thedrifter
05-10-05, 06:21 PM
STANDING BY THE LITTLE GUYS
By RALPH PETERS
May 10, 2005 -- EVERY summer, we were reminded of Soviet crimes. Each weekend brought a different ethnic festival to the Pennsylvania coal towns. Whatever our family heritage, we gathered to eat kielbasa and pierogis, blinis and halupkies.
Folk-dance clubs from Saint This-or-That sweated through their costumes while accordions gasped. The adults drank beer all day and into the night.
But there was more. At a table between the beer tent and the ice-cream stand, a Lithuanian priest sold books on the armed resistance against the Soviets. Texts recounted the deeds of partisans who refused to lay down their arms when World War II ended.
As a polka band played across the park, Polish-Americans handed out pamphlets that kept the dream of a free nation alive. When their weekend arrived, Ukrainians lionized the freedom fighters who battled Stalin's commissars right into the 1950s.
Their tortured homelands remained alive in America, in church basements and parochial schools, in bars and at mass. The small-but-stubborn light of freedom burned against the Soviet darkness.
Those summer weekends shaped my life. As an Army officer, I would travel through the decomposing Soviet Union, then witness the strife Moscow instigated in the empire it had lost.
In Latvia in 1990, the Soviet Union still ruled. Nominally. But the Latvians and their Baltic neighbors had already grabbed freedom with both hands. And they weren't going to let go.
In the jewel-box city of Riga, a new museum chronicling Communist atrocities was second only to Auschwitz in its gut-punch power. Other exhibitions celebrated Latvia's cultural renaissance between the world wars, an astonishing display of creativity crushed by the Red Army.
The Nazis had come after the Soviets. Then the Russians returned. A third of Latvia's population perished - executed, starved or devoured by the Gulag - a loss rate comparable to the ravages of the Black Death. Latvian men were beaten or shot for the crime of wearing eyeglasses - intellectuals were dangerous. Rape was used to break the people's will. The secret police settled in, imposing bureaucratic order on oppression. By the time I arrived, no Latvian wanted to speak Russian to me, preferring to stumble along in English or even German.
A few years later, during a brief thaw with Moscow, I got inside the Russian military archives and held the map Molotov and Ribbentrop used to negotiate their pact. Poland had been divided with a crayon, Baltic freedom ended with a scrawl.
My travels took me to Georgia, too, a land of stunning mountains and daunting hospitality. Centuries before, the Georgians had welcomed the czar's armies as fellow Christians and allies against Turkish and Persian invaders. But the Georgians didn't want any part of the Bolsheviks. The Red Cavalry crushed the people's dreams of freedom under their hooves.
Contrary to Vladimir Putin's grotesque claim, the collapse of the Soviet Union was no tragedy. It was a triumph for humankind. But Moscow's malevolence didn't end in 1991. I saw first-hand how the Russian security services worked to cripple newly independent states, with special efforts made to divide the Caucasus. Chechnya was only the bloodiest of Moscow's many crimes.
The "new, democratic" Russia tried to dismember Georgia. For a decade, Georgians suffered from weak governments, Kremlin interference and unwanted Russian garrisons. The state became a kleptocracy.
At last, the people took matters into their own hands, staging a peaceful revolution that inspired later uprisings as far away as Lebanon.
But Moscow hasn't given up. It still regards the entire former Soviet empire as its "legitimate sphere of influence." As always, Russia's ambitions are mightier than its resources. If the world looks away, the results will again be tragic.
That's why President Bush's visits to Latvia and Georgia were vital. America finally took a stand against Russia's renewed aggression.
To us, these were brief stops, minor footnotes to history. But to the people of the Baltic states and the Caucasus, they confirmed their right to independence. Our president didn't mince words. He denounced the tragic outcome of the Yalta summit and stated clearly that the Soviets had been unwanted occupiers.
Bush's words and deeds mattered immensely. We must make up for time lost during the Clinton years, when incompetent "friends of Bill" insisted that our future lay with Russia - which was bound to become a model democracy. The newly independent states were treated as nuisances. And Moscow began to lust for a restored empire.
While cooperating rationally with Moscow, Bush made a vital course correction. First by supporting popular revolutions in Ukraine and Kyrgystan, and now by digging his heels into the soil of two brave countries - despite the Kremlin's protests. Our president brought us back to the American tradition of sticking up for the little guy.
When Bush stood on the reviewing stand with Putin, he honored the single positive achievement of the Soviet era, the defeat of Nazi Germany. But when he bracketed the Kremlin's circus of nostalgia with visits to Latvia and Georgia, he honored something far greater: the triumph of freedom.
Ralph Peters is a regular Post contributor.
Ellie
By RALPH PETERS
May 10, 2005 -- EVERY summer, we were reminded of Soviet crimes. Each weekend brought a different ethnic festival to the Pennsylvania coal towns. Whatever our family heritage, we gathered to eat kielbasa and pierogis, blinis and halupkies.
Folk-dance clubs from Saint This-or-That sweated through their costumes while accordions gasped. The adults drank beer all day and into the night.
But there was more. At a table between the beer tent and the ice-cream stand, a Lithuanian priest sold books on the armed resistance against the Soviets. Texts recounted the deeds of partisans who refused to lay down their arms when World War II ended.
As a polka band played across the park, Polish-Americans handed out pamphlets that kept the dream of a free nation alive. When their weekend arrived, Ukrainians lionized the freedom fighters who battled Stalin's commissars right into the 1950s.
Their tortured homelands remained alive in America, in church basements and parochial schools, in bars and at mass. The small-but-stubborn light of freedom burned against the Soviet darkness.
Those summer weekends shaped my life. As an Army officer, I would travel through the decomposing Soviet Union, then witness the strife Moscow instigated in the empire it had lost.
In Latvia in 1990, the Soviet Union still ruled. Nominally. But the Latvians and their Baltic neighbors had already grabbed freedom with both hands. And they weren't going to let go.
In the jewel-box city of Riga, a new museum chronicling Communist atrocities was second only to Auschwitz in its gut-punch power. Other exhibitions celebrated Latvia's cultural renaissance between the world wars, an astonishing display of creativity crushed by the Red Army.
The Nazis had come after the Soviets. Then the Russians returned. A third of Latvia's population perished - executed, starved or devoured by the Gulag - a loss rate comparable to the ravages of the Black Death. Latvian men were beaten or shot for the crime of wearing eyeglasses - intellectuals were dangerous. Rape was used to break the people's will. The secret police settled in, imposing bureaucratic order on oppression. By the time I arrived, no Latvian wanted to speak Russian to me, preferring to stumble along in English or even German.
A few years later, during a brief thaw with Moscow, I got inside the Russian military archives and held the map Molotov and Ribbentrop used to negotiate their pact. Poland had been divided with a crayon, Baltic freedom ended with a scrawl.
My travels took me to Georgia, too, a land of stunning mountains and daunting hospitality. Centuries before, the Georgians had welcomed the czar's armies as fellow Christians and allies against Turkish and Persian invaders. But the Georgians didn't want any part of the Bolsheviks. The Red Cavalry crushed the people's dreams of freedom under their hooves.
Contrary to Vladimir Putin's grotesque claim, the collapse of the Soviet Union was no tragedy. It was a triumph for humankind. But Moscow's malevolence didn't end in 1991. I saw first-hand how the Russian security services worked to cripple newly independent states, with special efforts made to divide the Caucasus. Chechnya was only the bloodiest of Moscow's many crimes.
The "new, democratic" Russia tried to dismember Georgia. For a decade, Georgians suffered from weak governments, Kremlin interference and unwanted Russian garrisons. The state became a kleptocracy.
At last, the people took matters into their own hands, staging a peaceful revolution that inspired later uprisings as far away as Lebanon.
But Moscow hasn't given up. It still regards the entire former Soviet empire as its "legitimate sphere of influence." As always, Russia's ambitions are mightier than its resources. If the world looks away, the results will again be tragic.
That's why President Bush's visits to Latvia and Georgia were vital. America finally took a stand against Russia's renewed aggression.
To us, these were brief stops, minor footnotes to history. But to the people of the Baltic states and the Caucasus, they confirmed their right to independence. Our president didn't mince words. He denounced the tragic outcome of the Yalta summit and stated clearly that the Soviets had been unwanted occupiers.
Bush's words and deeds mattered immensely. We must make up for time lost during the Clinton years, when incompetent "friends of Bill" insisted that our future lay with Russia - which was bound to become a model democracy. The newly independent states were treated as nuisances. And Moscow began to lust for a restored empire.
While cooperating rationally with Moscow, Bush made a vital course correction. First by supporting popular revolutions in Ukraine and Kyrgystan, and now by digging his heels into the soil of two brave countries - despite the Kremlin's protests. Our president brought us back to the American tradition of sticking up for the little guy.
When Bush stood on the reviewing stand with Putin, he honored the single positive achievement of the Soviet era, the defeat of Nazi Germany. But when he bracketed the Kremlin's circus of nostalgia with visits to Latvia and Georgia, he honored something far greater: the triumph of freedom.
Ralph Peters is a regular Post contributor.
Ellie