What am I talking about? The reunification of the Soviet Union. It officially (but not de facto) occurred on 12/8/99 with the re-unification of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation into the Union State, however then-President Putin backed off, stalling Belarus' incorporation into the new country while also putting other breakaway republic's applications on hold.

As of late however, this has started to change. De facto shared citizenship has been established, starting last year, the RF started looking to Georgia's breakaway republics and their applications to join the new country, going so far as to grant South Ossetia observer status in Parliament and Belarus and Russia also started to merge their militaries. And just yesterday, Prime Minister/Chairman of the Council of Ministers Putin, met with the State Secretary, Supreme State Council and Council of Ministers in the capital, Minsk (and I'm surprised it's not Moscow) to discuss the 2010 budget, integration, expansion and a provisional consitution.

Throw in Belarus still operating on the Stalinist model, Russia restoring most Soviet symbols and most pro-US Russians wanting to model it on the USSR and I think it's obvious what's happening.

Thoughts?

Russia is restoring Soviet symbols?

Reagan would rollover in his grave.

Though to be honest, I don't see any actual Soviet Union coming back ever. Maybe some more unity with a few old soviet republics (namely Russia and Belarus) but nations in the Warsaw Pact are mostly in NATO now and the Ukraine seems to be going in that direction too. So the new Soviet Union would probably just be Belarus and Russia, because I can't think of any other former soviet republics really wanting to form into the Soviet Union at all.


In any event, I don't see an issue with what Belarus and Russia are doing, NATO nations have been doing similar things for a long time, what's the problem?

It might happen with a few countries and provinces, but most will only merge with Russia if they are forcefully annexed, just as was necessary when the Soviet Union first grew. The Baltic states, the western Ukraine, and the Caucasus for instance have no desire to be unified with Russia. I'm not sure about Central Asia, but my guess is they aren't too keen on the idea either.

Considering Russia has been turning away applicants, I have to disagree with you. But the republics that joined the EU are lost without conquest, I'll give you that. Ukraine could also be partitioned, the eastern 1/2 is sufficiently pro-Russia for this to happen.

The Soviet Union is dead, mainly because Russia is now staunchly capitalist and will never return to the days of food shortages and gulags (I hope), but Putin is a big fan of Imperial Russia, which owned all the lands in the first place.

I can see Kazakhstan perhaps being included into a new Russia, since it's practically a Russian state, and has a close relationship with Russia. I'm not so sure about the other Central Asian states. They might be rather ambivalent to rejoining with Russia.

Form what I've read, 70% of Russians want the USSR restored and Belarus is begging to be fully integrated into the US aka annexed.

Don't forget this part of the conspiracy theory.
As for whether there's any validity in the theory, I don't know. They won't use communism as justification for their authoritarian regime again, but Putin is a bit of an autocratic imperialist.

The Soviet Union occurred because of an economically and ideologically vibrant Russia that easily expanded into an Eastern Europe devastated by horrible wars and extreme poverty. I don't quite see that happening again.

Personally, I'm more concerned of Russia's involvement in central Asia than east Europe. And I'm not really talking about Georgia here, but rather the several stan's.

Aside from Belarus, I agree. They've joined the EU, short of conquest they're lost.

Russia is doing what it is now because of a misguided concept over what capitalism is based on their strong nationalism and the idea from Communism that you need to build industry to compete with the US.

Because of this they are building domestic monopolies in order to use them as an arm of the state, which, as I said, isn't the POINT of capitalism, nor is it the point of growth.

In Soviet Russia, etc.

In essence, Russia is sticking to its old Byzantine/Imperial roots. And, typical in Russian history, the rich and powerful get it all, while the poor suffer economically bad (Moscow is practically an elite-only city when the numerous billionaires moved in and forced out the middle class). Typical Russian despotism, now with a laissez-faire Capitalist facade.

It's truly incredible what a nation can accomplish if it has absolutely no regard for the welfare of its citizens

this isn't the reformation of the soviet union. It's the reformation of the Russian Empire

Vibrant is a curious term for the Soviet Union.

I think Lam's got it, though the distinction between the two is pretty blurred.

Well, they learned from the Mongols; before the Mongol invasion, Russia (as Kievan Rus) was a very democratic and free, if not fractured (after the death of St. Vladimir), society with free trade as a general idea. It was basically a corporation/trading company that owned a huge swath of land, whose rulers, descended from Riurik, became landed nobles but still valued liberty despite becoming aristocrats and despite the family feuding going on between the princes. After Mongols introduced their form of despotic rule that saw no value in human life or personal liberty, the princes of Muscovy thought it was an excellent idea to implement themselves; they were the ones to unify Russia, and had it been Veliky Novgorod that came out on top instead of Muscovy, we'd have a Russia today that was actually more democratic. Novgorod made sure that its ruling Riurikid princes had little power at all, and was in actuality ruled by the veche, or popular assembly (This article is specifically on Novgorod's).



This.

Looks like the old empire my ancestors emigrated from is being revived in my lifetime. I think Putin and the main government officials are friendly with the current Romanov pretenders of the throne. I don't think they'll necessarily reinstate them.

Personally, I've always viewed the USSR as the 20th century version of the Russian Empire. Absolute monarchy was going out of fashion, so they switched to Bolshevist dictatorship.

It's kind of a shame that the existence of the USSR as a "communist state" (lol) has given the political position so much stigma that the average person equates Marxism with mass-murder.

Marx was to Bolshevism what Nietzsche was to National Socialism. The ideology did not adhere to the man's wishes, but clear ideological and philosophical influences were detectable in the rationales that were used, allowing political opponents to use their actions to tarnish his reputation. And so his legacy will forever remain entwined with those who wrought so much destruction in his name.

Well, the USSR's foreign policy is absolutely a continuation of Russia's. The differing ideology didn't change their goals, nor did it change how realistically they saw the world. Personally, I think that had the USSR been a slight more idealistic they would have gained the strategic advantage Communism gave.

You should see the light.

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2007/si...et-union-p1.php

I KNEW IT!

SSSR eto ochen horosho (argh, no cyrillic + n00b at Russian). <3

That video always makes me laugh

Wait, I thought the current Romanov throne-holder was somebody actually from the Romanov line. Not the one that got killed during the Russian Revolution (None of them survived that), but some brother or uncle of Nick that survived and had kids.

Also, I'm just trying to clear up what I know, I am hardly a supporter of monarchies.

I think you're confused by the term pretender.

Must...crush...Capitalism. One of the most memorable scenes in the Simpsons.



SSSR nye khorosho... eto khoroshaya (Respublika nye muzhovnoye slovo). Nu, SSSR - velikaya rodina!

(My Russian is a bit underused, so I might be wrong in that statement too, lol)



I think New Inca Empire cleared it up. Pretender means any legitimate claimant to an abolished throne or a currently occupied one as in the case of the Carlist claimants to the Spanish throne or the Jacobite claimants to the English and Scottish thrones. The current two main pretenders to the Russian throne are indeed direct Romanov claimants. The pretender closest related to Nikolai II is disputed by the other distant Romanovs, whom claim her father's marriage might possibly have been morganatic (despite the fact that her mother descends from the Bagrationi dynasty of Georgia, albeit on a distant cadet branch from their main line of pretendence).

SSSR ends with a consonant, so wouldn't it be masculine, not feminine?

No, SSSR is an abbreviation for Soyuz...

.... oh yeah, you are right, crap. Soyuz is the main noun in it, and since it's masculine, the adjective applied to the abbreviation should be masculine.

Shame my family is a few generations away from its Ukrainian/Russian-speaking past, otherwise I wouldn't make an elementary mistake. Having not used it much since my last class in it a few months back doesn't really help either.

I guess it's all perspective ... because of its continued reliance on central authoritarian government, I see Russia as little more than a giant Third World country barely sustained by energy revenues, but continuously threatened by ethnic strife:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9102904842.html