In article
<d9cc572b-bd1d-49f6-9802-1e6d44a607fa@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
tadas.blinda@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> On Sep 29, 12:23=A0pm, hol...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Eugene Holman) wrote:
> > No it isn't. I despise what Russia did in the Baltics as much as I
despis=
> e
> > what the Americans did in Hawaii. It is not OK, nor can you excuse
what
> > one country did because it happened a hundred and ten years ago to
> > Polynesians but excoriate the other one becase it happened only
sixty-fiv=
> e
> > years ago and to Europeans if you are going to be intellectually
honest.
>
> I am probably one of the few SCB contributors who does consider
> American imperialism to be just as rreprehensible as Tsarist /
> Soviet / Russian Federation imperialism.
I am another of this select fraternity, if you hadnt noticed. I find it
hypocritical that people can go ballistic when ordinary Russians claim
that the Baltics were not occupied, but do not understand, and sometimes
get very angry, when told that their own country has done the same thing
to Hawaii. the story of how the US acquired Texas, California, New Mexico,
Nevada, and some other land would read like the history of Czarist Russia
if some of te names were changed.
> But the matter of a
> century's time difference cannot be ignored.
The United States, after subverting its government, absorbed Hawaii in
1898; the USSR, after subverting their governments, absorbed the three
Baltic countries (for the first and, according to the Russian way of
thinking, only time in 1940). The time difference, forty-two years, is not
all that great.
> And as far as I am
> aware, the Yanks did not de****t any Hawaiians to Alaska.
No, but they flooded the place with migrant workers from Japan, China, and
the Philippines to work the pineapple planations, as well as with soldiers
from the mainland to man the famous base at Pearl Harbor. Hawaiian culture
and language were virtually destroyed and survive today primarily as bits
and pieces of "local color".
<deletions>
> > I am *not* making excuses for them. Russia and the United States both
hav=
> e
> > a history of imperialism. What I am objecting to is that some of the
same
> > people expressing amazement that Russians can deny the fact of the
Baltic
> > countries having been occupied, but denying that Hawaii came to be a
part
> > of the United States according to precisely the same scenario, but,
unlik=
> e
> > the three Baltic countries, is still under foreign occupation. It
ain't
> > OK, and I do not make excuses for either.
>
> Well, as I said to Macbeth's friend (McDuff), it doesn't go over well
> telling us Balts that you find a creep like the nats-bol B=E4ckman's
> left-wing revisionist theories "interesting" when you should be
> finding them repulsive, just as you would find theories of left-wing
> neo-nazi revisionist repulsive.
I do not agree with him, but I disagree even more with people who would
silence, censor, or ban him. Many of his viewpoints are indeed repulsive,
but his raising the issue of the degree to which the word "occupation" is
appropriate to the Baltic countries after the early 1950s, or, arguably,
the mid-1960s, wen they were opened to the world again after having been
cut off for a generation, is interesting. Even if you and I agree that the
three Baltic countries were under foreign occupation from 1940 until 1991
or even 1995, many perfectly rational people would deny this, just as
most Americans would deny that Hawaii was or is occupied. I don't know
abput you, but I am interested in finding how people are able to construct
such different historical narratives from what seems to be the same
empirical evidence. Nor, I have to say, am I comfortable with the idea of
countries that were themselves recently the objects of invasion,
externally forced regime change, invasion, and insurgency suddenly getting
themselves involved in such activities on the giving end. As I said in a
previous posting it is *not* OK when America does it, it is/was *not* Ok
when Russia/the Soviet Union does/did it, and it is damned repulsive for
the Baltic countries to have gotten themselves involved in such behavior.
Regards,
Eugene holman
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