Why the American media are so pathologically anti-Russian

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Heresson
Sad if it is true.
If it is, or if it is not I don't know for sure.
Even if some of the mentioned was caused by other things than race hatred (I doubt only Jews suffered during this period), some truth is probably present, even if the quote itself seems a bit biased ("Jewish front" part).
What's the book?
Any sites on the matter?
Any examples of persecutions of Jews by any organisation of Polish state except for alleged pogroms during this military campaign?

Persecution? As in state approved pogroms? No, of course not, this is Poland not Germany or Russia. Under Pilsudski there was an outreach to Jews as well as to other minorities. There were boycotts of Jewish businesses, but these were privately organized. They received state support after the coup in '36 (date?) when the Pilsudski regime was replaced. In that period there were subtle attempts to hurt the Jews economically, like nationalizing parts of the retail sector where jews had been dominant. I can look for more sites - but really, this stuff isnt that mysterious, its well known history.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Heresson
Btw, Vilnius was inhabited by Poles as were its surroundings, and belonged to Poland before to Russia.

It belonged to the Polish kingdom prior to the 18th c partitions, correct. That kingdom, IIIUC, allowed administrative autonomy to the lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, though it is from that time that the Polish MINORITY in vilna dates. There were certainly more Poles in Vilna than Lithuanians, but prior to WW1 both were outnumbered by Jews, at least according the 1897 census.


I doubt local Jews started learning Polish only after ww1

Why do you doubt that? Pre partition youre going back to prenationalism - no public school systems - most Jews were primarly Yiddish speakers - they might have known a little Polish for business, but they lived by themselves, in the Ghetto.

Jewish modernization in Vilna took place in the 19th century, but IIUC there were no Polish schools in the city then - certainly no Polish PUBLIC schools (which were first established in the 1920's. Any Jews looking to learn a "gentile" language learned Russian, which was the language of the state.

Jews in Warsaw and Cracow learned Polish in the 19th century, but that was a very different environment.

[lord of the mark]

from myjewishlearning.com

"Beginning in the late 1920s, as the Depression hit Poland with particularly severity, popular discrimination such as economic boycotts, attacks on students at the universities, and quotas in some liberal professions resulted in a desperate situation for many Jews. Though no outright anti-Semitic legislation was enacted in Poland, as it was elsewhere in Eastern Europe at the time, the Polish government did not oppose economic discrimination against the Jews.


In 1934 Poland signed an anti-aggression pact with Germany, and in the same year the Polish government renounced its obligations under the Minorities' Treaty.


In the second half of the 1930s, economic boycotts escalated and physical attacks against Jews became more frequent, with pogroms occurring in various towns from 1935 until the first half of 1938, when the government began to clamp down on the violence.


Despite the anti-Jewish violence and the desperate situation of many Jews in the last years before World War II, the interwar years defy attempts to characterize Jewish life in Poland with broad strokes. These years were neither all "good for the Jews" nor all "bad for the Jews," as one historian, Ezra Mendelsohn, framed the debate, referring to the tendency to view the period as either a golden age or as a community whose destruction was already visible in the distance. This was, rather, a period when rapid changes within and without the Jewish world resulted in both dynamism and conflict."

[Ned]

I don't know about the press in general, but the American right may have some very hard feelings about Russia given that it aligned itself with Saddam and Chirac in the fiasco at the UN concerning the "second resolution" on Iraq. Russia owes America an apology or some strong gesture of goodwill before we'll forget its stance on Iraq.

[Saras]

Vagabond blin, nebyl by ja v kolosalnom pohmele ja by...

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by The Vagabond


Don't play silly. If Ukraine joins NATO, NATO will be 350 miles from Moscow not only in the west, but also in the south.

If we can believe Serb you have to fear nothing because your glorious army with its superior equipment will eliminate every threat within nanoseconds.

[Saras]

Nanoseconds? NANOSECONDS??? PLURAL???????

[BeBMan]

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Ned
I don't know about the press in general, but the American right may have some very hard feelings about Russia given that it aligned itself with Saddam and Chirac in the fiasco at the UN concerning the "second resolution" on Iraq. Russia owes America an apology or some strong gesture of goodwill before we'll forget its stance on Iraq.

That's your personal understading. I don't think that the causes of the rage of your media at Russia are as simple as that.

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by Saras
Vagabond blin, nebyl by ja v kolosalnom pohmele ja by...

[The Vagabond]

Originally posted by BeBro


If we can believe Serb you have to fear nothing because your glorious army with its superior equipment will eliminate every threat within nanoseconds.

Please don't act silly.

[The Vagabond]

One more publication:

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ba94637e-6b51-11d9-9357-00000e2511c8.html

The west must not make an enemy of Putin
By Eric Kraus
Published: January 21 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 21 2005 02:00

Once again, the west is getting Russia wrong. Opportunities to build a durable and constructive relationship with Europe's turbulent neighbour are falling victim to western arrogance and incomprehension.


Even a perfunctory glance at history shows that the decline of great empires is not usually a peaceful process. The Soviet Union provides what is perhaps a unique example of an empire putting itself into voluntary liquidation. Both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin knew that they had limited time to dismantle the Soviet system before the reactionary forces could regroup. Weak and domestically isolated, they courted western political support. Under their leadership, Russia acquiesced to the extension of a potentially hostile military alliance to its western borders - abandoning not just brutal Soviet imperialism, but also its legitimate security interests. The temptation to exploit Russian weakness has proved irresistible to Nato.

In the aftermath of the 1998 debt crisis, Russia was widely portrayed as terminally weak and divided - doomed to decay, to default, to disintegration. The oligarchs were rightfully seen as uncontrollable, able to buy or intimidate anyone standing in their way, manipulating the political system to feed their own boundless greed. In parallel, the flow of power into the hands of the regional governors rendered Russia largely ungovernable.

Is it not odd then that the taming of both oligarchs and regional potentates by Vladimir Putin, the president, has been greeted internationally not with praise but with invective? Yukos - an oil company with its own foreign policy - effectively launched a hostile takeover bid for the Russian state. It used its vast wealth to buy a bloc of deputies large enough to obstruct any legislation not to its liking, by joining their votes with those of the Communists. Until the fall of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Yukos's jailed chief executive and until recently a key shareholder, the oligarchs repeatedly blocked the imposition of the windfall oil profit taxes necessary to rebalance the Russian economy. The dismantling of Yukos has been badly mishandled. But had the Russian government allowed the oligarchs' stranglehold to be restored, a repeat of the financial catastrophes of the late 1990s was in the offing.

Unlike his predecessors, Mr Putin plays to a domestic audience. Under his watch, Russia has become a far more prosperous and self-assured place. Although the economy remains unbalanced, growth has been impressive - Russia has gone from insolvency to being a big net creditor. A large middle class has sprung up. Wages and pensions are now paid in cash and on time. High oil prices have helped, but they were also high in 1996, yet the proceeds were stripped and hidden offshore by the same oligarchs who are now coming under the whip.

In foreign policy terms, Russia no longer writes blank cheques for the west. Perhaps as a result, and aided by a hugely professional Yukos public relations campaign, the Putin administration is encountering the sort of press hostility ordinarily reserved for members of the axis of evil.

The protests come not only from the western media; perhaps the shrillest invective comes from a tiny minority of Russian professional dissidents. Isolated and ignored at home and desperate for western approval, the latter are in no way representative of the Russian people. Although the political demise of the Russian liberals is to be lamented, they were victims of their own folly. Admired abroad, at home they were perceived as being aligned with the rapacious and thieving oligarchs, as well as with the western powers who find a weak and subservient Russia a safer option.

Mr Putin is genuinely popular at home, and the west will have to learn to live with Russia's choice. It is absurd to expect Swiss standards of democracy from a country struggling to rebuild itself after the traumas of the past decades. Liberal democracy remains as much an alien concept under Mr Putin as it was under Mr Yeltsin. But as Russia develops into a middle-class country, it will gradually acquire political institutions more similar to those of its western neighbours.

The ability of the west to influence events within Russia is rapidly waning. Even if other countries had the means to destabilise the Putin regime, any successor would almost certainly be more threatening. Although military confrontation is no longer an imminent danger, under pressure Russia would probably turn east. It would seek a strategic alliance with a China desperate for Russian resources, a gift the west would come to regret.

The writer is chief strategist for Sovlink Securities, Moscow

[notyoueither]

The west must not make an enemy of Putin

Why? On the off chance that your antique missile fleet will function after years of neglect?

What is Russia gonna do about other people living their own lives and thinking Russians are ********* for continuing to harp on the imperialistic past?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by molly bloom


Refighting World War II.

This time it's personal!

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sikander


This time it's personal!

New from D.C. - 'Serb, One Man Siberian Army Corps'.

Jack Kirby will be resurrected to draw it, Jim Shooter will do the usual sensitive treatment of the story, and it will be promoted with antique souvenir bullet casings from Katyn Forest.