on Steroids
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There a many different levels that the old adage, "The sins of the fathers..." are played out in Ukraine. The Russians have sinned against the people of Ukraine and Crimea. At the first level, how did Russia get that part of Ukraine in the first place? Crimea was in the 18th century a small part of the larger Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Crimean Khanate stretched from 1441-1783.
In the nearly two ensuing centuries, Russia continued to deal negatively with the Crimean Tatar. Stalin forced many of the Crimean Tatars, which he called Sürgün into a Central Asian gulag-esque as punishment for being Nazi supporters during WWII. Nearly half of them died due either to disease or hunger. What Stalin did was much like what America did with enslaving blacks and not trusting them to defend the enslaving country.
Churchill, FDR, and Stalin at Yalta in the Crimea Interestingly, Churchill, FDR, and Stalin met in Crimea at Yalta. Stalin was concerned about Crimea and his control of Central Europe while FDR was concerned about issues related to the UN. Then Khrushchev, who interestingly came from Ukraine, gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, which was on the 300th anniversary of Ukraine becoming a part of Russian Empire, which seems a moot point since Ukraine and Crimea were a part of the USSR regardless. However, when the USSR fell apart in 1991, Ukraine becomes independent – including Crimea. After the implosion of the USSR, the Russian Federation and Putin seem to be attempting to reconstitute parts of the old USSR. That seems like a no-brainer. It did not work before as a police state, why should it work now...as a police state? There are billboards in Crimea now this new slogan, With Russia. Sounds like the Better Together slogan against Scotland going independent. The Crimean's vote and the Russian Duma's approval of annexing Crimea is not something that the West will go to war over. The question remains what Putin will do with the three ethnically Russian providences/oblasts. This is reminiscent of Hitler prior to WWII. It was 75-years ago this March that Hitler entered the part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland. This was his attempt to protect the ethnic Germans from abuse.
The sins of the fathers are being visited upon the future generations...but on steroids.
Visit the Ukraine page to read more about this topic. 04/11/14 Follow @mountain_and_me |
