David Davis
We could be friends with the USSR Russia. But not, I think, until we have done régime-change there and it’s Russia again and not the USSR which it is still now. It’s long overdue, the crew we have allowed to be in charge since 1917 has caused quite enough trouble for ordinary humans and for us, and it’s time they went the way of Marx, Engels, V I Ulianov, Joseph Dugashvili and the other fascist murderers.
Russia the USSR gets away with murder, as in Georgia most recently and also literally, while sanctimoniously chiding us in the West for trying to be consistent on the rare occasions when we screw our courage ot the sticking point (not very far these days) and do something vaguely resolute. Then it threatens to turn the gas off, and we cave in instantly. Don’t we.
Today, Russia the USSR has the brass neck to make a show of getting angry about some Estonian publisher deciding to publish some wartime posters socialist realism. Of course, we all know that the “Nazis” were dyed-in-the-wool-socialists. that’s why they got so popular so fast in an otherwise civilised nation which they then proceeded to lead to disaster.
But if you were an Estonian in 1941, and one lot of socialists who had not actually quite yet got round to burning your villages and raping your wives and daughters or deporting the survivors off to the frozen wastes never to be returned, proceeded to promise you something that looked like partial liberation from the other socialists over the fence who had actually done all that stuff, then what would you do – given that FDR had sworn to not help you, and Churchill was tired and bust and had crypto-communists shouting in his earholes all the time?
You’d join the SS. (Don’t get at me – I would not have done, but what would one do in these circumstances?)
I don’t of course suppose that we’ll ever hear of the French SS Division that defended the Reichstag while it was falling, nor the Dutch one, nor that from Croatia, nor the Austrian ones.
The problem about socialism is that it’s so hypocritical: moreover, it can’t even resist savage internecine conflicts within itself, which are often bloodier than its external battles.
I don’t think we’d really like to revisit the atrocities perpetrated by USSR troops in 1944 and 1945, against defenceless German civilians, mostly women and children, in East Prussia, for example. Or what the same buggers did in Berlin. I don’t think Russia the USSR ought to utter so much as a minuscule beep, until it’s done the following…and even then I would be disinclined to listen: “sorry” is not enough.
Until it’s fully acknowledged its leaders’ arms, bloodied as they were to the elbows and beyond in the oceans of the stuff, and the mountains of sorrow and loss it has raised up over the graves of tens of millions of ordinary blameless humans, mostly living within a couple of thousand miles of the Kremlin’s gates.
Because, if even given the chance to vote, they might have voted the “wrong” way.
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Dave:
It must be one of the least attractive gambits in the book, to blame one government for the sins of its quite different predecessors.
The Russians are “touchy” about the nearer parts of the former USSR. Especially Georgia and Ukraine. You would be, too.
The crazed Georgian leader embarks on a provocation againt the Autonomous Region of South Ossetia, which has been de facto independent since 1991. Condoleeza Rice, with access to all the intel, knows he’ll get his sorry ass kicked, and tells him not to do it.
The Georgian dimwit then phones Cheney, who tells him to get on with it. And so he does, leading Georgian forces into a carefully-prepared death-trap.
The outcome is EXACTLY what we knew would happen. Were we supposed to start the Thirld World War to save the sorry Georgian dimwit’s political backside?? And to give Cheney and his chums an excuse for a New Cold War?
[ FX: “No Way, Jose!” ]
Poking bears with sticks is unproductive…
Tony
But it’s the same government, Tony, as it was under Lenin and his buggers. they put it back after our back was turned and when yeltsin died. Even he was not whiter-than-white.
Dave:
On the most recent occasion that I chatted with out friend George Miller of NTS, the Russian Resistance organization (see Wiki), he was speaking from his apartment in Moscow. The Revolution they had worked for for so long had succeeded. Russia was no longer a Communist State.
I have to tell you that I preferred Mikhail Gorbachev to Yeltsin; but the last-ditch botched coup attempt by te Communist hard-liners failed, destroying Gorbachev’s hopes of restraining Yeltsin.
I don’t have to live under it; but I prefer Putin’s government: rational, Westernized, secular. I’d rather have it as a friend than an enemy.
The three pivots of Russian politics today are economic reconstruction; the Russian Orthodox Church; and Russian Nationalism. And a determination not to be dominated by anyone else.
Communism? “A political corpse.”
You posted a nice video of the incomparable Su-33 flying from the “Admiral Kutznetsov.” Would you rather have these folk as friends rather than enemies?
When I called the Russian Embassy this year and asked to speak with the Russian Military Attache, he phoned me back. We chatted cordially for half an hour. Russians can now (amd do) read Solzhenitsyn and Popper and Hayek. They can visit me in the West. We can trade together. Not a hint of Communism anywhere.
Neither society is perfect: but the USSR threatened me with nuclear weapons. A US Official, Gil Kerlikowske, Chief of the Seattle Police, threatened me with arrest without charge or trial, HERE IN THE UK!, deportation without a hearing, and unlimited detention without charge or trial or Attorney or Habeas Corpus under BushCo’s “PATRIOT ACT.”
So I sent the ACLU $100.00 for Christmas.
http://www.aclu.org
I’m a Card-Carrying Member… >:-}
Best,
Tony
I have to say, from what I’ve observed I find it hard to dislike Vladimir Putin. I think on the whole he has a good and conscious attitude towards politics. He doesn’t seem to me to be a madman.
And compared with the days of the USSR the current Russian standard of living is relatively high, although I’m sure it’s not perfect. But then again, where is?
And I agree Tony, it serves no British purpose to make an enemy of the Kremlin. We should have a strict noninterventionist and diplomatic political relationship with the Russian Federation.
We could in time become very good friends with them. Or, we could not ever have conflict with them. Either option must certainly be very good.
🙂
We shouldn’t mix many topics into an (incoherent) argument.
Yes, it was Russia’s fault if the USSR ceased its geopolitical existence (Eltsin’s decrees during the golpe sealed USSR’s fate ) but I think that the “democratic revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia are nothing more than provocations to establish USA-compliant straw-men in an area of Russian influence.
Silly geopolitical jargon, but true; Americans should mind the Cuban missile crisis to understand…in fact after straw men are in power, their masters in Washington start talking about war games and military commitments: what would Americans say if China “sponsored” a “freedom revolution” in Albania and subsequently tried to involve its cronies in military schemes?
About the people:
In Georgia they dethroned Shevarnadze, who was unanimously hailed as good man from the Gorbaciov era…all of a sudden he became a tyrant…curious, huh?
In Ukraine they dethroned Kuchma, Moscow’s man, but the antecedents are not well known. Kuchma had threatened to strip wealthy billionaires and their kin holding Israeli passports of their UA citizenship: it was all over local newspapers.
The petty political dispute soon escalated into the “orange freedom revolution” being born fully clothed and equipped, with attending masses paid a token “attendance fee”…fee that decreased over time, much as attendance did.
Mere coincidence?
I doubt it, highly.
Why should Russia be provoked?
The SS item is a completely different one.
As mentioned, Russia is the main culprit when the demise of the USSR is examined…yet every country needs (bogus) rhetoric, and they have no other left than that of the very USSR they helped to dismantle, much like Americans always talk about freedom even when it’s about sponsoring a golpe in a banana republic after a careful scare and media campaign have been orchestrated by skilled spin-doctors on behalf of fruit multinationals…Nicaragua, anyone? No conspiracy here, it’s all in print.
Small(er) countries always had to find chaperons and masters…no wonder many thought Germany would make a good “dominant ally”.
By 1944 the UK -as of 1939 T H E uncontested world power – had shrunk to the status of mere regional power, wagging its tail in joyful anticipation after its former subjects turned masters…
So many bought German propaganda revolving around race, European heritage and other ideas that have critics’ eyes rolling…well, haven’t we bought American propaganda for the last 60 years in the West?