Originally posted by: sandorski
Originally posted by: zinfamous
Originally posted by: filetitan
CNN Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/...ve.military/index.html
Looks like Russia is slowly regaining control over the Baltic States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...cs_of_the_Soviet_Union
Interesting to see how Ukraine will position itself in the near future.
I for one believe (in my opinion) this is headed towards the proper direction of uniting broken states and using their combined forces towards strengthening their region.
Thoughts?
There is absolutely nothing good to come from a strengthened Soviet Union. They can call it what they will in public, but everyone knows this is nothing but Sovietism.
The Baltic states have always been worried, but their membership in NATO and the EU pretty much ensures Russia will stay the fuck away. Putin may posture on a near-daily basis about re-invading them (and he does), but all he can really do is pound sand.
No, I disagree. The Soviet Union was a rigid Ideologically driven Empire. The current Russia is quite tame in comparison and much more maleable and open to outside Influence. It may not stay that way and has certainly been drifting back towards Soviet style governance, but they are not there yet and not beyond help.
The issue is that they want to go back to their Soviet ways. The leaders want this, the brainwashed citizens want this. Not all Russians want this, but a staggering number do.
The place is still a steaming shitpile. Where Russian minority communities are begrudgingly allowed to continue within former occupied territories (the Baltics; where Latvia currently has the largest Russian problem by having been the most accomodating soon after independence) and former satellite states, there is nothing but devastation. While many of these newly independent nations have thrived and become economic players despite 3rd world status only 2 decades ago (The Lat is worth more than the British pound or the Euro; Estonia has averaged 6% growth over the previous 12 years--of course, there are dangers with how fast these economies have grown), those generations-old Russian communities remain isolated and mired within a 50 year-old time warp. It's mind boggling that these people still live this way--but only more so because they openly CHOOSE to, their rampant nationalism would not allow them any other way.
It would be one thing to say that Russia can truly reform itself, and step into a new concept of government and social order, but what is their history before Communism? Remember that Czarist Russia was one of the most restrictive, polarizing, and socially decrepit world powers for centuries before the Soviet Union. There is simply no modern HISTORY of a Russian social and governmental order that works.
for some 700 years the Latvians were occupied by either Russia or Germany. They first gained independence in 1919 by finally kicking both out of their country. Within these brief years of their first government (until Soviet Russia returned in 1940, illegally occupying their free country, murdering their and imprisoning their military and political leadership and electing themselves as the governing body), they created a world-wide player by focusing their centuries-old agricultural know-how and became major exporters of farmed goods. They did it on their own, in such short time. And they've done it again recently. Russia continues to fail. They simply don't know how to abandon their brainwashed nationalist attitude, their machismo that does nothing save cause strife and lay fields fallow in their wake.
Good for them if they do it, but if you can't see what Putin has done over the previous 6 years to restore the old demagoguery (there is no more free press, there are no real elections, the murder rate of journalists triples every year), and how the ave Russian, at home and abroad, openly WELCOME this return to Soviet false power, then I think you need to open your eyes. Sure, it'd be great for them to finally step up to 1st world status and be a legitimate player, but they simply have no history of it. Those around them have done it--and the best way for them to get to that point is to forcefully remove as much of "Russia" as they can from within their borders. It's just, fucking, poison.
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