Posted on 08/03/2005 3:55:14 PM PDT by lizol
Eastern Europe: Russian-Polish Tensions Rise Over Attack On Russian Children In Warsaw
By Valentinas Mite
Poland's relations with Russia have reached new lows. The formal reason for the exchange of current diplomatic unpleasantness is an attack on teenage children of Russian diplomats in Warsaw on 31 July. Moscow says the attack indicates strong anti-Russian sentiments in the country. Analysts say more serious disagreements are under the surface.
Moscow is condemning in strong words the attack on Russian teenagers in Warsaw, saying anti-Russian sentiments are widespread in Poland.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the attack an unfriendly act.
"I am asking the Foreign Ministry and the presidential administration to contact Polish colleagues to understand what Polish authorities are doing in order to respond adequately to this unfriendly act which can only be qualified as a crime," Putin said.
Russian news agencies report that the three children of Russian diplomats were attacked in a Warsaw park by 15 youths shouting anti-Russian slogans.
Moscow said the attackers beat the teenagers and wants an official apology from Warsaw. But the Polish government has said it views the incident as a common criminal act.
Boris Makarenko, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow-based think tank, said there is some ground for a tough Russian stance.
"Eyewitnesses say that the skinheads [the attackers] left the site of the fight on a microbus," Makarenko said. "I don't know many hooligans who are traveling in microbuses."
The report that the microbus was waiting for the attackers to take them away cannot be independently confirmed.
Even leaving such odd circumstances aside, analysts say that anti-Russian feelings are strong and old in Poland, making the beating a hate crime of international significance to Moscow.
Makarenko said that much of the anti-Russian feelings in Poland is caused by grievances of the past.
"The Polish envoy to Moscow, when invited to the [Russian] Foreign Ministry, denied those anti-Russian sentiments, but they have existed for more than 200 years," Makarenko said. "It is easy to understand why, and I am not going to defend Russia either for three divisions of Poland [at the end of the 18 century] or many other [unjust things done to Poland]. These anti-Russian sentiments resurfaced in the recent decade and there are many examples of that."
Russian officials said that bad feelings toward Russia are widespread in Poland.
The Polish daily "Gazeta Wyborcza" reports that Gleb Pavlovskii, an adviser to Putin, complained during a recent visit to Warsaw that "Poles talk about Russians the way anti-Semites talk about Jews." Poland's foreign minister, Adam Rotfeld, replied that Russian politicians are "looking for an enemy and find it in Poland."
Jakub Boratynski, director of international programs at the independent Polish think tank Stefan Batory Foundation, said that Makarenko overlooks the fact that anti-Russian feelings have substantially decreased since Poland joined the EU and NATO, and that Poles feel more safe than before.
On the other hand, he admited that many people in Poland still look suspiciously at Russian foreign-policy moves and are afraid Russia is seeking to "recreate an empire in a different form."
However, both analysts say that the current row is more about politics and the new role Poland is playing in the region than about history.
Makarenko noted that Poland and Russia have recently clashed over the events in Ukraine, and that Poland sometimes criticizes Russias stance on human rights or press freedoms.
Boratynski said many Russian politicians are upset with Poland's entry into the EU and NATO. He said the Kremlin perceives Poland's involvement in encouraging democracy in the region as limiting its own influence. The analyst also said the Kremlin is using the attack on the teenagers to show its displeasure over Polish policy in the region as a whole.
"The incident as we look at it in an isolated manner has really created a very strange reaction," Boratynski said. "However, of course, it becomes much more logical if we look into the current context of Polish-Russian relations."
Boratynski said it is not an accident that the reaction comes at the time of tense relations between Russia and Belarus.
"I think the Russians are seizing a very good opportunity to try once gain for the external audience, mostly for the European Union, to show that actually Poland cannot be treated in a serious manner, that it is a country kind of obsessed with anti-Russian phobia," Boratynski said.
Last week, Poland recalled its ambassador to Belarus after weeks of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions by both countries. Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is accusing Poland of using the Polish minority in Belarus to help push him out of power.
Boratynski said that by portraying Poland as a place obsessed with anti-Russian sentiments, the Kremlin plays into the hands of Lukashenka, who can now more easily reject Warsaw's demands to respect the rights of Polish minority in Belarus.
If you bother with facts, Read Anne Applebaum Book: "Gulag: A History", page 302 Hardcover. She spent years researching the history of GULAG going over all archives imaginable (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, American, etc.) The majority of GULAG inmates were ethnic Russians throughout GULAG history. That was their "benefit" of living under soviet empire--being the largest group of slaves because they were the largest demographic group in USSR.
Also do the math--if at least 20 million victims of Stalin Regime and at least 25 million Soviet WWII losses were predominantly Ukrainians and Belarussians, there wouldn't be any of them left today. So learn about history from trusted sources or just shut up.
"We have a hard enough time getting the facts from the Kremlin-lackey NY Times and do you think I am going to tolerate a Russian website? "
Are you talking about memo.ru site that I gave you ? It's a site of "Memorial Foundation" who works for more than 10 years is to preserve the memory of all the victims of Stalin terror in all the republics of Fmr. USSR (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc). Their work is actually frequently obstructed by Putin' Kremlin.
They got bunch of documents showing who was shot were from what republic and what region. So learn the facts before saying any more crap. And read Anne Applebaum book as I suggested where she tells all aspects of GULAG, including its demographic make up.
"Lets take all the assets of all the people in a country of 10 million, then take all the food they would have eaten for 3 years, and then allocate those funds to the confines of Russia to build chandalier subways, summer dachas, and various other infrastructure to benefit loyal soviet citizens. "
Build dachas, chandalleers to whom ? To Brezhnev and Communist party elites ? How does it benefit average Russian living somewhere in Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Ivanovo,or Novokuznetsk working somewhere in coal mines, steel mills, factories, plants, schools, scientific institutions, etc ? Most of Russians during Soviet times had no dachas at all. The average Russians who did, had a poor country houses with tiny plots of land to grow food because outside of Moscow and few other showcases of "developed socialism", it was impossible to buy in grocery shops an adequate nutrition. You had to either grow food or go to country market in cities where prices where higher. If you were traveling in Russia during Soviet times you would see delapidated villages and cities filled with a number of ugly multiapartment buildings where most Russians lived. The communist party had their fabulous dachas all over fmr. USSR including the Ukraine, Baltic States, etc. They had their own supply of anything they needed and they lived fabulously in Russia, Ukraine, Baltic States--everywhere. Also you leave out a "little" detail. Where Ukraine, and a number of other former Soviet republics get gas and oil from during Soviet Times for internal Soviet prices (meaning the tiny fraction of world oil Prices) for decades. Answer: From Russia and Central Asia.
Also do you have any idea how much aid was given by Communist party leadership to spread communism round the world--somewhere in hundreds of billions of dollars. Russian economy was about 60% of overall Soviet Economy so average Russian financed 60% of all the Soviet expenditures to promote this ugly Communist system around the world.
How did it benefit average Russian who was not a member of high echelons of Communist power ? What it did other than bankrupting the Soviet System and wiping out the meager savings by Russian, Ukrainian other pensioners from fmr. USSR ?
In other words, every surviving Russian "benefited" from Soviet system by being a number 1 slave of this system. Average Russian outside of Moscow lived worse than most other Soviet Citizens. One thing is to criticize that most of Russians still don't come to terms with their past and did not look honestly that they were not only victims but also a biggest manpower of the Soviet communist regime. But to say that "every surviving Russian benefited" from this system--it's mother of all craps.
"Read and weep , Kremlin propagandists. "
http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-29.html
http://www.faminegenocide.com/resources/famine_map.html
And don't you call me Kremlin propagandist--you find nowhere in my posts any attempts to defend Stalin or any other Kremlin bastard who deserve nothing condemnation. I have no sympathy for Putin either for his attempts to partially rehabilitate Stalin legacy.
Ukrainian Famine was a horrendous crime against humanity, genocide--no question about it. However this famine was a part of USSR wide collectivization that wiped out also millions of Russian, Kazakh and other peasants, although Ukrainians had the highest number of dead proportionately to the population. Also decade before Ukrainian famine, there was a Volga famine that wiped at least 5 millions in Central and Southern Russia and about a million in Ukraine. The only thing that saved Volga Region from complete depopulation was the realization by Lenin that Bolsheviks are unable to grow the food (only take it away from peasantry and rob the rich), so they need these peasants to produce the harvest. So the nascent Soviet Regime back then asked "imperialist" powers to help the starving peasantry of Volga and "imperialists" (United States, Sweden, Britain, etc) saved Volga region from complete depopulation but not until after at least 5 million of Russian Peasants and about 1 million of Ukrainian peasants died.
Stalin engineered famine of 1932-1933 was the result that in Ukraine the resistance to collectivization was higher than in Russia, and he decided to use a weapon of hunger to subdue Ukrainian peasantry. Russian free peasantry was mostly eliminated or subdued during Civil war decade earlier so there were fewer will to resist. The grain taken away from Ukrainian peasants went on export outside of USSR--not to Russia. Stalin is the world worst mass-murderer--that's I know perfectly well.
As for Soviet military losses in WWII, Ukraine in fact suffered proportionately higher losses of population than Russia, but it does not negate the fact that millions of Russians (residents of RSFRS) also perished in WWII. Also the statistics of WWII losses is still not accurate, so the losses of Russia itself maybe much higher than the one quoted.
organized group of skinheads it is just oxymoron, I never heard about similar actions, group of 15 skinheads attacking somebody and immediately escaping in their microbus. Of course they must knew that those people will coming back to home from cinema. Very funny indeed
Russian newspaper "Novye Izvestiya" claims there was beating of children from Russia at Warsaw's railway station 6 years ago. Also there was skinheads' attack on Frenchmen. (Stefan Meller, Polish Ambassador to Russia).
6 years ago and even the Frenchmen suffered . Your examples showing only that Im right. As a Russian you should not even complain if in your country such attacks are normal. Just recently I read that three(?) Azerbaijanis were attacked in Saint Petersburg. Im curious wherever Putin already officially apologized Azerbaijan, somehow I doubt
How can you count skinheads?
I cannot, but there is international organization which aim is to fight racism and xenophobia around the world. They have sections in most of the countries and can estimate such number.
40 murders and hundreds of assaults were committed in Russia for ethnic reasons in 2004, and skinhead groups bear the responsibility for most of them, Charny was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Unbelievable and they dare to complain!
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