Br'er Tim and the Bug Hole

[Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM]

Robert Hettinga <rah at shipwright.com> writes:
> 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.

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Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps