Russia today would have us believe that there are millions of Russians who simply naturally reside in The Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, and other parts of Eastern Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification But this is not the case. The TRUTH is, millions of Russians live in these areas because the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union has a strong and forceful policy of RUSSIFICATION. They colonized the far reaches of their empires with Russians. They deported native speakers to Siberia and other places. This took place under the Czars, but even more under the so-called "internationalist" Soviets. The Soviets believed in unity.....under Russian language & culture. Even non-Russian Stalin engaged in the massive practise of Russification of non-Russian lands. I would like to raise a toast to the health of our Soviet people and, before all, the Russian people. I drink, before all, to the health of the Russian people, because in this war they earned general recognition as the leading force of the Soviet Union among all the nationalities of our country. Naming the Russian nation the primus inter pares was a total turnabout from Stalin's declaration 20 years earlier (heralding the korenizatsiya policy) that "the first immediate task of our Party is vigorously to combat the survivals of Great-Russian chauvinism." Although the official literature on nationalities and languages in subsequent years continued to speak of there being 130 equal languages in the USSR,[33] in practice a hierarchy was endorsed in which some nationalities and languages were given special roles or viewed as having different long-term futures. THIS is why 20% of Latvia is Russian-speaking. THIS is why soo much of eastern Ukraine is Russian-speaking. Its all the result of colonialism. Russian colonialism.
Russian language and Russian culture are amongst the most beautiful ones in the world. So why would you oppose a bit of russification? I personally would love it. I wouldn't mind. And no, Putin is not Hitler.
I dunno. That's strange because Poland does not have its own culture, so it would be handy for them if German highly developed culture was imposed on them. BTW, remember that so called "Polish culture" is a patchwork in fact - it consists of stolen or borrowed fragments of the cultures of other countries. The same is true for their language.
It is inevitable that a country as populous and as big would have impacts on most countries which are geographically somewhat close. It is also likely that the impact is world wide. We are talking about an industrialized country after all with a population of over 140 million people. How could it be that we (who live somewhat close) wouldn't feel the effects. But the effects we see from the not even half as populous UK are huge as well. The difference may be that you personally approve of the UK more than of Russia, when in fact the technique isn't too different. Maybe the British Empire just didn't use it lately, and probably it had a less of an impact on the Czech Republic. If you lived in another area of the world, the view may be different. I would have to disagree with your statement. There might not be "one" Polish culture, but I can see a vast diversity in a Polish cultures in the areas today's Poland occupies. And I disagree with it being positive to be forced to change their culture for what ever reason. Every culture in Europe to day is a patchwork of different previous European cultures in various forms. This doesn't make them less important though and it doesn't mean that they can and should be overrun by others. Truly unique cultures can rarely be found unless they are very isolated geographically, which in Europe really doesn't happen too often.
This is true. I also met a woman from Czech who said that they used to learn Russian in school. That attests to the fact that even western slavs were influenced by their culture. Serbia is also an example. WW1 was fueled by Serbia and Austria-Hungary conflict (Serbia was Russia's ally at the time). Russian politicians don't even atone for their past imperialism.. Russia should ante up reconciliation fees for every country that it abused in the same way as Germany does to the jews.
