От Begletz
К Г.С.
Дата 07.05.2005 20:37:50
Рубрики Современность;

Вырезать=убрать? :-))) Как можно.

Статья Вайры:

Rights and Remembrance

By Vaira Vike-Freiberga

Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A17

RIGA, Latvia -- As the president of a country that suffered immensely under Soviet and Nazi rule, I recently faced a dilemma. I had to decide whether to accept an invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend a rally in Moscow on Monday. That is the date when Russia traditionally celebrates its military victory over Nazi Germany, and this year is particularly significant, as it marks the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

Numerous heads of state and government, including George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder and Silvio Berlusconi, had already said they would attend the Moscow celebrations. But unlike in France, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands or Austria, the collapse of the Nazi empire did not lead to my country's liberation.


Instead, with the full acquiescence of the western Allied powers, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were reoccupied and annexed by the Soviet Union, while a dozen other countries in Central and Eastern Europe experienced renewed repression and decades of totalitarian rule as powerless satellite states of the Soviet empire.

Latvia certainly rejoices with the rest of the world at the fall of Hitler's regime. Like numerous other European countries, my country suffered immensely under the German occupation, which lasted in Latvia from 1941 to 1945. During that time, the Germans and their local accomplices carried out the most heinous and large-scale crimes against humanity ever committed on Latvian soil. They murdered about 100,000 of Latvia's inhabitants, including more than 90 percent of the country's prewar Jewish community, as well as tens of thousands of other Jews whom they transported into Latvia from other parts of Europe.

The Nazis also drafted some 115,000 Latvian men into various German military units. Thousands more people were shipped to Germany as forced labor. For a country with a population of less than 2 million, these figures represented a staggering loss.

But Latvia's so-called liberation by Soviet troops in 1944-45 materialized in the form of another calamity, accompanied as it was by the customary rapes, lootings and wanton killings that the Red Army committed in a systematic manner throughout the territories it occupied, and that continued in Latvia well after the end of the war. These were followed by still more killings, repression and wave after wave of mass deportations, the last taking place in 1949.

After the war, Germany made great efforts to atone for the unspeakable crimes committed under the Nazi regime. This process began with an honest evaluation of the country's Nazi-era history and continued with Germany's unequivocal renunciation of its totalitarian past. Russia would gain immensely by acting in a similar manner and by expressing its genuine regret for the crimes of the Soviet regime. Until Russia does so, it will continue to be haunted by the ghosts of its past, and its relations with its immediate neighbors will remain uneasy at best.

In the end, though, I accepted President Putin's invitation, because I believe that the Allied victory over Nazi Germany should be seen as a victory of democratic values over totalitarianism and tyranny. These values form the very basis of our common social contract and lie at the foundations of our civil societies. We the democratic nations of the world value respect for human life and dignity. We value compassion for the suffering of others, tolerance of differences and diversity, and freedom of choice and action, so long as it does not result in harm to anybody else. We value the rule of law as a basis for justice.

For decades after the war, Europe's former captive nations, including Latvia and Russia, were robbed of the opportunity to flourish and to prosper in the framework of these values. And it is on these core values that the perspectives of our long-term partnership with Russia will depend. That is why all democratic nations must urge Russia to condemn the crimes committed during the Soviet era in the name of communism. Russia must face up and come to honest terms with its history, just as Germany did after the end of World War II, and just as my own country is doing today.

The writer is president of Latvia.

Статья о Прибалтике:

Memories of Soviet Repression Still Vivid in Baltics

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A11

RIGA, Latvia, May 6 -- The rusted helmets, pistols and knives tell part of the story. The worn boots, tattered prison clothes and slave laborer serial numbers fill out the picture. And then there is the life-size reproduction of a gulag barracks where inmates slept on wood-slatted platforms and shared a single primitive toilet.

The nerves are still raw here at the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia more than six decades after Soviet troops rolled across the countryside to seize this seaside capital and all three independent Baltic states. As Russia prepares to host President Bush and other world leaders for a Red Square celebration of the end of World War II, Latvia and its neighbors find themselves once again haunted by memories of the Soviet repression they were left to endure.

"It's still a very, very living and present topic," said museum director Gundega Michel. "Sometimes in passing by, people say, 'That's the old stuff, why do you still focus on the old stuff?' But for the people who lived through it, it's still part of their nightmares."

To show that the United States appreciates the ambiguous legacy of the anniversary, President Bush, who landed here Friday night, will pay tribute Saturday to Baltic independence from Communist tyranny before traveling to Moscow. First lady Laura Bush will visit the occupation museum.

As the president begins his five-day trip to Europe, Russia and Georgia, White House officials have been stunned at how quickly it has become caught up in a fresh debate over the legacy of the Soviet Union. An acrid exchange between Washington, Moscow and the Baltic capitals over long-ago events has overshadowed the Victory Day commemoration.

Moscow has bristled at U.S. and Baltic suggestions that it should repudiate the secret 1939 pact between dictators Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler that led to the Soviet occupation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Although the Soviet Union declared the pact null and void 16 years ago, Russia has lately reprised the Stalinist assertion that it did not forcibly occupy the Baltic states but was invited in.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told German television Friday that the 1989 declaration was enough. "We've already done this," he said. "We must, what, do it every day, every year?" In a separate interview with the German newspaper Bild, he maintained that Stalin was not as bad as Hitler. "I cannot agree with equating Stalin with Hitler," he said. "Yes, Stalin was certainly a tyrant and many call him a criminal, but he was not a Nazi."

As Bush headed his way, Putin rejected U.S. criticism of his crackdown on democratic institutions in post-Soviet Russia. Russian elections may be even more democratic than U.S. contests, he told CBS's "60 Minutes," because the American president is selected indirectly by an electoral college.

The Russian refusal to accept responsibility for Soviet dictatorship in the Baltic republics has renewed long-standing frictions with the three states, which joined the NATO alliance and the European Union last year. The leaders of Estonia and Lithuania are boycotting Monday's ceremonies in Moscow.

"By coming to the Baltic states, President Bush is underscoring the double meaning of these events," said Latvia's President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, who plans to attend to improve relations with Moscow. While victory over Hitler meant freedom for many, she told a news conference, "for others it meant slavery, it meant occupation, it meant subjugation, and it meant Stalinist terror."

In an interview, Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks said Russia appears intent on reclaiming lost greatness through "domination" of its neighbors. "We do not hate Russians, we do not hate Russia. We simply want to be left alone," he said.

But, Pabriks added, "It's not easy to forgive, and it's especially difficult to forgive those who never asked for forgiveness."

Russia often tries to turn the tables, accusing Latvia of Nazi sympathies during the war and discrimination against its ethnic Russian minority today. Some Latvians did join the Nazis to fight the Soviets and win their independence. Latvian officials insist they have bolstered the rights of Russians, who still make up 29 percent of the 2.3 million-strong population.

In an interview with Bush, a Russian television reporter pressed him on U.S. culpability for abandoning Eastern Europe to Communist rule after the war, noting that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill went along with Stalin's division of the continent at the Yalta conference in 1945. "There's no question three leaders made the decision," Bush conceded to NTV television in remarks released Friday.

The history of the period is documented at the occupation museum. Opened in 1993 and visited by 65,000 people a year, it has become the region's premier memorial to the suffering of the era.

By most accounts, the Soviets engineered provocations to send troops into Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in June 1940, then installed puppet governments, supposedly elected by margins of up to 99 percent of the population, which then asked to join the Soviet Union.

The Soviets moved quickly to deport Latvians en masse and relocate Russians into the states. In 1941, the Nazis captured the republics and held them until 1944, when the Soviets moved back in. About 550,000 Latvians, or one-third of the population, died during the two wartime occupations. Moscow remained in command until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Gundega Michel was born 11 days before Soviet troops first moved in and was a year old when 15,000 of her neighbors and countrymen were rounded up one night and loaded aboard cattle cars bound for Siberia. When she was 4 years old, her family escaped, remaining in exile for half a century. Eventually, she made her way to the United States, where she became a chemistry professor in Chicago.

After she retired, Michel came back to Latvia in January 2002 and took over as director of the museum. She found a homeland still bruised from an occupation Russia denies ever happened.

This week's statements out of Moscow, she said, reminded her of the museum's mission. "It makes us feel very, very badly," she said. "It's a denial of reality. Those who have lived through it, they're told, 'What you experienced, what you lived through, that's not real, that didn't happen.' "

Колонка редактора:

Mr. Putin's History


Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A16

IN 1989 THE rubber-stamp parliament of the dying Soviet Union finally renounced the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, by which Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin agreed to divide up central Europe in 1939. The secret treaty, the Soviet body conceded, was a "deviation from Leninist norms" -- though that did not, in its view, justify independence for the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which were invaded by Soviet troops in 1940 and still ruled from the Kremlin half a century later. Since then the Soviet Union has collapsed, and sovereign Baltic governments have joined NATO and the European Union; you might expect attitudes in Moscow to have evolved further.

In fact, as Russian President Vladimir Putin made clear in the run-up to his vainglorious celebration of victory in World War II on Monday, the change has gone in the opposite direction. Mr. Putin recently defended the notorious bargain with Nazi Germany as a step by the Soviet Union to "ensure its interest and its security on its western borders." His foreign ministry has hotly objected to the planned visits by President Bush to Latvia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia before and after the anniversary celebration, and to Mr. Bush's reference to the Soviet "occupation" of the Baltics in a letter to the Latvian president. "One cannot use 'occupation' to describe those historical events," the Russian ambassador to the European Union said Thursday, repeating the Stalinist propaganda.


Why is this important? Because Mr. Putin's neo-imperialism, like the huge celebration to which he has lured more than 50 world leaders, is intended to shape the uncertain identity of post-Soviet Russia. Mr. Putin would like that identity to be one of a respected world power (even if Russia's per capita income ranks behind 96 other countries), one that made the biggest contribution to the defeat of Germany 60 years ago and still wields geopolitical influence as well as a nuclear arsenal. Most Western leaders, including Mr. Bush, are ready to recognize that Russia; that is why they are traveling to Moscow.

But Mr. Putin's vision also contains elements that should deeply trouble the world. His is a power where "democracy" is mostly a facade, independent voices and private property are subject to arbitrary suppression and confiscation by the state, and aspirations for self-rule by non-Russian peoples, like the Chechens, are to be crushed by military force. Russia's neighbors, ranging from Central Asian republics to Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltic nations, are regarded not as truly independent states but as something like rogue provinces, rightfully ruled from Moscow in Soviet times and lost in a breakup that Mr. Putin recently described as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."

In fact, the greatest catastrophe of the past 100 years for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia began with Molotov and Ribbentrop and continued with the victory Mr. Putin will celebrate Monday. For her country, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said yesterday, May 9 "meant slavery, it meant occupation, it meant subjugation, and it meant Stalinist terror."

Until Russia and its leaders can accept and fully repudiate that history, it won't be possible to unambiguously celebrate the conquest of Berlin, and it shouldn't be acceptable to treat as a strategic partner a Kremlin leader who can't bring himself to reject the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. "We already did it," an irritated Mr. Putin told a German television interviewer this week, referring to the 1989 Soviet parliament. "What, we have to do this every day, every year?" Actually, in his case, just once would be a good start.




Саакишвили:

Georgian Leader Spurns Moscow Celebration

By Christian Lowe
Reuters
Saturday, May 7, 2005; Page A10

MOSCOW, May 6 -- Georgia announced Friday that President Mikheil Saakashvili would boycott celebrations in Moscow to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II, bringing relations between the ex-Soviet neighbors to a new low.

Saakashvili cancelled his trip to protest the lack of progress made during talks with the Kremlin about the removal of two Russian military bases in Georgia. Georgia wants the pullout completed in 2008, but discussions in Moscow have failed to establish a timetable.


"Very important issues have been left unagreed," the Georgian foreign minister, Salome Zourabichvili, told reporters here Friday after the talks. "As progress has been not been made, the president will not fly to Russia."

Saakashvili, a pro-Western leader, will also miss a summit of leaders of former Soviet states scheduled for Sunday.

President Bush is scheduled to visit Georgia after going to Moscow for the May 9 festivities, and he and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have already differed on the Soviet Union's role in the Baltics during the war.

Georgia views the two Russian army bases as a legacy of the Soviet Union and evidence that Moscow wants to exert influence on its small southern neighbor despite the fact that it became independent in 1991.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that representatives from the two governments would meet again soon. "The Russian side confirmed its firm willingness to reach mutually acceptable agreements, which will require the efforts of both sides," a ministry statement said.

Bush will fly to Georgia after the Moscow celebrations for talks with Saakashvili. The trip is widely seen as U.S. blessing for the young leader, who came to power in a 2003 street uprising known as the Rose Revolution.

Analysts say Bush's trip is likely to further irritate the Kremlin, which has long considered Georgia -- strategically crucial as the site of a major new pipeline linking Caspian oilfields to Western markets -- as its backyard. The first trip to Georgia by a U.S. president demonstrates that Washington backs Saakashvili, analysts have said.

The Georgian leader is also at loggerheads with the Kremlin over its alleged support for the separatist Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Speaking before his boycott was announced, Saakashvili said he would not back down on the bases. "This is our territory, and we want to see this done in a civilized manner, but the occupation of Georgia must end," he told Georgia's Rustavi 2 television.
От Alex Bullet
К Begletz (07.05.2005 20:37:50)
Дата 07.05.2005 23:56:41

Re: Вырезать=убрать? :-)))...

Полтаблетки - от головы, полтаблетки - от задницы. И смотри, не перепутай.

Слушайте, а на хрена она вообще 9-го в Москве нужна?

С уважением, Александр.
От Г.С.
К Begletz (07.05.2005 20:37:50)
Дата 07.05.2005 20:51:37

А америкосы из Вошь Поц похуже этой фашистской сучки (-)
От Begletz
К Г.С. (07.05.2005 20:51:37)
Дата 07.05.2005 21:10:32

Это да

С момента ареста Ходыря идет сплошная анти-путинская истерия. Кореша у него в газетке, похоже.
От А.Никольский
К Begletz (07.05.2005 21:10:32)
Дата 07.05.2005 21:30:00

там тоньше

конечно, непосредственно в Вашпост они не заносили - их бы не поняли (хотя слыхивал и про обработку непосредственно пишущих, но не там и не тогда). Но многие каналы доставки информации туда довольно плотно обработали. Но и не это, думаю, главное. Никаких денег "Юкоса" на такую компанию не хватило бы, если б не ответное желание.
С уважением, А.Никольский
От Begletz
К А.Никольский (07.05.2005 21:30:00)
Дата 07.05.2005 22:15:19

Я ж не говорю, что они за деньги. :-)) (-)
От А.Никольский
К Begletz (07.05.2005 22:15:19)
Дата 07.05.2005 22:22:54

деньги тоже были:)

но не непосредственно в редакцию
С уважением, А.Никольский