[simon]

Originally Posted by la aurora

Yes, your government doesn't surpress alternative viewpoints. They (+media) just don't give you alternative viewpoints to consider. They feed you the same old story about evil USSR and anti-democratic Russia. Look at your own words. You almost put a "=" sign between USSR and Putin's Russia when it comes to surpressing opinions. You make it sound like it's a fact, you don't even consider other options.

I didn't claim that the USSR and Putin's Russia were the same. I'm well aware that there is more freedom than in the USSR.

I've seen many things with my own eyes, I have older people around to tell me how things really were for them back in years, I have old movies and documentaries, novels and songs, art work to see how it 'felt' for people. I have modern russian media writing about things that happened back then, revealing archives that lost their 'secret information' lable lately. I have my history lessons that I got in new democrating Russia with new re-written books and quite an open-minded teacher. The lesson about WWII didn't start with 'evil Hitler attacked our beloved homeland'. It began with pre-1941 events, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Stalin's plan to catch Hitler out guard with sudden attack, secret services reporting Stalin exact date of Hitler's attack and Stalin not taking it seriously enough and not using an opportunity to prepare which caused extra victims and diffculties for us in the begining of war on our territory. I have my literature lessons and Solzhenitsin was one of obligatory authors in my school.

I never claimed that criticism of Stalin and the USSR isn't allowed in Russia today.

And on the top of this all I have western media to give me yet another perspective on things. I read those articles online or see them on tv. You know, in this 'totalitarian' country almost every channel has 'foreign media' section on their news that does inform us of 'your' opinion on things. Surprisingly, those channels are still feeling pretty well and journalists responsible for this aren't killed or prisoned.

Unlike Anna Politkovskaya, who strongly criticised Putin, was poisoned on her plane journey to Beslan and later assassinated. Or Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned in London.

This is where my opinion comes from and I don't feel it being suppressed by anything or anyone. I can go to Red Square now and shout it out, I can write in my blog and no one will look for me to punish, I can tell it to my boss at work, I can tell it to Putin personally if I meet him without any fear, I can write in in the news-paper and it won't be closed.

I mentioned how peaceful anti-government demonstrations in Moscow and St Petersburg were recently violently broken up and the participants arrested.

And if I don't share your ideas about everything about USSR and Putin being black, if I don't feel like spitting into face of my grandparents for that war and feel thankful they suffered and died not allowing Hitler to take over this country and whole Europe, it means my opinion is wrong, suppressed and comes from brain-washing? Because with this your whole post you made me feel like this is how you see it.

That's not at all what I said. You keep equating opposition to the Soviet Union with support for Hitler. It's extremely offensive.

I honestly don't know what kind of British monuments were removed in your ex-colonies. If those were set just as symbols of British domination then yes, there's nothing wrong with removing them just as there's nothing wrong with East-European countries removing varios 'CCCP' signs, random soviet red stars, monuments dedicated to communism, communistic party and special events of that time, monuments to Lenin, Stalin and so on. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that and we removed quite a lot of those ourselves.
But monuments to unknown soldier set near places where people were burried together in one grave is a whole different issue.

No, British war memorials were removed too. It happened first in Ireland after independence and then in many of the other countries that later got independence.

Those people didn't come there as conquirers. They were fighting for 'freedom', they were fighting against Hitler, against dark power of fascism and they had no goddamn idea on what would happen next. Have you ever looked in the eyes of those people that stayed alive and lived it long anough to still be here now? I did and heard them telling stories about how it was. They feel really sad about a lot of things that happened. They themselves didn't expect to live under fear of being killed and deported due to 'traitors' paranoia that happened after the war was over, they didn't expect to be labled 'occupants' by people who's freedom they believed they fighted for.

But they did come as conquerors and they weren't bringing freedom. The USSR occupied those countries for the next 50 years. Those people didn't have a choice and so it's not their fault, but we can't deny the truth just because it's more comfortable for you to pretend something else.

There's a monument of a soviet soldier holding a German girl in one hand and a sword ripping fascist Iron Cross apart in another in Berlin. Somehow no one is removing it, Germans actually spent 1.5 mlns Euro reparing it few years ago. No matter how monsterious Stalin and soviet regime was, it still was a soviet army to break into Berlin loosing thousands of people there and destroying last remanings of fascism there. And there's nothing wrong with honoring dead people that did this, there's nothing wrong with allowing others who feels thankful to come a bring flowers to the monument that is dear to them. That's what democracy is about I guess - respect.

I'm of Jewish ancestry so I have more cause than most people to be glad the Nazis lost the war. Nazi ideology was certainly worse than Soviet ideology. But in practice Stalin was as evil as Hitler. Both murdered millions of people, just for different reasons. The most important difference is that after Stalin died the Soviet regime became much less bad, whereas the Nazi regime would probably have continued to be just as bad for a lot longer.

June 2002. Pyarnu, Estonia.
August 2004. Lihula, Estonia.
2 attempts to install a monument for 'heroic fighters for freedom of Estonia'. It was same monument actually with a soldier in SS uniform, with fascist Iron Cross and german gun in his hands. Both times the monument was removed under pressure of EU, USA and russian and jewish organizations. In 2005 third attempt almost happened but then they desided to put the monument into museum of 'History of the fight for liberation of Estonia' (not sure about the exact translation).

The fact you don't mention was that these monuments weren't official. It was private groups that attempted to put them up. And they weren't allowed to.

16 March is an un-official day of Latvian SS Legioner in Latvia. In 2005 nationalistic groups were officialy allowed to organize demonstration. Anti-fascist groups dressed in prisoners' suits, stood on the way of this demonstration and were 'cleared from the way' by police. Your media did show it I believe. That moment made it to many tv reports. In 2006 authorities of Riga have forbidden any demonstrations on this day in fear to get another fight on the streets and they had NATO summit coming later that year. In 2007 all 'selebrations' were once again officially allowed.

It was wrong of the Latvian authorities to clear the way for the demonstration like that. Latvia is not Estonia.

I don't really see anything bad about feeling sorry for victims of this war whatever side they were on. That was an ugly war, as I already said, and a lot of things were twisted but people suffered and died for things they believed in.

I agree. The statue and the associated graves are not being destroyed, they are being moved from Freedom Square in the centre of Tallinn to a military cemetery.

It's not about being madly in love with soviet regime. But don't you see that trying to get closer to Europe and/or feeding nationalistic feelings in their countries, they go for another extreme. They try to re-write history, they discriminate people here in 2007. They shave away modern democratic Russia and russians like they are some kind of desease. They stopped considering the day nazis were out of their countries any good. New ideology is praising 'fighters for freedom' and the excuse for wearing SS uniform is ' they planned to free themselves from soviets first with the help of german army and after that they planned to get rid of germans as well'. I see more and more people actually believing this without realizing how absurd it does in fact sound. That's what scary.

You're making a false equation where opposition to the Soviets equals support for the Nazis and the SS. There were genuine partisans in all those countries who fought both the Nazi and the Soviet regimes. Those people should be celebrated and have statues in places like Freedom Square, not the Soviet invaders. We don't have to celebrate conquest by one monstrously evil regime because it was perhaps slightly less monstrously evil than another one. Nobody forced the USSR occupy the Baltic states and central Europe for the next 45 years.

Russians, estonians, latvians, lithuanians, georgians etc were actually in pretty same position under this regime. Deportations, prisons, limitations of freedome, propaganda - we all were getting it. Never ever were those nations considered 'our slaves' or something. The ideology itself wasn't as bad as the methods used to enforce it. For generations of soviet russians estonians and latvians were nothing but 'brothers'. It's history now after USSR collapsed and every country was suggested to 'take as much independence as they could handle'.

It's modern russians they raise hatered for in their children.

Now you're equating not wanting to celebrate the Soviet conquest of Estonia with hatred of Russians. You keep trying to change the subject.

You don't have to really use the button that only you own to push your interests forward. I never digged deep enough into this situation but everything has its reasons. Allies + USA had everything to demand liberation of those countries from USSR right till 1949 when Stalin got a heavy 'leave us alone' argument. Russia lost quite a lot of blood in domestic wars in the first quater of the century. Commies took over and began building this regime. USA and Europe did nothing to stop it when they could just like they did nothing to stop Hitler when he began doing his thing in the country weakned by the WWI. Why did they alow Stalin to take over Eastern Europe? I dunno. Probably it had something to do with those documents that give hints into direction of British&American plans to attack USSR a bit later and probably it was just the opposite and they let Stalin to do that to prevent WWIII that could begin right after WWII. I don't know. Do you?

They allowed it to happen because they didn't want to start World War III. I don't think that makes them morally responsible for it.

Would be a good advise if our similarities were really due to occupation. But you see, we are both slavic, our languages have a lot of similar words for many centuries as we have similar orgins. My parents grew up on Polish TV shows, movies, music and were happy getting clothes produced in Poland. How comes all this doesn't matter suddenly just because USSR 'occupation'? They indeed were under soviet influence but they weren't part of USSR. In many ways Poland was the most 'western' country of the region. Do you really think this is enough of excuse to raise children feeding them ideas of hate for whole Russia (that is not USSR btw)? So if whole this commie thing never happened, would we be right hating all Polish people for the Polish Intervention we had earlier in our history? It's not like we got introduced to each other in 20th century, you know. We've been 'entertaining' each other for many centuries with 'bright' moments for both sides. Sorry, but I honestly believe this all should be left there, in the past.

You start out saying that the cultural similarities weren't due to occupation, but then you mention how Poland and the USSR were close because Poland was under Soviet 'influence'. You mention the brief Polish intervention after WW I, but not that czarist Russia occupied most of Poland for 150 years before that. Poland has a long history of Russian domination. That's not your personal fault, just like the British Empire wasn't my fault, but it calls for a certain sensitivity in dealing with people from countries like Poland and Ireland.

As for appologizing... you know, if I meet some Latvian and Estonian and he tells me a sad story of something that happened to his family, I'll sincerely say 'I'm sorry your family had to come through all this'. But the country you expect appology from doesn't even exist anymore... majority of russians suffered from this regime just as much as other nationalities did, as I said already. It's not the case when one country slaves another. The thing is much more complicated than this.

Russia inherited the USSR's permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the Soviet nuclear arsenal and has the same national anthem as the USSR. It's reasonable to consider it the main successor state.

When the Irish Famine took place in the 1840s, Ireland was a constituent part of the UK. Even so, Tony Blair apologised to Ireland for what the UK government had done during the famine. You're taking a legalistic position.

Would it really be more accurate? That's your subjective view on things. Russia never occupied those counrties, it was USSR that did. Russia hasn't done anything to threat these countries after USSR collapsed. And it's not Russia's permission I was talking about. I was talking about NATO as organization. I find it very wierd that you find dissing Russia more important than actually thinking about what's going on. USA plans to expand military power of NATO on European continent without giving a damn about what other members of NATO think about that. It does look like they do it for their own needs.

If those countries want US bases on their territory, that's for them to decide. It's not for other countries to tell them whether or not they can.

Why would I look at things from different perspective while giving reasoning behind Putin's words about this situation? I wasn't discussing what's fair or not, what's good or not. It IS against Russian interests. That's all.

Why wouldn't USA attack Russia? Because it can't happen in the modern world, right? WWIII could be a serious threat for whole humanity when nuclear potential of small group of countries is enough to destroy this planet fully and more than once. Then why the hell do all those small countries we don't give a damn about for almost 20 years need protection from Russia? Double standards or what?

Russia is currently supporting breakaway armies in Georgia and Moldova. Russian troops are backing up the breakaway republic in Moldova. Russia is imposing an economic blockade on Georgia. Last July, Russia cut off the oil pipeline to Lithuania because of a 'leak' immediately after Lithuania sold an oil complex to a Polish company rather than a Russian one. Nine months later, the pipeline still hasn't been 'repaired'.

And please explain me how we bully Estonia. All we did was express our disgust with this their action.

Kommersant, 27 April 2007: State Duma International Relations Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachyov echoed the sentiments of his party's leader and threatened the Estonian authorities with harsh retaliation from Moscow. "These measures will not necessarily take the form of official sanctions – the palette of our possible actions is very wide, and the actions of the Russian authorities will be very effective and will have an extremely painful impact on the state of the Estonian economy," said Mr. Kosachyov.