Russia decries demolition of war memorial

[bemildred]

Source: UPI

TBILISI, Georgia, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Russia's Foreign Ministry denounced Georgia for exploding a World War II memorial in Georgia -- in which two people died -- calling it a provocative act.

A mother and daughter died during Saturday's demolition of the Glory Memorial in Kutaisi, when chunks of the memorial were sent flying when explosives were detonated, the Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported Monday.

"A memorial to World War soldiers was barbarously demolished in Kutaisi," the Russian Foreign Ministry said on its Web site. "The Georgian authorities committed an act of public vandalism, humiliating the feelings of any civilized person."

Georgian officials said the memorial was removed to allow for the construction of a new parliamentary building, RIA Novosti said. The Georgian government has said relocating the Georgian parliament from Tbilisi to Kutaisi would boost development of western Georgia.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2009/12/21/Russia-decries-demolition-of-war-memorial/UPI-21021261401346/

[burning rain]

1. In Georgia, as in some other countries formerly part of the USSR,....

World War II memorials are largely perceived as monuments to Russian domination, and are therefore defaced, or demolished altogether. Already in 1993 when I travelled to Lithuania, I saw eternal flames at WW II memorials extinguished and the statuary splashed with red paint, alluding to Lithuanians' view of Russians as bloodthirsty oppressors.

[bemildred]

2. I was mainly taken by the fact that two passersby were killed by the explosion.

I am well aware that imperial powers are often seen as oppressors by the people they oppress. If the government of Georgia were less incompetent, it might have better luck in defending itself from Russia.

[burning rain]

3. In Georgia...

it's partly the stupid neo-con aggressiveness of Saakashvili, partly geography. Georgia's too small and geographically isolated from Western countries to be safe angering the bear. By contrast, Yeltsin pounded his fist and yelled about the Baltic states' nationalistic policies, but didn't dare make good on his threats to intervene militarily.

[bemildred]

4. Well, it's not that I don't sympathize with the people of Georgia.

Like most places, I would wager they would like to be allowed to get on with their lives in peace.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. Well, then they chose the WORST possible target for their pent up aggression.

WWII memorials? Cute.

"We think the Nazis were LESS evil than the Soviets, so there! THHHBTTHH!"

Morons.

[burning rain]

31. Not at all morons.

They wanted the right to self-determination--in their case neither to be ruled by Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. The Nazis didn't leave war memorials, but if they had, they'd have been razed as well.

[Peace Patriot]

5. I visited the Russian war memorial in Leningrad in the '70s. The Russians take their

honor toward the dead heroes of WW II very seriously. Their losses were immense. I was very impressed by the vast sweep of that memorial and its somber tone--and the numerous Russians visiting it, more than twenty-five years after the war was over.

And we owe them, we really do. It is arguable that we would have lost to Hitler if the Russians hadn't fought so hard and taken so many deaths. It is probable, too, that Hitler's decision to open a Russian front was the fatal decision that lost the war.

I think it is one of the greatest tragedies of our history that we could not reconcile ourselves to a friendly, non-military competition of the two economic systems, after WW II.

After the Stalinist dictatorship was overcome, and Nikita Kruschev became premier, that's what Russia wanted. They wanted to demobilize, as we should have done. They also wanted to ban nuclear weapons. Krushchev negotiated the first limit on nuclear weapons--the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty--with JFK, against the vociferous objections of the both military establishments. Krushchev and Kennedy's goal was to END the "Cold War" including the proxy wars like Vietnam.

Recommended reading: "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died And Why It Matters," by James Douglass.

It makes you weep.

[burning rain]

7. Russians sure do.

It's a bitter divide between Russia and many ex-Soviet countries. What Russians call liberation, they call conquest and domination.

[Peace Patriot]

9. And what about the US and its topplings of democratic governments, invasions, wars, occupations,

installations of dictators, direct or proxy murders and tortures, and other outrages against Costa Rica ('48), Guatemala ('54), Iran ('54), Haiti ('57), El Salvador ('60), Cuba ('61), Vietnam ('54, '60s-'70s), Cambodia & Laos ('60s-'70s) Guatemala ('60), Ecuador ('61), Congo ('61), Brazil ('62), Dominican Republic ('63), Guatemala again ('63), Brazil ('64), Dominican Republic again ('65), Guatemala again ('66), Chile ('70), El Salvador again ('72), Chile again ('73), Uruguay ('73), Operation Condor ('75: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia & Brazil), Cuba again ('76), El Salvador again ('80), Honduras ('80), Nicaragua ('81), Guatemala again ('82, '83), Granada ('83), Nicaragua again ('84), El Salvador again ('84), Panama ('89), Cuba again ('96), Haiti ('00), Venezuela ('02), Colombia ('90s-present), Afghanistan ('01-present), Iraq ('03-present), Guantanamo Bay & other torture dungeons around the world ('01-to ?), Ecuador ('08), Bolivia ('08), Honduras ('09-on-going)...

This doesn't begin to exhaust the list of US interventions, "dirty wars," support for fascists, assassinations, tortures, psyops/disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilizing governments, funding of rightwing groups, looting and ruination of "third world" economies through instruments like the World Bank/IMF and "free trade for the rich," and the horrors of the US "war on drugs." Much of it has been aimed at effective colonization of the western hemisphere, and it has left deep wounds and profound resentment.

What North Americans call "liberation," they call conquest and domination. And it is egregiously wrong no matter who does it, under whatever hypocritical banner. But we should never forget that we have slaughtered far more people, and destroyed far more democratic governments, under the utterly hypocritical banner of "freedom and democracy," than Russia ever did under its own dubious banners.

-----

Some references:

http://www.zompist.com/latam.html

http://www.questia.com/library/book/turning-the-tide-us-intervention-in-central-america-and-the-struggle-for-peace-by-noam-chomsky.jsp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

[proteus_lives]

12. Do you realize there is a similar Soviet list, right?

It takes two to tango.

[Peace Patriot]

20. Yes, of course. The Russians, although with quite a bit less foreign carnage than the US,

were imperialistic and repressive--and Stalin was a mad monster against his own people especially. I don't have any sympathy with the Russian treatment of its "satellite" countries, although I think I do understand the reasons why they did what they did. Some of it was Stalin's descent into paranoid madness, and Russia's complete lack of any democratic tradition to fall back on. But also, after WW II, the US was on top of the world, with immense power--and the Russians were deeply fearful of US capitalist hostility to communism--rightfully so. We almost destroyed planet earth with a nuclear holocaust because of it.

Secondly, the Russians had made immense sacrifices during WW II. They felt "entitled" to a sphere of influence. But all this is just understanding, not sympathizing. I have a harder time understanding my own country, which had NO NEED to destroy democracy almost everywhere it could, except for Europe and Japan. Talk about paranoid delusions! The people in small countries like the just liberated Vietnam, the just liberated Belgian Congo and many Latin American countries felt that their time had finally come. Fascism and nazism had been defeated and they thought colonialism was over as well. They longed for democracy and social justice. And the US--in the name of paranoid anti-communism--utterly smashed this healthy democracy movement, all over the world. It is heartbreaking to read about. Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese war hero, wrote to Eisenhower invoking our own "Declaration of Independence" and asking for support of UN sponsored elections in Vietnam. He would have been a US ally! He thought we would understand their revolution because of our own! And our government just ignored the fact that the Vietnamese had been fighting off invasion for thousands of years. They were ruggedly independent, and would NOT have been a tool of either China or the Soviet Union. They might even have gone for "neutral" status in the "Cold War" (as JFK was trying to arrange)--like Laos and India.

The US had the power and moral authority to do right by these aspiring peoples, and it did not. We reconstructed Europe, we reconstructed Japan--both done honorably and well. And we shat on everybody else--in some cases, driving them into alliance with Soviet Russia, as with Cuba, and in others installing rightwing dictatorships or waging war on them. It is a tragedy because of what could have been. We were the "beacon of democracy." What are we now?

[proteus_lives]

29. Few things.

"We almost destroyed planet earth with a nuclear holocaust because of it."

What are you talking about? Hiroshima and Nagasaki or The Cuban Missile Crisis?

I don't really have a problem with what you're saying. I agree that the US missed a huge chance in Vietnam and that our successes are often matched by our failures. But the same can be said for the communists. Their mission statement was to unite the brotherhood of workers but that often just meant Russian or Chinese domination.

I don't like people phrasing this as a Capitalist or US problem. It's a human problem. The British called it the "Great Game" and all nations play it. On what level depends on how much money, how many people and what resources they can devote to it. If the Soviets had a shorter list then us, then it's because of the oppression they visited on their own people and client-states.

All nations and peoples need to rise above this old patterns. I think the future is one of mixed capitalism and socialism. What that will look like I can't say but orthodox thinking from either side will kill us.

[Peace Patriot]

37. I was referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis. All the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, everybody

in the government with a voice to weigh in on it, demanded that JFK nuke Russia and Cuba and annihilate them. He stood virtually alone against them. (Only his brother Bobby was on his side.) He thought they were insane. He said no--and he then created a backchannel to Krushchev (trying to get around the CIA) and worked out the deal that the Soviets would withdraw the nuclear missiles from Cuba and the U.S. would withdraw its nuclear missiles from Turkey (which directly threatened Russia). They continued this contact, and worked out the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty--the first limit on nuclear weapons--also to the outrage of the Joint Chiefs et al (and the Russian military as well). These two men--Kennedy and Krushchev--prevented a nuclear armageddon that would have destroyed the earth. They knew it would be horrible, but they did not know how horrible at that time. (Only later, with the publication of Carl Sagan's book, "The Cold and the Dark," did people begin to realize that even a limited exchange of nuclear weapons would destroy all life on earth within months.)

After they ended the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy and Krushchev wanted to END the "Cold War"--both the threat of nuclear annihilation and the "conventional" wars that had been breaking out in many places, with the Russians on the side of leftist revolutions and the U.S. stark-raving mad on the issue of even mildly socialist governments emerging in the "third world." Russia was on the right side (for their own reasons, of course), and we were on the wrong side. Kennedy was re-thinking this insane policy. He told Castro (with whom he had also opened a backchannel) that he understood and sympathized with the Cuban peoples' overthrow of the fascist and brutal Batista regime! Kennedy also signed orders starting a withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam--and he was dead within a month.

I think probably only people who lived through it can understand just how insane US anti-communism was. I recommend James Douglass' great book, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters," for those too young to remember. He brilliantly lays out the struggle between the "military-industrial complex" and its mad anti-communism, and this president, JFK, who was trying to see out of that dark cloud to how these two powers, the US and the Soviet Union, could peacefully inhabit the same world.

I totally agree with your statement: "All nations and peoples need to rise above (these) old patterns." It is quite tragic reading about JFK's struggle to do just that. He came to the presidency a "Cold Warrior." I remember his campaign speeches and the debates with Nixon. He was more "Cold Warrior"-like than Nixon was! But he went through a dramatic transformation after the Bay of Pigs (the incident that scared Cuba into inviting Russia to place missiles in Cuba) and especially during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. He is the only president who has ever come that close to wiping another country off the planet. He asked the Joint Chiefs what the US casualties would be. They told him "only 300,000." He refused to do it. That was perhaps the most important moment in the history of the human race. He had the ability to change--that creative flexibility of mind to abandon old patterns, and think a new thought: world peace.

His death was a tremendous loss, and we have not recovered from it yet. We are still on the wrong path--the war path--the path that he tried to direct us off of. But for JFK, we wouldn't be here at all. We need to learn from that--as Douglass says, "why he died and why it matters." We need to take that leap again--many wars later--and believe that world peace and social justice are possible. It's a very difficult thing to do, embedded as we are in Endless War. But, so was the US at that time. And if JFK could think it through, so can we all.

[KrR]

40. Vietnam is actually worse than you think...

We helped return it to French rule after WW2 not "in the name of paranoid anti-communism", but in support of brutal colonialism.

[burning rain]

13. Where on earth do you get the idea that I'm a defender of US thuggery?

I'm not. But I'm also not not willing to fritter away my days attaching every conceivable caveat to my posts regarding the actions of other countries, that the US is just as bad or worse. That just takes up too much time, and often, as here, doesn't seem pertinent. My replies on this thread stand or fall on their own. I'd welcome any argument regarding my claims on this thread, but you haven't presented any.

[go west young man]

16. I'm pretty sure Peace patriot isn't attacking you.

Just matter of factly pointing out the US's similar behavoir to Russia.

[Peace Patriot]

18. Sorry, BurningRain, I did not mean to attack you. Your observation was a good one,

that people in former satellites of the Soviet empire resent the Russians. I've been reading a lot about Latin America lately, and it just struck me how similar the feelings of Latin Americans are for having been forced into being "satellites" of the US. I think this may be at the heart of the problem with Iran, too. We destroyed their young democracy back in 1954, because their new war hero, mildly socialist president tried to nationalize the oil. The US, England and Israel then imposed the horrible 'Shah of Iran' on the Iranian people for 25 years of torture and repression. Iranians--probably the potentially most progressive people in the Middle East--remember this, although damn few of our people do, and we are certainly never, ever reminded of it by our corpo-fascist press or anyone in 'authority.' This horrible imposition on Iran by the western powers drove the Iranians into the arms of the mullahs who have been turned into as a sort of monarchy to provide Iran with stability and unity.

The "blowback" from anti-democratic actions such as the CIA destruction of Iran's democracy just keeps on coming back and back and back. When are we going to learn? Or, rather, when are we, as a people, going to acquire the democratic power within our own country to prevent such things?

[KrR]

43. The problem is that the memoral is a WW2 memorial...

not a Russian Civil War memorial... which no one would care about and i assume is long gone.

[SOCALS]

8. Russians believe that it was them

who won the World War 2 and Americans just jumped on the bandwagon. That's what they teach in schools there. There probably is en element of truth to it since they did lose 20 million people while fighing Germany

[proteus_lives]

11. We do owe the Russians a lot and they owe us a lot.

But "we" losing to the Germans? Britain certainly would have. And if Germany had total control of the Isles and Western Europe, I don't see how we would been able to invade without massive casualties.

But it would taken the Germans another decade to build-up enough naval resources to directly threaten the US. Even longer if they embarked on a path of conquest against Africa, the Middle East or the British and European Dominions.

I would guess that if Germany had defeated Russia and Britain, we would still defeated Japan and probably ended up in a Cold War situation with Nazi Germany.

[renegade000]

15. ever read Fatherland by Robert Harris?

The United States/Nazi Germany Cold War after Britain and Russia fall is exactly the scenario that happens in that book.
One of the things that tickled me in the novel was that the remnants of the Soviet Union were waging a guerrilla/terror war against Nazi Germany, and as a result, the German government instituted a system of color coded terror warnings (the book written in 1992, well before our system :P).

[proteus_lives]

17. That is a good book.

I love alternate history.

It was spot-on too. I can see German control up to the Urals but all that Siberian wasteland? Nah, they would be fighting a low-level guerrilla war for generations.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

35. Someone pinch me, I agree with you.

I think that makes a lot of sense.

Unlike Mr. "The Nazis weren't as bad" downthread.

[MellowDem]

22. We don't "owe" them shit...

Communism killed more innocents than Fascism and nearly led to nuclear armegeddon. We wouldn't have lost without Russia, though they surely made it easier to win. If not for Russia, Germany would have retained some portions of Europe, but as it was, Russia just ended up owning some portions of Europe. Would it have been worse to have a Nazi controlled Europe rather than a Soviet one? Hard to say, really. Suffice it to say, the Soviets were no better than the Nazis and to suggest we owe anything is ludicrous.

[Selatius]

26. The war in Europe killed anywhere between 45,000,000 to 50,000,000 people.

That was a war that Hitler started. I'm not saying Stalin was a better alternative, but obviously, without the Red Army wearing down the Wehrmacht, the war in Europe would have taken a much different path.

[MellowDem]

28. Very true...

though Stalin hatched a deal with Hitler to split Poland between them, and to be fair, Russia already had gone to war with Finland, and was generally expanding where it could.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

34. Will you say that to the face of a Holocaust survivor?

"Would it have been worse to have a Nazi controlled Europe rather than a Soviet one? Hard to say, really."

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Some people just can't accept the reality that the most evil regime in history was a RIGHT-WING one.

[MellowDem]

36. You want to make it about politics...

You are trying to make fascism and communism into partisan politics, which is a rather bizarre thing to do. There is nothing inherent about fascism or communism I suppose that make them inherently evil. Communism isn't all about gulags and you don't have to have concentration camps to have fascism.

I suppose you should tell a gulag survivor to their face how they didn't have it as bad, really... and you have the nerve to act all offended. You do see what you are saying? You are tryig to compare and rank the deaths of millions of people, which in and of itself is a rather impossible and offensive excercise. From a purely numbers stand-point, the communists slaughtered more. But if the main point of your comparison is to try and meet your black and white worldview of "left vs right wing" then you won't have much logic to stand on. Germany and Russia had a lot more in common than different. The far left and the far right often are pretty much one and the same. Both Germany and Russia were trying to create "utopias", were totalitarian, and were willing to kill as many people as it took to do so. I always find the way WW2 is looked at to be quite interesting. The holocaust is the focal point in the US, but there was a lot of suffering in Russia, not to mention Japan, which is almost totally ignored in terms of atrocities and in many ways were at least as bad as Germany. I guess it reflects the Euro-centric culture and Jewish influence in the US compared to other groups.

[KrR]

41. D-Day would have worked

with 5 million German Army Regulars on the beach instead of a few ragtag divisions? Don't let your hatred change any facts please...

[KrR]

42. You can say Hitler is no worse than Stalin and

you would be wrong, but at least there is an argument.

"the Soviets were no better than the Nazis" is absurd.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

45. Bin-fucking-go. -nt

[izquierdista]

24. It started with Truman

When FDR dropped Wallace for Truman, he pretty much guaranteed the start of the Cold War. Wallace had toured the USSR during the war and could have steered a far better course. Truman was a neophyte in foreign affairs, having come to prominence keeping the war profiteers honest. He listened to a bunch of reactionary cronies who were like Patton, itching for a fight with the Russians. They loved to engage in brinksmanship and pushed to "contain" Communism and make the world safe for American corporations. Stalin managed to keep Kim Il Sung on a leash for 5 years, until he decided that the Americans were set on picking a fight. Then he told Kim he could do what he wanted, and America found itself back in another war, a war that cost the Americans far, far more than it cost the Soviet Union.

[AngryAmish]

6. The war memorial from Slapshot?

[happyslug]

21. That is the Cambria County (Johnstown Pa) War Memorial

What does that have to do with a Georgia War Memoirial? Oh, you only remember history and memorials if they are on film.

[AngryAmish]

25. If you ever saw the movie Slapshot you would get it

It was shot there.

[happyslug]

33. I live in Johnstown, that is why it throw me....

I NEVER saw the movie, but the War Memorial is while known in the City with Escarpment to Westmont seen behind it.

[proteus_lives]

10. What a scummy thing to do.

Two dead, they ever hear of safety regs?

[BreweryYardRat]

39. Preach it. n/t

[bigworld]

14. This is the memorial

http://visualrian.com/images/item/34633
http://visualrian.com/images/item/535462


For such a small country, Georgia sure likes to provoke the Russians. Especially since they'd now be speaking German if it wasn't for Moscow's actions in WW2.

[MellowDem]

23. I'm not sure that Nazi Germany would have lasted this long...

But as it is, I'm sure Georgians "grateful" towards Russia in the same way that Cuba felt "grateful" towards us for driving out the Spanish.

[AlphaCentauri]

30. why not slavery did last more than a hundred years n/t

[tabasco]

27. There are huge Soviet war memorials in (formerly) East Berlin.

I had the opportunity to visit them before the Wall came down, as active duty military.

I thought they were very appropriate and I hope the Germans never remove them.




The Georgians probably were just being dicks.

[burning rain]

32. You don't have to be a dick....

to resent having been conquered and dominated by a foreign power.

[Dutch]

44. But you probably DO have to be a dick

To blow up a memorial to the defeat of the most evil regime in human history, and kill two innocent people in the process- all in order to build a plush new office for yourself.

[burning rain]

46. It was a memorial to the Soviet army, & by extension to the Soviet Union...

which, however much it oppressed Russians, oppressed other peoples within the USSR even more, subjecting them to Russian domination and Russification. You can not expect people to tolerate memorials to erstwhile colonial oppressors, even on the basis that they ousted an even-worse crew.

The memorial was not just to the defeat of Nazi Germany, however much you may want to spin it that way.

[boppers]

38. It was in the way of a new parliament building...

In addition to being a memorial to a country that recently INVADED them.