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.
What invasion?
I’m not talking with ignoramuses
Have a good day.
The only concerns the Poles have about Ukraine is that the Russians will be coming back to Poland. They joined NATO at the first opportunity to prevent what is happening in Ukraine. And Obama’s killing of the missile defense installations in Poland was viewed with dismay.
And that weakness can lead to miscalculation on the part of our enemies.
Genius argument. how long did it take you to come up with that?
Why do you support an invasion of a sovereign nation?
Why are you so afraid to answer that?
You’re defending and supporting it.
Why?
Thank you for your concern. Crimea is part of Ukraine. Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Russia invaded it. That’s as simple as it gets.
“90 percent” voted to rejoin Russia with a large presence of Russian troops on the ground.
Poland cannot make any assumptions on getting outside help.
I am glad to see the Tusk Government has fast-tracked increasing their Fracking capabilities. And frankly a military buildup would also be a good idea.
80000 troops show up and voila...90%
in other news, North Korea just voted 100%.
Tyrants are such popular leaders!
A dout of wildcats to ya ma’am
Putin is curtailing civil liberties in Russia.
Yes, you left out the Bolshevik conquest of Ukraine in 1919, the killings and deportations to Siberia, and the subsequent Soviet genocide of 1932-33 killing 10 million Ukrainians.
You also left out the Ukrainians desire for independence in 1990 and the declaration of an independent state in 1991 with majority of the people voting to approve it, even in Crimea.
You seem to imply that Ukrainian desire for closer ties to the EU and to get out from under the thumb of Russia is some sort of globalist/Soros conspiracy. It is the desire of a people who for much of their history have been the battleground for other powers to have a better future for themselves. You are kidding yourself if you think Putin and the new Russian empire are going to be content with Crimea.
You don’t think the Crimea speaking mainly Russian and the fools who just took over Kiev trying to ban the Russian language might have something to do with it? Or seeing what Soros and the IMF have done to Italy and Portugal??
Putin and his regime are still illegal killers, of journalists, defectors, critics, and possibly some clergymen.
You can take a person out of the Communist Party, but you can’t take the Party out of the person.
Communism was the ultimate form of state power and that’s what Putin is all about.
About 20 years ago, I knew a few lawyers who were going to the new Russia to help them write a new Constitution. That didn’t work very well, did it?
The KGB did what a Leopard couldn’t do, change its spots to FSB.
While I don’t like the Chechnians because the are extremely cruel and kill children by the hundreds, the Russians were ruthless in suppression the revolt there. I don’t think anyone won that war except the dead who got out of it the hard way.
Putin is a man of detiny in his own mind, a lot like Hitler was, Mussolini was, and Mao and Ho were. Look at the cost of their megalomania to mankind.
He has got to be reigned in if only to stop his delusional concept of being invincible(a concept that Obama also shares in but as a Second Tier Communist).
Some backbone by the Western nations when all this hit the fan months ago would have prevented what has happened and what is going to happen.
The same for Obama’s deliberately missed chances to bring down the Mullahs regime in Iran during the 2009 protests there, and the more recent protests in Syria where it might have been possible to have a moderate regime instead of the revolt becoming a training ground of Al Qaeda International and the Hezbollah boys of summer.
While Obama is “fundamentally changing America for the worst”, Putin is fundamentally changing Russia for a much stronger and important role in guiding almost all of Eastern Europe, the Baltic States (and by proximity, Scandanavia), and even doing some fancy footwork re Turkey, Iran, and anyone else in “Mr. Putin’s Neighborhood”.
Who’s going to stop him? Obama? Biden? Pelosi? Debbie Wasserman Putz? Susan Rice? Samantha Powers? Jay the asshole Carney? Gen. I’m So Pretty Dempsey, the pansy of the Marines? How about Secy of the Navy Mabus, who is more concerned about putting women and transgendered people onboard ships rather than having enough fighting ships and crews to protect us and to project us.
Who you gonna call, “Ghostbusters”? Sorry, they went out of business when Reagan retired.
yep..sounds like a communist sympathizer..sad.
HOLY SMOKES!!! It’s that hard for you isn’t it?
I’m directly calling you out, you and your putin bootlicking bullshit.
WHY DO YOU DEFEND A TYRANT, SOMEONE WHO INVADED A SOVEREIGN NATION??
Article 5 of the Washington Treaty:
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security
Article 5 was invoked the first and only time after the US was attacked on 9/11. It is the reason why NATO headed our forces in Afghanistan.
Yeah, well, how did that alliance with England and France work out in 1939?
Poland meanwhile, imports about 70% of its gas from Russia, as well as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It’s been like that since the existence of Warsaw block, and it hasn’t changed in 25 years, only increased.
As for the Baltics republics Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, they depend at 100% on Russia’s oil and gas exports, and Germany at 40%. Any economic war with Russsia would bankrupt those countries.
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.