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 dare you to speak Russian in downtown Warsaw.
When I was in Rostov, however, where there is a famous statue, the Russians told me they stopped Hitler right there.
They stopped him. And I say they won in spite of Stalin....Stalin made the war much more costly for the Russians than it had to be.
There are beatings and killings of innocent people every day in this country. Seriously much worse than your video link.
They abandoned Poland at the end of the war when they allowed the Soviets to include Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe into its sphere of influence. They did not abandon Poland at the beginning of WWII.
They declared war in name -- that's what it was called from 39 to 40 as the Phony war. If the French and English had actually attacked Germany instead of just talking, they would have ended the war in 1939 and saved millions of lives -- a lot of it their own.
Neither Germany or France and England took offensive action on the Western Front save for the French Saar Offensive that went into Germany a few miles on September 7. Hindsight is 20/20 as to whether the French and English could have invaded Germany successfully despite outnumbering them in forces. England was still unprepared for war and the French favored a defensive strategy.
That said, there is no justification to say that France and England abandoned Poland. They declared war on Germany with all the consequences that entailed for their countries. It was a serious commitment in support of Poland and against German aggression. The German and Soviet invasions of Poland and subsequent surrender of Poland in four weeks made it very difficult to intervene. Let's look at the chronology encompassing the "phoney war:"
1 September 1939
"Operation Weiss": German troops invade Poland. German tanks thundered across the Polish border at precisely 0445 hours, supported by Junkers Ju87 ("Stuka" named Sturzkampfflugzeug) dive-bombers.
At 9.00 am England and France issue an ultimatum to Germany.
2 September 1939
The ocean liner S.S. Athenia is torpedoed by the German U-boat U30. Over 112 civilians died at sea, 69 women, 16 children and 28 men. America and Canada were popular destinations, trying to escape from War.
7 September 1939,
French troops cross the German border at the "Saar-front." Eleven French divisions advanced along a 32 km (20 miles) line near Saarbrücken against weak German opposition. The attack did not result in the diversion of any German troops.
17 September 1939,
Russian troops invade eastern Poland.
The British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous was sunk by U-29. She went down in 15 minutes with the loss of 518 of her crew, including her captain. She was the first British warship to be lost in the war.
19 September 1939,
Soviets and Germany meet at Brest-Litovsk.
24 September 1939,
Start of the bombing of Warsaw with 1150 bombers. Warsaw is blitzed from the air as the German ground forces prepare for an assault on the capital.
27 September 1939,
Poland surrenders to Nazi Germany
29 September 1939
Germany-Russia treaty of frontier- and friendship at Moscow, providing for division of Poland. Esthonia signs mutual assistance pact with Soviet Union.
6 October 1939,
The last Polish ground troops surrender. Polish national losses: 700,000 men captured by the Germans, 200,000 men by the Russians and great loss of life; more than 120,000 troops could escape. The Germans lost 10,000 men and Russia several hundred.
In a major speech to the Reichstag, Hitler speaks of his desire for peace with Britain and France. Hitler says that up to now he has done nothing more than correct the unjust Versailles Treaty and that he has no war aims against France or Britain. He blames warmongers like Churchill for the present state of affairs and calls for a European conference to meet and resolve the few remaining differences.
It is difficult to distinguish between the two. Based on my two years in Poland (1981-83), I witnessed many manifestations of hatred for the Soviets. The memories of the Katyn Forest massacre were still fresh. And the Poles still believe, true or not, that the Russians were involved nefariously in the President Kaczynski plane crash in Smolensk in 2010.
Poles are not fond of the Russians and view them with suspicion. The reaction of Jaruzelski to Weinberger's statement that he was "a Russian general in a Polish uniform" should give you some idea as to how deep the division is between the Russians and the Poles.
What gets me angry are even some Poles that think Jaruzelski saved Poland from Russian invasion.
Jaruzelski BEGGED the Russians to come in, and they told him flat out, “Nyet!”
So he tries to sell Martial Law as saving Poland from Soviet invasion.
Bastard should have been strung up years ago.
I doubt Putin personally issues orders on individual beatings, killings, etc. anymore than Stalin or Brezhnev did. He just sets the tone on cracking down on civil liberties.
Do you honestly believe that in terms of civil liberties and individual rights, things are better in Russia than here?
Hitler wanted revenge on France, and it was going to happen sooner or later.
But I do believe he still wanted peace with Britain, that’s why IMHO, he sent Hess over there. Hess would have NEVER disobeyed Hitler, he was as loyal as it gets.
Is there any oblast dominated by people calling themselves Russians? Yes, there was one, Crimea
I thought Tatar already WAS an official language — there is Tatarstan which is dominated by Tatars from Kazan. Perhaps that’s a different dialect from Crimean Tatar?
Speak German though and expect dirty looks or old people saying "Jestesmy polacy we polsce, nie w niemczech!"
yes, commissars etc
I figured they would be more Ukrainians, than ethnic Russians there.
They could have prevented the Battle of France and Battle of Britain
But I've lived here since 2010 and am talking about now
They believe that the Russians were involved in Smolensk and I didn't believe it until now.
But they don't hate Russian people. The Russian govt YES they hate it
yes, but you get Ukrainians from the East as well here. Or at least you had.
I didn't believe it myself...But then I started thinking...How different would the Polish response been if Kaczynski (a great man, who is sorely missed), was still in power.
Had the Russians not come in, Poland could have held out in pockets for at least several months, to allow time for Britain and France to come in. By the 17th, the German advance had slowed considerably, but when the Russians came in, it was over.
He wanted "revenge" on a lot of people including the Jews, Russians, etc. Are you suggesting that his actions were justified?
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.