RIGA — I flew to Riga last week for the May 9 Victory Day celebration, hoping to get an adrenaline fix from the promise of a riot. I’ve been to the Baltics many times, and for years now I’ve been expecting the Russian-speaking minorities in Latvia and Estonia to burn shit down. By any historical-moral standard we Westerners have set, the Russians in those countries have every right to riot. It took a long time, but finally, it happened.
Here I should admit that I come to this story with my own prejudices: I think the Baltic people are fucking Neanderthals for the way they turned on their Russian minority, once it was clear that the Russians were defenseless and could be smacked around with impunity. Given the choice between walking upright like the Westerners they claim to be, or behaving like knuckle-dragging monkeys, the Estonians and Latvians chose old-style European village fascism. And for that, I believe they should be booted out of NATO and the keys to their borders handed back to Russia to do with as they please.
For the past decade or so, I’ve been waiting for the Baltics to get a little come-uppance. Partly out of affinity with the Russians, and partly because of the Baltic people’s vile record in WW II towards Jews and Slavs, a record shameful even by Europe-of-the-40s standards.
Still, when the Tallin riots finally happened, I didn’t trust them. I got sucked into the conspiratorial mindset that comes from being in Russia too long: Who was behind it? Who benefited? Was it manufactured by the Kremlin? The surface can never be trusted…
A riot was promised on May 9 at Riga’s Monument to the Soviet Liberators, the local equivalent to Tallin’s bronze statue memorial. Latvian nationalists were going to try to march on it simply to provoke the Russian minority. A group of Russian-speakers camped out at the memorial the night before vowing to “protect” it, a crowd whose numbers swelled from dozens to several hundreds by 10 a.m.
Burn, Baltics, Burn
2007
06.01
06.01
Who wrote this??? I don’t understand, but it can’t be you :O
I can see only one set of quotation marks there (at the end) so is it a quotation or what???
Why can’t it be me? Actually, it’s not. The link is at the bottom where it says this is a must-read. It’s from Exile magazine in Moscow.
Looks like a couple of my comments vanished from your blog. I wrote to say I had read this a couple of weeks ago. What a total moron!…
I read it tongue-in-cheek. It was amusing, really.
Aleks, I don’t find this article amusing. But I also have no sense of humor around the Russian-unconfessed-unrepented Soviet-Russian occupation of Latvia. I think the half-century occupation, brutalization, cultural-genocide, Russification of ethnic Latvians by the occupant-majority Soviet-Russians gives “minority discrimination” the gold-standard definition. I would have expressed this directly to Mark Ames, the violent cry-baby BURN author, but there was no place for comments at his blog. I glanced briefly at his other rants, and he appears angry about the “victimization” of Russians or Jews or both by just about everyone including Putin and other Russians, not just the Balts. I would suggest that the real discrimination against Russians might just be a more insidious discrimination from fellow Russians like Mark A., who appears to believe that it’s just impossible for his fellow Russians to learn another language, especially if it’s Baltic. I don’t find Mark A’s diatribe amusing in the least.
Appearently you have no sense of objectivity when it comes down to historical facts…all your blah blah about jews ans slaws is completly incorrect…and how would you know what is best for these three states after being pushed and commanaded around with no civilized freedom? Seems to me that you go too far in your extreemes….and what i cant stand is people who think they know everything and speak before they think…. it is a shame….you did not deal with communism, you did not deal with russians,you were not born under russian communism and what’s worse, you aren’t a latvian and don’t speak the language to be judging another nation like this…..
I’m not sure to whom your comment was addressed. But if you’re talking about historical facts, here are a few: Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940; many people were deported in 1940, 1941, and 1949. As a result of the Soviet policy of Russification — which commenced immediately after Latvia was annexed into the SU — the Latvian language likely would have died.
“…you aren’t a latvian and don’t speak the language to be judging another nation like this…..”
Not sure what being a Latvian, speaking a Latvian has to do with being able to comment on Latvia and what’s going on here.