RT is now reporting that Putin said Russia may offer fast-track citizenship to all Ukrainians at the Belt and Road summit in Beijing.
He has also reacted forcefully to critics of giving Donbass residents citizenship:
These rumors are spread by people who don’t want Russia to support the people in Donbass. There will be no serious burden on the Russian budget, we have calculated everything.
So what did I tell you? This as good as confirms that PUTLER reads my blog. Back in October 2018, I suggested that best course of action now is to drain the Ukraine of human capital. This will now become much easier… assuming this is actually followed up.
Will it be?
Well, my/Kholmogorov’s suggestions from antoher post written soon afterwards have been adopted by the kremlins:
For instance, as Kholmogorov has recently suggested, one powerful way this ideological reformulation – if indeed it is to be taken seriously – can be implemented is in the Donbass, which is ripe for mass distributions of Russian passports. Furthermore, Putin explicitly mentioned the long-suffering Donbass in his speech, alluding to their struggle to preserve their national roots and traditions. But if Russians are henceforth to be defined by their Russianness, and the Donbass is fighting to preserve its Russianness, then it becomes ridiculous to continue portraying the War in the Donbass as an internal Ukrainian affair, as Kremlin propaganda has been doing since the end of the abortive “Russian Spring” in 2014.
But that post also included the following:
According to the latest report from Kommersant, the desirability of increasing labor immigration from the Ukraine and Belorussia has been explicitly specified. According to an anonymous official, the next legislative change could involve the cancelation of Russian language requirements for citizens of those countries for obtaining Russian citizenship: “They all speak Russian there anyway,” notes the official in question. There will likely be further deregulation of naturalization procedures for highly qualified specialists and people who finished university with flying colors.
So hopefully these general trends – making Russian citizenship easier to obtain for Russians abroad, and ultimately not just in the Ukraine – will continue progressing in that vein.
Sorry but passportizatsiya is a very Nazi thing to do. And an excuse already seen in Sudetenland, Austria, Abkhazia and Crimea to consolidate occupation
— toomas ilves, ex-verif (@IlvesToomas) April 25, 2019
PS. It is very telling that “liberal” commenters, both in Russia and the West, have been so triggered by the passports decision. As Egor Prosvirnin noted on his livestream with Zhuchkovsky yesterday, internationalist liberalism ends when it comes to Russia issuing passports to Russians in the LDNR, and Russian socialism ends when it comes to paying pensions to Donbass grandmothers (a whole bunch of people who complained about Putin raising pensions now condemn him for deciding to subsidize Donbass parasites… even though this is not even strictly true, as people who continue to reside in the Donbass will apparently be ineligible for Russian pensions unless they move to Russia).
But back to the topic at hand. Is Russia forcing anybody to accept passports? No, it isn’t. It is offering people choices. Opening up borders. Isn’t labor mobility an important part of globalization, which has brought immense prosperity to the world the past few decades? Indeed, do not many other countries, such as Israel and Hungary, already long have such politicies, though even more implicitly ethnonationalist in character? Why are they not getting condemned and accused of “escalating” tensions? The answer is that their support for cosmopolitanism and globalization ends wherever Russia starts to benefit from them too.
PPS. Seriously, what happened to Putin to make him go from putlet to PUTLER within less than a year?
The filthy cockroach grifter Joe Biden…
War Crimes in Ukraine…..aided and abetted Nazis in the Ukraine….
If the fat fucking cockroach ANTIFA Heather Hyer were still alive…..she would be voting for….as the many species of BLATARIA will be………cockroach Joe Biden…the neo-nazi enabler…..
For what it’s worth, Hungary did receive serious criticism of its passport policies.
I think Russians are deciding to act now because recession is coming to US and EU. Best to act when opponent is distracted.
Russians benefit from a blurry border and Ukrainian nationalists would benefit from a hard one. This is a smart move by Putin.
I think that most of the younger people that have been able to leave Donbas for either Russia or Ukraine have already done so. These new measures that Putler is promoting will only serve to draw away many of the remaining souls there. Looks like Donbas will become a total human wasteland for many decades to come…
Meanwhile, Poland is eating the Ukrainian cake from the western side. In a few decades, the Ukraine will be a void, demographically speaking. Their birth numbers are already collapsing in front of our eyes. So do the Russian ones, but as we see, they want to fill up the ranks with Ukrainians.
Its surprising it took Putin 5 years to seriously start looking at expediting the the granting of citizenship to Ukrainians. The way things are going with Ukraine having a 3:1 GDP per capita gap relative to Poland and Russia I expect there will be huge emigration from Ukraine in the decades to come if there is no economic convergence. Increasing the flow of migrants from Ukraine should also help Russia stave off significant population decline in the short to medium term. Putin may finally be starting to become the kind of leader the Russian nation needs.
Putin may finally be starting to become the kind of leader the Russian nation needs.
Who do you think could have done a better job? What would have been your policies over the last 19 years if you were in charge of Russia?
Of course it did. Ethnonationalism is the terror that wakes globalists at night. The whole EU project was built in opposition to it. And let’s not kid ourselves: these things are explosive if they get out of hand.
Sagging approval rating might have something to do with it. Putin is not a stupid person and understands what people want from him.
My thoughts exactly! It’s worth mentioning that the country hasn’t had a census since 2001. Its actual population could be significantly lower than the current figures indicate. When Georgia had a census in 2014 its actual population turned out 20% lower, than previously thought.
Emulate the demographic policies of Israel.
Emulate the fiscal policies of fellow petro-state Norway, avoid Dutch Disease.
Attract more US investment into Russia to counterbalance the EU and China.
Sign a free-trade deal with the US.
In core Europe (Blue Banana) or the American white middle class?
Sure, there is significant fear of ethnonationalism.
But outside of it there is nowhere near the level of political correctness, and nationalists have a less cringe-worthy appearance.
No one condemns Mexican nationalism or Chinese nationalism. Nor do they condemn Pan-African nationalism.
They do condemn Hindu nationalism.
Free trade deal with the US, because the US always makes it a 50/50 arrangement? LOL.
Attract more insidious American Wall Street-US .gov tentacles as the American parasites are currently sanctioning the giant Rusal and GAZ factory complexes jeopardizing the livelihoods of 40,000 Russians employees? Not hardly. The US is never to be trusted.
Does Putin really want to copy our wealth-concentrating / asset-bubble-inflating / mass-immigration-flowing Wage Stagnation Economy? It brings so much prosperity for so few, creating such a placid stew of satisfied serfs in the bottom 80%, taking to the streets with various agendas none of which are pro-Establishment.
The US has run huge trade deficits, allowing the hollowing out of its Rust Belt. 50/50 would be an upgrade for the US.
The EU, by virtue of geography, will always be more of a threat. It’s long term goals are to subvert and incorporate Russia into EU membership and Liberalism. The US cannot do that, protestations of Chechen-supporting neocons aside.
The US Right also needs the help of Europe’s most conservative country.
If Russia needs people why didn’t Putin follow through on his offer last year to those South African farmers. Those people are in real immediate daily threat to their lives and family lives whereas the Ukraine situation was not quite as dire…
Why’d Putin cancel these plans of his?
On the bright side, though, at least other countries are going to benefit from Ukraine’s decline.
A flow of Ukrainians could also mitigate population decline in the rest of Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechia, Hungary, et cetera), no?
An effect of liberalizing the process of passport applications for Ukrainians will give a little more aid to the Ukrainization of Ukraine, as ceteris paribus, more Russians will emigrate to Russia.
Good side of policy:
1. Helping normal people have less paperwork barriers.
2. Increasing immigration of people from Ukraine, other things equals.
Bad side of policy:
1. This will, other things equal, increase Ukrainization in Ukraine, loss of its historical Russian people, culture, language.
And his opinion relevant? Estonian diplomat. In Estonia, they do not give passports even to the country’s own population, who were born in the country, if their parents’ were Russian. Estonian official opinion is relevant as an example of the second worst contemporary policy in Europe of not giving passports to a country’s main historical minority, after Latvia.
In Israel, they only give the passport to people who have been living in the country for a year, and they only give an immigration visa to people who qualify for their complicated “Law of Return” system. Israel is a medium-difficult passport to acquire, even for people who qualify for their Law of Return.
The most liberal heritage passport, is Italy. In Italy, they give a passport to anyone (regardless of nationality or religion), who had any ancestor who lived historically in Italy.
In addition, they send the passport to people who have never been to Italy even for a vacation. So Italy is constantly sending passports across the Atlantic Ocean, to lucky Brazilians, Uruguayans, Chileans, Argentinians, who had an ancestor that had lived in Italy in the 19th century.
Too liberal passport system is quite abused, though. South Americans use the Italian passport to live in other EU countries, like the UK or Spain (without necessarily going to visit Italy).
Although there will not be this issue by liberalizing passport application process for Ukrainians, as a Russian passport is not more useful than a Ukrainian one, unless you will move to Russia.
This assumes the number of people leaving grows, rather than is relatively constant. Recently a lot of those people willing to leave Ukriane for work, even from eastern Ukraine, now go to Poland rather than Russia because it is easy to do and because wages in Poland are a lot higher than wages in Russia (hence all the new direct flights between Kharkiv and Zaporizhia and Poland). Granting Ukrainians easy Russian citizenship may be a way of getting some of that flow into Poland, back to Russia. It may not necessarily mean a massive expansion of Ukrainian outmigration.
That’s a pretty ignorant statement, especially since you’ve been corrected on this several times.
Those Russians whose ancestors were there before 1940 automatically received citizenship without discrimination, so inasmuch as we’re talking about a “historical” minority, there’s no “intolerance” whatsoever. Those who were settled under communism (it was government policy; due to the propiska system, people couldn’t just move from Russia to Estonia) received residency permits. They could receive the citizenship if they learned the language, a very sensible requirement. We’re talking about people whose roots were pretty shallow at the time, they or their ancestors arrived between the 1950s and 1980s, and Estonia became independent by 1991. Now their children are in a similar position to immigrant children anywhere in the world, they could receive the citizenship easily. One major hurdle is that some of the Russians applied for a Russian passport in the meantime (instead of just learning the language and receiving the Estonian passport), and they now cannot renounce their Russian citizenship (it’s basically impossible to lose, even if you wanted to), and Estonia doesn’t accept dual citizenship. So these people cannot realistically receive an Estonian passport. Just like third generation Iranian immigrants. But why should we blame Estonia for this situation? Their annexation by Stalin never received universal international recognition (the UN considered them separate territories all along), and they didn’t ask for Russians to be settled there.
It’s pretty dishonest to talk about a “historical” minority, when you have already been told several times that Russians who had been there before 1940 were already citizens and they didn’t even have to learn the language. (I bet they did anyway.)
Latvia is basically the same.
That was selected because it could be used on television for creating a patriotic narrative, that even wealthy white Boer people (i.e. one of the most elite people in the world) would choose to immigrate to Russia. Whether they actually came or not, was not relevant. It was just journalists not explaining the story clearly to the extent they could increase morale.
Wealthy South African investors are sometimes interested in buying land in Russia, and Philip Owen (who comments here), had met those people before.
The difference last year was that journalists had used the visit of one wealthy South African couple to create a narrative, and link it to Western news stories about attacks on white farmers in South Africa.
When Kommersant interviewed with the family later, they said they could live anywhere in the world, and are travelling around the world to find the country which matches their conservative values. They were interested in Russia (instead of Western Europe or Australia) because of more conservative values of Russia, but they were comparing with some other conseervative Eastern European countries which interested them like Hungary (they were really “designer emigration”, where they said everyone in their community was a millionaire, and they were choosing their country based on spiritual values).
How many people are leaving Ukraine each year? Also, out of that number, how many eventually come back to Ukraine?
I don’t have a lot of problems with it, but there’s one issue. Hungary has a very generous law about the usage of (historical) minority languages, and Ukrainian is registered as one. It’s not a very good situation if Ukrainian immigrants will enjoy the rights originally intended for native (historical) minorities.
By the way there is a growing number of Ukrainian immigrants in Hungary.
Lithuania gave citizenship to all of its ethnic Russians–even those who moved there after 1940–no?
Maybe that law should be amended so that only minorities who have a meaningful historical presence within Hungary’s current borders would actually qualify for this.
In this post I do not imply that the flow of people won’t grow at all because of this new Russian policy. But I suspect there will be more a shift within the group who leave rather, than just adding to that group. The prospect of getting an easy Russian passport might entice some % of Poland-bound people from Dnipropetrovsk to choose Russia instead, to a greater degree than it will convince someone who would have stayed in Ukriane to leave instead.
This law will be a good way of clearing Ukraine of any Russian nationalists still living there, however. Also if, after obtaining Russian passports, they get Russian pensions, it might get a lot of older people to move if they have cousins, nephews or kids in Russia. Will they be able to spend those pensions in Ukraine? Would be funny if some of these people came back to Ukraine with their new Russian pensions.
Because the Lithuanian communist leader (who was renounced by his whole family including his own mother, and had one of his brothers sent to Siberia) turned somewhat nationalistic after Stalin’s death, and resisted large-scale Russian settlement in Lithuania. As a result, the number of Russians (or non-Lithuanians in general) was way lower than in the other two countries. Lithuania is also significantly larger.
Yes, because there were relatively few Russians there. Latvia and Estonia wanted to avoid the problem Ukriane had, when it still had Crimea and Donbas.
What is meaningful? Certainly there have been thousands or maybe tens of thousands of Ukrainians (Rusyns) in Hungary (both Rusyn and Ukrainian are registered, to avoid a debate), and I don’t think it makes sense to reduce their rights. But Ukrainian mass immigration shouldn’t benefit from this law.
At any given time there are probably about 2 million Ukrainians in Poland, however most of these move back and forth – people will work in Poland for 6 months, earn as much money as they would have made by working 2 years in Ukraine, then come back to Ukraine. Not including Donbas refugees, there are probably half that number of Ukrainians in Russia.
Ukraine didn’t have that option, because the Russians there had deeper roots, and it was impossible to distinguish newcomers from earlier arrivals, there being no Ukrainian citizenship in 1940. Ukraine was also not a recognized independent state between the wars, nor was its belonging to the USSR ever questioned by any country or international organization. So the situation was very different.
The number of farmers is estimated at about 30,000 to 100,000 when including immediate family members.
Attacking another BRICS member is bad optics, especially one that shares hostility towards the US.
On another point, the likely reaction to increased Ukrainian emigration, is that Ukraine will follow Romania in importing people from Pakistan and other Third World countries.
I agree.
I wish that Ukraine’s language law made a distinction between indigenous minority languages and those of non-natives, as was done in the Baltics with respect to citizenship. This would leave the Hungarian natives alone. With Russians it would be tricky – many Russians came to Ukraine under the Soviets (this was true of almost all the Russians in Lviv) but there were Russians living in Ukraine since the time of the czars. Based on the 1897 census, historically there were very few Russians in Kiev region and all points west, as well as in Poltava. But Russians were as native as Ukrainians in the southern and eastern lands, even if outnumbered by them.
I agree. For this reason Latvia and Estonia were fortunate to escape Ukriane’s problems in its first ~25 years after independence – about 22% of the populaton being Russian and another 20% or so being quasi-Russian (most ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea or Donbas, living among Russians and assimilating into them). This is a huge % of the population not really invested in the idea of a Ukrainian state.
Ireland offers Irish citizenship to British citizens born in Northern Ireland. I imagine there are other examples of this type of thing (a country offering passports to the population of an ethnically-mixed country with which it has historical ties) although I can’t think of any offhand.
I just checked some Western MSM. They are all ballistically furious. It seems that Russia can’t do what they advise for the UE with respect to black and moor migrants. It seems like Putin epically trolling Western hypocrites.
Germany gives German citizenship to all people in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine – who can prove they have some level of German national ancestry. So many people can attain a German passport this way.
In addition Germany gives freely German citizenship to any Jews in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine who will accept it (Germany gives citizenship to any Russian Jews, even with no historical connection to Germany – as their form of apology for Nazi warcrimes in the Soviet Union).
Finally, Germany gives quite a lot of residency to Russian “dissidents” (but this is a different topic).
Italy gives citizenship to anyone who can prove any Italian ancestry, however distant. Ultimately the whole population of the planet will qualify.
https://twitter.com/Glossophiliac75/status/1122247003046596608
There’s a big difference between going to Russia as a Gastarbeiter, or so as a Russian citizen, with associated employment rights, etc.
I suspect that brain drain regardless, the Donbass will fare better under steady integration with Russia than in the past 5 years… or reintegration into Ukraine, given Maidanist plans for it.
https://twitter.com/leonidragozin/status/1122038424939188226
It is up to those South African farmers to choose Russia, and in any case, Russia doesn’t owe them anything. While it does have a duty of care to Russians abroad.
I should perhaps look into Dmitry’s suggestion to get Italian citizenship. There is a chance my late 19th century Odessa ancestors would indeed qualify me for it.
BTW, Andriy Reva is a native of Kharkiv oblast (though after studying in Leningrad most of his career was spent in Vynnytsia).
Per Wikipedia Italian citizenship is only granted if at least one of your grandparents was an Italian citizen born in Italy. There’s also a residency requirement. I think several countries have rules like that (my understanding of the German rule was that it was along those lines). I wouldn’t mind having an EU passport but as my family have been in the US for several generations on all sides I don’t qualify in any nation I’m aware of.
By “larger,” do you mean in terms of population?
Also, wouldn’t a lot of the Russians who would have otherwise moved to Lithuania moved to Kaliningrad instead? I know that Klaipeda has a large Russian presence (almost 20%)–possibly due to the need to repopulate it after WWII–but the rest of Lithuania has a much lower Russian percentage.
I do accept your point that it was easier for Lithuania to give its Russians citizenship since there were less of them, though.
Well, Latvia and Estonia could have chopped off a part of their territory just like Russia did with Ukraine, but they didn’t want to do that. Still, even this would have only had a limited impact since a lot of the Russians in Latvia and Estonia live in their capitals–which obviously can’t be separated from Latvia and Estonia.
If the Baltic states were never recognized as being a part of the Soviet Union, though, wouldn’t it mean that a lot of the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians there have no legitimate right to be there and should be expelled?
I’m certainly opposed to this idea, but given that the international community is calling on Israel to evacuate its settlers from the interior of the West Bank, one would wonder why exactly there should not have been similar calls for the evacuation of the post-1940 Slavic immigrants from the Baltic states.
BTW, it is an interesting approach to recognize the Soviet Union’s conquest of eastern Poland, Karelia, Bessarabia, and Bukovina but not of the Baltic states.
So, this would mean that Russians in “Novorossiya” should have special language rights but not Russians elsewhere in Ukraine, correct?
It would have been even worse had Ukraine also gotten the Kuban and perhaps Rostov as well.
As a side note, it’s interesting that there was widespread support among the board for Ukrainian independence in December 1991 with the partial exception of Crimea (where a majority supported it, but with a much smaller percentage than even the Donbass). One would think that voters in “Novorossiya” should have voted against Ukrainian independence in 1991 if they would not have thought that they would be fully committed to the Ukrainian national idea.
Does this extend to Tatars, Jews, et cetera who live abroad and who have a Russian (and/or sovok) spirit and soul?
Thousands is 0.1% or less. Tens of thousands is 1% or less. That’s not that much.
Do Jews in Hungary get special privileges? What about Germans in Hungary?
What was the perception of the CIS at the time of dissolution? Was it intended to be a more significant economic bloc than turned out to be the case? Perhaps Ukrainians were not expecting the equivalent of “No Deal Brexit”.
I know that Russia expected the CIS to end up being much bigger than it actually was–perhaps even becoming the stepping stone to a new Soviet Union. I’m unsure if Ukrainians actually had that impression, though; Ukraine’s leadership certainly didn’t have that impression but I’m unsure as to what the Ukrainian people themselves actually thought about this issue back then.
Clearly not comparable, Poland, Karelia, Bessarabia, Bukovina were merely territories (and at least in the first two cases the Polish and Finnish population largely left for their nation state, so there was little point in not recognizing the annexations), whereas the nationhood and statehood of the Baltic states was to some extent even recognized by the Soviet Union, they were Soviet republics after all.
It’s pretty remarkable how obtuse you and Dmitry are about those issues, completely disregarding any national rights of the Baltic peoples (or Palestinians for that matter), striking example of a colonial mindset.
I think he could have begun policies to raise the fertility rate and life expectancy earlier, around 2000 instead of 2005. He could have also more aggressively pushed for Russia to become independent of western financial markets. Overall I think he did a satisfactory job over the past 19 years, I don’t really think he under performed but he certainly did not do as much as he could to strengthen Russia.
Not fully committed but not opposed either. Those regions followed their local bosses who wanted independence (it allowed them to steal without Moscow looking over their shoulders and without competition form Russians who were like them).
Not so simple:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War#The_diplomatic_front
On November 21, 1919, the Highest Council of the Paris Peace Conference granted Eastern Galicia to Poland for a period of 25 years, after which a plebiscite was to be held there, and obliged the Polish government to give territorial autonomy to the region.[66][67] This decision was suspended on 22 December 1919 and never implemented.[66][64] On April 21, 1920, Józef Piłsudski and Symon Petliura signed an alliance, in which Poland promised the Ukrainian People’s Republic the military help in the Kiev Offensive against the Red Army in exchange for the acceptance of Polish–Ukrainian border on the river Zbruch.[68][69]
Following this agreement, the government of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic went into exile in Vienna, where it enjoyed the support of various West Ukrainian political emigrees as well as soldiers of the Galician army interned in Bohemia.[70] Although not officially recognized by any state as the government of West Ukraine,[69] it engaged in diplomatic activity with the French and British governments in the hopes of obtaining a favourable settlement at Versailles. As a result of its efforts, the council of the League of Nations declared on February 23, 1921 that Galicia lay outside the territory of Poland and that Poland did not have the mandate to establish administrative control in that country and that Poland was merely the occupying military power of Galicia, the sovereign of which were the Allied Powers (pursuant to the Treaty of Saint-Germain signed with Austria in September 1919) and whose fate would be determined by the Council of Ambassadors at the League of Nations.[70] The Council of Ambassadors in Paris stated on July 8, 1921 that so called “West Ukrainian Government” of Yevhen Petrushevych did not constitute a government either de facto or de jure and did not have the right to represent any of the territories formerly belonging to the Austrian empire.[69] After a long series of negotiations, on March 14, 1923, the Council of Ambassadors decided that Galicia would be incorporated into Poland “taking into consideration that Poland has recognized that in regard to the eastern part of Galicia ethnographic conditions fully deserve its autonomous status.”[70] After 1923, Galicia was internationally recognized as part of the Polish state.[71] The government of the West Ukrainian People’s Republic then disbanded, while Poland reneged on its promise of autonomy for Eastern Galicia.
Pretty much.
Alternatively, Ukraine could pass a law only granting special status in regions where 50% or more of the population belong to the minority ethnicity. This would cover the Hungarian area but would cover very little of Ukrainian territory (since Crimea and urban Donbas are gone).
Unfortunately Ukraine is taking a primitive sledgehammer approach and angering Hungary for no good reason.
Ukrainian raions and municipalities by self-declared native language:
http://www.brockpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Story-06-Photo.jpg
IIRC This is the approach Quebec takes. Native English-speakers can study at English schools but no one else can. So if you are a Russian who moves to Quebec, your kids go to French not English schools. Even if they already know some English but don’t know any French. (I think they can still go to private English schools).
If Ukraine made a law allowing non-Ukrainian schools only in areas where the majority houses that language as native, it would solve the Hungarian problem without having huge areas of the country with Russian schools.
Provide Russian citizenship to any citizens of Ukraine of working age (as well as to facilitate the Ukrainian gastrbeiters working conditions in Russia) – a measure necessary at least in 2014. The fact that this was not done – Putin’s undoubted failure
It’s just a fake.
2019 – https://vz.ru/news/2019/4/25/975020.html
“If you want to publish a book by a Ukrainian author writing in Russian, you have to make a translation into Ukrainian and publish this book in the same edition. Nobody will read them (in Ukraine). We have very few readers of Ukrainian literature,” the expert said.
The same situation is with the media…the most popular Ukrainian Newspapers are published in Russian.
So, did Poland’s refusal to grant autonomy to eastern Galicia mean that Poland’s claim to it was no longer valid?
Also, what about Polish-majority or Polish-plurality Lwow and Vilnius? In addition, what about the Belarusian parts of Poland?
Why did the local bosses command so much obedience, though?
Did the Polish and Finnish populations leave voluntarily, though?
Also, what about Georgia? Its independence was recognized by the Soviet Union only for it to be subsequently conquered. Why was Georgia’s several years of independence insufficient to be permanently recognized as an independent state?
For what it’s worth, I’m not fond of the Soviet Union in general. Still, the idea of settling one’s people in a foreign land isn’t a radical idea. For instance, had Germany won WWI, do you think that it would have been unacceptable for Germany to flood Latvia and Estonia with German settlers (either from Germany, from Austria-Hungary, or from other parts of Russia)?
As for the Palestinians, they could have their own state on 90+% of the West Bank. Some nationalistic Israelis might insist on keeping the Jordan Valley, but it’s not a deal-breaker for me. In fact, I’d even go further and push Egypt to give up the northeastern part of the Sinai Peninsula to the Palestinians so that the Gaza Strip could expand into there and alleviate its severe overpopulation crisis that way.
Of course that would have been morally illegitimate, I’m not in favour of imperialism.
Italy gives citizenship to anyone who can prove any Italian ancestry, however distant.
With the proviso that your Italian “ancestor” must not have died on or before 17 March 1861, the “official” date of Italian unification.
There are in fact various other restrictions which are extremely limiting notably that if your Italian ancestor became a naturalized citizen of another country before 1 July 1912, in so doing he gave us both his own citizenship and that of all his minor children. Hence you are not Italian.
And if your Italian “ancestor” was a woman, you are likely out of luck as well, as Italian women could not transmit citizenship until 1 January 1948.
The present rate of emigration coupled with the rock bottom birth rate is already enough to let the Ukrainian population collapse over the coming decades.
I am open to considering that for Tatars, as Russia is de facto their primary homeland as well and they have no other. Not for Jews, obviously – they have Israel (at least unless they are substantially Russified, e.g. speak Russian and have converted to Christian Orthodoxy).
Only the three western oblasts and Kiev voted against the preservation of the Soviet Union in March 1991. Even after the coup, there was an expectation that formal independence would soon be followed by another confederation – and the vast majority of Ukrainians were on board with that.
I am quite sure that if the law on granting citizenship to the indigenous peoples of Russia would adopted in the future, the Jews (as well as the Germans and most likely the Koreans) will be considered the indigenous people of Russia. From a practical point of view, this (including Jews in the list of indigenous peoples) is correct – no real consequences , but it is better for PR
Really difficult case is Circassians
This would have been when all the relevant countries were under the Soviet umbrella, no?
Give Sochi back.
Yeah, but that’d also have been unnecessarily cruel and politically also not the wisest to do of Estonians and Latvians in or after 1991. For one thing, Russian troops were still stationed in these countries until 1994. For another, they needed international recognition, and such mass deportations would have looked pretty bad on TV.
And even morally, I think we can all agree that these settlers were themselves the victims of Soviet policy. It’d have been immoral to unduly punish them for just moving into an area which they believed to be part of the same country.
So a compromise solution was to give all of these people residence permits, but not citizenship – although citizenship law was pretty permissive, all they had to do was learning the language. These countries also became richer than Russia itself, so it would be difficult to argue that these people received the short end of the stick in any event.
Now the worst thing you can say about it is that in Western Europe immigrant populations (like Africans and Pakistanis) often enjoy a number of privileges. (Though, not necessarily citizenship, at least not easier than for the Russians in Estonia.) While the Russians don’t. But the bad thing is the privileges granted to the immigrant minorities elsewhere.
The situations are not totally comparable, for example Estonians weren’t restricted to travel around their own country even during Soviet times, Russian settlements and their roads weren’t enclosed by fences, concrete walls and barbed wire. As opposed to the West Bank, where any Jewish settlement diminishes the area available for Palestinians to just hike around. But once a Palestinian State was given sovereignty over the West Bank (including the settlements), and they gave residence permits to the Jews already there, I bet you those calls for evacuation would stop.
Eastern Poland was a contentious issue, because the British originally supported the Curzon Line as the border, which is the present day border. Poland was also amply compensated in the west for its losses, so it was accepted. Regarding Karelia, Bessarabia and Bukovina, I think the main issue was that these countries fought on the side of the Axis, and however legitimate their 1940 grievances were, they thought their territorial losses were adequate punishments. It’s also important that these countries themselves continued to exist, and recognized those losses. As German_reader mentions, the evacuation of the Karelian and East Polish population meant that there was no longer a basis for territorial claims any longer. International powers didn’t want to be more Catholic than the Pope by demanding something which these countries themselves didn’t demand much.
Hungary started giving passports to people who could prove that they or their ancestors had Hungarian citizenship before 1918 and still not lost connection to Hungarian culture (e.g. could still speak Hungarian) in 2010.
It was conquered in 1921, and its annexation was universally recognized by the 1930s at the latest. At the time military conquest was not yet universally frowned upon. It’s pretty different from the 1940 annexation of the Baltic states, which happened as a consequence of the temporary alliance with Hitler.
So it was already recognized in the 1930s, they didn’t un-recognize it. Same thing with Ukraine (though it was granted UN membership in 1945, along with Belarus).
So only the Baltic states ended up as being part of the USSR, but still not universally recognized up until 1991. Though I think it was kind of de facto recognized, so all maps showed it as part of the USSR, people (even diplomats) referred to them as Soviet territory, etc. It was pretty theoretical until 1991, when it did have some real consequences, mostly in that the Latvian and Estonian decisions to not give citizenship to ethnic Russians (and others, including a few hundred Uzbeks, I think) was accepted without any protest by all countries in Europe.
imho, all this is quite understandable and reasonable because last year RF entered inevitable population downtrend wave again, so it is measure to increase population at least nominally.
Do not see very big deal here, as the type of people who crave RF passport tend to do more damage in the long run for their birthplaces than potential good, so it is guite desirable if received RF citizenship make many of them relocate into RF from so called “near abroad”.
Give it back to whom? What does this have to do with Jews and Tatars?
I’m surprised you would make such an uninformed comment.
Self-declared native language is not the same thing as language of daily use.
Sovoks do what they are told.
Though I think it was kind of de facto recognized, so all maps showed it as part of the USSR, people (even diplomats) referred to them as Soviet territory, etc. It was pretty theoretical until 1991
When I was growing up, in the public mind there was no essential difference between the Baltic States and others (Poland, etc.) held “captive” by the USSR. Thus, each year in July we observed “Captive Nations Week” in favor of the officially-designated “captive” nations. The original list, from 1959:
The clown is really furious about the proposal.
https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/zelenskiy-responses-to-putins-plans-to-issue-russian-passports-in-occupied-donbas.html
Funny to call it “nazi method” while promoting SS symbology.
“We are ready to discuss new conditions for the coexistence of Ukraine and Russia. The true normalization (of relationships) will only take place after a complete de-occupation. Both Donbas and Crimea. Ukraine is not giving up!” Zelenskiy added.
LOL
Don’t worry, now that Ukraine is a democracy it can important a near endless supply of African Ukrainians. These people will bring vibrancy to that shockingly white land as well as manpower to fight Russia, seems like everything you could hope for.
Obviously, native Jews in Ukraine, enter Russia as Ukrainians – in Ukraine nationality is not recorded in official documents.
Children born in Israel with parents from Russia, receive Russian passports in a few weeks. Probably higher rates of Israeli mothers could be tempted to return to Russia with more advertisement maternity capital, as the money can only be used in Russia, not abroad.
http://mamsovet.co.il/topic/1358-гражданство-других-стран/?p=89286
For Ukraine, it seems more complicated to apply for citizenship for children born abroad.
http://mamsovet.co.il/topic/1358-гражданство-других-стран/?p=253524
The dilemma is if Russia issues passports to stateless population of the Baltics. From a humanitarian viewpoint, this is necessary. However, at the same time this could have an effect of renunciation to persecution of Russians and Russian-language minorities.
E.g. Latvia specifically does not allow dual citizenship with Russia, although it allows dual citizenship with other countries. So if Russian passports issued to Latvia, it could contribute to translating the Russian culture and heritage as something foreign and second class.
And it’s a similar dilemma as for Ukraine (although of course, Ukraine does not use quite the same legal levers of discrimination against its national minorities), where the humanitarian decisions, will also contribute to Ukrainization.
Anyway, in Latvia the language genocide is the role model for Ukraine, and just a couple of years more advanced of Ukraine, and even the transition itself will result in educational disadvantage for the children.
https://www.facebook.com/rusojuz/posts/2199903480126827
Estonia issues a “grey,” passport to Russians and their descendants who arrived after 1940.
All people born in Estonia after 1992 may acquire Estonian citizenship.
As an American citizen I can only stay inside the schengen zone for 90 days within a 180 day period,which is exactly how the “Grey,” passport holders are treated. The Russian government only allows a visa free entry to those “grey,” passport holders for 90 days. The “Grey,” passport affects around 100,000 people.
Estonian citizens may of course travel and live anywhere inside the EU
Estonia does not allow dual citizenship
From the humanitarian view and from the position of demographics, inside Russia. But a simplification process to emigration, will also contribute and allow even further Ukrainization in Ukraine – so was not a simple decision to respond to.
Much as the western and now eastern European countries and populations are current victims of US-military occupation and CIA subversion post-1945. Add the current Afro-Arab ‘migrant’ horde invasion to the list of woes that are directly related to the US post-WWII NATO Order that protects no one in US-occupied Europe from anything.
Presumably he wants it to be given “back” to Armenians, or maybe some other Caucasians, owing to it’s large Armenian population, even though this is obviously impossible.
Seems to me that without Russia’s support and implicit protection of Armenia, the Armenians would eventually be overwhelmed by the Turks and Azerbaijanis.
Rather than demanding territory from the Russians, wouldn’t Armenia be wiser to seek membership in the Russian federation?
This is obviously a false map of the Self-declared native language. I don’t know what the reasons were – whether people lied in the census, or the results were skewed-but the map is obviously a fake.
Currently, the majority of the population in rural areas around Sochi are Armenians. But it is the descendants of migrants of the age of Russian Empire/USSR. In the hypothetical case of the “transfer back” of Sochi to the Circassians (or Turkey) , these Armenians will be expelled
He is also making mental contortions by claiming native language and language of daily use in Ukraine is different.
The map reflects the results of the census and reflects declared native language. There is nothing fake about it.
The question on the census was about рідна мова (родной язык).
If you weren’t so stupid you would realize that native language and language of daily use are not necessarily the same thing.
Here you can learn something:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B9_%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA
The third concept is one that many Ukrainians (among others) use to define the meaning of native language. Many ethnic Ukrainians in, for example Kiev state that the Ukrainian language is their native language, but they use Russian in their daily lives.
In principle, every ethnic Ukrainian could consider Ukrainian to be their native language. But on the 2001 census, 77.8% of the population declared Ukrainian to be their ethnicity but only 67.5% declared Ukrainian to be their native language. Census did not ask about language of daily use but large-scale studies showed that about 42% of Ukraine’s population used Ukrainian as their language of daily use, vs. about 46% Russian and the rest using both equally (this was before Crimea and Donbas left Ukraine).
It is not a difficult concept for normal people to understand. But we know that you are not a normal person.
Census results here. Naturally nothing fake about the map, it reflects the 2001 census results accurately:
http://2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/rus/results/general/language/
Here is the city of Kiev:
http://2001.ukrcensus.gov.ua/rus/results/general/language/city_kyiv/
Most people in the city declared Ukrainian to be their native language. 86% of ethnic Ukrainians did so. Ethnic Ukrainians were 82% of Kiev’s population.
Some facts just trigger Russian svidomists.
Great, then it’s a non-fake-map of fake census results. In Ukraine, even the census is the same as everything else in this country.
The main reason was AFAIK that Lithuania was not able to claim the full restitution of their preWWII state because it was Stalin who took Vilnius from Poland and added to Lithuanian SSR.
Thy calculated that having few hundred thousand Russian-language citizens is small price to pay compared to potential Polish (and German) territorial claims.
Much of which is temporary – people leaving for six months and then coming back. Often the same person will “emigrate” multiple times.
Outside the Donbas and regions bordering Russia, Ukraine’s TFR is fairly typical of eastern Europe and better than in places like Italy or Greece. While this is not good, it is not “rock bottom.”
Figures for 2017:
http://database.ukrcensus.gov.ua/PXWEB2007/ukr/publ_new1/2018/zb_dy_2017.pdf
In western Ukraine, birth rate ranges from 12.4/1,000 people in Rivne oblast to 8.8 in Ternopil oblast (in Lviv oblast it was 9.9) . In Kiev city it is 12.1. Lowest birth rate is Sumska oblast, at 7.3.
In 2017, according to CIA worldfactbook, Poland had a birth rate of 9.5. Czechia 9.3 and Hungary 9.0. Italy’s was 8.6 and Greece’s was 8.4.
Why do you think census results are fake? Melanf whom as we know is rather ignorant about Ukraine (and Finland/Sweden, as Jaako has shown) thinks differently than how natives think about themselves?
I fully understand the difference. But if what you say is true that simply means Russia should take over since independent Ukraine population is getting russianized instead of Ukranized. In Ukraine Russians should be more native speakers then everyday use. If it’s the opposite I have bad news for your svidomi heart.
Also I fully approve all the crazy shit your people are doing. Best strategy for independent Galicia.
It’s quite interesting that, in spite of Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric in favor of national self-determination, the conquest of an already recognized independent state (especially a European or quasi-European state) was not universally frowned upon after the end of WWI. I don’t know if anyone recognize Ukraine’s independence after WWI, but a lot of countries recognized Georgia’s independence after WWI:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Georgia#International_recognition
How exactly did countries square their decision to recognize the Soviet conquest of Georgia later on with their support of national self-determination elsewhere in Europe?
Also, the interesting thing is that, had it not been for Poland, the Soviet Union might have very well conquered the Baltic states after the end of WWI. It was the failure to defeat Poland that made this much harder for the Soviet Union to do due to the fact that Poland could provide military assistance (up to the point of outright Polish military intervention on their behalf) to the Baltic states. Indeed, from the Soviet Union’s perspective, it was simply resuming its conquest program from 1918-1921 when it signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler.
Are migrants inflating the Italian and Greek figures?
This map actually does make sense, though. It shows solid Russian majorities in Crimea and the Donbass and also Russian majority in other cities in “Novorossiya” such as Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odessa, et cetera–while the surrounding rural areas are largely Ukrainian and sometimes overwhelmingly Ukrainian.
Oh yes, I forgot about it.
So they had three reasons:
they gained territory after 1940, which they intended to keep, and it could have been questioned if they claimed full restitution of the pre-1940 government
it’d have been technically difficult, too, because the border changes in 1940 meant that citizenship before 1940 would have excluded lots of natives of the area; so there was no easy or obvious test to exclude the Russians
Perhaps a fourth reason is that ethnically they weren’t more homogeneous before 1940 either, due to the large Jewish population, who were exterminated 1941-44.
Not one of these apply to Estonia (which had a very small Jewish population before the war, and lost some minor territories during the war), and only the Jews apply to Latvia (however, it had also been more homogeneous before the war), so their situation was quite different, both legally and politically, and I’d say morally, too.
If Ukraine is permanently lost to Russia, though, why not try encouraging as many Russians and quasi-Russians to emigrate from there as possible, though? At least that way Russia is going to get a demographic boost.
And their proud, strong, and vibrant African seed is going to produce lots of babies in the wombs of Ukrainian women! /s
Off-topic, but do you think that it would be a good idea for Odessa and the Budjak to join Transnistria? These territories are still largely Russophone but they are too far away to be outright annexed to Russia. Thus, why not have them join Transnistria instead? After all, Transnistria is right across the border from these two areas.
Do you think that the US’s settlement of Whites and Blacks on Native American and Mexican land was also morally illegitimate?
Probably it helped that some of the top leaders of the conquering power were Georgians themselves, like Ordzhonikidze and Stalin. Especially Stalin became the undisputed leader in a few years.
By the way you sound like you are scolding 1920s European governments for recognizing the conquest. Calm down, they are all dead now.
I’m just describing reality: the pre-1939 Soviet borders were generally recognized. The conquest of Eastern Poland was recognized for a number of reasons (the Curzon Line had been preferred anyway, Poland was compensated, the Polish population deported, Poland itself largely accepted it), while the conquest of Karelia and Bessarabia was accepted because, however justified the grievances of Romania and Finland were, they still ended up fighting for the Axis. They also largely accepted the losses themselves. Kaliningrad was taken from Germany, so it was accepted, too. (The Kurils were not really recognized, however.)
So the Baltic states’ annexation was not recognized in 1940, nor during the war, nor in 1945, and by 1948 the Cold War prevented any recognition.
Whether it was fully logical or moral I don’t know, but that’s how it happened.
You sound hysterical here.
Good explanation!
Anyway, I wonder if this would have been different had some or all of the Baltic states actually fought on the side of the Axis in WWII. I know that Lithuania was given such an opportunity but declined–which in turn caused Hitler to agree to give Lithuania to Stalin.
Israel only accepts one if one is a quarter-Jewish or more or if one has a close relative (such as a parent) who is a quarter-Jewish whom you are immigrating together with. One could have a Jewish identity and yet not be Jewish according to halakha and have less than a quarter Jewish ancestry. In such a case, Israel probably isn’t going to want you unless you convert–which I’ve heard is very difficult to do.
That might have very well been the case–though the impression that I get is that the Ukrainian leadership refused to agree to anything more than a British-style Commonwealth even before the December 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum. Maybe a lot of Ukrainians were hoodwinked and expected more than that, or maybe Ukrainians genuinely understood what was at stake and nevertheless thought that independence without a meaningful confederation would be good enough for them–with them perhaps having the hope that they would quickly become prosperous and live like the Swiss or at least the French or Italians.
Excellent points!
Of course, in regards to the Jews, Latvia could have given citizenship to all of the post-1940 Jewish migrants into Latvia (from other parts of the Soviet Union) but not to all of the post-1940 Slavic migrants into Latvia. At the very least, Latvia could have justified such a move as simply it being a case of it needing to replenish its Jewish population after the losses in the Holocaust. (Indeed, AFAIK, it was easier for Jews from the former Soviet Union to move to Germany than for Slavs from the former Soviet Union to do this.) Still, such a move on Latvia’s part might have been viewed as racist.
Ze implied as much in his response to Russia’s possible move to grant citizenship to all Ukrainians:
Note that this Jew, funded by a co-ethnic who’s cozy with the European Jewish Congress, is open to giving citizenship to all nationalities — as the Europeans and the Anglosphere do — not only those from Russia. It was unnecessary to mention other nations, but for some reason it was in his mind.
It’s all I need to know about him.
I said from the beginning that the Maidan was not a nationalist revolution, and that the nationalists were merely paws who’d be slowly pushed aside and criminalized once their usefulness was over. In the future, I said, Ukraine would become like all other Western countries: they would hate Russia, love cultural Marxism and critical theory after being brainwashed (“memetic learning”) by the universities and the media (don’t think the Ukrainian universities won’t be captured, it’s a question of time), hate their own because opposing demographic displacement is “racist” and “hateful”.
Since 2015, Radio Free Europe Ukraine has streamed the gay pride march in Kiev, and I checked all years after since, and noticed one thing: the dislike to like ratio is decreasing by the year as the minds of Ukrainians are worked on by the usual suspects. A majority still dislike globohomo, but the change is there and it’s very, very consistent.
We know Jewry and we know the type of people who run the foreign policy of the US and other Western European countries involved in the Ukraine fiasco. It was stupid to think that the nationalists would prevail in the end, especially if you consider yourself a learned nationalist, and I saw quite a few of them, people you thought knew better.
Which is why I want Ukraine in limbo or absorbed by Russia: because I know that five decades from now, if it’s fully captured by the ZOG-Globohomo machine, Ukrainians will be subjected to demographic displacement and will become a minority in their own major cities, to be followed nationally — and they will approve of their looming demise. Having followed the events in Ukraine since the first days of the Maidan protests, it was all very depressing to me, knowing what was coming.
Not always, true. But would you not agree that the common wisdom on the genocide in Rwanda is that it was a case of ethnonationalism going berserk? And that much of the indulgence toward ethnonationalism in the Third World is basically the soft bigotry of low expectations?
Ethnonationalism is inevitable in all diverse countries. This is why you should not invite diversity home.
Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Balts are all waiting for this alleged Jewish-sponsored demographic replacement! When exactly is it going to come to their countries?
Norman Davies, in his Heart of Europe: The Past in Poland’s Present*, discusses this at some length.
I disagree with the first part and agree with the second. Ethnic diversity can be managed, but to claim that it’s a “strength” is globalist shibboleth.
I’ve only read Davies’ Europe: A history, which I definitely wouldn’t recommend. Long stretches of it were very tedious (and too superficial to really learn much), and while I kind of liked his concept of the “Allied scheme of history”, his treatment of Soviet crimes seemed too polemical, using very dubious numbers of victims.
Did hear a public lecture of him in Heidelberg early this decade…have forgotten the details, but it was very clear that he really can’t stand Russia (iirc Roman Dmowski also figured as one of the bad guys in his lecture).
In general I suspect Davies is a bit too much in love with his subject (Poland), which makes his judgment as a historian somewhat suspect imo.
Already happening in Poland.
https://www.amren.com/features/2018/11/a-frank-assessment-of-nationalism-in-poland/
“…and in any case, Russia doesn’t owe them anything. While it does have a duty of care to Russians abroad.”
It’s not a question of owning them anything or a duty of care as you say; I just don’t get why he didn’t follow up on the initial offer. The South African farmers are in dire straits versus Russians in the Ukraine which Putin issuing them passports is politics not a life or death decision…
Doesn’t Russia need farmers and people who are committed to having large families?
I doubt if any Russians in the Ukraine are going to become farmers and start having large families after receiving Russian passports. I assume most are urban dwellers and wish to remain that way…
It’s one thing if the South Africans decided not to take him up on the offer, but I hope it’s not a question of no follow up on the part of Russia…as the situation in South Africa deteriorates rapidly these people face imminient danger…
I agree, for Armenians to be hostile to Russia makes no sense whatsoever. I don’t think they should ask to be annexed, but at the very least they shouldn’t be antagonizing Russia.
Neither Sochi nor any other part of Russia should be “returned” to anyone, regardless of the demographics of the region in question.
Young people in Odessa are as Ukrainophile as they are Russophile.
Perhaps, that would make Italian and Greek figures even worse. And Hungary’s numbers might be boosted by gypsies. Outside the Russian border regions, Ukrainian birth rate is not bad by the low standards of Eastern Europe. And unlike the countries other than Poland, this isn’t in the context of a growing gypsy population.
LOL….so the freak who has been to neither area, doesn’t speak either language, is somehow claiming to have formed this nonsense as an organicly formed opinion?….ridiculous!
I would think some freak not even knowing about Kiev’s hot water problems , even with the article directly linked to them ( i.e not being able to read the language) would just leave the blog having been exposed as beyond deranged
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Mol
Behold, Simon Mol, Afro-Polish anti-racism activist and AIDS vector, now deceased (due to AIDS).
The Holocaust was ofc a terrible tragedy, a terrible injustice and loss of talent, but your suggestion doesn’t make sense – why would the Soviet Jews be entitled to anything in the Baltics more so than elsewhere? I don’t mean to be hurtful but wouldn’t all those Slavic areas whence they came from need to be “replenished” just as much? Remember also that some Jews were actually imported to persecute the local population.
The Soviet Jews are culturally very different not just from the Balts but from our local Jews. Unlike our Jews the Soviet Jews can be not only disloyal but openly hostile to the native population. The infamous Interfront, the group that rallied the Russian speakers to oppose Latvia’s independence was founded and run by a Russian Jewish woman who still to this day continues her hostile activity. Some of them are not just communists but NatsBols who qualify as terrorists. Not many are that way and we also have wonderful Jewish people ofc but there’s been a clear trend.
The world is going to get rougher so I kindly suggest to your people to seek not entitlement but cooperation.
Ukrainian election 1998……29 million people
Ukrainian election 2018……18 million ( with probably 4 million of them fake)
Russia election 2000…….75 million
Russia election 2018…….75 million ( take off Crimea and make it 73)
That is not without even mentioning that Slovakia, Hungary, Czech (i.e successful , not fucked-up pseudo-states) have had pretty much the same population , maybe increased, from the end of communism upto now you misleading, lying ******* weirdo
Lie. Ukrainian birthrate is dismal you idiot – and that’s without even allowing for the accurate assumption that the authorities have inflated the figures.
As for ‘Russian border regions”…that’s just the type of phrase of one fantasist manufacturing BS on the internet, because it is a big border and not all the regions of that border are like Kharkov /Donbass in economic/culture links with Russia you cretin.
Btw some time ago Putin set out the guidelines for repatriation. This can still be partially carried out, with dignity. Soloviev and Simonyan recently discussed that on one of his shows.
What a stupid line of thought.
No it’s not you dumb f**k. Citizenship comes with BIRTH you ****. Working there for 30,40 and 50 years,raising a family and now paying taxes ( from a high skilled and or hard working job ) should also guarantee automatic citizenship following on from when there is a change in power.
JOBS like in education , maybe certain political positions, are what comes or should come with language skills…not citizenship. How stupid can you be to confuse the two different issues?
because these Nazi f**kers don’t choose positive reinforcement, is why there are these problems…and without much of that same mistreated Russian population – these idiots would not even have got independence in the first place.
Though the Lithuanians conveniently didn’t go through with the gutter citizenship/language policies of their Baltic neighbours – they did still happily accept 25% of their current territory ( including the capital) given by Stalin, that doesn’t seem to be affected by the “never received universal international recognition” BS
….except for the previous president who was a dual national (with the US) about a day before he was President. Seeing as he is in the US now…..maybe he never did
Anyway , prior to joining the EU and having Schengen privileges…not allowing dual citizenship, given the unique situation with the end of the USSR was inexcusable you filthy animal
My stalker got triggered. We can expect a flood of vulgar, stupid posts from you now. I won’t bother with most of them.
There was no Ukrainian election in 2018. Are you drunk and forgot what year it is?
In the 1999 presidential election, 26 million people voted in the first round, 28 million in the second round, not 29 million. Voter turnout was 75%.
In 2019 it was 19 million in the first round, 18.5 in the second round. Voter turnout was 62%.
Hungary had 10.37 million people in 1991, 9.8 million in 2017. And this was with a large, fecund gypsy population.
But we were not discussing trends over 20 years, but recent ones.
http://database.ukrcensus.gov.ua/PXWEB2007/ukr/publ_new1/2018/zb_dy_2017.pdf
In western Ukraine, birth rate ranges from 12.4/1,000 people in Rivne oblast to 8.8 in Ternopil oblast (in Lviv oblast it was 9.9) . In Kiev city it is 12.1. Lowest birth rate is Sumska oblast, at 7.3.
In 2017, according to CIA worldfactbook, Poland had a birth rate of 9.5. Czechia 9.3 and Hungary 9.0. Italy’s was 8.6 and Greece’s was 8.4.
Regions do border Russia. You didn’t know that?
And these regions have collectively the lowest birth rate in Ukraine.
Sumska – 7.3/1000
Chernihiv – 7.4/1000
Kharkiv – 8.0/1000
Donbas isn’t listed for 2017 but it was always sub-Kharkiv (in 2014, Luhansk was 5.1 and Donetsk 8.2 compared to Kharkiv 10,1 that year) and no reason to doubt it is even worse now due to the war.
So Donbas Sovoks are disappearing.
It had a population of 10.8 million in 1980, so the decline started already under communism. It accelerated greatly in the mid-1990s under an austerity package by the new Socialist-Free Democrat coalition government, which idiotically tried to save some 0.1% of GDP (or less…) by cutting and means testing maternity allowances.
It’s even worse if you consider that hundreds of thousands immigrated since the late 1980s, the majority of whom (well over 200 thousand) ethnic Hungarians from neighboring countries.
The situation is and has always been pretty bad in Hungary, and we have a liberal media constantly mocking Orbán and his party for trying to motivate people to have more children.
Yes, that’s why the Russians weren’t given citizenship. Their ancestors weren’t Latvian or Estonian citizens, and it comes with birth.
No it doesn’t. It’s a big problem in Western Europe that in practice it does, though in Switzerland there are third generation immigrants still not receiving citizenship. (Recently it was made way easier for this category of people to receive it, though – a great success of SVP’s “populism.”)
Merely living and working in a country guarantees you nothing. And why should it?
A few more arguments:
In other words, there was a chance of a third or more of Estonian citizens becoming Russian citizens, too, simply because Russia willingly handed out Russian passports to anyone applying. Besides that, the French didn’t grant automatic French citizenship to Germans who came to Alsace-Lorraine between 1871 and 1918. (This latter example is especially stringent, since Germany acquired Alsace-Lorraine in 1871 in accordance to then valid international law, i.e. as a result of a peace treaty after having won a war, and France legally recognized that the area in question was part of Germany during the time period in question.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_nationality_law#Undefined_citizenship
Another example might be the Pieds-Noirs, who were expelled from Algeria after Algerian independence – despite having been there far longer than Russians in Estonia or Latvia. (And we all know the arguments that they actually built Algerian infrastructure, and that Algeria had been a slave trader and pirate outpost before the French conquest.)
It’s worth noting that the USSR supported the Algerian nationalists, and Russia is still friendly with the Algerian successor state, behaving far worse than Estonians could ever accused to be. So perhaps it shouldn’t complain so much when Estonia and Latvia do far milder things to Russians. (It’s worth noting that Russians in Turkmenistan fare also far worse than in Estonia, yet there’s nary a complaint about it. Russia is, in fact, pretty friendly to Turkmenistan. Even Uzbekistan’s and Kyrgyzstan’s Russians would probably have traded places with Russians in Estonia or Latvia in 1991 or 1992. If Russia calls Latvia a “genocide” or “apartheid,” then they should perhaps call what happened in Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan “holocaust” or “slavery.”)
I forgot to answer this:
This is why Lithuania gave citizenship to all its inhabitants. So what’s the complaint there?
In general I suspect Davies is a bit too much in love with his subject (Poland),
Interestingly, his wife (a literary scholar) is of mixed Polish-Jewish origin (she had a Jewish mother) and was saved during the war by a Christian family:
Also interestingly, Davies provides an objective (imo) but devastating portrait of the role Jews played in Eastern Europe:
In combination with his treatment of Poles and Jews during WWII, this led to accusations that he was “insensitive” toward Jews and “unacceptably defensive” of Polish gentiles in WWII, and his denial of a tenured academic position at Stanford University:
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/13/us/scholar-says-his-views-on-jews-cost-him-a-post-at-stanford.html
https://news.stanford.edu/pr/91/910905Arc1210.html
Where is this quote from? I couldn’t find it with a search engine:
His views on Jews are pretty realistic: the aristocracy and nobility (and even the Church and the Crown) shirked their duties, leased their feudal rights to Jews, who were motivated to behave badly, and as a result, Jews (more than the aristocracy and nobility, who bore ultimate responsibility for the situation) became the subject of a growing hatred.
It’s not the first example that I saw such realistic and plausible descriptions depicted as “anti-Semitic.”
Somehow when historians talk about how Germans or Hungarians or any other peoples behaved badly, no one cares. It’s also interesting that his description is way more anti-magnate or anti-nobility than anti-Semitic, since it basically shows that Jews merely followed their incentives. It puts the absentee landowners in an even worse light.
Or, conversely, it just describes groups of people following their incentives and paths of least resistance, leading to (easy to understand, though not always fully rational) hatred among them.
I actually thought about the Russians in Estonia and Latvia. Wouldn’t it be possible to resettle them (only the stateless and the Russian citizens) in Russia? Of course they could keep their property (and sell it later, or receive compensation – however they choose).
Advantages:
Latvian and Estonian paranoia about an imminent Russian invasion would be alleviated, so maybe they’d become less hostile?
Western propaganda about an imminent Russian invasion would get weakened
Disadvantages:
people don’t work that way: Baltic Russians wouldn’t want to leave
people don’t work that way: Russian self-confidence would get a blow
So it seems to be impossible. But it’s one of many Soviet poison pills, which are not good for any involved.
Where is this quote from? I couldn’t find it with a search engine
When using a search engine for a long quote, best to use only a part of it. Here it is (courtesy of Google). As you will see, the book doesn’t specifically identify her as his wife, but as he is married (since 1966) to Maria Korzeniewicz I think it is virtually certain that they are the same person.
His views on Jews are pretty realistic
The quote I cited was from Vol. 1, the one which really caused outrage was from Vol. 2 relating to Jewish-gentile relations in inter-war Poland:
I have to wonder though how true that is, unless I’m mistaken a substantial proportion of Jews in Poland wasn’t even able to speak Polish, basically living as a parallel nation.
I also don’t think it can be denied that elements of the Polish government in the 1930s were at least somewhat anti-Jewish, how else to explain their investigations into whether resettling Jews to Madagascar was feasible, or their attempts to prevent the return of Polish-born Jews from abroad (which was the background to the German Polenaktion of 1938, the prelude of the November pogroms).
Davies is of course right to sharply distinguish this from violent Nazi antisemitism, but it seems to me he does paint a dubiously rosy picture.
After 1940? – and in a state whose own historical foundations are weak, and with Russian finance, infrastructure and settlers in that area for a few centuries?
South Africa – many, many problems – but they would be even greater if whites stupidly were to become ‘non-citizens’ after the end of Apartheid – or English /Afrikaans were not still allowed to be major/state languages.
Ridiculous – you are not comparing say, Turkish immigrants to Germany – this is Russians in Estonia – a completely different scenario, made even more ridiculous by the scenario involving a change in power structure ( one that would not have been possible without the actions of many of these same Russians) and the connivance of the supposedly liberal west.
You also can’t ‘backdate” citizenship is such a stupid manner
I would guess that when
Going back to Lithuania – if the prebaltika midgets recognize Lithuania’s borders redrawn by Stalin – then they have no ground for recognizing anything as illegal (immoral or not is upto their education system) that happened in 1940. All these rules are even more stupid because it’s not as if 90%+ Estonians were virulently against the Soviet Union , a sizeable ( not big but sizeable) part of the population intermarried and many of them supported it
Latvian and Estonian Parliament are both about 10 out of 100 slavic I should add. Populations ( taking out non-citizens ) are about 20-25%
Israel immigration does not have concept of “1/4 Jew”. They follow Jewish religious law.
If you have a grandfather, who had a Jewish grandmother, then you can repatriate on the same criteria (“Jewish roots to the third generation”) as the 1/4 Jew.
Law of Return criteria is to be “Jewish roots to the third generation”, or to be under 18 years old with one parent with “Jewish roots to the third generation”, or to be married to husband/wife who has “Jewish roots to the third generation”.
In addition, if you are over 65 and have children who repatriated to Israel on that criteria, then you get residency in Israel. Israel also gives citizenship to children of foreign workers born in Israel (including illegal immigrants), who completed national service.
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So it seems like it is “easy to abuse” system. However, to receive the passport from Israel even with Law of Return, you have to live in the country for 1 year.
By comparison, in Cyprus, they give immediate Cyprus passport for anyone who invests $2 million into property in Cyprus.
Cyprus’s system is more convenient , but only if you can afford it.
It’s an unresolved issue from 1991. It’s largely the West’s fault because they pushed integration rather than repatriation. As a result we have a perfectly legal 5th column that destabilizes everything and drags everything down because you have to constantly worry about diversity or worse. Most of them are ok and just really sweet people but the 5th column really should go.
Also, most are citizens now and upon accepting Russian citizenship they’d have to give up their LV/EE citizenship. Those who wanted it probably already took it, I know one guy who tried to move there but he came back saying that they’re intolerant. Maybe they’re not given enough help with relocation, it’s hard.
And what good did it do Lithuania to give everyone citizenship, they’re still being threatened with tactical nukes every other month by the Russian public and an invasion on them was simulated at Zapad.
Anyway, the Russian share of the population has crashed, 200K troops left and many are integrated.
Btw one Latvian nationalist calculated that the rate of population change in Sweden is now just as bad as it was in Latvia when the influx of the Slavic migrants was happening.
Do you have a poll for this?
BTW, wasn’t the same almost true for Donbass youth right before the Maidan Revolution? I seem to recall Anatoly Karlin posting a poll in 2013 that showed that 38% of Donbass youth prefer the Eurasian Union while 29% of Donbass youth prefer the European Union (the rest were apparently undecided). That’s a single-digit gap between the two–and that’s in one of the most pro-Russian regions of Ukraine!
Also, wouldn’t a lot of the pro-Western/pro-Ukrainian youth in Odessa flee in the event of a Russian-Transnistrian conquest of Odessa? I mean, didn’t a lot of young people in the Donbass flee after the war there began?
Even the children of Thai and Filipino foreign workers?
Also, how many foreign workers are there in Israel?
To hear Davies tell it, Dmowski was anti-Jewish while Piłsudski was pro-Jewish
By the way, I share your impression that Davies seems driven by great dislike of all things Russian. His hatred of the Soviet Union is understandable enough, but his views on Polish-Russian affairs often take on a queer Manichaean quality. Takes this passage (very long, but it pretty much sums up his view)
These attitudes sound to me like dictionary definitions of servility and cargo cultism, but in Davies’ mind, they are good and noble. I also don’t buy for a second the idea that Polish society didn’t pick up any influences from Russia, or for that matter the suggestion, elsewhere in the book, that Poles who worked for the Russian Empire were frozen out from their local communities.
The idea of having been betrayed by “the West” seems to be a common theme among many Poles, but tbh I’ve always wondered what it’s supposed to be based on. The failure of the French army to attack Germany in the west in 1939? That probably was a grave mistake, but on the other hand France and Britain did declare war on Germany because of the German attack on Poland. There’s even less grounds for complaints about post-war betrayal at Yalta etc. imo, there simply wasn’t much Britain and the US could do against the Sovietization of Poland, short of a war against the Soviet Union which would have been disastrous.
I can’t comment about Davies’ remarks about Polish-Russian relations, but they seem rather harsh.
Jews are another victim of policy against the Russian national minority of Latvia. Most Jews in Latvia, are the Russian Jews.
It will be almost as alienating for children of Jews to lose their Russian education, as with the Russian children in over 100 Russian speaking schools in Latvia.
For children of all nationalities in Latvia, they lose their education in the language of Pushkin, and replace it with a less useful education, in a narrower folkloric language. Moreover, they transition in the middle of their education, which will be damaging for children of older years.
Finally, a forced transition against the consent of the parents, and in an atmosphere of political hostility and paranoia to a Russian minority, a proportion without right of citizenship – and all somehow allowed in the modern EU.
So the Jews of Riga had at least a Russian education, which they are losing
But also Ukrainians will have trouble to transition to Latvian, for their school in Riga.
And main language of instruction in the Riga Ukrainian School – still Russian:
In the Ukrainian school in Riga, they cover everything with a Ukrainian flag and dress like
https://i.imgur.com/bTOzBd8.jpg
And the book shelf of Ukrainian schools of Riga:
https://i.imgur.com/OOAQH3n.jpg
In the Jewish school of Riga – they have Israel flags and Hebrew on the bookshelf
https://www.facebook.com/skolarevs/photos/a.236267296553845/881305892049979
By comparison in Pushkin Lyceum of Riga – there is no Russian flag. No Russian nationalism. Only the Latvian flag. People are just want a normal education of children in their country of birth.
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Finally, the systemic discrimination against Russian education. Of the top 10 worst performing schools in Riga, 9 of them are Russian.
This is despite the fact historically the best schools of Riga, were the Russian schools, of Russian children.
https://rus.db.lv/novosti/iz-10-samykh-neuspevayushchikh-shkol-rigi-tolko-odna-latyshskaya-pochemu-479988
Here – a result not of the children, but of transferring Latvian language for exams. And while the Latvian nationally-minded politicians force Latvian onto Russian children, they do not supply teachers of Latvian to even help them transition.
Israel gives children of illegal immigrants who were born in Israel, Israeli citizenship after they finish a first year of the army.
So this is how children of the Thai, Colombian, Filipino, African, legal and illegal immigrants in Israel, are becoming Israeli citizens.
As for example, the daughter of Thai and Filipino immigrants in Israel. Even if the parents die, they can still continue and become an Israeli citizen through the army.
Illegal immigrants in Israel are over 230,000 (I’m not sure if this includes or excludes the Palestinian illegal immigrants in Israel).
However, I don’t think Israel has a problem with the Colombians, Romanians and Filipinos.
It’s much more Sudanese and Eritreans, which people talk about causing crime problems.
On the whole, I don’t see how the Western powers could have acted very differently. But they could have offered far more help to individual Poles, especially people who fought in the wartime resistance movement, many of whom were sent to gulags.
A lot of Poles settled in Britain though, and I don’t see what could have been done for those who went back to Poland and were arrested by the communists.
iirc Davies always refers to events like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Victory_Celebrations_of_1946#Political_controversy
which was certainly questionable (if in line with the general Western desire to maintain cooperation with the Soviet Union in the immediate post-war era). But on the other hand, it’s not like it changed much on the ground in Poland, the reality was simply that the Red army controlled Eastern Europe and nothing could be done about it.
IIRC Poles were expecting the West to assault Germany soon after war was declared, rather than the so-called “Phoney War.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoney_War
Polish strategy was to hold out for a few weeks while the Western allies got the war going from the West, which would force Germany to shift much of its forces out of Poland and to the West.
The best schools in Riga have always been Latvian – 1st & 3rd Gymnasium.
You’re misleading. The Russian party has not 10 but 22 seats out of 100 in the Latvian parliament, with various Slavic MPs scattered within the rest of the parties. They have pretty much reached their electoral potential.
In Latvia as a whole, Daugavpils Russian Secondary School, ranks as high as second best school in Latvia.
They somehow achieve such high ranking despite the systemic disadvantage for Russian schools, in a Latvian exam system.
http://www.russkije.lv/ru/journalism/read/alexandrova-success-secret/
And Riga Jewish School (which is a Russian school) is one of the top 10 best city schools in Latvia. (Riga French Lycée is also a top 10 lyceum, but it teaches in Latvian)
http://www.baltic-course.com/rus/education/?doc=48970
Latvia’s government had also wanted to force a law to close schools with under 800 students, which would have ended Pushkin Lyceum above, the Ukrainian high school of Riga, the Belarus school of Riga, and the Polish school of Riga.
If Latvia does not listen to Russia, at least you would hope Ukraine, Belarus and Poland could protest.
No I am not misleading, that’s how I calculate it. In fairness neither are you in this instance, but I wouldn’t call it the “Russian party”, but “pro-Russian” or even just a “neutral” party, in terms of going along with much of the foreign policy of the Latvian state against Russia/Eurocentric ( deposed Riga mayor’s mother is a “non-citizen” I should add in to this ridiculous farce), while ( not particularly strongly ) supporting the rights of ethnic Russians
In fair conditions you should probably get 1/3rd population heavily pro-Russian, 1/3rd neutral to the USSR heritage and modern Russia – and willing to do any co-alition with pro-Russian politics…..and a 1/3rd anti-Russian .
That proportion is pretty much how I view the Polish public towards to USSR in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Warsaw Pact
…..and the rules in Russia for dual citizenship are perfectly good ( restrictions on working in the security services, government companies, media ownershipless than 20% /or being editor of a media outlet) …..with everything else being fine to receive full benefits
Absolutely no reason why the Baltic Nazis of Latvia/Estonia could not do an identical scheme ,with minimal protests from Russian government.
errr…you’re giving a load of fake , BS arguments there. You go round to Vilnius and actually speak to people ” in fear” of “Russian invasion”?
As for the point itself………..biggest trading partner by a distance for Litva?……..Russia!
Would all have been so much better if Paskas ( a genuinely good guy who would have been good as President towards Russia) wasn’t cheated out of his Presidency and replaced by the Nazi-American POS slimeball Adamkus ( conveniently just in time for their ascession into EU/NATO) is a case that had a strong smell of **** setup from the start
Latvia also has an American as their PM now ( probably by US diktat) to complement the Canadian Nazi bitch they had as President
Only a small percentage of Latvian politicians would agree to go into coalition with the Centr Soglasiya.
Check the language referendum – most of the population was against formal bilingualism.
And btw one doesn’t need to be pro-Atlanticist to dislike Russia’s policies toward its neighbors. Neutral towards USSR doesn’t mean they think the occupation was ok.
OK then, assuming you disagree over the land-disputes in Ukraine ,Gruzia and Moldova, and the cyberattack over the statue issue in Estonia in 2008 ( we were provoked)….what else exactly over the last 28 years categorises as “negative Russian policy toward their neighbours”?
You can’t include anything that has been in response/reciprocal such as military training exercises and expulsions.
You also have to justify if there has been any change in policy because of Putin – because from what I see it is the same anti-Russian policy throughout the time of Yeltsin upto now.
I don’t consider that if Russia gave gas and oil for free to the Baltics – they would even remotely change their policies.
Ethnic Russians have limited/no political rights, but near full business rights in Latvia – that is about as positive as I can get about it.
How about when you hacked our biggest social networking site on our election day and left a message “Russia has no borders”. This is where people date and grandmas talk to their granddaughters. Etc, etc. And btw we have never caused any deliberate problems for your transit or for Kaliningrad.
I would support a third way candidate but not the kind you envision. The current PM is not the right guy, but there is no US diktat – the US diplomats await the election results together with the rest. But they should be losing their bargaining power regardless due to renegging on Article 5.
Yes, there is trade with Russia but most export is with the EU. I think investment from Russia grew a little recently.
He does, but there were also shameful events like this, which the West should have made much more noise about. If they did, I don’t remember reading about it in the book. (Last quote from it, promise. :))
A lot more could have been done early in the war, true. I was mostly thinking of its later years.
And one does not have to be “anti-Atlanticist” to dislike Latvia’s policies to its Russian-speaking citizens or non citizens.
This is not as much political issue, as question of basic respect and civilization, to allow people to keep their culture and heritage, and to be citizens of the country they are born, live loyally, and give their life and taxes to.
Of course, Russian government and officials are also idiots, this doesn’t condone idiotic behaviour from the Latvian government. The different kind of idiots rely on each other. And as ordinary Russian population of Latvia, who have actual “skin in the game” – are the only people paying the cost.
There are far more serious “humanitarian problems” in the world than this one. Still, it’s bizarre anyone would justify such an unnecessary kind of coercion and general lack of civilization. And it’s crazy that coercion is allowed to happen in an EU member state
Vilnius is full of Russian tourists. This “Russian invasion” – civilized people who want to visit their heritage sites and buy something from their souvenir shops.
Perfect example when somewhat technically truthful fact without a context equals a lie as all Baltic states have roughly about 50-60% of all the trade with EU&US, 20-30% with the rest of the world and about 10-15% with RF (imports mainly oil&gas and re-exports foreign goods into RF). When taken individually as a country by country, yes RF trade has the biggest share, but in the whole picture it is actually just minor trading partner, so why they should be content with RF agents in power when nearly 90% of their trade is NOT with RF?