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Polish or Russian?
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Chung
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Message 25 of 37

19 May 2009 at 11:28pm | IP Logged

I read God's Playground a few years ago and rather enjoyed it. Just bear in mind the noticeable pro-Polish undertone even though it was written by the British historian, Norman Davies. Some sections can leave you with the impression that Poland's place in Europe should be much higher than it is.
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Russianbear
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Message 26 of 37

19 May 2009 at 11:53pm | IP Logged

Chung wrote:

The attempt at linking quantity of candidates from the same party as equal to quantity of candidates from different parties seems kind of odd. Would you have us believe that say Reagan and Carter could be that close ideologically?

I think they were much closer than, say, Gorbachev and Yeltsin were.

Quote:

On the other hand, dissent within one party tends to be suppressed and what happens is that the dissidents tend to form their own party or association whenever possible. Unfortunately for dissidents, this was next to impossible in communist societies until the advent of Solidarity in Poland.

Dissent isn't really posible in the US, either. You can't realistically expect to, say, be the president if you don't belong to one of two parties. There is little sense to form your own party, because it would never get media coverage, as the media outlets get controlled by the same corporations that sponsor the two major parties. And even if one tries to work within the framework of the two parties, one can still be put in place easily - whether by appeals to party discipline, or - again - by media refusal to cover the candidadate's campaign in the earlier stages of elections. Carter and Reagan may be the extreme and best example you've got, but it is not that impressive and as far as most election go - including the Obama/McCain one- the candidates are so close on most of the issues, there aren't really any major differences between them.

Quote:

The comparison with the EU and USSR also seems a little odd upon further review. Remember that the USSR was not quite the same as the EU. It's tough to compare the two satisfactorily despite the superficial similarity of banding a bunch of nations, economies and cultures together. The comparison with Brussels and Moscow seems a bit incongruous on reflection. The EU is more decentralized than the USSR ever was (and understandably so, since if the EU were less decentralized, it's tough to see how all of the diverse members today would have even considered joining it as it was already.)

The point was not to compare EU to USSR. The point was that the location of the capital is irrelevant. It is in that sense that saying Russians should get the blame - or the credit - for whatever USSR had done is as silly as saying Belgians should be the only ones responsible for what EU has done.

Quote:

On the subject of language, it's not as if French, Walloon or Flemish are the dominant languages of the EU, despite the EU's capital being in Belgium. The EU doesn't have one dominant language but it seems that one could argue that the prestige language in the EU is English which is a foreign language for the majority of EU citizens (roughly 86% of the EU's population is from outside the UK and Ireland) In the USSR, not only was the capital on Russian territory, but the dominant ethnic group was Russian which comprised about 50% of the population (Ukrainians were at no. 2 with about 15% of the USSR's population) and it's not surprising that Russian culture and language were prestigious in the USSR and got blurred with the meaning of "Soviet".

"Russian" never got blurred with the meaning of "Soviet" in USSR. It may have been the case for some outside the USSR, where some insist on it, even if they can't really back it up.

Quote:

Apart from Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev (the last one half-Russian, half-Ukrainian), the remaining leaders of the USSR were Russians, which only makes sense since by law of large numbers most members of the Communist party were Russian to begin with and only party members could rule the country.

I am not sure if it is correct to imply most members of the Communist party were Russian to begin with - as it is not clear that there was a greater part of Russians in the party than the percentage of Russians that there was in the USSR.

"Apart from Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev ", huh? Well, USSR existed from 1922 to 1991, which is 69 years. Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev were the leaders of the country from 1924 to 1982, which is 56 years. So "Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev " actually amount to the greater part of Soviet history. So yes, maybe Lenin, Gorbachev and other ethnic Russians did lead the country the remaining 20% of the time - but then again, it is probably fair to say Russians were underrepresented - at least percentagewise - as far as the leadership of the country went. This is hardly a picture of Russian domination. In fact, even when Lenin was the leader, a lot of the Russian nationalists claimed that the Soviet elite had so little Russians (as it mostly had Jews, Poles, other "minorities", Latvians were notorious as the toughest fighting units of the Red Army, etc) - to the point it was used as a battle slogan at the times of the Russian civil war, and the fight against the Soviets was portrayed as the fight of the Russians (Whites) against the non-Russian minorities (Reds) trying to enslave the Russian people.

Quote:

I'm not sure if the comments about minimizing the Western Front's suffering compared to that of the Eastern Front would go down well with survivors in the West. While the Eastern Front had a pointed edge that was missing in Western Europe, dismissing WWII's effects as "relatively minor or insignificant" in the West could be really offensive for Western Europeans. I doubt that people who endured the Blitz and flying bomb attacks, the viciousness of the Battle of the Atlantic or deprivation of German occupation in the Low Countries would be comforted to hear others dismissing their suffering as minor or insignificant.

Well, it is either that, or your dismissing the suffering of the Eastern front as if it was a mirror image of the Western front - which it obviously wasn't. If you think what I said may be somehow offensive to the survivors of the Western Front, I'd say what you said would be offensive to the survivors of the Eastern front. So, if we must "offend" someone one way or another, we might as well tell the historical truth, which is what I said.

Edited by Russianbear on 20 May 2009 at 2:05am
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Russianbear
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Message 27 of 37

20 May 2009 at 12:22am | IP Logged

cordelia0507 wrote:

The negative aspects of the USSR are well known and 99% of it happened before the 1970s.

Here is an example of something good that Russians in the USSR did for others, and of some people who definitely would not have any problem speaking Russian with visitors:

There was a very good BBC documentary about Tadjikistan - the people there liked the USSR and are sad that they are now on their own. (I didn't quite get why, in light of this, they actually broke off in the first place.)

The thing is - it is not that they actually "broke off". The only ones who wanted to break off were the Baltic countries. The remaining republics were dumped by Russia as much as they dumped Russia. A lot of power struggle was happening in Moscow. Yeltsin thought he could get more power if the USSR ceased to exist - as that way he'd get rid of Gorbachev, who was supposed to be the leader of the big thing. So - whether we talk about sovereignty/independence declarations or the dissolution of USSR in Belarus in the Winter of 1991, Russia has led the charge as far as getting independence fro mthe Soviet Union. For example, The Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was adopted on August 24, 1991 The Independence day of Russia actually came over a year earlier (http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/8251-2.cfm), while Tajikistan declared its Independence On Sept. 9, 1991 - but of course, the power struggle went on, and it didn't get finalized for any of the (non-Baltic) republics until the leaders Belarus, Ukraine and Russia signed their agreements that effectively ended the USSR. So, I think it was more of a case of Russia (along with the two other Slav republics) dumping the remaining republics rather than vice versa.

Chung wrote:

Moscow had no choice but to pump money into those areas not only to placate the local population and present a positive light on Russia but more importantly to set up conditions for these local people to live in a communist economy that used technocratic education, collective farms and heavy industry as espoused by the CPSU. It was the only logical thing to do.

Again, "Russia"? I very much doubt anything was done to cast a positive light on "Russia", and I don't imagine the word "Russia" was even used. When you keep saying things like that, it just shows lack of understanding of the issue. Your analysis is quite simplistic. "Russia" only incorporated Tajikistan and then had no choice but to pump resources into it so as to placate the local population? Those Russians sure sound dumb, as they'd waste a bunch of resources on the mere pleasure of knowing they control a bunch of godforsaken mountains in Central Asia. Interestingly enough, getting incorporated into a bigger entity that involves greater prosperity than you were able to achive on your own - that sure sounds like what happened to those new EU countries isn't much different from what happened to, say, Tajikistan. In that sense, the analogy is relevant.

Edited by Russianbear on 20 May 2009 at 12:24am
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Chung
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Message 28 of 37

20 May 2009 at 12:24am | IP Logged

As far as numbers go, actually more than half of the leaders of the USSR were Russian: Lenin, Malenkov, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev (5 out of 8). Longevity was a different matter of course. Brezhnev may or may not be counted depending on how you want to count his Russian and Ukrainian parentage.

Actually I don't recall dismissing the ferocity and suffering of conditions on the Eastern Front. My point was saying that dismissing the Western Front's suffering or damage as relatively minor or insignificant could be really offensive to survivors who were on the Western Front. There are other historical truths about the Eastern Front that would likely irritate you, but for the sake of civility I won't bring them up and would be even more off-topic than our recent posts currently are ;-)
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cordelia0507
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Message 29 of 37

20 May 2009 at 12:24am | IP Logged

Russianbear wrote:

Dissent isn't really posible in the US, either. You can't realistically expect to, say, be the president if you don't belong to one of two parties. There is little sense to form your own party, because it would never get media coverage, as the media outlets get controlled by the same corporation that sponsor the two major parties. And even if one tries to work within the framework of the two parties, one can still be put in place easily - whether by appeals to party discipline, or - again - by media refusal to cover the candidadate's campaign in the earlier stages of elections. Carter and Reagan may be the extreme and best example you've got, but it is not that impressive and as far as most election go - including the Obama/McCain one- the candidates are so close on most of the issue, there aren't really any major differences between them.

Too true! However people will never realise this if you constantly complain about lack of democracy in OTHER countries (say, Russia...) or scare people about dangerous evil ideologies in other countries. Then the lack of democracy on the home front wont be as noticeable.

People might even continue to believe that they live in the most democratic country. While in fact, this is not objectively true for the reasons outlined above.

If you play media right you might even convince people that it is necessary to start wars in far away countries because those oil rich and otherwise endowed countries deserve the same democracy as you enjoy - not to mention the opportunity to trade their natural resources to their liberators...

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Russianbear
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Message 30 of 37

20 May 2009 at 12:31am | IP Logged

Chung wrote:

That's just ridiculous. Who cares how many of the leaders of the USSR were Russian if they only led the country 20% of the time? You are grasping at straws here. The point is - most of the time USSR was led by a non-Russian - even if you count half of Brezhnev's tenure as "Russian".

Quote:

Actually I don't recall dismissing the ferocity and suffering of conditions on the Eastern Front. My point was saying that dismissing the Western Front's suffering or damage as relatively minor or insignificant could be really offensive to survivors who were on the Western Front. There are other historical truths about the Eastern Front that would likely irritate you, but for the sake of civility I won't bring them up and would be even more off-topic than our recent posts currently are ;-)

If I were to be as overly-sensitive about this as you are, I'd say the very fact you implied the amount of suffering on the Western front was anywhere close to that of the Eastern Front would be dismissing "the ferocity and suffering of conditions on the Eastern Front". If you want to say that suffering of a country that lost less than a million is comparable to the suffering of a country that lost 26-28 million, go ahead. But keep in mind, that when I said "relatively minor and insignificant", I referred to the Western Front (as in the military term) and its military importance, not to the suffering of those on the Western Front. So I am talking about the longevity of the fighting, the casualties, and (as it was brought up in the context of economics, remember) the material damage, etc - that is, measurable things. The whole "suffering" thing is really a distraction from the point that a lot more damage was done on the Eastern Front.

Edited by Russianbear on 20 May 2009 at 1:07am
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Chung
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Message 31 of 37

20 May 2009 at 12:40am | IP Logged

Oh one thing about the distance in ideology. The US is probably not a great example notwithstanding examples such as Carter and Reagan or Roosevelt and Hoover, because of how the American political system works even if the odd Independent politicians tries valiantly to make a run at the White House.

I'm thinking more of what you see in Western Europe, Japan or Israel where you can see more than two-horse races and remember that the USA doesn't use proportional representation whereas those places do. They give a chance even for relatively minor parties to have a good hold of the president/prime minister/whatever's ear.

With a multiparty system (or even a two-party one) there's a greater chance to see a difference in views. Having a one-party state makes it illogical since for the sake of the party's being, it can't tolerate too much dissent or even difference in opinions. The option for such genuine dissenters is to either keep quiet, quit, or form their own party. A one-party state by definition can't allow the third option.

Anyway, this should be enough about politics as it's really off-topic.
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guesto
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Message 32 of 37

20 May 2009 at 1:37am | IP Logged

Chung wrote:

I'm not so sure whether we can say that the Americans occupied or dominated Western Europe in quite the same way as the Russians did. For sure Germany and Austria were occupied states divided between the Americans, British, French and Russians until the mid-1950s, but I fail to see how the Americans clamped down on Western Europe like the Russians did on Eastern Europe.

Rather than comparing Russian domination in Eastern Europe with American domination in Western Europe, it would probably be more accurate to compare it with American domination of Latin America. The USA is resented there about as much as Russia is resented in Eastern Europe. Speaking English there could probably motivate the same reactions you could get for speaking Russian in Eastern Europe. Most people wouldn't mind, but you could get a lot of snide remarks.

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