XPost: soc.culture.usa, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.latin-america
XPost: soc.culture.iraq, soc.culture.iranian
lo yeeOn, <news:o860mv$sk1$
[email protected]>
In article <[email protected]>,
Brian W Lawrence <[email protected]> wrote:
Is UK going to give back Falklands?
No, but why is that relevant or remotely similar?
For the sake of peace :), I'll take a stab.
Falkands' residents are overwhelmingly British. And upwards of 80 percent
of residents in Crimea are either Russians or have Russian relatives. And
an overwhelming majority of Crimean residents want to associate with Russia, not the strange-looking Kiev government nurtured by Victoria Nuland with billions of NED money and closely nannied by VP Joe Biden.
They are pro-Russian for good reasons.
Crimea is historically and culturally Russian. Yalta, a city by the Black Sea, is in Crimea and is famously Russian for a variety of reasons. Among them is Anton Chekhov, one of the famous Russian writers of all time.
Another is the Yalta Conference. Recall that the host at the time was
Joseph Stalin. If the residents were real haters of Russia, Stalin being there to host Roosevelt and Churcill in the twilight years of WWII would
have certainly been a strong reason for them to choose the State
Department's Vicki over Volodya in 2014. But no, when the Russian soldiers went down the peninsula that very night, when locals weren't sure whether they were one of their own, they said: "Do not fear, we are with you!" Not one shot was fired in the process. The rest is history.
Then we can also learn from the vast mountain of information available on
the internet that much of Russia's one-millenium history was about struggles between the Russians and tartars, with most of the tartars eventually
getting absorbed into Russia.
Finally, the Kerch Strait bridge project shows great care from Russia to Crimea. The importance Russia attached to Crimea is nothing to sneer at.
It is not an attitude of a colonialist or an occupier.
Yep, and the Russia-Ukraine issues in general are not about a colonialist legacy. The Russian empire did conduct policies that were somewhat similar
to the colonialism in the common 'western' meaning, but the Ukraine is not
the case. It was/is a part belonging to the most ancient Russian state, and when it was under Poland's rule - in the 15-17 centuries - the Poles (the Greeks etc as well) called it Russian area [within Poland]. One might say
the Ukrainians are the Russians that were subjected to Polish colonization,
but it'd be also inaccurate. The history of the region was peculiar, it's difficult to find easy labels and proper analogies to 'known practices'.
Also, it's typical for a colonialism that the settlers go from 'metropolis'
to 'colony', but with regard to the Ukraine it doesn't look like that.
About 25% of the modern Russians in Russia (about a half in Siberia) are
those who have ancestors that once came from the territories of the present
day Ukraine. Thus one might claim the Ukrainians colonized Russia ;)
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