9 ms·

It's always funny to me how facts about previous allegiance are withheld with impunity, apparently in hopes to confuse a distracted reader. I can forgive peopl

It's always funny to me how facts about previous allegiance are withheld with impunity, apparently in hopes to confuse a distracted reader. I can forgive people for forgetting to mention that Baltic states were part of Russia for centuries before they were re-annexed by the USSR in 1945. Indeed I can see how people had 20 years of independence and weren't fans of being included into a socialist utopia. But, just yesterday I've read that Georgia had a "Bolshevik invasion of 1921". A province of Russian Empire for a really long time and up until 1917. It looks like the free press thinks you can make legitimate territorial claims go away by not mentioning their existence.

dvdkon 2y ago
Certainly many parts of the world aren't too big on democracy and self-determination, but from my point of view any military operation not sanctioned by the target region's people or government counts as an invasion. Maybe that's not how all the people involved saw it, but we see, judge, and name events through the lens of our own values.
- protomolecule 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - mopsi 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - rubytubido 2y ago
      > short bombing campaign > It is one of the best examples of foreign interference During my visit to Syria, Iraq and Libya, I noticed something common between the people of these countries - when I told them I was from the US, they all said: "Thank you for your bombing campaigns, we are liberated now!"
    - dang 2y ago
      Please don't perpetuate flamewars like this on HN, and please don't cross into nationalistic attack on a fellow user, regardless of their (or your) nationality. Having replied as I did to the other user I feel I should add that you also are welcome here. The two of you are equally welcome, but we need you both to follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Edit: it looks like you've been doing this in other places too, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40541225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40541225. That's definitely not ok here, so please stop doing that.
      - mopsi 2y ago
        I just honestly don't understand what the issue is with NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and why Russians in particular are so butthurt about it. During some of the worst massacres in Yugoslavia, more people were murdered in the span of a few days than died during the entire aerial campaign. The campaign put a decisive end to wars, and the following decades have brought massive success. Former parts of Yugoslavia like Croatia are now advanced high-income countries. We see passive-aggressive hints about NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on HN all the time, but rarely anyone explains where that comes from. I can understand why Serbians could be bitter - the campaign had several horrible incidents like the passenger train that got hit during a strike on a railway bridge - but why are Russians complaining more than anyone else about a thing that happened 25 years ago, thousands of miles away, to people they have no relation with? I'd really like to get an answer to that.
        racional 2y ago
        I think Dan's point is that there's never a need to introduce references to a commenter's nationality or other presumed essential traits. No matter how self-evidently full of excrement their droppings here may be.
        protomolecule 2y ago
        "I think Dan's point is that there's never a need to introduce references to a commenter's nationality or other presumed essential traits. No matter how self-evidently full of excrement their droppings here may be." @dang So how comments like this fit the site's guidelines? Btw, that's another account "using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle".
  - dang 2y ago
    Please let's not go into flamewar like this. You're welcome here, but I've noticed that your comments are running a bit afoul of the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd please review those and recalibrate, we'd appreciate it. It's not easy preserving the commons for everybody. Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle. As you know, that's not allowed here and we ban accounts that do it. If you don't want us to ban this account, please stop doing that. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. I know that users holding minority or contrarian views are under pressure that the rest of us are not, but that doesn't make it ok.
    - protomolecule 2y ago
      I see my comment as invitation to resolve the apparent contradiction between the statement I replied to and mainstream understanding of western values or as invitation to clarify the values of the author (which might be interesting). "you've been using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle" I disagree with this characterization of my comments as a whole, they are often contradictory but informative and rarely combative. Perhaps some are unnecessarily sarcastic. "If you don't want us to ban this account, please stop doing that" That's a fair warning, but I wonder why accounts like https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mopsi https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mopsi aren't banned despite long history of waging 'political and nationalistic battles' and flamewars.
      - dang 2y ago
        I'm afraid you're underestimating the provocation and aggression in your comments by quite a lot. That's normal in the sense that everyone does it, but it's important to understand how that dynamic works if you want to use HN appropriately (and therefore not get banned). Here's how it works: people underestimate their own provocations by at least 10x and overestimate the other side's provocations by another 10x, leading to a 100x skew (I'm speaking metaphorically of course) between their own perception and how things appear to an ordinary reader. It's basically a case of "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear" - a lot closer. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20objects%20mirror%20appear&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... This is how we end up getting flamewars in which all the participants are certain that their contributions are the reasonable ones, the other side started it, and the only thing the mods need to do is put a stop to the bad behavior of the others. As for the other two accounts you were asking about, the simple answer is I hadn't looked at their comment histories yet. All three of you are on the wrong side of the line in a similar way, so the moderation response is more or less the same in each case—once we've seen the data, that is. We can't moderate what we don't see, and we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, or even 10% of what gets posted here. It's common for people to see a post or an account which hasn't been publicly moderated and jump to the conclusion that the mods must be condoning it and therefore taking the other side. That's a non sequitur. By far the most likely explanation is that we didn't see it.
- thriftwy 2y ago
  > any military operation not sanctioned by the target region's people or government counts as an invasion It does not give one an excuse to skip the whole history of the region and start it where it fits them. I wonder if their values include skipping uncomfortable trivia or highlighting it when appropriate. With regards to values, the legitimacy of a 3 years old government is in deep doubt. The values you've mentioned repeatedly lead to political backing of seriously unpopular regimes just because they fit the narrative that was never true in the first place.
  - dvdkon 2y ago
    If you only care about the current citizens'/government's opinion, you actually can ignore history leading up to that point. Geopolitics is complicated, however, and I think most people would bring more nuance to any moral judgment. What if a large portion of the previous population was killed/driven out, for instance? What if the citizens are subjected to "brainwashing"? I do have to disagree on the notion that a government should have a historical or traditional basis to be legitimate. In my eyes it needs foremost the support of its "subjects". In reality, different factors make a stable government, but legitimacy is ultimately a value judgment.
    - thriftwy 2y ago
      I agree with you, but I was talking about a specific article which does an explicit history dive: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/19/georgia-looks-to-future-historic-euro-2024-football-appearance https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/19/georgi... Also, this convention of not digging into a country's history can only ever work before it brings its history as a topic of conversation. In case of small, post-colonial countries that often happens on the first contact.
protomolecule 2y ago
"re-annexed" Wrong word. "In Nystad, King Frederick I of Sweden formally recognized the transfer of Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and Southeast Finland (Kexholms län and part of Karelian Isthmus) to Russia in exchange for two million silver thaler, while Russia returned the bulk of Finland to Swedish rule." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nystad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nystad
- mopsi 2y ago
  The treaty of Nystad from 1721 is obsolete and has been superseded by other treaties. Estonia[1], Latvia[2] and Lithuania[3] fought successful wars of independence against Russia in 1918-1919 and made peace treaties in which Russians recognized sovereignity and withdrew territorial claims. (These treaties were later violated when Russians entered a secret pact with Hitler and they jointly invaded everyone in Europe between Germany and Russia.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tartu_(Estonia%E2%80%93Russia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tartu_(Estonia%E2%80... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian%E2%80%93Soviet_Peace_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian%E2%80%93Soviet_Peace_T... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Peace_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Peac...
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    > Hitler and they jointly invaded everyone in Europe between Germany and Russia Wow, I didn't knew Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are located between Germany and Russia. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Map_used_to_illustrate_Stahlecker%27s_report_to_Heydrich_on_January_31%2C_1942.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Map_used...
    - mopsi 2y ago
      Here's a helpful map visualizing how Russia and Germany divided Eastern Europe in the secret protocol[1] to the Hitler-Stalin pact: https://i.imgur.com/DvCrPWB.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/DvCrPWB.jpeg As to the "Judenfrei" status, that's a great deal due to the executions and mass deportations[2] that Russians unleashed after invading in 1940. First they banned all Jewish organizations, even fraternities and tennis clubs. Then they started targeting the professional class (politicians, doctors, lawyers, etc) to wipe out people capable of running the country and challenge the Russian rule. Their crime was officially designated as "being socially undesirable". Jews were overrepresented among the victims by a factor of 10. By the time Germans arrived in 1941, only 900 Jews were left in Estonia, as depicted on your map. Some had been deported, others ran away wherever they could. The last 900 remained because they believed that Germans couldn't be worse than the Russian terror of 1940-1941. When Russians invaded again in 1944 and began their 50-year occupation of the country (which included another wave of terror and mass deportations[3]), they replaced German antisemitic policies with their own and continued suppressing Jewish culture until the very end of the USSR. The Jewish school in Tallinn, for example, opened in 1924, was closed by Germans in 1941, and only in 1990, as the USSR entered the final death spiral, got its confiscated real estate back and resumed teaching. So if you intended to be clever and play the Jewish card, you chose a very wrong place to do it. Germans had the holocaust in store for them, and for Russians they were exploiters of the working class, destined for Siberian labor camps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi
mopsi 2y ago
> I can forgive people for forgetting to mention that Baltic states were part of Russia for centuries before they were re-annexed by the USSR in 1945. Indeed I can see how people had 20 years of independence and weren't fans of being included into a socialist utopia. There's fair bit more history than the 20 years of independence squished by Russians in 1940. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were always very distinct from Russia in religion, language, culture, education and other key areas. A good example of this are literacy rates in European part of Russian empire recorded during 1897 census.[1] Even two centuries later, the effect of protestantism and the trace of school system established by Sweden is clearly visible. Moreover, Estonia and Latvia weren't even ruled by Russians, but by Baltic German nobility, and the main language used in administrative affairs was German. Likewise, to portray Georgia as a mere "province of Russian Empire" is ridiculous given that they are so distinct that you cannot even read what they write, because they use a different alphabet. Finland or Georgia are no more "a part of Russia" than than Egypt and India are characterized by labeling them as "former British provinces" (with a subtext that they belong to Britain). [1] https://i.imgur.com/uCFzZmq.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/uCFzZmq.jpeg
- thriftwy 2y ago
  Before early XX century most of the globe was comprised of countries who looked like that. > the main language used in administrative affairs was German > to portray Georgia as a mere "province of Russian Empire" is ridiculous given that they are so distinct that you cannot even read what they write Please don't tell me that many Englishmen could read Devangari script or that many Frenchmen could read (pre-Latin) Vietnamese. You may not like it today, but these territorial claims were seen as completely valid. The subtexts that you are pinning on me are your own invention, I just say about unfaithful representation of history in the press.
  - mopsi 2y ago
    > The subtexts that you are pinning on me are your own invention, I just say about unfaithful representation of history in the press. What is the purpose of having to mention that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were in Russian Empire in the context of their invasion and occupation in the 1940s if not an attempt to give legitimacy to the invasions? It's far more important to stress that the people on the Baltic coast are not Russians, have nothing in common with them, nor have never wanted to be close with them. The same applies to the many other indigenous Finno-Ugric peoples[1] on the other side of the border inside the present-day Russia who have been driven away from their land like Native Americans and decimated with hostile policies that have resulted in their rapid decline. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeoDW20WQAESJuZ?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeoDW20WQAESJuZ?format=jpg&name=...

dvdkon 2y ago

Certainly many parts of the world aren't too big on democracy and self-determination, but from my point of view any military operation not sanctioned by the target region's people or government counts as an invasion. Maybe that's not how all the people involved saw it, but we see, judge, and name events through the lens of our own values.

protomolecule 2y ago
[flagged]
- mopsi 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - rubytubido 2y ago
    > short bombing campaign > It is one of the best examples of foreign interference During my visit to Syria, Iraq and Libya, I noticed something common between the people of these countries - when I told them I was from the US, they all said: "Thank you for your bombing campaigns, we are liberated now!"
  - dang 2y ago
    Please don't perpetuate flamewars like this on HN, and please don't cross into nationalistic attack on a fellow user, regardless of their (or your) nationality. Having replied as I did to the other user I feel I should add that you also are welcome here. The two of you are equally welcome, but we need you both to follow the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Edit: it looks like you've been doing this in other places too, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40541225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40541225. That's definitely not ok here, so please stop doing that.
    - mopsi 2y ago
      I just honestly don't understand what the issue is with NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and why Russians in particular are so butthurt about it. During some of the worst massacres in Yugoslavia, more people were murdered in the span of a few days than died during the entire aerial campaign. The campaign put a decisive end to wars, and the following decades have brought massive success. Former parts of Yugoslavia like Croatia are now advanced high-income countries. We see passive-aggressive hints about NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on HN all the time, but rarely anyone explains where that comes from. I can understand why Serbians could be bitter - the campaign had several horrible incidents like the passenger train that got hit during a strike on a railway bridge - but why are Russians complaining more than anyone else about a thing that happened 25 years ago, thousands of miles away, to people they have no relation with? I'd really like to get an answer to that.
      - racional 2y ago
        I think Dan's point is that there's never a need to introduce references to a commenter's nationality or other presumed essential traits. No matter how self-evidently full of excrement their droppings here may be.
        protomolecule 2y ago
        "I think Dan's point is that there's never a need to introduce references to a commenter's nationality or other presumed essential traits. No matter how self-evidently full of excrement their droppings here may be." @dang So how comments like this fit the site's guidelines? Btw, that's another account "using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle".
- dang 2y ago
  Please let's not go into flamewar like this. You're welcome here, but I've noticed that your comments are running a bit afoul of the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd please review those and recalibrate, we'd appreciate it. It's not easy preserving the commons for everybody. Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle. As you know, that's not allowed here and we ban accounts that do it. If you don't want us to ban this account, please stop doing that. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. I know that users holding minority or contrarian views are under pressure that the rest of us are not, but that doesn't make it ok.
  - protomolecule 2y ago
    I see my comment as invitation to resolve the apparent contradiction between the statement I replied to and mainstream understanding of western values or as invitation to clarify the values of the author (which might be interesting). "you've been using HN primarily for political and nationalistic battle" I disagree with this characterization of my comments as a whole, they are often contradictory but informative and rarely combative. Perhaps some are unnecessarily sarcastic. "If you don't want us to ban this account, please stop doing that" That's a fair warning, but I wonder why accounts like https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mopsi https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mopsi aren't banned despite long history of waging 'political and nationalistic battles' and flamewars.
    - dang 2y ago
      I'm afraid you're underestimating the provocation and aggression in your comments by quite a lot. That's normal in the sense that everyone does it, but it's important to understand how that dynamic works if you want to use HN appropriately (and therefore not get banned). Here's how it works: people underestimate their own provocations by at least 10x and overestimate the other side's provocations by another 10x, leading to a 100x skew (I'm speaking metaphorically of course) between their own perception and how things appear to an ordinary reader. It's basically a case of "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear" - a lot closer. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20objects%20mirror%20appear&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... This is how we end up getting flamewars in which all the participants are certain that their contributions are the reasonable ones, the other side started it, and the only thing the mods need to do is put a stop to the bad behavior of the others. As for the other two accounts you were asking about, the simple answer is I hadn't looked at their comment histories yet. All three of you are on the wrong side of the line in a similar way, so the moderation response is more or less the same in each case—once we've seen the data, that is. We can't moderate what we don't see, and we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, or even 10% of what gets posted here. It's common for people to see a post or an account which hasn't been publicly moderated and jump to the conclusion that the mods must be condoning it and therefore taking the other side. That's a non sequitur. By far the most likely explanation is that we didn't see it.
thriftwy 2y ago
> any military operation not sanctioned by the target region's people or government counts as an invasion It does not give one an excuse to skip the whole history of the region and start it where it fits them. I wonder if their values include skipping uncomfortable trivia or highlighting it when appropriate. With regards to values, the legitimacy of a 3 years old government is in deep doubt. The values you've mentioned repeatedly lead to political backing of seriously unpopular regimes just because they fit the narrative that was never true in the first place.
- dvdkon 2y ago
  If you only care about the current citizens'/government's opinion, you actually can ignore history leading up to that point. Geopolitics is complicated, however, and I think most people would bring more nuance to any moral judgment. What if a large portion of the previous population was killed/driven out, for instance? What if the citizens are subjected to "brainwashing"? I do have to disagree on the notion that a government should have a historical or traditional basis to be legitimate. In my eyes it needs foremost the support of its "subjects". In reality, different factors make a stable government, but legitimacy is ultimately a value judgment.
  - thriftwy 2y ago
    I agree with you, but I was talking about a specific article which does an explicit history dive: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/19/georgia-looks-to-future-historic-euro-2024-football-appearance https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/19/georgi... Also, this convention of not digging into a country's history can only ever work before it brings its history as a topic of conversation. In case of small, post-colonial countries that often happens on the first contact.

protomolecule 2y ago

"re-annexed" Wrong word. "In Nystad, King Frederick I of Sweden formally recognized the transfer of Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and Southeast Finland (Kexholms län and part of Karelian Isthmus) to Russia in exchange for two million silver thaler, while Russia returned the bulk of Finland to Swedish rule." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nystad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Nystad

mopsi 2y ago
The treaty of Nystad from 1721 is obsolete and has been superseded by other treaties. Estonia[1], Latvia[2] and Lithuania[3] fought successful wars of independence against Russia in 1918-1919 and made peace treaties in which Russians recognized sovereignity and withdrew territorial claims. (These treaties were later violated when Russians entered a secret pact with Hitler and they jointly invaded everyone in Europe between Germany and Russia.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tartu_(Estonia%E2%80%93Russia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tartu_(Estonia%E2%80... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian%E2%80%93Soviet_Peace_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latvian%E2%80%93Soviet_Peace_T... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Peace_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Peac...
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  > Hitler and they jointly invaded everyone in Europe between Germany and Russia Wow, I didn't knew Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are located between Germany and Russia. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Map_used_to_illustrate_Stahlecker%27s_report_to_Heydrich_on_January_31%2C_1942.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Map_used...
  - mopsi 2y ago
    Here's a helpful map visualizing how Russia and Germany divided Eastern Europe in the secret protocol[1] to the Hitler-Stalin pact: https://i.imgur.com/DvCrPWB.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/DvCrPWB.jpeg As to the "Judenfrei" status, that's a great deal due to the executions and mass deportations[2] that Russians unleashed after invading in 1940. First they banned all Jewish organizations, even fraternities and tennis clubs. Then they started targeting the professional class (politicians, doctors, lawyers, etc) to wipe out people capable of running the country and challenge the Russian rule. Their crime was officially designated as "being socially undesirable". Jews were overrepresented among the victims by a factor of 10. By the time Germans arrived in 1941, only 900 Jews were left in Estonia, as depicted on your map. Some had been deported, others ran away wherever they could. The last 900 remained because they believed that Germans couldn't be worse than the Russian terror of 1940-1941. When Russians invaded again in 1944 and began their 50-year occupation of the country (which included another wave of terror and mass deportations[3]), they replaced German antisemitic policies with their own and continued suppressing Jewish culture until the very end of the USSR. The Jewish school in Tallinn, for example, opened in 1924, was closed by Germans in 1941, and only in 1990, as the USSR entered the final death spiral, got its confiscated real estate back and resumed teaching. So if you intended to be clever and play the Jewish card, you chose a very wrong place to do it. Germans had the holocaust in store for them, and for Russians they were exploiters of the working class, destined for Siberian labor camps. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_deportation [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Priboi

mopsi 2y ago

> I can forgive people for forgetting to mention that Baltic states were part of Russia for centuries before they were re-annexed by the USSR in 1945. Indeed I can see how people had 20 years of independence and weren't fans of being included into a socialist utopia. There's fair bit more history than the 20 years of independence squished by Russians in 1940. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were always very distinct from Russia in religion, language, culture, education and other key areas. A good example of this are literacy rates in European part of Russian empire recorded during 1897 census.[1] Even two centuries later, the effect of protestantism and the trace of school system established by Sweden is clearly visible. Moreover, Estonia and Latvia weren't even ruled by Russians, but by Baltic German nobility, and the main language used in administrative affairs was German. Likewise, to portray Georgia as a mere "province of Russian Empire" is ridiculous given that they are so distinct that you cannot even read what they write, because they use a different alphabet. Finland or Georgia are no more "a part of Russia" than than Egypt and India are characterized by labeling them as "former British provinces" (with a subtext that they belong to Britain). [1] https://i.imgur.com/uCFzZmq.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/uCFzZmq.jpeg

thriftwy 2y ago
Before early XX century most of the globe was comprised of countries who looked like that. > the main language used in administrative affairs was German > to portray Georgia as a mere "province of Russian Empire" is ridiculous given that they are so distinct that you cannot even read what they write Please don't tell me that many Englishmen could read Devangari script or that many Frenchmen could read (pre-Latin) Vietnamese. You may not like it today, but these territorial claims were seen as completely valid. The subtexts that you are pinning on me are your own invention, I just say about unfaithful representation of history in the press.
- mopsi 2y ago
  > The subtexts that you are pinning on me are your own invention, I just say about unfaithful representation of history in the press. What is the purpose of having to mention that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were in Russian Empire in the context of their invasion and occupation in the 1940s if not an attempt to give legitimacy to the invasions? It's far more important to stress that the people on the Baltic coast are not Russians, have nothing in common with them, nor have never wanted to be close with them. The same applies to the many other indigenous Finno-Ugric peoples[1] on the other side of the border inside the present-day Russia who have been driven away from their land like Native Americans and decimated with hostile policies that have resulted in their rapid decline. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeoDW20WQAESJuZ?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeoDW20WQAESJuZ?format=jpg&name=...