Robert Hettinga
I mean, Stalin went out and deliberately created these "ethnic" republics where none existed before, (or where at least the czars had done a reasonable job of repressing ethnicity for centuries before that) and we
Bzzt! Armenians killed 2 million Moslems under the tzars. In 1918, the borders of the newly independent state of the Ukraine were defined by the occupying Germans as "the farthest the German army reached East", which is how borders were often defined historically, but then Stalin pretended that it had something to do with an "ethnic" Uke republic.
all know what that "diversity" program did to the Soviet Union after communism, and even to Russia today in places like Chechnaya. Fortunately, lots of the former Soviet "republics", Kazakhstan, Mongolia (though not officially a Soviet republic still a vassal state), etc., are pretty stable. Homogeneous populations, again.
I suggest you look up a standard reference, like the CIA world book, before trying to show off your phoney expertise and looking like an ignorant fool. Almost half of Kazakhstan's population are Russians and Ukrainians (many of them moved there after Kazakhstan's borders were drawn). They're not shooting right now, although there has been occasional interethnic violence already (aimed not at Russians, but at some of the ethnic minorities that Stalin forcibly exciled to Kazakhstan after WWI). "Homogeneous" my ass. They're certain to have either a civil war (if the Slavs want to rejoin Russia and the Moslems want an Islamic state) or have a real shooting war with one or more neighbors over the Caspian oil within 30 years. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps