From: oleg@watson.ibm.com (Oleg Vishnepolsky)
Subject: Re: treacherous Russians (Re: "democratic" Estonia)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 13:34:06 GMT
News-Software: IBM OS/2 PM RN (NR/2) v0.1 by O. Vishnepolsky and R. Rogers
Reply-To: oleg@watson.ibm.com (Oleg Vishnepolsky)
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

In  <1992Aug28.223301.23601@leland.Stanford.EDU>
georglin@leland.Stanford.EDU (george lin) writes:
> Looking through the Baltic discussion...
> 1) The anti-Balt posters exaggerate the potential for terror against Russian
> settlers.  The new Baltic governments are not about to give Moscow any ex-
> cuse for  "rescuing its people."

  I have not seen any anti-Balt posters here. I did see anti-Russian remarks.

> 2) They omit mention of the ex-Soviet army still planted in these sovereign
> countries--a rather truculent and hostile presence.

   Rather than Russian government is using injustices towards ethnic Russians
   in the Baltics as a pretext to mount hostilities against the Baltic states,
   it is the Baltic states themselves who have been using the ex-Soviet army
   presence to draw attention of the Balts from the current economical
   difficulties.


> 3) Sadly, every country has injustices large and small.  I doubt that one can
> create a perfect society with 100% contentment.  To expect saintly perfection
> from the ethnic Balts--who did not receive such treatment from the Soviets and
> who have well-grounded fears for their languages / cultures--is disingenuous.
> Given the awful history they have experienced since 1940, their post-liberation
> behavior could have been much worse.

   In the Baltic region all the time during those Soviet years there was a
   tendency on the part of the native Baltic population to blame all
   non-Baltics ethnicities (and in particular - Russians) for their plight,
   instead of the Soviet regime. In fact, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians
   were among the most eager proponents of the regime.
   Latvian KGB, for example, consisted mostly of native Latvians -
   there was no problem recruiting natives for the job.
   I know because my family was more or less forced to leave the USSR in 1980,
   and my father had an opportunity to "meet" the KGB personnel. His case was
   supervised by none other than Pugo (one of coup leaders) who at the time
   was a KGB general in Riga.
   Or take Voss and Pelshe - those types did very well in Latvia and then in Moscow.
   It does not show, of course, that Latvians were more inclined to the regime
   than Russians. It only shows that it was everybody's fault, and not of a
   particular ethnic group. Sadly, the current governments of the Baltic states are
   playing the anti-Russian card blaming the Russians for the Sovok years.
   Prejudice and bigotry run deep in people's minds, even at the end of 20th
   century.


> 4) The Russian settlers are not in the position of pre-World War II European
> Jews, who had no homeland to which they could flee.  Russia may be ragged and
> poor, but it's there.  As a Western diplomat commented in the Nov. 7, 1991,
> Christian Science Monitor:  as long as they possess citizenship in another
> country, this is NOT a human-rights question.

   You simply do not know what you are talking about. You do not know what it
   is like to be born, raised and spend most of your life in a particular place,
   and then be thrown out on some absurd basis. To most Russians in the Baltics,
   Baltics is their home. It is utterly inhumane to force them to live.