Russian Hostage Crisis

Bandits i heard russians calling chechens bandits... nearly same situation was in lithuania long ago(1945-1953~) peaople was tortured...freedom fighters died in tens of thousands. And you know what? they said Bandits we are dealing with bandits.

One question for you all: what is the difference between direct shell hit to chachen school and this dram? i feel sorry for kids but this is nothing but war.... Russian wanted checenya...now they have to deal with results

"I read something... that Putin was actually considering pulling Federal forces out of Chechnya."

I will never believe this text above me.

The Germans built their navy by themselves, no need to blame the British for that...

The Beslan Tragedy...the looser terrorists and the Russian Army...i strongly condemn these both.

i wish patience for those mothers in the rest of their lifes.

This hostage criss took place when i was in Moscow...

They closed red square during the weekend

Wahabbism came to Chechenya only after Russians invaded Chechenya. The majority of Chechens are liberal Sufis. So don't start with that terroristophobia nonsense. Only the extremeists like the ones at Beslan are Wahabis.

Criminal and bandit... There are plenty in Russia now! Better solve their problems first then move on to others!  

Russians who say they support Putin's war on terror are either evil or ignorant of reality. The Russian police are so poorly paid that during Moscow Theatre crisis a terrorsit just bribed his way into the theatre right through the ring of police and military! Do they even realize that their own security forces are terrorist-collaborators? By the way they were so stupidly organzied that 2 civillians just walked right into the theatre and were gunned down by the rebels!

The person who said that Moscow hostages were denied food and water is a know nothing. I just read a book on it (57 Hours, Nedkov) by a Bulgarian hostage, who said that women terrorists did their best to keep the people supplied with water and passed around food (which they took from the snackbars that were located in the halls of the theatre.).

The Rus Army did not even know what gas they were using. It was something given to them by Putin and his cronies. The Ambulances arrived 30 minutes late and spent a hour trying to find an antidote for the victims stunned by the gas. Do you call this organization? As a result aroudn 120 people died.

Remember the terroists could have blown themselves up when the Alpha Team (Rus Commandos) stormed the theatre... They did not. A woman terroists was not stunned by gas and started shooting at the Russians, but she did not blow herself up, which would have resulted in a chain reaction and cause the theatre to come down on everyone.

In my book, the Russian military even looted the victims. They looted the unconcious, and also looted during body-checks for "terrorist weapons". A lithuanian was checked for weapons, his passport, credit card and cash were all taken away never to be given back again.

In Beslan again, the ambulances arrived 30 minutes after the clash took place.... what kind of organization is that? And armed civillians stormed the building with the military.... what age are we living in?

@Kalevipoeg,

I find it hard to understand a lot of what you wrote, and feel that at least some is rather irrelevant. I will try my best, however.

"Well, the first sentence is just ignorance, or is it arrogance, in its purest form. Yea, the Estonians were massive commies, because the were in the party. That is logical, because you could have joined some kind of a democratic party. What does it matter if the Soviet Union wasn't a democratic country? It is a ridiculous statement, it somehow seems to try to justify dictatorous warcrimes are justified and right.Yet another confused smiley on the way...... are you saying that Russia has no obligation to pay reparations to a newly born country, they dictated just because they were richer from day-one since their independence. Should we have  forgotten 50 years of occupation from the day we gained our independence and also forget the losses we gained in manpower and in financial cases. And don't forget that the Western Allies gave us, and the entire Eastern-Europe, to the Stalinist regime freely and they had the right to ask billions from the nazis. And Styrbiorn: The Britts had an agreement with Hitler for the navy. It was to be one third compared to the Brittish one?"

Firstly, you understand that the main argument that I was making, was that in the USSR, the population was about 50% Russian, 20% Ukrainian, 4% Belarussian, etc, etc, and that blaming solely Russia for the USSR's invasion of and crimes under Stalin in Estonia is very unfair. And yes, the fact that the USSR was not democratic IS important, because it would destroy the grounds for your Russophobia (ie it was the Soviet gov't under Stalin, not the Russian people, that occupied Estonia). OK, I don't really mind Russia apologizing to Estonia, if only because an apology doesn't cost anything, but the whole idea of reparations should be cast straight away. Firstly, Estonia's treatment of Russians is far from laudable (I will come back to address those parts of your post later), secondly Estonians are now richer anyway, thirdly precisely who's going to force Russia to pay up? What do you mean by 'they [the Western Allies] had the right to ask billions from the Nazis'? It was the Red Army who liberated E Europe from the Nazis (yes, and then imposed communist dictatorships, but there can be little argument that the severity of Nazi rule in wartime Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, etc (I don't know about Baltic states) was not harsher than the communist dictatorships). Besides, the reason Stalin set up the E European sattelites in the first place, was because of strategical reasons (as a buffer versus the West - Poland had refused to cooperate with USSR in late 1930's vs Germany, even diplomatically - Germany made a devastating attack - this could not be allowed to repeat itself), not merely personal megalomaniacal reasons.

"Here comes the good part: "in addition opresses the 30% Russian population in it!"  ....... notice how i start out from amazement and end up giggling like a little school-girl in the end. Russians have jobs just like Estonians. They don't form strikes on the streets on the matter of having no jobs. And the matter of the second language being Russian: The Russians in Estonia speak Russian all the time anyway, because only the teenage Russians no Estonian language. Their parents are relatively still Russian in their souls i guess. If you live in Estonia as a citizen, know the language, or atleast the national anthem and an alphabet other than the cirillitsa......."

OK, this is even more muddled than usual. DID YOU READ WHAT I WROTE? I'll repeat it here.

"When Estonia was granted independence, nationalists made Russophobic laws, which include some of the following - very few Russians were allowed to have citizenship, making them in effect citizens of no country thanks to the the almost equally disgusting nevermind attitude of Russia's own gov't; Russian was not even allowed to be the second language; oppressive language laws excluded Russians from most/all of the professions; Russian-language schools were supported by taxes levied on the Russian community)...Yet, Russians have to pay taxes to support Estonian-language schools."

As for Russians not striking because they don't have jobs..well, as you yourself said, they do have jobs. Mining, industrial, cleaning away rubbish, etc - basically, low-paid unskilled jobs, which they have to do because of oppressive language laws that bar the way to proessional jobs, especially for the older generation, and make Russians into second-class citizens. (Even for the younger generation, what's the real advantage in learning Estonian - it will hardly be useful anywhere outside Estonia, better to concentrate upon English and even Russian).

"Should not Russia take his people back home after they have brought them here in the first place to take OUR JOBS. Russia now has a reason to wine about the repressing Estonian Russians while we acctualy take care of the Russian minority better than Putin takes care of the 150 million Russians in Russia and that is a fact. It is not our fault that we are richer than the Russians, although they have the entire table of Mendeleyev in their back yard(Siberia). Many Russians would immigrate to Estonia if they had the chance. Is it our fault the Russians are here......NO WAY, and they are taken care of extremely well if you regard our history with them and hatred against them. The administrative system might be in Estonian but if it would also be in Russian aswell, they would never learn Estonian and as arrogant as they are, they would become even more so. It shouldn't be a problem for the minority Russian in Estonia because he is Estonian and should know his home language."

Firstly, in the USSR borders were free. Many of the Russians who migrated then, did so because of new industrial plants that were opening up in the Baltic countries, and which didn't have enough indigenous manpower to be operated. And then, you say that Russians are better off in Estonia than in Russia?  Maybe, from an economic perspective, yes, but most definitely not from a moral or human one. As I said earlier, Estonian hatred of the Russian people is IMO unjustified...and the penetration of such hatred into the democratic government of what I consider a consider a civilized, responsible country is totally unacceptable. Again, moving on, why should Russians learn Estonian, when English and Russian would still be much more useful to them if they didn't live in a country like Estonia? You say that Russians are 'arrogant' - so, evidently, the western import of political correctness hasn't arrived in Estonia yet. In this particular case, it is a pity. As for Russians in Estonia, very few consider themselves Estonia, and your attempts at 'Estonization' of a 30% ethnic group is starkling when compared to the 'Russification' of a few tribes who'd in the long run be much better off coming into the modern world.

"Well this a good one. It is of course good to get an education in Tatar and in Bashkiri, but those are just 2 of the hundreds of minorities Russia is ruling over. In the "ethnic minorities" thread i mentioned the opression of Finno-Ugrians in the so called "autonomous regions" of certain ethnicities where the natives form 1%-20% of the entire population. Russian students in universities learn in Estonian because they know Estonian fluidly. Russia has repressed countless number of ethnicities for over half a millenia and many of them are gone and vanished from the face of the earth (87 different ethnicities i think). Don't you dare compare us with Russian policies on the minorities."

OK, I will soon go to that very thread and start putting forth counter-arguments. However, I will not do it today, since I am busy (on weekdays especially) and I have already spent more time than I should have writing this. (BTW, what's the good in learning in Tatar/Bashkiri? That more or less restricts your professional life to Tatarstan and Bashkir Republic.) Anyway, the point is that, although Bashkirs and Tatars together make up 7% of the population, democratic Estonia, with a Russian population of 30%, denies it! The argument that 'Russia has repressed countless number of ethnicities for over half a millenia' can be destroyed in two ways - firstly, in the 1500-1900 period, nobody particularly cared about destroying the culture of tribes of a primitive social and cultural structure...the Americans, the Westerners whom you so cherish, were heavily involved in that as well. (Besides, not all were destroyed - why do you think Russia still has city names like Ufa, Astrakhan, Kazan', etc and numerous ethnicities?). As for the post-Stalin Soviet period, many of these groups were actually subsidized! I think I've got a good argument, and frankly how dare you say what I should dare not compare! And stop threatening me with the angry red faces.

Finally your statement "It is not our fault that we are richer than the Russians, although they have the entire table of Mendeleyev in their back yard(Siberia)" is true - it's not Estonians' fault, or Russians' fault, but rather due to unfortunate climatic, geographic and political reasons. The harshness of the Russian climate makes most manufacturing industry (look at a climatic map of the world during January, and you will see that European Russia's average winter temperature corresponds to that of central Canada, where you only have small mineral towns) - the mainstay of the economies with which Russia is supposed to compete, aka the countries in Latin America, East Asia and South East Asia - simply unprofitable, since much more money has to be spent on building the factory, heating it, transporting (Russia is basically a landlocked country, and land transport is much more expensive than by water - and even the rivers run north-south, not west-east which corresponds to Russia's economic/population and resource centres respectively), paying workers (simply to survive in the cold winter conditions if nothing else) and even base minimum taxes (ie even the maintenance of infrastructure is far more expensive than in the West). Agriculture, it shouldn't surprise you, is grossly innefficient from the very start. A country can never get rich on 'Mendeleyev's backyard' as you put it - there are massive swings in world prices making the economy vulnerable, oil-production in Russia is already at its maximum peak (and will only last for about 20 more years, btw), even the extraction and transport of these minerals to markets is far more expensive (let me suffice with the example of oil - it is far from markets and so the transportation distance by pipe is huge; moreover, during the winter, enourmous monies have to be spent on heating the oil so that it would actually flow (otherwise it is too viscous) anywhere; and thus, whereas it costs just 4$ to produce 1 barrel of oil in Kuwait, the figure is 16$ in Siberia! I'll stop rambling, but no doubt you can well imagine the extent of the problem and Russia's resultant uncompetitiveness in the world. Let's turn to politics - since peretroika, Russia has been opening up to the world economy, and as a result capital has been outflowing at like 50$ bl per year, whereas the gross investments from 1991-98 were 7$ miserly bl!!!  Even the USSR, with all its inefficiencies, corruption, etc that are inherent in such a heavily socialist economy, was doing much better! Why don't they isolate Russia from the world economy and allow an 'internal capitalism' to develop? Ask the oligarchs and oil magnates, the real power in Russia. They'll start talking about the necessity to 'introduce foreign expertise', 'integrate into world economy', 'compete', blah blah blah, but no doubt they just want to profit at the expense of Russia, even denying the federal gov't their share of taxes, and spend it all on frivolities like English football teams and multi-million $ yachts.

"O and another thing about the Russian federation, rather amusing by the way: the so called "democratic" Russian Federation took his troops out of OUR LANDS in the August 30th in 1994. That is three years from the day we gained independence. "Well, Boris, are you going to get the Russian troops out of the Republic of Estonia?" said Bill Clinton to Yeltsin. Yeltsin had one thing to say: "Njet!!!" Russia would have kept the forces in to this day probably if there weren't the diplomacy of our certain politics. Yes Russia was so very democratic. Yeltsin even demanded that the Estonian government has the obligation of taking care of the leftovers of the Red Army and support them with households and give them Estonian citizenship because"poor old "democratic" Russia" didn't have any money or places to stuck them in Russia. The Russians feel imperialistic to every damn neighbour they have. An example in Estonia: The Russian and the Estonian national soccer teams had a friendly match a few years ago. The Russian fans brought a sign with them and hung it out during the game, it said: Your masters are back to stay, slaves!!!!! I don't see it as soccer bullying, atleast the nation didn't see it as so."

Firstly, you do realize that withdrawing forces is an extremely expensive process, and Russia in the 1990's certainly didn't have baskets of banknotes to be throwing about? Secondly, I never ever claimed Yeltsin was a democrat. The b...ard killed democracy in its grave in 1993 (a move which was, btw, universally supported in the West (and if not by Estonia, then I will eat my own boots)). As for the football example, unfortunately, sorry to dissapoint you, but Russia too has its idiots, like any other country.

"This statement, when said in Estonia would get you a series of insults including "commie" said in your face and some WWII vets probably beating you up and spitting on you afterwards. How dare you say something like that. A normal person, if his name isn't Ivan or Dimitri, wouldn't say a thing like this. There is nothing more insulting to say to an Estonian and there is no bigger hatred in an Estonians heart than there is against communists. Don't come telling me about the Ameriacns hating the reds. That is hardly comparable, they don't know the first thing about hating communism. Acctualy, the Russian Federation is still holding our land which we gained from the treaty of Tartu in 1920. Russians aren't willing giving up a mere stripe of land and that shows their imperialism and arrogance. No apology from the Russians for the 50 years of occupation is the top of that and what do the marks on the word 'occupation' mean Anatolius????????"

Firstly, for the record, my name is Anatoly (not too hard to guess from the username). Secondly, answer the damn question. "If the Russian majorities in eastern Estonia (eg, in the Narva region) demanded independence (or union with Russia, either way), would you grant it?" Thirdly, calm down and quit with the commie bashing and pretending Russia=commie and commie=Russian. Fourthly, unless I am mistaken, the Narva region has always been historically Russian, Narva has to my knowledge far more meaning to Russians than Estonians (the site of 1700 lost battle vs. Sweden). The fact that Tartu was signed in 1920 makes me suspicious if used as justification - the Reds at the time were fighting the Whites, and probably, they might not have wanted yet another threat from the west. And then, you even talk about Russians giving up land to Estonia, which I don't doubt is very much majority Russian (so why would Russia give it away? Why would the Turks hand over Istanbul to Greece?). Personally, I think Russia has lost too much ethnic Russian territory as it is in the in 1991. Just as an example, did you know, that northern Kazakhstan is virtually entirely Russian? I do not understand what you mean by 'what do the marks on the word 'occupation' mean...?'

"I don't know, but i wouldn't believe any statements the Russian Federation makes or made about treatys of peace!!! "

And why don't you try to be objective for a change? The argument I presented to you is mine, not that of the RF's (I don't know what the RF's precise argument is, but probably it shares many similarities with mine, than is it true). So, for what is it, the fourth time?, I ask of you WHAT PRECISELY DO YOU WANT RUSSIA TO DO IN REGARDS TO CHECHNYA? I have yet to hear you present a single decent counter-argument, preferably free of bland statements of no substance and the Russophobic racist crap that you spill out so easily.

"Firstly, you understand that the main argument that I was making, was that in the USSR, the population was about 50% Russian, 20% Ukrainian, 4% Belarussian, etc, etc, and that blaming solely Russia for the USSR's invasion of and crimes under Stalin in Estonia is very unfair."

Well, they were all under Russian command so the Russians were at the top. You can't blame the people you have conquered in the crimes of your country. In the peoples eyes it was the Red Army that manifested the warcrimes, which is a Russian army and they don't much think if it was a Belorussian corp and anyway, if it were the minorities who caused the warcrimes they were following orders From Russia (U.S.S.R.). They couldn't refuse any orders and they did not do it from their free will.

 "And yes, the fact that the USSR was not democratic IS important, because it would destroy the grounds for your Russophobia (ie it was the Soviet gov't under Stalin, not the Russian people, that occupied Estonia)."

Are you saying then, that i should be having a case of some sort of "Soviet-fobia" because soviets occupied my land and not Russians?

"but the whole idea of reparations should be cast straight away. Firstly, Estonia's treatment of Russians is far from laudable (I will come back to address those parts of your post later), secondly Estonians are now richer anyway, thirdly precisely who's going to force Russia to pay up?"

Do you think that the way we treat the Russian minority has a thing to do with paying reparations???? 

Again, what does the matter, that we are richer, have anything to do with reparations? The payment of reparations is for the crimes caused in history and that has nothing to do with the present day economic status. By that, you also agree, that after WWI, Germany did not have to pay reparations, because the allies had it going better economically?

The third point of your argument is excactly why we can't get anything from Russia in any way. Noone can force Russia to do anything, especailly his neighbouring countries. That is the problem, Russia doesn't like to admit its crimes of the past, especially former hardcore commies.

"As for Russians not striking because they don't have jobs..well, as you yourself said, they do have jobs. Mining, industrial, cleaning away rubbish, etc - basically, low-paid unskilled jobs, which they have to do because of oppressive language laws that bar the way to proessional jobs, especially for the older generation, and make Russians into second-class citizens. (Even for the younger generation, what's the real advantage in learning Estonian - it will hardly be useful anywhere outside Estonia, better to concentrate upon English and even Russian)."

Maybe the older Russian generation has low-jobs because they have zero education to do anything else. My dad and mom don't have so called first class jobs, that you feel Estonians get. They don't feel prejudice against the Russian population across the country, not many under 50 or 60 do. The thing about forbiding professional jobs??? You think we should have Russian as a second language so Russians could get professional jobs? You need to speak Estonian on your professional jobs anyway, what will you do with the Russian language in on your job. Nobody will understand you??? And your question what is the advantage of learning in Estonian? You live in Estonia, you will learn in Estonian and i mean universities of course. The Russian minority here are by nationality Estonian so they should know their new home language and as they are going to maybe live here for the rest of their lives and help develop the country as proper Estonians should why learn in Russian? �There �xists no such problem with Russians in Estonia as language disspating, you can assure yourself in that! That is what Russians can be proud of and what i envy them: They will never stop speaking their language anywhere they live, especially in Estonia, where over 300,000 of them live. Anyway, most of the population of Estonia knows Russian as their second language. 

 "Firstly, in the USSR borders were free. Many of the Russians who migrated then, did so because of new industrial plants that were opening up in the Baltic countries, and which didn't have enough indigenous manpower to be operated."

Yes, but the communist party deliberately imported the Russian poulation here, don't deny that. They got the first jobs here.

"And then, you say that Russians are better off in Estonia than in Russia?  Maybe, from an economic perspective, yes, but most definitely not from a moral or human one."

O my gods, there is NO reprssions of any kind against Russians. Show me some kind of proof! They go and do their job just like any Estonian in the morning and come back in the evening. Russians, in the time they ruled over us never took care of us as well as we are today taking care of them. I have seen many sympathetic happy Russians jumping around the city. Where are the protests against the job thing you mentioned. I do admit, the Russian minority protests for the declaration of Russian as a second language here and so do the ones in Latvia.  

"As I said earlier, Estonian hatred of the Russian people is IMO unjustified...and the penetration of such hatred into the democratic government of what I consider a consider a civilized, responsible country is totally unacceptable."

UNJUSTIFIED...... What????? Of course it is. And probably every neighbour of Russia feels the same way and with more justification than anyone. What should we feel for Russians???? What jibbery. Come tell that to the neigbour of my grandmother who spent time in the "lovely cilmate" of Siberia and lived off of pine thorns and returned to tell the tale!!! That statement is repulsive. As your name is Anatoly i presume you are Russian. Well if you are, then you don't know what hating another nationality is cos Russians are the ones causing all the hate from other nations against themselves. You have no right to say that our hatred is unjustified as you can't imagine what it feels like to be occupied and raped by Russia.

Every nationality has some prejudice against certain others, be what the order of the country be, it still exists everywhere.

"Again, moving on, why should Russians learn Estonian, when English and Russian would still be much more useful to them if they didn't live in a country like Estonia?"

What........ again WHAT????? You say, that there are thousands of Russians without a certain nationality and now you say they don't need Estonian as a language. You make it seem as the Estonians should be the minority here. If Russians want to live here as Estonians and not rude visitors they HAVE to know the language. What are you babbling? People don't need languages to suceed in life, they NEED to know their home language. You can't state that Russians don't need Estonian if they are its citizens. 

 "As for Russians in Estonia, very few consider themselves Estonia, and your attempts at 'Estonization' of a 30% ethnic group is starkling when compared to the 'Russification' of a few tribes who'd in the long run be much better off coming into the modern world."

Assimilation of any kind is repulsive and i can assure you that Russians won't be assimilated. They have too big of an awarance of their nationality, they are proud of who they are and won't be easily assimilated, even if we wanted to. How are we assimilating Russians: They have their newspapers, magazines, schools, political parties and they aren't pressured into being a certain part of the society as the second rate citizens you mentioned. Have you ever been to Estonia, or are you getting the information from Russian media, which can't be trusted.

Well comparing Russian treatment of minorities to Estonian is preposterous: Russia, a country who has forcefully with an agenda assimilated 87 various ethnicities (the number may not be exact) into its population with no policies to aid them to keep their cultural heritage. Russians don't even know with whome they are sharing the country with and who they have subdued. This day Russia has many minorities learning Russian as the only language and the cirillitsa as the alphabet. The stores, papers, everything in Russian, no possibility to advance your own culture and language and pass it on to your children as otherwise they would be without no other job than farming or herding in their home villages which doesn't require Russian. Autonomous regions have no rights and most of the inhabitants are Russians there anyway. Certain languages are known by only a few village elders who have noone to pass it on to as the children are forced to move into towns as there is no other way to suceed.

Estonia: Russians form 30+% of the entire population and have newspapers, schools, magazines in Russian. They aren't forced into second rate jobs. The Russian language isn't disappearing in Estonia as Russian parents teach their children Russian as the main language and many Russian kids speak faulty Estonian do to that. Russians get to vote as an Estonian, form organizations and political parties as any Estonian. Form businesses, advance in any part of their lives. 

Anatoly, there is no way you can say that the Estonian treatment of minorities is worse, or even comparable to Russias. In that argument, you will always be the loser.

"Anyway, the point is that, although Bashkirs and Tatars together make up 7% of the population, democratic Estonia, with a Russian population of 30%, denies it!"

Yes, i understand the issue, but there is one thing: Russia is composed of 150 million people of them how many are Russians i don't know and native Estonians form just 1 million people in Estonia. Russian minorities are widely spread across the land and are formed in certain areas which they mostly inhabit and don't mingle with Russians on a daily basis as do Russians in Estonia with us. I mean, that in Russia, there is no threat of being assimilated by anyone as there are hundreds of minorities and they form fractures of the population and don't pose any major threats of that kind. Estonians on the other hand are one the fastest people dissapearing due to extremely low birthrate. You can't miss that as an important issue in the language politics. We stand in 1 million, that is extremely scarce, remember that. If the Russians would get their language law i see a real threat of Russians becoming purely Russian speakers which isn't good at any point when you consider the percentages of our population.

"the Americans, the Westerners whom you so cherish, were heavily involved in that as well."

I don't cherish the west, i rather hate it actually. You can call me a: Russophobic-Finnougrist-no major political preferences-nature lover kind of guy! Or something like that.

"If the Russian majorities in eastern Estonia (eg, in the Narva region) demanded independence (or union with Russia, either way), would you grant it?"

NO, the place is as Estonian as the Kremlin is Russian.

"Thirdly, calm down and quit with the commie bashing and pretending Russia=commie and commie=Russian."

I won't calm down because your first long post was everything an Estonian would get pissed about and you just pressed the right buttons and an extra one with the stuff about Narva being Russian.

"unless I am mistaken, the Narva region has always been historically Russian, Narva has to my knowledge far more meaning to Russians than Estonians"

I don't think it means much to Russians. Atleast not more as yet another province they conquered. We lived there first and the matter that you immigarted there with swords and guns won't make it yours in my eyes.

"The fact that Tartu was signed in 1920 makes me suspicious if used as justification - the Reds at the time were fighting the Whites, and probably, they might not have wanted yet another threat from the west. And then, you even talk about Russians giving up land to Estonia, which I don't doubt is very much majority Russian (so why would Russia give it away? Why would the Turks hand over Istanbul to Greece?)."

It has no importance what the reds at that time thought or felt, a pact is a pact and they agreed to it with a signature. As i told you, Russians being on territory that rightfully belongs to us and form the majority there doesn't make the land theirs. I don't know about Istanbul, but Narva isn't yours other than it was when you killed it's previous inhabitants and named it historically yours!!!

"Personally, I think Russia has lost too much ethnic Russian territory as it is in the in 1991. Just as an example, did you know, that northern Kazakhstan is virtually entirely Russian?"

What excactly is ethnic Russian territory? This is a real question without national prejudice. Is it the area form Kiev to the Urals?

Kazkhtsan, did you immigrate there during soviet times or travelled there as nomads millenias ago has a difference. If it was the first, then it is still Kazakhstan and not Russian in any case.

"I do not understand what you mean by 'what do the marks on the word 'occupation' mean...?'"

Well, you wrote 'occupation' but not occupation, why? Does it refer to something?

"I ask of you WHAT PRECISELY DO YOU WANT RUSSIA TO DO IN REGARDS TO CHECHNYA? I have yet to hear you present a single decent counter-argument, preferably free of bland statements of no substance and the Russophobic racist crap that you spill out so easily."

Well, Chechnya, actually, i don't see an answer to the matter as Chechens are born soldiers and have been for centuries. Was it Nikolai I who used them as bodyguardsand made peace with them. They will fight to the last man, literally. Russia should take the troops out and if Chechens keep attacking, close the damn border. And i can't be racist to Russians as they are of the same race as am i.

I won't read the reply over again so if any grammatic mistakes occur, so be it.

@Kalevipoeg,

"Are you saying then, that i should be having a case of some sort of "Soviet-fobia" because soviets occupied my land and not Russians?"

IMO, probably more of a Stalinophobia or Soviet-governmentophobia. Yes, you have a point when you say that the leadership was mostly Russian (although there were important exceptions - Stalin and Beria were Georgians, Khruschev was Ukrainian and many of the first revolutionaries were Jews). Secondly, Russians suffered possibly even more from Stalin's rule than Estonians or the other Baltic peoples. Whereas in Encarta I read that 60,000 Estonians died during Soviet occupation (and 30,000 under Nazi), during the 1930's and post-WW2 at least 10 million died due to Stalin's purges (btw, it's not just your grandmother's neighbour who spent time in Siberia; one of my great-grandads did too, and unlike him, he never returned), and many millions more due to famine (during the Civil War, during collectivization and during a smaller-scale in the 1941-43 years). Yes, I know that Estonia's population is much smaller, but nonetheless the %'s would have been roughly equal, if not higher for Russians. Thirdly, a lot of the Estonian deaths were due to resistance to occupation - not that I condemn the resistance, of course, but if Estonians hadn't, Stalin would have been easier in them.

Now about the reparations. Now that I have though it through, I oppose it for probably the most important reason of all. Why? Because it is quite simply collective punishment, and nothing else. Why should ordinary Russians, whose ancestors suffered because of Stalin's rule at least as much as Estonians, have to dole out their meagre salaries in taxes to pay Estonia reparations?

'Maybe the older Russian generation has low-jobs because they have zero education to do anything else. My dad and mom don't have so called first class jobs, that you feel Estonians get. They don't feel prejudice against the Russian population across the country, not many under 50 or 60 do. The thing about forbiding professional jobs??? You think we should have Russian as a second language so Russians could get professional jobs? You need to speak Estonian on your professional jobs anyway, what will you do with the Russian language in on your job. Nobody will understand you??? "

Firstly, apart from workers, many of the Russians who emmigrated to Estonia were highly-qualified, what with them having to oversee plants, industrial and military sites, etc because there was a shortage of the necessary indigenous manpower. Secondly, as you said yourself, Russian is widely known in Estonia, even outside the 30% Russian minority (for instance, in the Narva region, maybe even Talinn, it could be even profitable to have civil servants with a knowledge of Russian catering to Russians). (Btw, I have a question - is Narva region an autonomous or semi-autonomous republic in Estonia? I heard that in the early 1990's there were Russian efforts to acquire that status and gained great majority support, but was overturned by the central Estonian government.)

"And your question what is the advantage of learning in Estonian? You live in Estonia, you will learn in Estonian and i mean universities of course. The Russian minority here are by nationality Estonian so they should know their new home language and as they are going to maybe live here for the rest of their lives and help develop the country as proper Estonians should why learn in Russian? �There �xists no such problem with Russians in Estonia as language disspating, you can assure yourself in that! That is what Russians can be proud of and what i envy them: They will never stop speaking their language anywhere they live, especially in Estonia, where over 300,000 of them live. Anyway, most of the population of Estonia knows Russian as their second language. "

Well, OK, I concede that it's best to learn the language of the new state you're in. But nonetheless, they should be allowed to keep their knowledge of Russian and not be impeded in the learning of English, and possibly other foreign languages. (I bring this up because I've heard that in Tibet, for example, knowledge of Chinese is necessary - and then there's the good choice - you can study either Tibetan (and keep your roots), or study English (and have a much greater chance at success)).

"Yes, but the communist party deliberately imported the Russian poulation here, don't deny that. They got the first jobs here."

'Encouraged' is the better word. The only people who were deported to my knowledge were professionals. The argument went, that the Soviet state had payed for your higher education, and so had a right to tell you where to go. That is, btw, the reason some distant relatives of mine have ended up in modern-day Uzbekistan.

"O my gods, there is NO reprssions of any kind against Russians. Show me some kind of proof! "

"I do admit, the Russian minority protests for the declaration of Russian as a second language here and so do the ones in Latvia.  "

Proof? Here. And it's part of a Western site, the 'Center for International Development and Conflict Management', and not a "biased" Russian source.

As for the second point, why not? The US has Spanish as an official language in addition to English, most schools there teach Spanish despite the historical American ambivalence towards learning foreign languages) and 13% of the population is Hispaniac (as compared to a 30% Russian population in Estonia).

"UNJUSTIFIED...... What????? Of course it is. And probably every neighbour of Russia feels the same way and with more justification than anyone. What should we feel for Russians???? What jibbery. Come tell that to the neigbour of my grandmother who spent time in the "lovely cilmate" of Siberia and lived off of pine thorns and returned to tell the tale!!! That statement is repulsive. As your name is Anatoly i presume you are Russian. Well if you are, then you don't know what hating another nationality is cos Russians are the ones causing all the hate from other nations against themselves. You have no right to say that our hatred is unjustified as you can't imagine what it feels like to be occupied and raped by Russia."

Yes, unjustified. Entire peoples should not be judged on a few b..tards who sometime in history managed to achieve internal power (and in Russia's case, undemocratically). I feel sorry for you grandmother's friends, just as I feel sorry for my great-grandad, the millions of Russians and other Soviet citizens...heck and all the victims of all the world's other genocides and warcrimes, etc. And according to your Weltenschaung, Russians would have good reason to hate some other peoples. The Germans immediately come to mind because of their numerous massacres, food deprivations, war crimes, superiority complex, brutal retributions upon local populations, etc, etc during WW2. One of my  grandmothers experienced 2 years of German occupation, and she's certainly not too fond of them. But do I personally, and the vast majority of Russians younger than 50 or 60, hate Germans? NO.

"What........ again WHAT????? You say, that there are thousands of Russians without a certain nationality and now you say they don't need Estonian as a language. You make it seem as the Estonians should be the minority here. If Russians want to live here as Estonians and not rude visitors they HAVE to know the language. What are you babbling? People don't need languages to suceed in life, they NEED to know their home language. You can't state that Russians don't need Estonian if they are its citizens. "

I admit, I didn't think this through sufficiently. You are right.

"Well comparing Russian treatment of minorities to Estonian is preposterous: Russia, a country who has forcefully with an agenda assimilated 87 various ethnicities (the number may not be exact) into its population with no policies to aid them to keep their cultural heritage. Russians don't even know with whome they are sharing the country with and who they have subdued. This day Russia has many minorities learning Russian as the only language and the cirillitsa as the alphabet. The stores, papers, everything in Russian, no possibility to advance your own culture and language and pass it on to your children as otherwise they would be without no other job than farming or herding in their home villages which doesn't require Russian. Autonomous regions have no rights and most of the inhabitants are Russians there anyway. Certain languages are known by only a few village elders who have noone to pass it on to as the children are forced to move into towns as there is no other way to suceed."

Many of these minorities are extremely small - the largest ones, apart from the Tatars, Bashkirs and Chuvash, are under a million strong and widely scattered. During the post-Stalin Soviet period these minorities were subsidized and their culture retained. But with the coming of today's economic woes, and the halt of subsidies (why pay these unprofitable subsidies, when some people can barely live on their pensions, and when the subsidized can move out into more economical, greater-opportuinty towns and cities?) I for one think that althoughh the break with the past this entails is painful, the long-term prospects are much brighter. Leave the languages to linguistic experts and those interested in them. Besides, this is hardly much different than what happens in other parts of the world, say Brazil, or even in the US or Australia.

"Russians get to vote as an Estonian, form organizations and political parties as any Estonian."

Do Russians with no Estonian citizenship get to vote? I very much doubt it, and the majority as far as I know do not have it.

"Anatoly, there is no way you can say that the Estonian treatment of minorities is worse, or even comparable to Russias. In that argument, you will always be the loser."

The Russian minority in Estonia, and the tribal minorities in Russia, are two vastly different and little inter-related things, in my opinion.

"Yes, i understand the issue, but there is one thing: Russia is composed of 150 million people of them how many are Russians i don't know and native Estonians form just 1 million people in Estonia. Russian minorities are widely spread across the land and are formed in certain areas which they mostly inhabit and don't mingle with Russians on a daily basis as do Russians in Estonia with us. I mean, that in Russia, there is no threat of being assimilated by anyone as there are hundreds of minorities and they form fractures of the population and don't pose any major threats of that kind. Estonians on the other hand are one the fastest people dissapearing due to extremely low birthrate. You can't miss that as an important issue in the language politics. We stand in 1 million, that is extremely scarce, remember that. If the Russians would get their language law i see a real threat of Russians becoming purely Russian speakers which isn't good at any point when you consider the percentages of our population. "

Russia has a population of 143ml, and about 80% are ethnic Russians. The indigenous peoples form a tiny percentage, not more than 2% probably. As for Estonia being Russianized 'from within', have no fear. The Estonian birth rate of 9.8 is comparable to Russia's 9.6 per 1000; the total fertility rate in Estonia is 1.4 children per woman, in Russia 1.25; and Estonia's death rate, 13.3 per 1000, compares well with Russia's 15.2. Plus, there is significant Russian emmigration out of Latvia. Add it all up, and I would even hazard a guess that it is the Russian, not the Estonian, population thta is relatively declining in Estonia.

""If the Russian majorities in eastern Estonia (eg, in the Narva region) demanded independence (or union with Russia, either way), would you grant it?"

NO, the place is as Estonian as the Kremlin is Russian."

Fair enough. I read up on this, and found that Narva was originally founded by the Danes, and later became Estonian, and was very much majority Estonian until the post-Stalin era.

"I won't calm down because your first long post was everything an Estonian would get pissed about and you just pressed the right buttons and an extra one with the stuff about Narva being Russian."

Well, sorry, I was wrong, but the point is that I know in 1700 Peter the Great was defeated there by the Swedes, that nearby Lake Peipus was the scene of the great Novgorod 1242 victory over the Teutonic Knights and most importantly that today it is very much majority Russian.

"I don't know about Istanbul, "

It was originally Constantinople, part of the Byzantine Empire (which was Greek). It was captured by the Turks in 1453, and since then the population has become virtually entirely Turkish, especially after Mustafa Kemal's expulsion of 1ml Greeks from Turkey in the 1920's. But to return it to Greece...is an absurdity to say the least.

"What excactly is ethnic Russian territory? This is a real question without national prejudice. Is it the area form Kiev to the Urals?"

If you would count only the places with a Russian majority, it encompasses all of Russia (including Siberia), except for a few autonomous republics such as Dagestan, Chechnya, etc. Also northern/western Kazakhstan. Eastern Ukraine and Belarus are culturally close to Russia, and there are plans to unify Russia and Belarus in the near future.

"Kazkhtsan, did you immigrate there during soviet times or travelled there as nomads millenias ago has a difference. If it was the first, then it is still Kazakhstan and not Russian in any case."

There was a Cossack presence on the Ural River from the 16th century, and the town of Guryev on its banks near the Caspian Sea was founded in 1645. From 1815-56, the territory of much of modern-day Kazakhstan was incorporated into the Russian Empire. Throughout the 19th century, but especially towards its end and the early 1900's, many Russian settlers settled in the north and west, augmenting the original Russian communities. However, it should be noted that at the time much of the indegenous inhabitants were still living in tribal structures, illiterate, unurbanized, undeveloped, and their nomadic nature meant that land was not possessed in the legal sense of the word (ie similar to the relations between Native Americans and the European settlers). Besides, the density of Turkic habitation in northern and western Kazakhstan was very low - it was concentrated in the south. In the 1930's started the urbanization and literacy drives in the region. In the 1950's, with the 'Virgin Lands' program, Khruschev encouraged people to settle in northern Kazakhstan. A new wave of Slavic settlers stransformed the countryside from steppe into farmland and industrial sites. In addition, from about 1960-85, Russians in the whole of Kazahstan outnumbered the Kazakhs themselves (although, now, the ratio is about 50-30% in the Kazakh's favor. Unlike in Estonia, Russians have a significantly higher quality of life in Kazakhstan than the locals, as it is in the north that industry is concentrated, whereas the south is reliant on cotton production. Russian is the lingua franca, although 60 of the population can also speak Kazakh. Nazarbayev has also been much warmer in his relations with Russia than the Baltic states, and vice versa.

"Well, you wrote 'occupation' but not occupation, why? Does it refer to something?"

Sorry, but before I never pictured the Soviet presence in Estonia as an occupation.

"Well, Chechnya, actually, i don't see an answer to the matter as Chechens are born soldiers and have been for centuries. Was it Nikolai I who used them as bodyguardsand made peace with them. They will fight to the last man, literally. Russia should take the troops out and if Chechens keep attacking, close the damn border."

I don't know about Nikolai I (he was an Emperor, btw, and remember that in his days the Chechens were still extremely tribal and Russia had poor relations and constant wars with them because of their raids on outlying settlements and ambushes on caravan routes, soldiers, etc on their way to Armenia and Georgia. I know, however, that in the period 1989-91, Boris Yeltsin had only Chechens for bodyguards. The Moscow Chechens were the first to support him, and he paid them back by trying to restore their influence in Chechnya in 1994 (they had lost it, because Chechnya had in 1991-94 become a bandit state) despite the great disaproval of Parliament and the people.

Closing the border is an idea. However, several things count against it.

1. Chechnya will inevitably become a bandit, criminal and possibly Wahhabist state (I have explained why before).

2. Believe it or not, there is still a roughly 20,000 Russian minority in Chechnya (down from 250,000 in 1991, before the Chechen ethnic cleansing). I don't trust the Chechens to look after their welfare if they get independence.

3. Does the world want another crime capital and Wahhabist state? Does the US want it? Heck, does Estonia want it?

4. Strategic reasons. There are oil reserves near Grozny. And more importantly, not for nothing is Chechnya nicknamed the 'Gateway to the Caucasus'.

But then again, if the current policy doesn't become more effective in the next five or so years, closing the borders, making a demilitarized zone (like between the two Koreas) and peppering the Russian side with machine guns and artillery might be an idea.

"And i can't be racist to Russians as they are of the same race as am i."

Russians are Eastern Slavic and Orthodox, Estonians are Finnic-Ugraric and Protestant. So you can be, and in some instances, I feel you have been.

and what are you,mate?

how come you refer to a nation to be bloody cowards..

wouldnt it be racism if someone called your nation to bloody cowards...

Thats unfair.

1. Russia is already a capital of crime.... and no punishment much to the grief of Dostoevsky.

2. Does the Chechens want ethnic cleansing by Russian troops to continue? No. You intend to keep 1 million angry people under the rule for sake of 20,000 Russians? Just get them out!

3. I already told you comrade that CHECHENS ARE SUFIS and NOT WAHABISTS! Next time I am going to call Russians Communists for the good measure.