Сою́за Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик

Pidge has called me out in this post, for which I am more than happy to oblige him.  It will have to wait a bit, but in the meantime, here's something to help set the mood.

Now first, I have some homework assignments for you to read.  As you can imagine, I have a lot to say on this topic, on Russia in general, Vladimir Putin, etc, and I will come at it from a historical, rather than say an analyst's perspective.

How The Russian Empire Crumbled

The 90th anniversary of the October Revolution provides another occasion to wonder whether socialism was capable of removing national antagonisms and paving the way to a supranational world community.

by Gennady Bordyugov
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Nov 06, 2007
Anyone who has been following the stormy debate brought on by the 90th anniversary of the Great October Revolution may well wonder why its national aspects have been forgotten. Were they not intertwined with the social aspects? The events that shook the world took place in the Russian Empire, which had a very complex social-ethnic structure. And it is hard to say whether the social or the ethnic factors played a bigger role in those sinister events.

Take land, one of the Revolution's key issues: Russia being a country of peasants, the poorest social stratum of one ethnic group often sought to seize the landed estates owned by representatives of another ethnic group. And in the cities, too, the youth that had migrated from the countryside seeking to climb the social ladder often met with resistance from other ethnic groups.

Contrary to what some politicians thought, the abdication of the Tsar in February 1917 could not automatically solve the ethnic problem in Russia. There was an incredible upsurge of the national movements in Russia's borderlands, and they could not accept the Provisional Government's call for a "single and indivisible Russia". Even so, discrimination of non-Russians was abolished, and the autonomy of Finland and the Polish Kingdom was restored. The remaining ethnic groups were not granted any territorial rights.

The democratic government would, of course, pay a dear price for its failure to appreciate the magnitude of the ethnic problem. True, in June 1917, faced with a mass movement of peasants and soldiers in the Ukraine, the Provisional Government would delegate some of its powers to the Central Rada and recognize the national principle as the basis for the country's administrative division....

Read the rest

Comments

[antitool06]

I have your mood-setting right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pavbnb9rD6Y
And if you like Vladimir saying "glory to the great Russian soldiers...Urrah!" Here you go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbjQeW8KRn0

What's the most visible manifestation of NATO at full alert? A parade through Red Square.

Soyuz nerushimy...

[antitool06]

All that being said, I see a lot of muted calls for Russian expansionism in this article--a longing for the "good old days". Wishful thinking, at least as far as Eastern Europe is concerned. Then again, the Russians control the gas taps, and they aren't too squeamish about jacking the prices up or turning the valves off.