Posted on 03/18/2014 9:10:05 PM PDT by varmintman
I'm not the world's foremost expert on Russia... But I believe I know enough to at least try to clear up a few of the misconceptions I see on forums and have been listening to on talk radio for the past few weeks.
A bit of Russian history for starters... Slavic farmers invited Vikings (Verangians) into what you'd now call Russia and set up the Kievan state which adopted Christianity around 988 AD so that the territory controlled by the city of Kiev was the dominant power in Russia prior to the Mongol invasion in 1236. In other words, they'd fought Polovyetski/Cumins and other nomad tribes to a sort of a standstill which appeared to be a workable state of affairs and then they got run over by a military avalanch and an empire whose military technology was 300 years ahead of the rest of the world.
Russia spent the next 140 years or so under the "Mongol Yoke" before the princes of Moscow managed to win a huge battle over the Golden Horde at Kulikovo in 1380, only to have the white and golden hordes unite a couple of years later and plow Russia under foot again where she would have remained for another century or two, nonetheless shortly thereafter Tamerlane came through and annihilated the Golden Horde. Unlike the situation with Genghis Khan who had utterly competent heirs, Tamerlane's empire began to crumble shortly after his death in the first few years of the 1400s, leaving much of Russia a sort of a shambles and Southern Russia what was called "wild fields". Jews living in what had been the remains of the Khazar kingdom prior to that time finally had enough and started moving to Poland and Germany and for a period of a century or so until Russia started to get organized again, Poland and Lithuania began to look like serious countries on maps. In those days, the Ukraine was part of Poland and one of the biggest if not THE biggest celebrations there ever was in the Ukraine was when Russia took it over in the 1700s.
The Ukrainian language is basically the language of the principality of Kiev while modern Russian is basically the language of the principality of Suzdal and the city of Moscow. At some point, the languages of the various places which comprised Russia must have fused, which is presumably why you have more than one system for verb formations and declension endings. The difference between Russian and Ukrainian is similar to the difference between our English and Chaucer's and anybody in the Ukraine who isn't retarded can speak Russian.
The city of Moscow featured the most paranoid design for a city in the history of the world, basically a system of concentric rings, each more difficult to break into than the last. That is because up to a very late date, Crimean Tatars, remnants of the Golden Horde, used to ride into the city as far as they could get, capture children and stuff them into baskets on their horses and ride off to sell them so that the word "Slav" morphed into "slave". The fact that any Crimean Tatars remain alive at all strongly indicates that Russians are an unusually tolerant people, less given to holding grudges than most.
The official title of the tsars was "Tsar of all the Russias", meaning primarily 'Great Russia' (Russia), 'White Russia' (Belorus), and 'Little Russia' (Ukraine). That is the heart of the Slavic Orthodox world and Ukraine is the breadbasket of that world. The Ukraine could feed everybody from the Volga to the Atlantic and that in fact was Hitler's plan; the idea was to build a super-gauge train to haul foodstuffs from Ukraine to Europe and, as I read it at least, to get Western Europe pretty much out of the food business altogether.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn
"Early plans for routes considered India and Vladivostok as the ultimate goals of the railways, but [b][i][size=150]by 1943 the planning was focused exclusively on European cities.[1] Ukraine and the Volga Basin were seen as especially important targets, as these areas were viewed as the future granaries of the Nazi empire[/size][/i][/b],[1] potentially through the "settlement strings". orSiedlungsperlen of the proposed Wehrbauer settlements within the conquered Lebensraum territories, which would also be linked by the planned easternmost reaches of theReichsautobahn freeway network.[5]...."
But you get the idea. The idea that anybody should have expected Vladimir Putin to just sit there and watch George Soros, Monsanto, and the US state department to just walk off with the Ukraine is idiotic. For that matter, the Crimea had been part and parcel of Russia for at least a couple of centuries before Khrushchev gifted it to Ukraine in 1954; it didn't seem to make much difference when everybody was a citizen of the CCCP one way or other, but expecting Russia to just let go of he Crimea under present circumstances is doubly stupid.
Moreover, there is a very big problem with language convergence. Television and the Internet are radically shrinking the world. TV has in fact killed the Southern accent in Texas so that I hear it only amongst people over 60; I expect TV and the internet to kill most of the world's languages in the next 30 years. My guess would be that languages which will still be in use by 2050 will include:
Basically, Ukrainian is a dead language walking and the idiots who just took over Kiev know that, which accounts for at least some of their irrational behavior. Ukraine has a border with Russia, their culture is tied up with that of Russia, and Russian is the main language of those which will survive, with which they are most familiar. My money says that in 20 years, Ukrainian will be spoken only amongst people over 60. The future of the Ukrainian people clearly lies with Russia.
That brings up an obvius question: what are the people in the US state department smoking? What did they expect to see happen?? Another question is, what reasons could there be for wanting to start a major war over any of this stuff?
A century or two ago the reasons for starting wars were simple: Gold, land, women, treaties... That stuff was heinous enough but it was at least comprehensible. In today's world, unfortunatley, you have to at least consider the most paranoid possibility i.e. that the LaRouche group may be right and that the idiots may actually have in mind to start a nuclear war to reduce the human population of the planet to less than one billion as per their stated ideology, for the glory of Gaea.
It turns out the sniper killings around Kiev a month ago were the work of the hoodlums WE are supporting, and not that of Yanukovich or Russians:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-05/behind-kiev-snipers-it-was-somebody-new-coaltion-stunning-new-leak-reveals-truth
We have now seen two of these false-flag ops in the past six months (Syria and Kiev). At some point, the world has seen this **** one too many times and gets wise to it, and starts to look on Americans as a bunch of lunatics. It's hard not to get the idea that somebody in the US State Department is trying to start a major war.
Aside from that, the world can clearly see that Vladimir Putin is the best Ruler Russia has ever had since Tsar Peter, and that Bork Obunga is just as clearly the worst ruler any advanced state has ever had since Nero and may in fact be WORSE than Nero since I don't view Bork as being bright enough to play a fiddle. More likely we'll get to listen to rap while America burns.
Vladimir Putin is the main force responsible for bringing the global warming lunatics into global disrepute and disrepect. Putin apparently got a number of Russia's best hackers in a room and said something like "Guys, I'm not gonna wreck Russia's economy over a bunch of bullshit, I want you to blast your way into that East Anglia Email Database and spread to the four winds whatever you might find there", and they did that:
http://www.climategate.com
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?221759-Is-Putin-behind-the-leaked-Climategate-e-mails
In other words, aside from needing to learn how to pronounce the guy's name properly, commentators like Limbaugh and Hannity need to understand that Putin is primarily responsible for their not needing to rub sticks together to make fire.
I mean, how many times does that make that Russia has bailed our hiney's out of some really awful kind of ****? Picture living in a world in which Sweden was a major power, i.e. picture yourself cruising in a 57 Volvo:
Guy a half mile up the road had one of those when I was a teenager. The thing was so ugly that just having it parked at the curb reduced housing values within a three-block radius. Tsar Peter saved us from that ****:
I EXPECT libtards and demoKKKrats to be clueless; it's painful to listen to stupid **** coming from right of center commentaters like Limbaugh and Hannity. Again they should start by at least learning to pronounce the guy's name properly:
"vla-DEE-mir POO-Tin" The accent is on the second syllable in Vladimir and nobody swallows a T or pronounces it like a D in Russia.
There is a question of communism in the picture and the thing you have to grasp is that the Soviet state had an absolute monopoly on weapons under the CCCP so that there was no possibility of the people ever rising up and overthrowing that system. That system fell because the people running it finally realized it couldn't work and gave it up. There is zero possibility of Russia going back to socialism or communism.
They ARE however going back to their original Christian roots and aside from building some 200 Christian churches in and around Moscow, they have actually rebuilt that gigantic cathedral which the commies tore down and made into a swimming complex:
Aside from all of that, Putin and the people around him have clearly taken a hard look at the ongoing suicide of the West and determind that Russia is not going to participate in any of that happy horse-****. Not allowing gays to recruit or prosylitize in schools or allowing girl bands to desecrate a church are signs of a recovered righteousness.
I mean, if I've missed anything or left anything important out here or gotten anything wrong, somebody let me know, but this is the picture I'm seeing. I don't see anything not to like with Putin or the vision of the current Russian government.
I don’t care what you think.
It’s how this will end anyway so I say get it done and over with. More years, decades of threats. And false promises are not worth living....
Seems there a new crop of idiots who need educating about Russia....Happens every 30 years.
This is the long game they are playing. I can see it, but you can’t and from your words, you won’t see it until....
And?
And now American NASA astronautes rely on Soyouz rocketry in Baikonur, to reach the ISS.
----------------------------------->
And NASA was arranged to educate Muslims...arranged by B. Hussein O.
“The Crimea population had the choice to express their choice in a referendum. Crimea was not “annexed”, as a republic it asked to join the Russian Federation”
Yes, the Imperial Russian idea of free elections, which you so profoundly propagandize, consists of sending armed goons into the streets, setting up roadblocks, putting Jack Boots on the ground...and then so warmly asking them all to vote their conscience.
LOL...how very Soviet of you. Not to mention that Crimea is part of Ukraine, a sovereign nation. Those kangaroo elections are meaningless.
“Yes, the Imperial Russian idea of free elections,”
Is that kinda like the Chicago idea of a “free Election”?
The Chicago idea is both “educating” the stupid and paying off the apathetic.
The Russian idea is to put a Jack Boot on every corner and physically coerce the population.
While modern Russia has a lot of good things going for it and I strongly support what Putin is doing in Syria, we cannot go the whole hog and say it's a beautiful regime
but technically he was a leader of the Soviet Union and by his movement to replace all languages with Russian, he was a leader of Rossiya
Also, there are Russian speakers who call themselves Ukrainian (I don't understand it, but there are) and there are Ukrainian speakers who may have some attachment to Russia perhaps mostly economically.
it's just not that simple Russians and Ukrainians
Calm down. I disagree with Mt and varmint as well, but let’s not toss slurs around. At the end of the day, we’re all freepers, so let’s debate or argue sensibly.
I seriously doubt that I would visit Russia right now. We have a police state and they have a corrupt police force.
I mean they always had bribery as part of the culture so to speak, but recent events there have made me wish for the Russia of the 90's.
As for the rest of it, they just don't like sickos like Pussy Riot and Soros.
No way? I didn’t know that.
He did not deserve the heat he took for Grozny though.
On the Crimea issue, however, we just look like idiots after what we did to Serbia. That's some serious hypocrisy. And as someone recently posted, Ukraine itself broke away to become independent from the USSR. Hello separatism.
I have deep concerns about the neonazi stuff associated with the current Ukraine govt.
Finally for those who want to go to war with Putin over this, first rescue Tibet from China - or you are a hypocrite.
Just as Kosovo was part of Serbia, a sovereign nation.
Big hugs to you!!
It started before then. Homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) that the psychologists/psychiatrists use in 1973, and arguably by infiltration there. That didn’t happen in 3-4 short years.
Transport across the Atlantic is extremely problematic. There are no existing pipelines for a reason. LNG is difficult and expensive as well.
1. I support somewhat what Russia is doing in Chechnya because the opponents are Moslems. But the fact is that the Chechens, dagestanis etc. have lived in that area at least since 4000 BC. The Russians did invade in the 18th century. And their people in the Kuban was a factor in pushing many north caucasus people to chose Islam (not the deciding factor, but it was A factor). But this was an invasion by Russia
2. I sympathise with the Ossetians -- they are a separate ethnicity from the Georgians who are looking to Georgianize everything -- I also sympathize with the Gergians but think they were wrong to do this to the Alanii and also that Russia was cynically using this to put Geogria in it's place
3. What he wants is to regain the greatness of Russia as set up by the great precursors Peter and Cathrine II, at the end of 18th century, but a new, modern Russia. -- Peter the Great yes, but Catherine incorporated millions of non-Russians into her lands. that is the problem if that's what Putin wants to do
They didn't need to invade.
Poland has long ties and relationships with Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine.
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