding what the situation might look like from the perspective of small nations like the Baltic states bordering giant Russia.
That’s not what I wrote, I was referring to hypothetical scenarios. I’m not in favour of the current confrontation with Russia either, it should be a high priority for European politicians to work for deescalation.
Yes, if there were cases of mistreatment they should had stopped. But German schools and language use was legal and unrestricted, Germans had full political rights, representation in Parliament, etc… It was also before EU and its emphasis on minority rights (a weak argument, but nevertheless).
Oh, I understand it quite well. It is simply a function of geography and best approach is to lower the temperature and not intentionally provoke (on both sides, but Balts seem today to provoke more). I also have little patience for revenge politics whether it is colonials against empires, feminists against men, or long-suffering nations against their former rulers. It is past, different people, different dynamic.
I answered your hypothetical by saying that instead of starting a war over it, the first step should be to listen to the complaints of the locals – e.g. Russians in Narva – in the context of European human rights principles. The same way as anywhere else, from Basques in Spain to Hungarians in Romania, or Swedes in Finland, Europe has a fairly workable way to solve this. But when you start with ‘but Russians are different, blabla…‘ and something about Asiats and WWII myths, you are on the way to oblivion. Most wars are totally unnecessary, this one would be an outright farce.
Not that long ago you were quite enthusiastic in your defense of Slovakia’s post-WW2 ethnic cleansing of Hungarians, so clearly you feel it’s right on some situations for formerly subordinate peoples to feel vindictive against their former imperial masters. Well, for the Baltic states Russians are the former imperial masters, and they have much shallower roots there than Hungarians did in Slovakia and in the minds of Baltic nationalists are associated with much worse repression than anything Hungarians ever did to Slovaks.
I agree with you that the issue of Russians in the Baltic states should be solved in a spirit of good neighbourliness and respect for minority rights, and as I wrote, something like Estonia’s move against Russian-language education is probably rather misguided. But I disagree that the onus for improving relations is solely on the Baltic states. Sentiments like those shown by some Russians here (“Baltic states are shitholes, can easily be conquered if Russia wants to”) can’t be helpful for dispelling concerns of the Baltic states for their sovereignty or the notion that local Russians might be a 5th column.
I didn’t write anything about an alleged Asiatic mentality of Russians, so I don’t feel this applies to me.
It was 1945-48 and WWII was different. I am concerned with today. You statements that Hungarians had ‘deeper roots’ in Slovakia or that the oppression was milder than in the Baltic states are not true – I don’t want to rehash it but Soviets (Russians) were communist and above-nationality, Balts had free access to their languages, schools and culture. Magyars in Slovakia in 1890-1914 period were nationalist and restricted others’ language and cultural rights. It was ethnic, and Soviets were ‘class’ based. In any case, 2019 is not 1945 and shouldn’t be.
In Latvia-Estonia (and now slowly also in Ukraine) you have a situation where EU basic minority norms are ignored and EU stays silent. That’s not in the same category as a random statement by someone in a discussion forum. You trying to equate the tho is rather troubling.
You didn’t call Russians Asiats, that was not a reaction to you. But your argument implicitly suggests that ‘Russians are somehow different’ and not covered by EU general policies. It is that blind spot that leads to everything else. The best way to lower tensions in Baltic would be for Brussels to say that language-citizenship discrimination for long-term residents doesn’t belong in EU – and that also means Russians. Instead they look the other way and work on rights for Pakis and Nigerians.
Russia protected Europe many times, not by design or out of kindness of its heart, but it did.
First, it was against Mongols/Tatars, who were stuck in Russian quagmire and did not advance to Europe. Geography did not deter them: remember the Great Mughal (Moghul) Empire in Northern India? Mongols and allied nomads crossed high mountains, despite being steppe people.
Next Russian Empire made it impossible for the Ottoman Empire to progress much further than the Balkans. By way of gratitude, eventually France and Britain allied themselves with the Ottoman Empire in Crimean war. Their victory did not last long, though.
Russia also protected Europe against itself: it crushed Napoleon in the nineteenth century and Hitler in twentieth. It sure did not neglect to get the spoils after both wars.
Recently Russia was the chance (already lost) for declining Europe to protect itself from the US Empire. Recent behavior of the EU guaranteed that Russia won’t protect Europe from invading hordes of Muslims and Africans, or from Chinese domination. Blok couldn’t know about that, but in essence he was right: Russia will simply stock up on popcorn and watch.
However, what’s the point of saying all this now? As they say in Russia, the train has already left the station.
As to “retrograde systems of government”, it’s a pretty common misconception in Europe. When Russia was an absolute monarchy, so were most European countries. Technically, the UK still is: it has no constitution, its head of the state (Queen or King) is hereditary, and the head of government is elected by the parliament, not by the people. The latter is true for Germany, as well as for Spain, Italy, etc. German or Italian President is not hereditary, but not elected by the people, either. In contrast, Russian President is. Among large European countries, only France can boast of that. At the times of Stalin’s Soviet Union, many European nations were ruled by dictators. Not to mention that present-day Western “democracy” is a ruse for the gullible sheeple. In fact, scientific analysis of American system (see here https://bulletin.represent.us/american-government-isnt-democracy/ and at many other sites) came to the conclusion that the US is an oligarchy, not democracy. The uniformity of “opinions” in Western MSM today is matched only by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In Russia you have much greater variety, even on state-owned TV channels. But the pot keeps calling the kettle black. What’s more, sheeple readily gobble up the lies of the pot. Orwell was prophetic, even though he probably did not know that he described Western society in “1984”. Or maybe he did.
Maybe in theory, but in practice the post-1945 mass settlement of Russians was clearly intended to disarm Baltic nationalisms and keep the countries Sovietized.
I didn’t suggest that at all, in fact I explicitly wrote that something like restricting Russian-language education is problematic/misguided. I don’t know all the details of the situation, so I’m being somewhat reserved in my judgment, but I agree with your general line about the issue.
I’m unsympathetic to that line of argument, because “long-term residents” could easily be applied to groups like Turks in Germany as well…should they be granted formal recognition as an ethnic minority, with attendant rights and privileges?
Maybe one could get around that by applying it only to native ethnic minorities with deep roots in the country or something like that…but are post-1945 Russian immigrants to the Baltic states native ethnic minorities? Not clear at all imo.
Steppe nomads need large amounts of grass land for feeding their horses, in Europe that only exists in the Hungarian plain which couldn’t have sustained a large Mongol army for many years. So there were clear ecological limits to the Mongol way of warfare in Europe.
Habsburgs and the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth were fighting against the Ottomans well before Russia iirc, so that’s a bit one-sided imo (though Russia did play a role in rolling back the Ottoman empire).
It’s not even entirely sure that Russia will be able to protect herself from those negative trends, so that sounds a bit far-fetched. And the Muslims and Africans are only coming because of political decisions taken by Europe’s own elites, it’s not like Russia could have done anything about that short of a regime change operation.
Maybe true to some extent for much of the early modern period, but Tsarist Russia was notably behind most European polities in introducing institutions of representative government and checks on the monarch’s power. But I’m not saying this is due to some defect in the Russian character, in any case one has to consider different geographical and material conditions.
Admittedly there is truth to this, there are certainly grounds for a positive view of Russia’s role in those conflicts.
Early 20th century Latvia was already 10% Russian, so at least some Russians there would be 4th or 5th generation. It is complicated by the layers of Russian population: some are recent arrivals, some have been there for generations, some are mixed. The 1945-90 people may had been settled for political reason, but that is hard to show, maybe they are there because of industry or higher living standards – this logic could be applied elsewhere with some unpredictable consequences, e.g. ‘white’ Australia policy, British settlement in Ulster, and endless other places from Alsace to Greece. Even non-Hispanics in California would fit that description of political migrants. How would West feel if all those were attempted to be reversed?
The other factor is that between 1945-89 it was a single country. Unlike Turks in Germany they were not foreign immigrants with no citizenship rights. There is also the fact that Balts and Russians for all the rhetoric are hardly distinguishable.
What I see in Baltic (and a few other places) is stupidity. The real problem there is the population drop and the danger of being swamped by EU sponsored Afro migrants.
One more time: if there is any unrest in Estonia or Latvia, before starting a potentially catastrophic war, I would want to know the merits of that unrest and whether a simple application of normal EU standards could solve it. I suspect many of the local nationalists and their parasite advisors from Washington-Warsaw prefer not to have this discussion and risk a war. I am always suspicious when people try to avoid even talking about a particular topic.
I don’t know about many places, but Russians lived in Narva before Estonians got off the trees. Swedes historically considered Finns backward savages. Estonians and Karels are under-developed Finns. You get the picture.
You have a point in one thing, though: most of these problems were created by Stalin, who arbitrarily drew the borders in a way to include Russian-populated areas into many former Soviet republics. I guess he wanted to have fifth column everywhere and never even contemplated the dissolution of the USSR. In some cases he used other nations: he included non-Georgian Abkhasia (which actually joined the USSR as an independent republic) and South Ossetia into Georgia, or placed Chechens and Ingushes, who hated each other for centuries, into one autonomous republic within Russian Federation, etc.
Becow has a point in other thing: EU position on minorities is hypocritical through and through, it has no leg to stand on. EU spews a lot of hot air about minority rights, but pretends that it does not notice obvious apartheid in Latvia and Estonia, and even worse in late unlamented Ukraine. Than again, I know a lot of Europeans, but I’ve never met a real person having high opinion about the EU.
Yes, because the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic states against the wishes of most of their population, that’s not an entirely irrelevant detail.
I tend to agree with this.
I agree even more with this, especially since the ports in Italy are now open once again and the German government has agreed to bring 25% of the new arrivals to Germany.
It’s indeed rather pointless to get worked up about a made-up “Russian threat”, when your own government works overtime to have you replaced with Congolese.
Nobody asked European elites. These were the marching orders of Imperial globohomo elites, followed by todays emasculated degenerate European elites. If you disagree about subservient position of European elites, let me remind you about the US monitoring Merkel’s phone. How much do you hear about it now? What does this deafening silence tell you?
Are Russians in Latvia and Estonia subjected to pass laws or barred from acquiring citizenship for racial reasons? I don’t think so.
Probably not a good idea to compare oneself to South African blacks either, given the trajectory of that country under black rule.
Nah, people like Merkel really believe in the mass immigration project (as does a significant part of the electorate), they don’t need any orders from Uncle Sam.
But that’s going off-topic and better reserved for an open thread.
Sure, but that logic could apply in many others cases, from US annexing Mexican southwest, to Britain, France, etc… if you start determining things by what was right 100 or 200 years ago you are opening a real Pandora box of problems. Let’s focus on today, we can’t fix history.
We agree on the rest, media screams about ‘Russians, Russians’ invading, and in the meantime pretty much all of Third World is tacitly invited to just move to Europe. It could be a coincidence, or are they just devious enough to work the Russia angle as a perfect distraction.
Latvian anti-Russian policies explicitly don’t apply to Russians who can prove ancestry in Latvia to before Soviet times. They only target Sovok colonists and their descendants.
AnnonFromTN emigre turbo Russian chauvinism that seems to be unconstrained by reason in a person who at the same time claims to be very successful and accomplished can only be understood through some traumatic experience in the US like for example the Appalachian Tennessee oink-oink squeal like a pig experience:
It’s language apartheid: to acquire citizenship, you have to pass a test in their tribal language. Considering how few people on Earth speak Estonian or any version of Latvian (there are three dialects of it), this is hardly reasonable. Say, if Switzerland or Singapore had that kind of laws, they’d become Ukraine.
BTW, apartheid is not specific to South Africa, although they invented the term. Israel practices apartheid, too (in that case its even based on nationality, like in SA).
I don’t know where you got those delusions, but if they make your life more enjoyable, you are welcome to keep them.
“tribal language” sounds pretty colonialist, don’t you think?
I’d say in Latvia and Estonia it is, and obviously for such small nations preservation and promotion of their national language is an especially acute problem.
Baltic states aren’t doing anything like Israel either though…or do you now want to tell me they’re building settlements on Russian land and subjecting Russians to ever more intrusive checkpoint controls etc.?
“Apartheid” is simply a completely misleading term for anything going on in the Baltic states.
Look, there are more than 6,000 languages in existence today. Many are dying out. As a biologist, I’d call it natural selection. I think in ~100 years there would be fewer than 1,000. Neither Estonian, nor any dialect of Latvian would be among the survivors. They are losing population too fast. This does not suggest that their policies are smart. As a scientist, I’d say that it is stupid and vain to go against natural processes. Does not stop many people, though. When God wants to punish a person (or a nation), he takes away that person’s (or nation’s) mind.
Yes, Israel is more violent. Maybe because they are not properly scared of any of their Arab neighbors. This is changing even as we speak.
Here we go: pure hypocrisy. Typical European attitude. I guess, it cannot be helped.
Most of what Europeans know about Middle America comes as the result of highly biased New York Times articles reprinted through the AP.
By contrast, most Americans have ridiculously romantic ideas about Europe; while a subset of the right believes that European cities are as violent as most US cities.
Any restrictions on usage of Russian language applies to all equally, long-term residents and recent ‘colonists’. So by definition it can’t be ‘targeted’.
You live in Nashville or Williamson County, right?
For those not familiar with US geography, this is the most “upmarket” part of Appalachia.
The EU is polling much higher than its 2009 recession era nadir. It polls at 90% in Germany and Poland. You’d probably get lower ratings for the US federal government in many states.
Eurosceptics have foolishly targeted the EU, and lost support due to the Brexit fiasco.
Salvini had the right idea to try to unite the souveranist bloc in the EU parliament, but he was late in the game and needlessly distracted by Steve Bannon’s unwanted interference.
The average European loves Schengen, Erasmus and even the Euro has made a comeback. Just imagine how popular a “US Erasmus” that allowed in-state tuition for any state would be. And then imagine the insanity of passports at every US state-line.
FYI, I live in Davidson County. Williamson County is indeed upmarket, Nashville proper (Davidson County) isn’t. Neither County is Appalachia.
If the Russian commenters are unhappy then maybe the Soviet Union shouldn’t have forced Balts (and all other non-Russians) to learn Russian.
Some nations are only satisfied with their enemies either at their feet or at their throats – Russians, apparently, are displeased even then.
I am sure I am not a typical American, but I have pretty realistic views about Europe. I was in many German, French, British, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Russian, and Austrian cities, as well as in a few in Hungary, Croatia, Switzerland, Slovenia, Serbia, and Czech Republic. In addition, I was in Estonia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Latvia (back in Soviet times), Ukraine, Donetsk, and Lugansk People’s Republics. In terms of violence, even Mexico City or Buenos Aires is safer than most American big cities (although in the last ~15 years New York, Philadelphia, and Boston greatly improved). You don’t see homeless in Europe, or neighborhoods that look freshly bombed out. But well-to-do (not super-rich, but those who actually earn their living) are wealthier in the US than in Europe.
As far as NYT goes, in the last ~15 years the percentage of lies there grew from ~50% to ~95%. Percentage of lies on CNN roughly matches NYT.
A lot of Europeans appreciate the convenience of Euro and the absence of borders. At the same time they complain that with the introduction of Euro the prices went up. This applies not only to Greeks, Italians, or Spaniards (where the prices really shot up a lot: I visited these countries before and after Euro), but also to Germans and French.
Balts were not forced to learn Russian. Only those who wanted to go to college in Russia proper needed it. But they do need some language they can use outside of their boondocks. I remember in the last years of the USSR being in a train with some Latvian (maybe Estonian, who can tell the difference) young ladies. They vehemently argued that English is best suited as an international language. I switched to English, and within minutes they begged to switch back to Russian: their English was at the level of my Chinese. That stopped the argument.
Something different than that has been planned for us. The Balts are still quite callous so there won’t be extensive welfare for third country nationals. The danger comes from Asia. Example: the founder of Rovio / Angry Birds (a Finn with a Swedish last name) thinks he’s Northern Europe’s Elon Musk so he wants to talk Estonia into agreeing to building a high speed railway tunnel between Helsinki and Tallinn. Investment would be 15B euro, would be built by Chinese or Japanese company. Without delving into logistics and regional competiton, here’s the rub – the dude is super liberal and believes Finland needs 1M immigrants. They also want to open up to foreign students. From China, India. Dude can’t build enough residential housing for his own people but wants to build a floating island to house Patels.
This is all a part of this utopian idea that Tallinn, Riga, Helsinki, Stockholm would form one aglomerate. Maybe include Minsk. Like a new Hansa which under different historic circumstances I would accept but today…
More people will be moving into the region, already are. The locals hold the keys and it should be done on their terms. If at all.
As to the usage of Russian, it is widely used. They have their own media outlets. Some of these outlets have spewed absolutely vile hatred against the local populations and should’ve been closed years ago.
We did most of what the EU and Nato asked years ago which was a lot so if the EU and NATO even as little as open their mouths again about our right to protect our language in our own countries they can go to the Devil’s mother.
They won’t though. And the Russian minority is not the problem because Lithuania doesn’t have them yet Russia’s still not happy. They want to apply the Francafrique on us but it won’t work because there are no perks for us and we are not papuases as much as they like to call us that.
The issue with the Russian language instruction (which they still have) is that this creates a situation where they wouldn’t understand what the majority is saying. Why should the onus be on the Baltic mothers and children to learn a difficult language including the Cyrillic alphabet to accommodate a shrinking Russian populatjon. It simply won’t be done.
Most Russian children and many adults are already bilingual. We should of course help the cubs with everything we have. Many parents want local language instruction for their kids and they should receive it. The Northern Russian cubs are very valuable.
As to “unrest”, Beckow, if you wonder why there is so little, it might be because they have a quarter of seats in the parliament, the Riga mayor’s seat, board memberships in state enterprises that amount to 6 figures for people with lousy former humanities or PR careers, and a ton of other perks. They know that if they rock the boat too much they risk losing it.
They shouldn’t have forced the Balts into the Soviet Union at all. Yes, bilingualism was mandatory to accommodate the newcomers. And unlike what Beckow says there are differences btw Balts and Russians, for ex, the sense of personal space, Balts require an arm’s length distance whereas the Russians often don’t. They can also be louder and bolder. Only the Northern Russians and maybe Belarussians are very similar.
AnonfromTN is also full of it. There aren’t 3 dialects of Latvian, there is standard Latvian and there is Latgalian which is spoken in the east and is easy to understand.
Even lying wiki knows the other two dialects of Latvian, Latgalian and Kursenieki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian_language), but self-proclaimed LatW does not. Tells you a lot about LatW.
IIRC (LatW can correct me) Russians who could prove that they are descended from pre-Sovok Russians were exempt from Latvian language tests for citizenship, they automatically got it.
Levels of Baltic butthurt (Latvians are slightly better) really is astounding, if it weren’t for Russian those countries would have culturally assimilated by Scandinavians and Germans centuries ago, with little heritage remaining except a few elderly speakers of dying languages and a funny accent like Ireland.
All the Baltics along with East Europe as a whole have been haemorrhaging people since 1989, since the EU’s expansion the old colonial relationship Western Europeans always held towards Easterners has just resumed uninterrupted from where it left off.
Interestingly, I was reading that Estonia was the only country in the world that recognised Chechnya as a sovereign state.
Rubbish. Narva started off as the eastern limit town of the Danish conquest, grew around their fort and it was historically majority Finnic (mainly Estonian) but politically dominated by Danes and later Germans with the Swedes getting in for a while. The Russians later built a fort on the other side of the river and Ivangorod grew into a town. If Russia had what’s now Estonia from the start without Danish, Teutonic and Swedish influence there would have been no Narva and no Ivangorod as opposing fort-towns.
Narva was still majority Estonian up to World War II when it was nearly destroyed and the Estonians were deported. The present town was mostly built after the war and even the ethnic Russian inhabitants overwhelmingly aren’t descendants from pre-WWII Narva. Note that part of historical Ivangorod had been combined with Narva during the period of the Russian empire and it remained in Estonia between the world wars; that part was given to Russia in the border change following the Soviet annexation.
You come across as an absolute idiot to be stating opinions with certainty when you clearly don’t know anything at all about either the history or the present. That is the opposite of what Stalin did! The border changes made to Estonia when Stalin annexed it made Estonia MORE Estonian. Under Stalin certain eastern, historically Russian parts populated by ethnic Russians were given to Russia which left the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic initially 97 % Estonian. Stalin’s border changes made Estonia more homogeneously Estonian than any other version of Estonia that has ever existed!
The first part of the demographic shift did happen during Stalin but it had nothing to do with borders which Stalin (or whichever adviser decided them) actually matched very well to history and ethnic reality. It was the mass deportations that hit ethnic Estonians and the people that were brought in to replace, mostly Russians with communist credentials that satisfied the Stalinist regime (so a big part of the demographic problem is that the Russians were specifically chosen to have hostile, extra communist political views). However these didn’t overturn the demographics and Estonia was still overwhelmingly majority Estonian at Stalin’s death.
The persistent demographic shift got going during the Khrushchev housing era so the credit for creating the mess largely goes to the same people who thought it was a bright idea to give Crimea to Ukraine. That’s when the era of quickly built commie block suburbs to house the urbanizing population got really off the ground in the whole USSR – but in the Baltic states it took the extra character of changing the local demographics as the people who moved into those buildings were heavily ethnic Russian. This shift was still happening at the collapse of the USSR as similar commie block neighborhoods and the adjacent industry were still being built and still getting migrants from Russia.
The population of Narva at Stalin’s death was still only a bit over 20 000. In 1970 – a bit under 60 000. The growth continued until the end of USSR and peaked at over 80 000. It has fallen since due to emigration of Russians.
The heaviest promotion of linguistic russification was a Brezhnev era policy.
He has no point. The EU has no strong protections for minority languages and never will because a whole bunch of countries with vetoes like France, Spain, Italy etc have minority languages that they don’t want to see getting any stronger. Especially France is built around linguistic nationalism and the supremacy of French over minority languages and France is now the one setting the moral tone over what kind of nationhood is acceptable.
Basically if you expect the EU to interfere on “minority rights” or “equality” in Baltic states, the most likely EU stance will be that there should be MORE effort to teach the Russians the local languages so that they can have equal access to government services and employment.
Furthermore, if Russia pushes this issue in European “human rights” courts it will run into the problem that all these institutions were created with stated goals to oppose ethnic cleansing as a “crime against humanity” after Germany had been convicted at the end of World War II. The USSR as a victor with plenty of ideological sympathizers in the West was ignored for similar behavior but today Russia is not a fresh, terrifying victor and today EU courts are packed with people who have only ideological antipathies against it. Russia definitely does not want to have those courts investigating how all those Estonians disappeared from Narva and how it turned Russian.
Slovaks enjoy telling that to the Hungarian minority.
Seems understandable to me.
They could have been Germans and Nordics and realized more of their potential, but in the end they remained Balts, a bunch of puny nations at the eastern periphery of EUrope.
That’s what happened to the Old Prussians. Few of their descendants now live in the region.
Any educational or office use restrictions on Russian language apply equally – you can be a 5th generation Russian or even 10th generation (and there are a lot of them) and not be allowed even basic minority rights guaranteed in EU to all minorities.
Where and when? This is simply not true.
See #114.
I can only say this: there are always three different stories about a family quarrel: his, hers, and the truth. Neither he, nor she will ever accept the truth. End of story.
Latgalian is often considered its own language, rather than a dialect, though this is somewhat controversial (perhaps it is like Carpato-Rusyn to Ukrainian though I’m not familiar enough with Latvian and Latgalian to say)
Maybe. I don’t speak any of the three versions of Latvian (or any of these three languages, whatever the case might be). I might choose to learn Spanish or Chinese because of their usefulness. The chances of me wanting to learn Latvian or any of the other two are exactly zero due to their uselessness outside of their microscopic piece of land. Their problem is that even a few migrants they allowed under the EU pressure refuse to learn Latvian, but learn Russian instead. Not for political, but for purely practical reasons. Interestingly, Latvian stats show that those who speak Russian (regardless of national origin) have better job prospects and are paid more.
I’m sorry but this simply isn’t up to date info. The most recent migrants are learning Latvian and Estonian. The small Chinese immigrant group as well as some of the Western spouses are learning.
As for the coastal group you brought up, the Kuren, they lived on the Curonian lagoon and were savagely flushed out after the war, just like the remaining ancient Prussian genetics. Thanks for bringing up their memory. That doesn’t change the fact that our language was standardized a long time ago. You don’t realize how retrograde you sound.
I don’t get what the fuss is though. For Russian speakers there are some really nice relo options out there. Parts of Russia are now gentrified. The UMC Russians who visit the Baltics attest to that – they are more discreet, less flashy, no more “paltsi veyerom” and overdone makeup. Their clothing is still high end but more classy. I was very impressed observing them this summer.
Good comparison. Listening to Rusyn, almost all of it should be understandable for a Ukrainian but the accent is more Western Slavic sounding. Like Slovak. It’s really amazing hearing where that Western phonetic transition is taking place.
Re: on Latgalia, you might find it interesting that it has strong Catholic roots (unlike the rest of the country which is Lutheran). There was a very beautiful event there on August 15 when pilgrims, including from Poland, gathered around the Aglona Basilica. They streamed it on national TV for 3 hours.
Wojtyla has been there (in 1993).
Well, be it as it may, the whole population of Latvia (including Russian non-citizens) is less than 2 million. Even if Latvian is as standardized as you say, it has fewer than 2 million speakers. In terms of speakers, it is not just absent in the top ten languages used, it didn’t even make the top one hundred. For comparison, Southern Quechua (ever heard of it?) has 7 million speakers. If you add the rate of population loss… maybe Nigerians are the best hope for preserving Latvian culture, but people would laugh at you in this case.
You can always point out that Estonian is spoken by even fewer people: the whole population of Estonia, with Russian non-citizens, is ~1.3 million. If that is a consolation, you are welcome to it.
What is beautiful about christcucks gathering for Simon mol to rise from the dead and continue his holy work. Will he be sainted?
Even if that were true, it would not be the case here, as YOU ARE NOT A PART OF THE FAMILY. You are not Estonian, you are not Russian and you are not even anyone else from the Baltic Sea, you are some American with no connection to the place.
You made a whole bunch of objectively false statements like Stalin drawing the borders to create an ethnically mixed Estonia when he did exactly the opposite – the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic started off as homogeneously Estonian and it was turned mixed by later policy. There are no “different stories” about this, you are simply making up shit yourself and imagining that you’re taking some “Russian side” when your made up stories are contradicting Russian history books as much as they’re contradicting anyone’s history books.
YOU are the one who is slandering Russian World War II intentions here with your assertion that Stalin drew mixed borders as a part of a plot to undermine other nations with a “fifth column”. I am the one who pointed out that it’s not true, Stalin did the exact opposite and separated Russian populated, historically Russian parts from Estonia to create a LESS Russian Estonia. (I consider these border adjustments like giving all of historical Ivangorod to Russia extremely reasonable and I’ve never met a Russian who would argue against me, even if it’s a Russian who absolutely hates Stalin.)
I am the one who pointed out that there was no such Russian fifth column scheme implemented by the border changes (and that actually the opposite was done) and that the ethnic demographics changed much as a side effect of housing and industrial policies so I was effectively defending Russia against your accusation that it was all one nefarious plot to undermine other nations with ethnic Russian fifth columns.
You seem to be a very typical expat psuedonationalist who abandoned his homeland (or whose family abandoned the homeland), lost any connection to it and now tries to compensate with attempts to take an extreme black and white “pro-Russian” stance – but since you don’t even know anything about the issues you end up taking totally random positions that don’t even correspond to any Russian factions.
Worse, you ended up endorsing the common Western russophobic trope of superbadman Stalin drawing borders that are intentionally mismatched with ethnic and historical reality as if it’s the truth when the reality is the opposite and Russia actually drew them with a very good match to the historical ethnic association and the 1945 ethnic distribution. It was a much better fit than the 1920 peace treaty borders. Yet you imagine that you’re actually “taking the Russian side” of a “family dispute”, making it evident that you’re very much not in the family.
It appears to be useless to argue with you, as you ignore all evidence and focus on Estonia only. In the grand scheme of things Estonia is as relevant as Republic of Palau.
It might be that Stalin drew Estonia borders according to nationalities of population. This was not so in most cases. Stalin added Transnistria to Moldova arbitrarily, knowing full well that few Moldovans live there. He added South Ossetia and Abkhasia to Georgia, significantly decreasing Georgian fraction of the population in the republic. He placed hating each other Chechens and Ingushes into the same autonomous republic. These are just the examples I cited and you ignored. It’s pretty clear why.
As far as positions go, I am not pro-Russian, I am pro-truth. Stalin did many good things and a lot of despicable things. Painting him all white or all black is equally untrue. The same goes for many things done by the Soviet Union after Stalin. As regards Estonia proper, all “Estonian” cities were founded by non-Estonians, mostly by Germans. Soviet authorities developed industry and port facilities in Estonia and supported higher standards of living there than in Russia proper. That was wrong of them. Current official position of Estonian authorities that their country suffered under Soviet occupation is pure demagoguery.
Anyway, Russia is shifting export to Ust-Luga port, specifically built to cut off the lifeline to all three Baltic statelets that went mad with their Russophobia. Incidentally, EU subsidies are ending in 2020. So, your Estonia, as well as Latvia and Lithuania, will have to earn their living themselves. First and foremost, independence means that everyone carries his own suitcase. Good luck with that.