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Moldovan leader refuses to annul Soviet Occupation Day
Published: 28 June, 2010, 17:16
Edited: 30 June, 2010, 18:36
Moldova’s acting President and Parliament Speaker Mihai Ghimpu, known for his sweeping pro-Romanian rhetoric and policies, said he would not annul his decree declaring June 28 Soviet Occupation Day.
It's like the FIFA world cup; was it over the line, was it not, was it offside was it not. But unlike the world cup, there's no crowd watching or caring - quite sad really! Just a load of Balls. But maybe a better approach would be the circus -'He's behind you' and get the kids cheering! The Moldovian National Circus - I suppose now the Ukrainian one is disbanded, the region is missing a bunch of clowns and a good laugh!
Your analogy is flawed, CountCash. It capitalises on mistaken umpiring that sometimes happen in football, but these are mistakes based on clear, consistent and unchanging rules. There are no consistent rules in Russia’s judgment of its Soviet past. For example, the Russian Federation is not consistently heir of the Soviet Union – Soviet successes are enthusiastically embraced and celebrated as Russian successes, but Soviet crimes miraculously become the deeds of an alien, non-existent country, and have nothing to do with Russia. The same with Soviet heroes and villains. Gagarin, for example, continues to be celebrated as the quintessential Russian; the imprisoners, torturers, deporters and killers of Baltic women and children are seemingly not Russian at all, and worse, not a one of them has been convicted and punished by the Russian establishment like Gagarin has been celebrated and heroized. Or take monuments. When Estonia respectfully moves a monument of Stalinist oppression from downtown Tallinn to a dignified military cemetery a few kilometres away and rededicates it as a memorial to all the victims of all wars in Estonia, Russians and Estonians included, Russian outrages reaches to the skies. But when Russians from 1945 onwards systematically destroyed (not relocated, but destroyed) monuments to the Estonian fallen in its 1918-20 War of Independence, that evokes absolutely zero reaction in Russia. It’s as if two entirely different sets of rules and standards apply. There are many similar examples I could cite. Your analogy would be more apt if you evoked a football game in which the umpire applied the rules precisely, but an entirely different set of rules applied to each team. Such Russian behaviour is extremely unlovely to non-Russians.
Leaving aside the question of whether or not Moldova suffered a Soviet occupation, Russia needs to grow out of its schizophrenic self-perceptions. Whenever Soviet successes are under discussion, Russia enthusiastically embraces these as its very own and celebrates these to the skies, like each May in Moscow. Yet whenever Soviet crimes are on the agenda, Russia gets absolutely livid and emphatically tells all and sundry that the Soviet Union and Russia were/are two entirely separate and distinct countries. Make up your mind, Russia – you can’t have it both ways at once. If Moldova was occupied by the Soviet Union, why does Russia get upset at that idea – what has the Soviet Union got to do with Russia? If the answer is, “nothing,” then what business does Russia have ostentatiously celebrating the Soviet victory of WW2? But what really takes the prize is the Russian Foreign Ministry’s grandiously pompous description of Moldova’s reference to a Soviet occupation as “blasphemous”. I thought blasphemy was an offense against God. It seems that Russia’s identity crisis goes well beyond just a Soviet/not Soviet question.