Posted on 08/03/2005 3:55:14 PM PDT by lizol
Eastern Europe: Russian-Polish Tensions Rise Over Attack On Russian Children In Warsaw
By Valentinas Mite
Poland's relations with Russia have reached new lows. The formal reason for the exchange of current diplomatic unpleasantness is an attack on teenage children of Russian diplomats in Warsaw on 31 July. Moscow says the attack indicates strong anti-Russian sentiments in the country. Analysts say more serious disagreements are under the surface.
Moscow is condemning in strong words the attack on Russian teenagers in Warsaw, saying anti-Russian sentiments are widespread in Poland.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the attack an “unfriendly” act.
"I am asking the Foreign Ministry and the presidential administration to contact Polish colleagues to understand what Polish authorities are doing in order to respond adequately to this unfriendly act which can only be qualified as a crime," Putin said.
Russian news agencies report that the three children of Russian diplomats were attacked in a Warsaw park by 15 youths shouting anti-Russian slogans.
Moscow said the attackers beat the teenagers and wants an official apology from Warsaw. But the Polish government has said it views the incident as a common criminal act.
Boris Makarenko, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow-based think tank, said there is some ground for a tough Russian stance.
"Eyewitnesses say that the skinheads [the attackers] left the site of the fight on a microbus," Makarenko said. "I don't know many hooligans who are traveling in microbuses."
The report that the microbus was waiting for the attackers to take them away cannot be independently confirmed.
Even leaving such odd circumstances aside, analysts say that anti-Russian feelings are strong and old in Poland, making the beating a “hate crime” of international significance to Moscow.
Makarenko said that much of the anti-Russian feelings in Poland is caused by grievances of the past.
"The Polish envoy to Moscow, when invited to the [Russian] Foreign Ministry, denied those anti-Russian sentiments, but they have existed for more than 200 years," Makarenko said. "It is easy to understand why, and I am not going to defend Russia either for three divisions of Poland [at the end of the 18 century] or many other [unjust things done to Poland]. These anti-Russian sentiments resurfaced in the recent decade and there are many examples of that."
Russian officials said that bad feelings toward Russia are widespread in Poland.
The Polish daily "Gazeta Wyborcza" reports that Gleb Pavlovskii, an adviser to Putin, complained during a recent visit to Warsaw that "Poles talk about Russians the way anti-Semites talk about Jews." Poland's foreign minister, Adam Rotfeld, replied that Russian politicians are "looking for an enemy and…find it in Poland."
Jakub Boratynski, director of international programs at the independent Polish think tank Stefan Batory Foundation, said that Makarenko overlooks the fact that anti-Russian feelings have substantially decreased since Poland joined the EU and NATO, and that Poles feel more safe than before.
On the other hand, he admited that many people in Poland still look suspiciously at Russian foreign-policy moves and are afraid Russia is seeking to "recreate an empire in a different form."
However, both analysts say that the current row is more about politics and the new role Poland is playing in the region than about history.
Makarenko noted that Poland and Russia have recently clashed over the events in Ukraine, and that Poland sometimes criticizes Russia’s stance on human rights or press freedoms.
Boratynski said many Russian politicians are upset with Poland's entry into the EU and NATO. He said the Kremlin perceives Poland's involvement in encouraging democracy in the region as limiting its own influence. The analyst also said the Kremlin is using the attack on the teenagers to show its displeasure over Polish policy in the region as a whole.
"The incident as we look at it in an isolated manner has really created a very strange reaction," Boratynski said. "However, of course, it becomes much more logical if we look into the current context of Polish-Russian relations."
Boratynski said it is not an accident that the reaction comes at the time of tense relations between Russia and Belarus.
"I think the Russians are seizing a very good opportunity to try once gain for the external audience, mostly for the European Union, to show that actually Poland cannot be treated in a serious manner, that it is a country kind of obsessed with anti-Russian phobia," Boratynski said.
Last week, Poland recalled its ambassador to Belarus after weeks of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions by both countries. Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is accusing Poland of using the Polish minority in Belarus to help push him out of power.
Boratynski said that by portraying Poland as a place obsessed with anti-Russian sentiments, the Kremlin plays into the hands of Lukashenka, who can now more easily reject Warsaw's demands to respect the rights of Polish minority in Belarus.
I was really referring to the russian mob and its ties to the govt.
Happiness is...seeing the Kremlin turned into a parking lot, preferably while Putin was there.
Every country has its thugs, once again Poland is singled out for something that every country has. The government didn't instigate this, unlike the actions against Poles in Belarus.
If there is any Belarus involvement, it is not from common people, it is from Luka's paid thugs. Or it could be just that young Poles are aware that Stalin abandoned Warsaw during the Nazi atrocities.
"Eyewitnesses say that the skinheads [the attackers] left the site of the fight on a microbus," Makarenko said. "I don't know many hooligans who are traveling in microbuses."
Strange, look like provocation for me. I cannot imagine skinheads planning such attack, usually such criminals attacking people whom they incidentally met on the street. Also number of attackers is too big in my opinion. When I see Putin’s personal intervertion, I have no doubts that Kremlin is behind that case.
Additional measures should taken to ensure security of the Russian embassy in Warsaw: Poland is becoming too dangerous.
Maybe the diplomats should work in shifts while their families left in Russia.
Rather Latvian embassy in Moscow...
Have they suffered in any way like in Warsaw?
Very complicated plan, sounds unrealistic. There was no similar racist incidents in Poland in recent times, in opposition to Russia, which have the largest group of skinheads in the world.
Have they suffered in any way like in Warsaw?
Latvian embassy is regularly attacked by Russian nationalists. Maybe their attacks have different form that this one in Warsaw but in Moscow it is a norm in opposition to Warsaw.
Of course if Russia want stronger security, they always can employ some agency… Not our business.
"Maybe the diplomats should work in shifts while their families left in Russia."
Russians are very adverse to leaving Poland,---or the Baltics, or Ukraine--- to go back to Russia!!!
"Russia's imperialism and genocide is unprecedented and the average Russian denies to this day culpability and each and every surviving Russian has benefited from the ill gotten gains. (Granted, some rightous Russians did perish) "
How the average Russian benefited from this genocide ?
Nearly every family in Russia as well as in Ukraine has somebody who perished in GULAG or collectivization. Or you would tell there were no repressions in Moscow, Leningrad (now. St. Petersburg), Voronezh, Ufa ,etc. There were no millions of Russians (as well as Ukrainians, Belarussians, etc.) in GULAG ? If you are claiming this, than you either:
1. Have absolutely no slightest idea what you are talking about.
2. You know that you are lying.
"And please, no crying about the "Russians" that perished beating Hitler. It was Poland and Ukraine that lost the tens of millions - not Muscovy."
There were no 1 million citizens of Leningrad who perished in Nazi blockade ( Stalin refuse to evacuate the civilian population of Leningrad) ? You will tell me there were no Russians among Soviet POW's who either died in Hitler POW Camps and the survivors who were repatriated to Stalin Gulags ? There were no battles of Stalingrad, Leningrad and anywhere in between ? If there were there were only Ukrainians, Belarussians who fought ?
So just cut your crap please !
If you telling that every surviving Russian "benefited" from Genocide, than you might start reading this list Russian Federation residents shot on the direct orders of Stalin in 1937-1938 alone. It's in Russian, but you'll get the picture--there are tens of thousands of names there. The list covers people who lived all over Russian Federation. You can also find the lists of people shot during this period from all other fmr. Soviet Republics. It's somebody's grandpa's grandma's, family friend, etc. This mass murder and genocide was going on all over the fmr. USSR. People were whisked away at night to be shot or rot in NKVD jails and GULAGS in Moscow, Leningrad, Voronezh, Ufa, Ivanovo, Vladivostok, etc--all over Russian Federation proper as well as in Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan--everywhere in the fmr. USSR. These lists do not include millions who were in GULAG, NKVD prisons, etc throughout Stalin era. And you call that every surviving Russian "benefited" from their own relatives or family friends murdered or their lives broken by GULAG ? Either learn about history or just shut up not to look like a moron.
http://stalin.memo.ru/regions/indgeo.htm
Don't want to drag this on, but here is another estimate of those perished in fmr. USSR during Lenin-Stalin Era, excluding WWII. The number varies between 20 million to 50+ million. The likely estimate of Stalin Purges, artificial faminies, victims of GULAG, etc is definitely more than 30+ million. These numbers for sure include millions of Russians (residents of Russian federation), or as you say "some" Russians, They simply could not have all come from Ukraine and Belarus--otherwise there wouldn't be anyone left in Ukraine or Belarus.
Soviet Union, Stalin's regime (1924-53): 20 000 000
There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to the number who died at Stalin's hands. There's the "Why doesn't anyone realize that communism is the absolutely worst thing ever to hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together?" school, and there's the "Come on, stop exaggerating. The truth is horrifying enough without you pulling numbers out of thin air" school. The two schools are generally associated with the right and left wings of the political spectrum, and they often accuse each other of being blinded by prejudice, stubbornly refusing to admit the truth, and maybe even having a hidden agenda. Also, both sides claim that recent access to former Soviet archives has proven that their side is right.
Here are a few illustrative estimates from the Big Numbers school:
Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993 cites these:
Chistyakovoy, V. (Neva, no.10): 20 million killed during the 1930s.
Dyadkin, I.G. (Demograficheskaya statistika neyestestvennoy smertnosti v SSSR 1918-1956 ): 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths" for the USSR overall, with 34 to 49 million under Stalin.
Gold, John.: 50-60 million.
Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998): c. 50 million killed 1924-53, excluding WW2 war losses. This would divide (more or less) into 33M pre-war and 17M after 1939.
Rummel, 1990: 61,911,000 democides in the USSR 1917-87, of which 51,755,000 occurred during the Stalin years. This divides up into:
1923-29: 2,200,000 (plus 1M non-democidal famine deaths)
1929-39: 15,785,000 (plus 2M non-democidal famine)
1939-45: 18,157,000
1946-54: 15,613,000 (plus 333,000 non-democidal famine)
TOTAL: 51,755,000 democides and 3,333,000 non-demo. famine
William Cockerham, Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe: 50M+
Wallechinsky: 13M (1930-32) + 7M (1934-38)
Cited by Wallechinsky:
Medvedev, Roy (Let History Judge): 40 million.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: 60 million.
MEDIAN: 51 million for the entire Stalin Era; 20M during the 1930s.
And from the Lower Numbers school:
Nove, Alec ("Victims of Stalinism: How Many?" in J. Arch Getty (ed.) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, 1993): 9,500,000 "surplus deaths" during the 1930s.
Cited in Nove:
Maksudov, S. (Poteri naseleniya SSSR, 1989): 9.8 million abnormal deaths between 1926 and 1937.
Tsaplin, V.V. ("Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody" 1989): 6,600,000 deaths (hunger, camps and prisons) between the 1926 and 1937 censuses.
Dugin, A. ("Stalinizm: legendy i fakty" 1989): 642,980 counterrevolutionaries shot 1921-53.
Muskovsky Novosti (4 March 1990): 786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53.
Gordon, A. (What Happened in That Time?, 1989, cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993): 8-9 million during the 1930s.
Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
MEDIAN: 8.5 Million during the 1930s.
As you can see, there's no easy compromise between the two schools. The Big Numbers are so high that picking the midpoint between the two schools would still give us a Big Number. It may appear to be a rather pointless argument -- whether it's fifteen or fifty million, it's still a huge number of killings -- but keep in mind that the population of the Soviet Union was 164 million in 1937, so the upper estimates accuse Stalin of killing nearly 1 out of every 3 of his people, an extremely Polpotian level of savagery. The lower numbers, on the other hand, leave Stalin with plenty of people still alive to fight off the German invasion.
[Letter]
Although it's too early to be taking sides with absolute certainty, a consensus seems to be forming around a death toll of 20 million. This would adequately account for all documented nastiness without straining credulity:
In The Great Terror (1969), Robert Conquest suggested that the overall death toll was 20 million at minimum -- and very likely 50% higher, or 30 million. This would divide roughly as follows: 7M in 1930-36; 3M in 1937-38; 10M in 1939-53. By the time he wrote The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (1992), Conquest was much more confident that 20 million was the likeliest death toll.
Britannica, "Stalinism": 20M died in camps, of famine, executions, etc., citing Medvedev
Brzezinski: 20-25 million, dividing roughly as follows: 7M destroying the peasantry; 12M in labor camps; 1M excuted during and after WW2.
Daniel Chirot:
"Lowest credible" estimate: 20M
"Highest": 40M
Citing:
Conquest: 20M
Antonov-Ovseyenko: 30M
Medvedev: 40M
Courtois, Stephane, Black Book of Communism (Le Livre Noir du Communism): 20M for the whole history of Soviet Union, 1917-91.
Essay by Nicolas Werth: 15M
[Ironic observation: The Black Book of Communism seems to vote for Hitler as the answer to the question of who's worse, Hitler (25M) or Stalin (20M).]
John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (2001): 20M, incl.
Kulaks: 7M
Gulag: 12M
Purge: 1.2M (minus 50,000 survivors)
Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin: directly responsible for 20 million deaths.
Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europes Ghosts After Communism (1995): upwards of 25M
Time Magazine (13 April 1998): 15-20 million.
AVERAGE: Of the 17 estimates of the total number of victims of Stalin, the median is 30 million.
Individual Gulags etc.
Kolyma
Kuropaty
Vorkuta
Bykivnia
Famine, 1926-38
Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): 4.2M in Ukraine + 1.7M in Kazakhstan
Green, Barbara ("Stalinist Terror and the Question of Genocide: the Great Famine" in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?) cites these sources for the number who died in the famine:
Nove: 3.1-3.2M in Ukraine, 1933
Maksudov: 4.4M in Ukraine, 1927-38
Mace: 5-7M in Ukraine
Osokin: 3.35M in USSR, 1933
Wheatcraft: 4-5M in USSR, 1932-33
Conquest:
Total, USSR, 1926-37: 11M
1932-33: 7M
Ukraine: 5M
"They simply could not have all come from Ukraine and Belarus--otherwise there wouldn't be anyone left in Ukraine or Belarus."
You are right - mortality in some area of Ukraine did reach 100% - Also WWII losses by Poland and Ukraine exceeded actual Russian losses by a factor of 5 .
Read and weep , Kremlin propagandists.
http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-29.html
http://www.faminegenocide.com/resources/famine_map.html
"How the average Russian benefited from this genocide ? "
Well lets see?
Lets take all the assets of all the people in a country of 10 million, then take all the food they would have eaten for 3 years, and then allocate those funds to the confines of Russia to build chandalier subways, summer dachas, and various other infrastructure to benefit loyal soviet citizens.
In 2005 dollars, that comes out to well over $100 billion.
"Either learn about history or just shut up not to look like a moron.
http://stalin.memo.ru/regions/indgeo.htm"
We have a hard enough time getting the facts from the Kremlin-lackey NY Times and do you think I am going to tolerate a Russian website?
http://ucca.org/famine/gordondispatch.html
HAHAHAHAHA
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.