Posted on 05/28/2007 2:00:00 AM PDT by RusIvan
Two days after the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB agent, should be charged with the murder of his old colleague Alexan-der Litvinenko and demanded that Russia extradite him to face trial in Britain, I bumped into a Russian friend: worldly, pro-western and a fluent English speaker who has travelled dozens of times abroad.
I asked him who he thought had ordered the murder of Litvinenko, a fierce Kremlin critic who died of a massive polonium210 dose in London six months ago. My friend had no doubts. “Boris Berezovsky of course,” he said forcefully. It was the exiled oligarch and foe of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, who had smuggled polonium into Britain and ordered his protégé’s death. Why? To sully Russia’s image in the West.
However absurd that seems, many Russians would agree. Even in exile Berezovsky, once one of Moscow’s most powerful political players, is regarded as a Machiavellian figure whose influence, they believe, knows no boundaries. Those who do not share that view, including Litvinenko’s first wife, believe he was instead killed by the CIA or MI5, enemies of Russia bent on weakening it just as it is becoming strong again. Few here suspect the FSB, as the KGB is now known, or the Kremlin. Too small a fish for them to get involved, they argue.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
“Ukraine became, and remains, a major sex tour destination for Western men.”
Starting in 1927, the forced collectivization of agriculture in the Ukraine caused 10-15 million people to starve to death.
Get some perspective, man.
I’m not much for socialism either, but it’s not up to you to decide what is best for Russians. That’s for the Russians themselves to decide.
There are two flaws your arguments. One is in assuming that the Soviet people had any choice with respect to the system they lived under. For that reason, I prefer the term "Bolsheviks" to Soviets.
The second is that you ignored that Yalta and Potsdam established the fate of Eastern Europe. It was a fait accompli. Why do you think 1956 and 1968 failed?
Do you think it is normal for old women, who survived the siege of Leningrad or the famines in Southern Russia, who lived on 75 g of bread a day, to be killed for an apartment, their bodies dumped on the street, a fate worse than that of dogs?
Do you think it is normal for the #1 dream job for girls to be prostitution, as it was after the collapse of the USSR?
What Putin was saying was that all of this was artifically created by the communist nomenklatura - they created the misery in the society, they created the oligarchs. That was his point.
In 1927, the Left Bank of Ukraine was still under NEP and a policy of "Ukrainization". Ukrainian literature was still flourishing - it was a major renaissance which has not been seen since. All those writers (whose works I have read - how many can you even name???) were eventually killed. Because you kill a nation from the head down.
Get a grip??? We're not living in 1927. Do you really think, a century later, that it is normal for women to marry strangers, or become whores for a few dollars from Western men?
You need to get a perspective. The collapse of the USSR did not have to come with abject poverty. That is all Putin's speech pointed out.
What poppycock! That is not what he said or all that he said. Certainly for a member of the Communist Party and a senior KGB agent, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a terrible tragedy. For the rest of the world, the rise of the Soviet Union was a far greater tragedy. You want to be an apologist for Putin go ahead.
No question a terrible thing. But answer my question: which is worse that or the death of 10-15 million Ukrainians.
Your answer: "Ah, but the literature was wonderful!"
So was the Gulag Archipelago.
Because you kill a nation from the head down.
Starving them to death works pretty well.
It was your Mr. Putin who suggested we look at the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the past 100 years not me. I am merely pointing out that there were far greater. Obviously, you disagree.
The second is that you ignored that Yalta and Potsdam established the fate of Eastern Europe. It was a fait accompli. Why do you think 1956 and 1968 failed?
Er, because Soviet troops crushed them. They didn’t have to. Could have let the Hungarians and Czechs become free but that’s now what Communists do best. Why were there no 1956 and 1968s in Western Europe?
Trying to put equal blame on the West for these events is moral equivalence.
I couldn’t possibly see President Bush okaying something like this.
“That is all Putin’s speech pointed out.”
Here’s another great quote from Putin in that same speech,
“Very soon, on May 9, we shall celebrate the 60th anniversary of victory. This day can deservedly be called the day of civilisations triumph over fascism. Our common victory enabled us to defend the principles of freedom, independence and equality between all peoples and nations.”
Ah yes, that is how I would describe Soviet rule over Eastern Europe and Central Asia from 1945 to 1991. He forgot to mention that it was the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty in 1939 which allowed Hitler to attack the rest of Europe.
What are you blabbering about? Who is a tyrant, someone like Putin who is democratically elected and with a high approval rating?
You almost sounds like the Libs complaining about Bush being selected and not elected in the 2000 elections. If you really like democracy, then you would respect a democratically elected leader in Russian society.
What I am saying, and what you are missing, is that you have taken Putin's statement out of context. He is not lamenting the demise of the USSR, but rather, the manner in which the collapse occurred and its aftermath.
The reality is that almost all the misery the peoples of the former USSR lived through was unnecessary. It was orchestrated by commies in the hope the people would want a return of the USSR. That was his point. It is evident if you read the whole speech.
Because of Yalta and Potsdam. Europe was divided into spheres of influence. That's not "moral equivalence". It is realpolitik.
That is why he goes on to state
But the terrible lessons of the past also define imperatives for the present.
I don't know if Putin lamented the collapse of the USSR. I do know the KGB had drafted plans to establish a Pinochet type regime before the coup.
However, your logic is flawed; Yeltsin, a CPSU apparatchik, and the RSFSR KGB, also communists, refused to support the coup and, in fact, gave orders for the media to call Muscovites to the streets. So, not all commies viewed the collapse of the Bolshevik system a calamity.
Why not go back to the Kaliyivchyna? Or the slaughter of Ukrainians by Catherine II? She ordered their bodies hanged all the way from the road to St. Petersburg.
If you asked some 15 or 16 year old girl "What is worse - the collapse of your country or the fact you are now forced to turn 20 or 30 tricks a day?", what do you think the answer would be? How "free" is she?
I am no defender of communism, by any means, and am, unlike most naive Westerners, not enamored with Mr. Gorbachev. However, the USSR of the 1980's and even the 1970's was not the USSR of the 1930's/1940's, so your point is non sequiter.
And again, you didn't read carefully. My point was that your dates were wrong. You likely don't understand the roots of the Holodomor either. It was not about collectivization.
The Gulag Archipelago was nothing new to me when it was published. I had relatives who served sentences in the Zone. Also, it isn't great literature. For Westerners, the subject matter is shocking, but Solzhenitsyn's style is plodding and written in a very simplistic style.
Well, with due respect, it is a stupid answer. We do not go back further than 100 years because that is the timeline Mr. Putin established.
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