Captain's Quarters -

Putin, once an NKVD apparatchik, always an NKVD apparatchik, it would seem.

putin has a "runt complex" that shows up at all the wrong times. the estonians for entertainment value should dig up the russian "war heroes" and send them home so that they can repose in the motherland!

This is merely Putin strongarming the Republic back into line. They fell apart in the nineties, and from what I read, the actual order to open the gates at Checkpoint Charlie and other places was actually accidental. He is merely in the latter phases of "cleaning up that mess", as you would say if it were you in charge of it. He has already taken over the "mafia", something I'm pretty sure was never as out of control as it was made out to be, and I suspect was mostly nothing but a shill for the Putin forces anyway. I'm pretty sure he controls all of it, just like a mafia don, since that's what he is. You'll see. We used to joke, "If you don't (whatever; hurry up, fix it quick, buy my product), then Russia will reform and attack!!! Seems like I should have hurried, I guess.

I've been arguing that the Soviet Union never dissolved during the "maskirovka", but merely went underground like any good crime family.

Putin is actually putting some truth into my age-old paranoia.

I think that at times, the remnants of the USSR has tried to be more open and western, but the cultural effects of being a dictatorship for so long still remains. It will take generations for the thought proccesses of freedom to assert themselves. Until then, everyone is still in a fight-or-flight mode.

And I don't see it changing as long as Putin is leading.

Putin is absolutely appalling, a KGB mafioso who daily confirms that Russia is a rogue state where klepotcracy substitutes for communism as the new ideology.

My wife is Russian, and has a mother and daughter back in the old country. She returned once about three years ago for a visit, and her verdict on state and society was: "Outside immediate family, everybody hates and mistrusts everybody else, and everyone hates and mistrusts the government."

In many ways Russia is still the USSR. Did you know they have retained the Soviet era external/internal passport system? The internal passport contains your home of record address, which means you can't live and work outside that area. We Americans cherish our constitutionally protected right to travel within the USA; in Russia one can't simply move to, say, Moscow or St. Petersburg from the provinces to better oneself. Your internal passport chains you to your home address locale.

My wife won't return to Russia again until she become a naturalized US citizen, if then, because of the insecurity of being there.

Soon, the Democrat party-version of politicians in Estonia will be calling for a timetable to restore the statue.

Don't let the EU off the hook. They were already going to attend a meeting.

What they should have dojne is cancelled the meeting and sent a separate delegation.

Of course, the EU has its own problems with Russia playing games with the supply of energy.

you know you are gutter scum when the nazis were seen as the lesser of two evils.....

from wikipedia....

In response to a period of Russification initiated by the Russian empire in the 1890s, Estonian nationalism took on more political tones, with intellectuals first calling for greater autonomy, and later, complete independence from the Russian empire. Following the German victories against the Russian Army of 1917 and the Russian October Revolution, Estonia declared itself an independent republic on 24 February 1918. After winning the Estonian Liberation War against Soviet Russia and at the same time German Freikorps volunteers (the Treaty of Tartu was signed on 2 February 1920), Estonia maintained its independence for twenty-two years. Initially a parliamentary democracy, the parliament (Riigikogu) was disbanded in 1934, following political unrest caused by the global economic crisis. Subsequently the country was ruled by decree by Konstantin Päts, who became President in 1938, the year parliamentary elections resumed.

Under the USSR
Estonia was occupied by Soviet troops on October 18th 1939, as a consequence of the secret amendment to the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and National Socialist Germany[2]. The Red Army made its final occupation in June 1940. Estonia was formally annexed by the Soviet Union in August 1940 as the Estonian SSR. Many of the country's political and intellectual leaders were killed or deported to remote areas of the USSR by the Soviet authorities during 1940 to 1941 [3]. The repressions also included actions taken against thousands of ordinary people. When the German Operation Barbarossa started against the Soviet Union, thousands of young Estonian men were forcibly drafted into the Red Army. Hundreds of political prisoners, whom the retreating Soviets had no time to move, were killed. The country was occupied by Germany from 1941 to 1944. Of the many Estonians who joined the German armed forces (including Waffen-SS), the majority did so only in 1944 when the threat of a new invasion of Estonia by Red Army had become imminent and it was clear that Germany would not win the war. Soviet forces reconquered Estonia in the autumn of 1944 after fierce battles in the northeast of the country on the Narva river and on the Tannenberg Line (Sinimäed). In the face of the country being re-occupied by the Red Army, tens of thousands of people chose to either retreat together with the Germans or flee to Finland or Sweden. In 1949, in response to slow progress in forming collective farms, as prescribed by the Soviet ideology, tens of thousands of people were forcibly deported in a few days either to labor camps or Siberia where half of them perished; the other half were not allowed to return until the early 1960s (several years after Stalin's death). That and previous repressions in 1940-1941 sparked a guerrilla war against the Soviet authorities in Estonia which was waged into the early 1950s by the so called "forest brothers" (metsavennad) consisting mostly of Estonian veterans of both the German and Finnish armies as well as some civilians.

Western bank of OsmussaarIn addition to the human and material losses suffered due to war, thousands of civilians were killed and tens of thousands of people deported from Estonia by the Soviet authorities until Joseph Stalin's death in 1953. Soviet rule significantly slowed Estonia's economic growth, resulting in a wide "wealth gap" in comparison with neighboring democratic countries (e.g., Finland and Sweden).

Of course, the EU has its own problems with Russia playing games with the supply of energy.

Posted by: Davod at May 3, 2007 07:08 AM

you should just shorten this to "Of course, the EU has its own problems.

Russia's history with some of the Soviet Union's former republics isn't so clear cut as the opressor-oppressed dynamic would suggest. The conduct of the Red Army and the policy of Soviet strategists vis-a-vis republics with some history of independence was unambiguously negative following the second World War. However, for Russians, the relevant historical metric is what preceded Hitler's invasion of their country. Fair or not, Russia's interpretation of history centers on the devastating fact that it lost almost 28 million of its citizens (almost five times more than in the Shoah, though many of those victims were also Russian). Even when Russians could view only four television channels at a time, two of those were always turned to WWII documentaries, and to this day married couples go to lay wreaths at soldiers' graves following the exchange of vows--in other words, it is difficult to comprehend for most individuals just how deeply WWII is embedded into the Russian psyche. Estonia's place in this historical episode is complex, to say the least, and its treatment of its Russian minority is a constant source of tension.

This, of course, doesn't, and shouldn't, excuse anything that followed, but it does give you some context, and makes a case for why this episode is categorically different from the others you have cited. I do believe though, that they are all related in the broader sense. What I mean is that Russians have built up something akin to a national foreign policy preference for assertiveness. Perhaps it would be too simplistic to say that this stems from the extremely cruel treatment they received at the hands of the Mongol hordes, and the fact that Russians have stopped every major epoch-changing invasion of their country since. Cultural explanations always leave something to be desired, but in the case of Russia, and its precarious geostrategic positioning, a national paranoia seems to be a fairly accurate way to describe the conduct of foreign policy.

Estonia was getting too big for its britches and had to be taken down a few pegs, or so figures Russia. And probably the rest of quasi-socialist Europe. Estonian economy has been booming since they shifted to a flat income tax. That is not acceptable to socialists. Now it remains to be seen if Russia will trump up enough of an excuse to actually invade and take over Estonia again. And if they do, if anybody will do anything about it. I believe Estonia is now a member of NATO - will NATO fall apart rather than defend a member against agression? This is potentially a very big deal. If Putin gets daring, and gets away with it, it will not stop at Estonia - look for the rest of European SSRs to 'rejoin' the Soviet Union. Who would stop them? Not Bush - not with his hands full of Islamofascists. This scenario would explain why Putin has been so accomodating of Iran - just keeping the US occupied and diverted from Russia's goals. A simple protest of a statue in a small European country could be the most important item in the news this year - but no one will notice.

Vasily said “…However, for Russians, the relevant historical metric is what preceded Hitler's invasion of their country. Fair or not, Russia's interpretation of history centers on the devastating fact that it lost almost 28 million of its citizens (almost five times more than in the Shoah, though many of those victims were also Russian). Even when Russians could view only four television channels at a time, two of those were always turned to WWII documentaries…”

This is the standard Soviet/Russian “I am a victim mentality” and I know it is of great import to the Russian national psyche but I have little sympathy whatsoever for this faux victimology. If Stalin had not allied himself with Hitler at the beginning of the war then Russia would not have lost 20 million of its subjects. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact gave Hitler the time and resources to carry out his greater European War. With a hostile Russia at his back Hitler could never have invaded France in the spring of 1940 nor would he access to food and raw materials to build up his war machine for the huge military task that was involved in invading the USSR. I have argued before that No Hitler-Stalin Pact, no Holocaust. The same thing applies here. No Pact, No successful invasion of the Soviet Union. I hold the Red-Brown alliance responsible for the destruction of Europe in WWII.

Vasily said “…However, for Russians, the relevant historical metric is what preceded Hitler's invasion of their country. Fair or not, Russia's interpretation of history centers on the devastating fact that it lost almost 28 million of its citizens (almost five times more than in the Shoah, though many of those victims were also Russian). Even when Russians could view only four television channels at a time, two of those were always turned to WWII documentaries…”

This is the standard Soviet/Russian “I am a victim mentality” and I know it is of great import to the Russian national psyche but I have little sympathy whatsoever for this faux victimology. If Stalin had not allied himself with Hitler at the beginning of the war then Russia would not have lost 20 million of its subjects. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact gave Hitler the time and resources to carry out his greater European War. With a hostile Russia at his back Hitler could never have invaded France in the spring of 1940 nor would he access to food and raw materials to build up his war machine for the huge military task that was involved in invading the USSR. I have argued before that No Hitler-Stalin Pact, no Holocaust. The same thing applies here. No Pact, No successful invasion of the Soviet Union. I hold the Red-Brown alliance responsible for the destruction of Europe in WWII.