Dennis
10/20/2011 7:32:00 PM
AlexMilman wrote:
>> I know that during the Soviet era the Soviets settled Russians in
>> especially 'eastern' part ?
>
> Big chunk of the 'eastern part' had big percentage of the Russian
> population under the Russian Empire. For one thing, it was not
> considered 'Malorossia': territories along the Black Sea shore were
> 'Novorossia'.
I can believe it!
>>Kiev. I read in Wiki article that Ukrainian
>> Communist Party suppressed Ukrainian language for a long time, even
>> during Gorbachev's glasnost.
>
> Wow! Taking into an account that it was all over the place (as in
> radio, TV, newspapers, street signs, etc.) even prior to the Gorby's
> time, I wonder what this 'suppression' was about? Most probably, it
> amounted to a freedom of choice between education in Ukrainian and
> education in Russian (not sure how their education had been settled).
Wiki isn't always accurate, to say the least.
>>Now there's over-reaction, in 'west' at
>> least.
>
> I had a chance to visit Lwov during the Gorby times and had tremendous
> dififculties with figuring out what 'the natives' had been saying so I
> somewhat doubt 'oppression' part. OTOH, history of a nationalism was/
> is definitely present in this area so this is probably not as much of
> over-reaction as just ideological rigidness.
L'viv is interesting, of course. It's close to Poland. At the
beginning of the 20th century, it was multi-ethnic, with Poles, Germans,
Jews, Ukrainians, and probably some others I left out. After several
rounds of ethnic cleansing and genocide, there are only Ukrainians there.
So a good many of those Ukrainians have ancestors who were recently
resettled there by Stalin, or even by OUN or Nazis? I can well imagine
rigidness and other things.
>> The current Russia can't accept a Ukraine aligned with the West,
>
> Why would 'the West' want Ukraine aligned with it is a little bit
> beyond me (especially when the West started running out of money to
> give away for unclear geopolitical reasons). On the Ukrainian side, I
> have certain doubts about seriousness of their 'aligned' with anybody
> except in a hope to get some freebees: at the pick of pro-/ant-
> <whoever> rhetorics suppossedly pre-western leaders kept making deals
> with Russia (and re-dividing whatever could be stolen on their own
> territory :-)).
>
> Taking into an account percentage of the Russian-speakers in Ukraine
> (and Latvia, Estonia), the most (seemingly) obvious way would be to
> make bi-lingual arrangements and to let the whole issue die from the
> natural causes.
Ukraine and the Baltics want someone to protect them from Russia, quite
aside from giveaways. Russia has its historical geopolitical fear of
invasion. The West might want a market for its weapons and goods;
Ukraine could offer cheap labor.
What you propose is sensible, but you also mention geopolitical concern
below.
>>and want
>> to protect 'genuine' Russians.
>
> Protection of the 'genuine' Russians (or rather Russian-speakers)
> seems to be a way to maintain semi-imperial status which is important
> (as far as the Russian leaders are involved) for the home
> consumption.
>
>>I have read that they suborned the Orange
>> Revolution.
>
> Western (and especially USian) reaction to these color revolutions is
> a little bit on a naive side.
> It was simply a way for the nationalistic leaders to whip up
> enthusiasm of their potential constituency. These methods could not
> hold them enthhusiastic forever (especially with the free goodies not
> coming from the West) so the next swing of the pendulum was in a favor
> of the pro-Russian half of the country: while the goodies were not
> coming, eating was still a daily issue and Russia (AFAIK) is a big
> labor market fdor the migrant workers, the major trade partner AND the
> main energy supplier. So, the people started looking in a food-
> supplying direction.
>
> Think for a minute: these 'orange' people, many of whom were not from
> Kiev, had been staying on the 'maidan' for a long period of time. They
> had to be fed, kept warm (transported). All of this takes money. Who
> had money? The leading 'nationalistic' politicians at least some of
> whom just happened to control/own a big chunk of the Ukrainian
> economics (most of the rest being, as I understand, controlled by the
> leaders of the opposing side).
I can believe it! Everyone there is just trying to survive. Ukraine
isn't doing nearly as well as Poland.
>> No doubt the Russians played some part in the trumped-up
>> charges against Yulya Tymoshenko.
>
> While political component is most probably there, if you think for a
> second that she is just an innocent victim, you are extremely naive:
> her family was, IIRC, practically controlling gas import from Russia.
> Taking into an account the way business (AFAIK) is conducted on a big
> part of post-Soviet space, illegalities are simply inevitable.
I wouldn't doubt it.
>> Plainly they're playing the divisions
>> to their advantage as they can.
>
> Of course, they did. If one of the main sources of income for your
> country is export of gas, you may want to have friendly goverment(s)
> along the route AND you probably want them to limit amount of the
> stolen gas and perhaps to pay (at least something) for the rest. :-)
It looks more to me like the other way around; Russia uses its gas to
blackmail other countries.
> OTOH, with the country being split approximately 50:50, change of the
> direction in national politics is a natural phenomena. I'm sure that
> if 'the West' was naive and rich enough to put the whole Ukrainian
> population on a welfare program, their previous set of leaders would
> still be in place.
Maybe so.
Where is the present-day dividing line between 'western' and 'eastern'
Ukraine?
Dennis
PS: The case of the KGB assassin Bohdan Stashinsky has always intrigued
me. He committed two first-degree murders, and got... eight years in
jail? He fell in love with a woman he wanted to spend his life with...
and turned himself in for crimes that could have gotten him life in
prison? What gives?
One explanation could be that by giving cheap deals to KGB assassins who
gave themselves in and spilled the beans, there might be fewer KGB
assassinations. If so, it worked, because after him, the KGB farmed out
its assassinations to satellite security organizations.
Also, I wonder if the West wasn't somewhat happy to have Bandera out of
the way? He might have been implicated in the Holocaust and also in the
genocide of Poles in Volhynia during WWII. Plus, maybe he was a loose
cannon as far as the West was concerned. I don't know.