Reuters Photo
Posted on 10/23/2002 7:16:19 PM PDT by TopQuark
Russian Official Plays Down Storming Theater
29 minutes ago
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian official involved in the handling of the Chechen hostage-seizure in Moscow said on Thursday that security forces would not storm the theater unless the rebels began killing hostages.
"Storming of the building will not be carried out at the initiative of the Russian side if the terrorists do not undertake actions to kill large numbers of hostages," Gennady Gutkov, a member of parliament's security committee, told NTV television.
Several hundred theater-goers were being held inside the theater in south-east Moscow after Chechen secessionist rebels stormed into the building late on Wednesday.
I find this to be an interesting slip of the tongue: he speaks of the terrorists as if they were foreign: there is the Russian side and another side.
That, in a nutshell, is Russian mentality: Chechnya, even after two centuries of being annexed to the Russian Empire, is not Russia.
I know... I know.... could take 'em prisoner at the same time, but why ruin 1/2 of the fun?
Care to name a gas that wouldn't leave folks brain damaged if the dose isn't just right?
That, in a nutshell, is Russian mentality: Chechnya, even after two centuries of being annexed to the Russian Empire, is not Russia.
The combatants in Chechnya are not locals. The Chechen Mujhadeen are mainly from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Pakistan, the U.S. and many other countries. Islamists have been collecting money and recruiting in mosques and on websites in the U.S. for years. Bin Laden himself sent Al-Qaeda jehadis to Chechnya.
Great. Giddy terrorists with automatics and explosives.
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Although the Russians are not alone in this --- this well may be mentality common to most of Europe --- to them Russian means more than nationality: it is ethnicity. Observe how people from Poland, when discussing Holocaust for instance, speak of "Poles and Jews." When I ask, didn't you mean Catholic and Jewish Poles, the answer --- after an incredulous look at me and my inability to understand the most elementary things --- is given, "No, I meant Poles and Jews." You see, the Jews that had migrated to Poland centuries earlier have never become "real" Poles.
My experience with a colleague who was visiting for a year was similar. I showed him a textbook I liked and, recalling that it was two Frenchmen (Claude Itzykson and Jean-Bernard Zuber), I excitedly mentioned that the authors were French. He matter-of-factly corrected me that the authors "are clearly Jews, not Frenchmen." I did not ask him whether his Gothic forefathers moved into France before or after the forefathers of Itzykson and Zuber: he is a real Frenchman, whereas they are not.
The example of attitude towards the Jews is a salient one because they were not colonized. The attitude towards Kazakh, Tadjick, Tatar, and other populations that have been acquired by conquest was (until recent independence) even worse. The Baltic States concurred by the Russians before WWII are an exception: those people were so "European" and cultured that it was hard for an average Russian to look down on them.
I have no sympathy for the terrorists. Personally, I have no doubt that, if Chechnya were to become independent tomorrow, the day after that it would be ruled by Taliban-like creatures. But they do have a just cause: their land was taken from them by force, first by the Tsar who used the half-century of peace in Europe after Napoleonic Wars, and then by the Red Army and the KGB.
Returning once again to the language, consider in parallel a situation where a group of thugs from, say, Louisiana takes some people hostage in Chicago. Can you imagine an FBI spokesman saying, "The American side will not initiate violence (against Cajuns)"? If he did, it would sound sooooo strange to us and would be duly noted. Not in Russia, however; not in Poland; and not in France.
You are very mistaken - you project American concept of nationality where nation equals state. For example in Europe the borders of the states do not define nationality. So Poles existed even during the partitions and they would take it as an insult to be considered Russians, Germans and Austro-Hungarians.
Now in Russia there are tens of nations and languages and they preserve their indentity. This is how Armenians survived for example or Finland preserved their identity.
If you need a lesson in a difference between nation and a state travel to Scotland and try to propagate your concept. Only make sure your medical insurance covers travel abroad.
If you need a lesson No, thank you. And you should learn to discuss without hectoring also.
in a difference between nation and a state travel to Scotland and try to propagate your concept. Only make sure your medical insurance covers travel abroad. Well, Mr. Pole, the marvelous language we use allows for a distinction of British and Scottish. In a similar situation, a Scotland Yard spokesman would never say, "The British side would not initiate violence against the Scotts," because Scotts are British. OF course, one could discuss differences between English and Scottish counties of Great Britain.
Actually, to the credit of the young Russian democracy, they do use the word "Rossiyski," which refers to nationality, in contrast to "Russki," which refers to ethnicity --- except for the aforementioned official, which is why I referred to it as his slip of the tongue. You are very mistaken - you project American concept of nationality where nation equals state. It is not an American concept. And it is you, much like the rest of the Europeans, are confused between nationality, religious affiliation, and ethnicity.
For example in Europe the borders of the states do not define nationality. They do. They do not define ethnicity.
So Poles existed even during the partitions and they would take it as an insult to be considered Russians, Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Of course, and that is understandable. The concurred people, hopuing to regain their freedom some day, may never agree to be dissolved into the concurring group. Yours is not an example: I was talking about the attitude of the other "side," the concurring group. The Russian Tsars always insisted that Poland was part of Russia, did they not? Officilly, of course, but in reality they resented Polish Catholicism and never considered Poles to be one of their own.
If you immigrated to this country a few decades ago, you, like many others have done earlier, would be forced to reconsider these notions: it is these age-old prejudices and bogotry that keep Europe at war at almost all times. Unfortunately, America nowadays is getting to be more like Europe, and because of multi-culturalism you are likely to continue in your confusion of ethnicity and nationality, however misguided it may be.
Whether or not you choose to reflect on this and modify your views is, of course, up to you. But please do not shoot from the hip and do not hector: your looking down upon the allegedly "American concept of nationality" make you look foolish.
This is not fair to me. My post is an attempt to explain my understanding of the mentality of the "Old Country" or Old World and the difference of it with American mentality. Those "Old" places are not less real than the New World. If you want to understand them, you need to do it on their terms or you will be projecting your cultural assumptions.
America is a unique nation - it was founded by the design by people who had common ideas. At its core is its Constitution and Bill of Rights. It is very different with the nations like Greeks or Poles or Russians. They formed by natural (words "nature" and "nation" have common etymology) process. First the tribes recognised their common character (language, legends, common ancestors) then they formed states. Greeks did not have common state until XIXc, in ancient times they were divided into small city states or were subjects to the other non-Greek states. Russians were under Mongol rule for a long time (in one state together with the Chinese!). Poles had three constitutions. French had five and earlier they were under royal non-constitutional rule.
Americans would experience those conditions if they were partitioned by the foreign powers and lost their statehood. Only then they would be forced to differentiate between the nation and a state. No doubt that they would assert themselves as American nation (although some groups possibly would opt out without unfiying state structure and Constitution).
We could say that in case of America the state created the nation while in most of other cases the nation formed the state.
My post is an attempt to explain my understanding of the mentality of the "Old Country" or Old World and the difference of it with American mentality. Fine, I understand the purpose better.
They formed by natural (words "nature" and "nation" have common etymology) process. First the tribes recognised their common character (language, legends, common ancestors) then they formed states. That all well may be; we can discuss city-states and nation-states, their origins, etc.
What I was addressing, however, the mentality that exists after the nation-states have been born. I have also demonstrated to you that all countries recognize the distinction between nationality and ethnicity: English vs. British, Rossiyski vs. Russki, etc. That is, at the present time, this is considered to be a shared value of the (western at least) world. The point I made was that, despite that aspiration, both confusion and bigotry persist, with claims that someone is "more Russian" than someone else, and someone else is more Polish.
We could say that in case of America the state created the nation while in most of other cases the nation formed the state. That too is an intellectually convenient, yet false, perception. What is the Spanish "nation?" Is Spain formed by Goths, Celts, Basques, Arabs and Berbers, Jews, Roma, and the Slavs brought there as slaves? [As you probably know, before that time, around X-XI century, when a large number of Slavic slaves were brought to Spain, Latin used an altogether different word for "slave;" the word "slave" came from "Slav"]
Who on earth are Italians, then? How many of the ever-nationalist "Russkis" are the descendants of Huns and Tatars, Germans and Finns that originally lived in the North?
The question of the origin, as well as the future of the nation-state is not a trivial one. But, to reiterate, the point I made was independent of that origin.
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I think that may be an artifact of language, i.e. a consequence of thinking in Russian and then trying to say it in English. That kind of use of "side" appears in English translations of things from China and Japan as well. In Japanese, the tacking-on of a modifier meaning "side" is required by the grammar as a device to indicate the existence of dispute or disagreement. Perhaps Russian uses a similar sort of grammatical construct, and it just sounds funny when rendered literally in English.