Topic: Meanwhile in Ukraine... Revolution. - page 86. (Read 227096 times)

Copying it out, just in case. Time to buy more bitcoins?

Hmmm. It would not be the first time US was covertly in favour of drugs:
http://rt.com/politics/drugs-sanctions-us-russia-329/

Also, the last US ambassador (Jack Matlock) to SU makes a lot of sense in this interview:
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/former_ambassador_russia_responding_to_years_of_us_hostility_20140320


The world would have been a better place if people like he or Ron Paul were the US presidents, while people like Pozner - Russian presidents.

It seems Ukraine's economy will significantly change in the nearest future after Ukraine's government announced a tender for creating and printing of a new national currency and G&D company won it. See this for more details, http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/kerry_urges_ukraine_reforms_in_call_to_russian_foreign_minister_20140316#comment-1294498663
As for me that will be a sensation because no one actually was informed about that and the info mysteriously disappeared from the original sources...

Your grandma's ethnicity?



More than 3/4th of those who died in the gulags were ethnic Russians. Meanwhile, only a minority of the perpetrators were ethnic Russians.

Haha nice. 

 

My grandma was sent to Siberia as a child, for hard labor. Soviets took their homes. My grandma had her first child in cold, harsh Siberia. Yet I do not view russians as bad people. It's governments who are bad. And that government is  long gone. And USSR was not so bad as it's painted. You cannot have everyone happy. It's a balance, an often unfair one. You smirk about the possibility of human rights in USSR, but I'd say situation was the same in other countries, it's just they were better in creating an illusion of those rights. Same pressure, but in more elegant matter. Same propaganda machine. Same secret police, thought police, even.

And about Kievan Rus you are still partly wrong.
There was simply Ancient Rus who knows how long before 830 AD
Then in 860 Rurik came and took the throne
Then in 879 he dies, and his wingman Oleg moves for Kiev and in 882 ADDS IT TO THE ANCIENT RUS and REBRANDS the WHOLE THING as Kievan Rus
(it's like if Putin would tomorrow rebrand Russian Federation as Crimean Federation of Russia)
By that time there were no ukrainians, there was no such thing as Ukraine, there was no such self-identification amongst these people
It came much later on, with cossacks you mentioned (not specifically by that point, but still much later than 800,1000 or 1200 AD.

Finally about Crimea, when this mess started and local Crimean gov denounced new Kiev leadership, there were talks about Crimean independence, or at least increased authoritarian status. I rooted for that option. But to be blunt, I don't think they can survive on their own. They need water, gas, food, and plain money.

Hate is too strong a word. Many Russians do disapprove of what is happening in the country.
Authoritarian rule is the best form of rule, when a country is under external threat. Russia just didn't have a chance to have normal foreign relations, pretty much ever.
The current estrangement and sanctions will only enforce authoritarian rule for an even longer period into the future.


And the same applied to Central Russia. My grandmother's father was labelled as "kulak" and got his land plot and house that he was building with his own hands confiscated at gun point. He died a couple of years after that from illness and malnutrition.


Basically, there was no organised White Army as such. There were officers from the Russian Army and men who remained loyal to them. They had different goals and agendas, where there even was an attempt at proclaiming an independent country in the Far East of Russia (not without Japanese help). If they were better coordinated, the whole of the USSR fiasco could have been avoided, for they were surely better trained and equipped than the Red Army.
You might find this read interesting (and it pertains to Ukraine as well):
http://www.grandars.ru/shkola/istoriya-rossii/grazhdanskaya-voyna.html


I agree with you there. From an economic point of view, Crimea would have been better off independent. From political point, the Western countries would not have allowed Crimea to stay independent for long.
(And yes, it saddens me to see Russia being thrown into the Dark Ages by the abuse of religion. For the record, I am an atheist.)


Some of these points will get a grudging (I don't like them, but they do make sense) nod of acknowledgement from me. My only consolation (at least from reading comments on quite a few of the mainstream Russian media) as that general public does not totally buy that propaganda. There is a lot of grumbling about the state of the Russian government, as long as that grumbling is not done by foreigners. Russians also seem to be mostly supportive of Ukrainians, but pity them exactly because they see parallels in the Ukrainian coup and the coup of 1917. (Oh, and no brown colours, please).

Check out this Google search for images of Putin and his biker buddies, The Night Wolves"

https://www.google.com/search?q=putin+night+wolves&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=fflb&biw=1288&bih=669&tbm=isch&imgil=gmqt79vC4icXYM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcRpYYSAqKNRkx_t9NttxhuHE95qlLUkuJBosolBh72pJAnB4oAong%253B634%253B423%253BLyxszy2wAvJtoM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%25252Fnews%25252Farticle-1369485%25252FVladimir-Putin-polishes-macho-image-Night-Wolves-Belgrade.html&source=iu&usg=__TggdSiJ6C0TCSiZI_8JpGGQJs98%3D&sa=X&ei=XI8sU46UC8fd2QWQ2IHIBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CC0Q9QEwAQ#facrc=_&imgrc=gmqt79vC4icXYM%253A%3BLyxszy2wAvJtoM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fi.dailymail.co.uk%252Fi%252Fpix%252F2011%252F03%252F24%252Farticle-1369485-0B4FFF9100000578-679_634x423.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.dailymail.co.uk%252Fnews%252Farticle-1369485%252FVladimir-Putin-polishes-macho-image-Night-Wolves-Belgrade.html%3B634%3B423

The Night Wolves:

http://nightwolves.info/en/main

Interesting, eh?

My $.02.

They could hate Russia? Seems a lot of bad stuff has been coming out of that area. Maybe it's something with the culture. I don't know, but I don't see things improving much since Tsarist or Soviet rule. Perhaps people have been under authoritarian rule for so long that they thing it's the normal and better way to live? *shrug*


It's ok for everyone to hate Germany. They kinda deserved it with Hitler   (and Ukraine was stuck fighting on two fronts, Nazis killing Ukrainians because they were in the way of Russia, and Russians killing Ukrainians because they considered joining Nazis, thinking they were a better option than Soviets... Seriously, think about it, Ukrainians thought Nazis were a better option than Soviets -.-


I am quite aware and quite concerned about that too. I think the US revolution was more of a fluke in world history, with most other revolutions typically turning for the worse. Then again, Ukraine was practically becoming a dictatorship, and the people there are decent, so I'm not sure if it could get worse than where it was going.



I know, but it's not propaganda. Yes, the hunger extended to other regions as well, but Ukraine being the breadbasket, and at the time refusing to form collectives or give up its produce, I think it was subjected to it the worst. Besides starvation, a lot of people were also killed, just in a line-up-and-shoot style, when they refused to give away all their farm stuff and the military rolled in to confiscate it. Lately it seems the propaganda has mainly been from Russia, trying to claim that it wasn't that big of a deal (despite something like $3 to $6 million dying in Ukraine alone). My grandfather was a university student when that was going on, and he remembers seeing dead bodies on the street quite often. It dehumanized everyone to the point that if someone was killed by some accident, no one even looked or cared.



Wasn't the Civil War the fight between Red Army Bolsheviks, and White Army Mensheviks? My early Soviet history is mostly from the time I learned it in Soviet Union, plus whatever little my parents told me, so I'm at a severe disadvantage there.


I don't disagree. Frankly, I don't see what the hoopla is about Crimea wanting to leave. It was Russian, it is inhabited by mostly Russians, and it wants to go back to Russia. Who cares. My main two concerns are that I'm not so sure that Crimea would do better under Russian rule (which I really see as more of a fledgeling theocratic totalitarianism than democracy), instead of becoming an independent republic with economic trade with both Ukraine and Russia, and the second concern is about all the anti-Ukrainian propaganda coming out of Russia. Sure, the overthrow of government wasn't legal, and the current government is not legal, but law is a product of government authority, and is DOES NOT mean the same thing as moral or ethical. Yanukovich's rule was neither moral nor ethical (nor democratic at the end). Regardless of how he was taken down, it was a good thing that he was. My overall position is strict antiauthoritarian, so it doesn't really matter to me whether something was "legal" or not. If someone is trying to be a dictator, kick his ass out by any means necessary.

Perhaps the reason there is so much russian propaganda about Ukraine being taken over illegally by fascists, or how the protestors (some of whom I know personally) were evil and violent, while the government were just innocent defenders, or how Ukrainians are scared of the fascists and fleeing the country into Russia (despite the border crossing being empty), or how Ukrainians are attacking and killing innocent Russians (despite most of them not giving a shit, and many speaking Russian as their first language), is because Russia is afraid that their own people might rise up and revolt against their government, which has been doing a lot of the same type of evil BS that Yanukovich got into.

Obama administration officials are very concerned the Russians are not being truthful when they say their forces near Ukraine's eastern and southern borders are merely there for training exercises.

I hope these allegations are false, I don't think the UN and the US can remain idle and only take mild sanctions if Russia would start invading other parts of Ukraine.

Ukraine didn't really feel very independent. We were still forced to pledge allegiance to Lenin and Moscow, to serve the Soviet military, etc. The general opinion we had under USSR was that Russia was in charge. And when Ukraine broke off from Soviet Union, it was in a way like breaking off from Russia (probably because Moscow was the seat of power)



I may be biased, because ""Soviet Russia" seriously f'ed the hell out of my family, with father's side fighting for the White Army, and mother's side coming from a royal family that was subject to pogroms and exterminations. So, at least for me and my family, it was sorta personal.


I consider the foundation of Kievan Rus in ~800 AD to be the foundation of what is now Ukraine. No, Kievan Rus was not Russia. Yes, the territory was originally a bunch of tribes, but it was unified under Kievan Rus. Everything you mentioned from the foundation of Kievan Rus, until it's destruction by the tatars is right, but everything after 1150 AD is not.
The power in that area has shifted constantly after 1150 AD, but not because the people living in Ukraine became Polish or Russian or whatever. They were conquered and occupied by various countries (that tended to plunder their food and resources, and take them into slavery). They did not consider themselves to be a part of their occupying country.
At a certain point, Ukrainians tried to establish independence from the ever occupying forces by forming a self defense force and a paramilitary government, led by the cossacks. The people living there, regardless of being from different origins, did not want to be a part of Poland or Russia. Nor did they coonsider themselves just an "outskirts" of their occupying country.
Keep in mind, when some country invade a piece of land, that land already has its own people with their own identity living onit. Just because USSR occupied Ukraiine, does not mean Ukrainians considered themselves Soviets. Just as just because USA occupied Iraq, that didn't mean that Iraquis coonsidered themselves Americans. So, for a really long time, Ukraine and Ukrainians considered themselves their own people and country, up to the point where USSR took them over, and again since USSR broke apart.


I agree, if in that analogy Cuba is Ukraine, USA is Russia, they both are completely separate countries until one occupied the other, and instead of 500 years it was only about 70 or 80.

russia need to be hated cuz its russia. easy ?
I dont like Ukraine too but at least they are not russians .

I quite understand where that hate comes from. My return question would be: what are Russians to hate, then? My grandmother and here family got a first-hand experience of the Gulag system. She survived, her sister and her mother didn't. Should Russians start hating Jews as the inner circle of the revolutionaries was predominantly Jewish, should they hate Germany, with Lenin being a half-blood German (who in his letters proclaimed hate to all things Russian and had as one of the goals disintegrating Russia), should they start hating Georgia as the birthcountry of Jugashvili, should they hate Ukraine as the birth country of two next Soviet tops, Hrushov and Brezhnev?
Revolution in Russia happened under circumstances much like the ones unfurling in Ukraine. The people were fed up with something (in case of Russia, WWI), but those who capitalised on that didn't have people's interests at heart.

You mention the starvation. It wasn't limited to Ukraine. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4_%D0%B2_%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A0_%281932%E2%80%941933%29 It's a despicable propaganda dividing that tragedy into Ukraine and everyone else. Again, my great-great-grandmother (in the same line as my repressed grandmother) died from hunger.

USSR was as much a product of WWI-induced Western intervention as it was a product of a small group of radicals. Red Army didn't come out of nowhere, but it was not the only army on the territory of Russia to fight for its future, or did you forget the Civil War?

Maybe it's enough with all hating?

Russia does not have its sights on Ukraine, not even on the territories that Lenin gave to Ukraine in 1922-24.
What happened in Crimea was not some whim of Russian politics, it was a process (or a volcano) that was brewing on a a backburner ever since 1954, and with an accelerating force since 1991. It was something that was going to happen sooner or later, and the events in Kiev were the releasing factor. And if Russia didn't act as a guarantor of peace, being there in the background, it might have gone much more violent and with bloodshed.

EDIT: Two people posted before me, while I wrote this. The text above was written without seeing what others commented.

It's from some older topics, when I was lurking more than posting, don't make me search for it. I think it was mostly about gay stuff with a grain of politics.

Anyway, I don't even know where to begin with you.

Basically: many years B.C - region was filled with different tribes
it's is a popular opinion that in about year ~500+ A.D. Kiev was mostly "polish"
power shifted constantly, with lots of different nations moving around
those nations were a different flavors of slavic, predecessors of polish, hungarians, slovenians and etc.
then, in about ~800+ A.D. a guy named Rurik came a long, a viking of sorts, and he took control of what you may call "russian lands" at that time, with it's capital Novgorod
then, after his death, ~850 A.D. his right hand man, named Oleg, took Kiev, and decided to move "russian" capital to Kiev
then, this "old russian kingdom" grew, under rule of Rurik's children and everyone prospered until a certain point
Kiev was a considered a capital, or at least an important political place, although "old russian kingdom" by that point consisted of many large parts, with complete autonomy and feuds between those parts
It all went to shit afterwards at about ~1250 A.D. after which region was raped by every other possible neighboring country, like Austria, Poland, Lithuania and many other

and the BEST PART is that there's was no such thing as UKRAINIAN PEOPLE for all that time
whole place was crawling with different peoples, and even nowadays should be considered much more than simply Russia vs Ukraine. It's a Austrian-Polish-Jewish-Lithuanian-Slovenian-Hungarian-Romanian-Russian-etc land, which suddenly decided to be Ukraine.
as you pointed out earlier ukraine means "outskirts of kievan rus"
this term was coined in about 1150A.D. and simply meant "further part of russia"

An idiotic analogy if I may:
If USA conquers Cuba, and decides that Havana is a new capital of USA. USA is therefore name "United States of America and some other islands like one which Havana is on", or USAH.
Then after 500 years after some infighting and civil wars throughout continent, Cuba splits away, taking Florida with it. USAH becomes "USA is formed Again, minus one state" or USAA.
We will not be able to say that Cuba is the mother of USAA, and should be treated a an equal, if not superior country.

Actually it was a product of Germany... Lenin was an agent, a government of Germany subsidized him to take down Empire government. But then Lenin scammed them and this led to formation of USSR.

That's correct for eastern republics... But TSFSR and a few other southern republics were independent states.

Don't be so naive. The most of republics (with exception for RSFSR and Kazakhstan) had a negative balances and were subsidised. But now they don't have such source of money... There is only one reason, it's always about money.

Anyway, there is no place for love or hate in global politics. These emotions are just the tools set, which used by governments to control the people, and nothing more.

I was not aware.


So, Ukraine got money out of Russia by whoring Crimea out to Russia so that Russia can build military bases there. But, in the end, the whore fell in love with the john, and Crimea decided to just be a part of Russia? My question was more like whether Crimea was producing something economically, and that product (or heavy taxation) was being stolen by Ukraine to be distributed among the rest of the people up north. (I know Crimea was a net producer of tax revenue, but I don't know if that was entirely thanks to Russia paying for the base, or something else).
I'm kinda wondering if the reason Krim decided to join Russia was simply because Ukraine government fell appart, and they are hoping Russia can keep providing them with government services.


USSR was a product of Russia. The Red Army didn't come out of nowhere to fight over Ukraine, they came out of Russia, after the Russian Revolution (my dad's side of the family fought for the White Army, btw, which put that side of my family on a blacklist through USSR's existence). Russia conquered the rest of the republics, and formed the Soviet Union. Even if you say "Russia didn't own..." the ruling party, along with the pogroms, holodomors, and the rest of the terrible Soviet rule, came out of Moscow, in Russia. It's why so many ex-Soviet republics hate Russia now. Not necessarily Russians but just Russia.

I think that we have to ask him about God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXhHqfMFLCI

My $.02.

The answer to your first question is: Yes, though luckily nothing physical.
As for the second question: US goes to war all over the world so as to have place for its naval bases. Those two points are enough, even if we disregard historical and humanitarian aspects.

And, please, Russia didn't own Ukraine under USSR. Russia barely existed, and out of the 15 republics it had least say in the matters of its own affairs.

For the Scandinavian readers here, I'd like to give a small simile: the relationship between Russians and Ukrainians is akin to that between Norwegians and Swedes.