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Lithuania's [1991] False Flag Counter-Revolution (www.kitklarenberg.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by davel@lemmygrad.ml to c/europe@lemmygrad.ml
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[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Great journalism work by Sapozhnikova and very good summary by Klarenberg. A lot of people always suspected CIA involvement in the counter-revolutions in the Baltics, it's nice to finally have definitive confirmation that it was a deliberately orchestrated Maidan-style color revolution with a false flag.

Love how the reason some people gave for only coming clean now is "we wanted independence so we were ok with lying, but it turned out independence was even worse". Yeah, no shit. Traitors and stupid.

[–] Red_Scare@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I think even without false flag operations it would be difficult to keep Baltics within the USSR for long, from what I know they were the only ones where significant part of the population hated USSR and never accepted it.

Having grown up in the Soviet Ukraine and having visited Soviet Latvia a couple times (mom's best friend lived there), lots of people in the Baltics really didn't want to be in the USSR and considered themselves occupied by Russia, unlike people in Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldavia, etc.

In Baltics it was common that people on the street would refuse to speak Russian even if you only asked how to get to the train station (despite learning Russian in schools), something that only started happening in Ukraine or Georgia after decades of Western propaganda (and still it's pretty much only people who grew up on Western propaganda who behave like that, people who grew up in the USSR still mostly consider all Soviets brotherly nations).

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I think even without false flag operations it would be difficult to keep Baltics within the USSR for long, from what I know they were the only ones where significant part of the population hated USSR and never accepted it.

I don't think so. There was and still is a significant Russian speaking portion of the population in the Baltics, and a lot of support for the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution came from the Baltics. The extreme anti-Soviet attitudes you would have encountered in the 80s were not as prevalent earlier on. The problem is that the anti-Soviet propaganda, first by the Nazis and later by the West, started much earlier in the Baltics. The largely autonomous governments of the Baltic republics were very lax in combating western infiltration and nationalist subversion, while Moscow never paid much attention, or, in the case of the treasonous Gorbachev clique, deliberately ignored the problem. This was a general problem that went further than just the Baltics, in that insufficient attention was paid across the USSR to ideological education and establishing a Soviet national identity. The problem of the Baltics is that just like western Ukraine they were exposed to the brunt of western infiltration and agitation during the cold war, along with having a history of Nazi collaboration.

[–] Rogelio_Marciano@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

a history of Nazi collaboration

To anyone interested, I came across this while studying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aili_J%C3%B5gi

It's about a woman who blew up a Soviet monument in 1946. Turns out she later had an interesting life story which ties into modern anti-Russian sentiment.

I suspect the Werwolf plan (nazi resistance during and after the final years of the 3rd Reich) tied into Operation Gladio as well.

Also, reflection on Uncle Stalin during WW2. When your country is literally surrounded by fascists and nazi collaborators, wtf are you supposed to do? Modern Euros conveniently forget that practically every government was fash around 1940 and therefore all antifa resistance was legitimate. Hell, Germany invading Poland is a nazi dictatorship attacking a military/fashy dictatorship. Since we had Franco in Spain, I don't have to put 2 and 2 together to know how "barracks democracy" works. Ffs, Poland even had Falanga, a copy of Falange. And of course it is now a crime to remind modern Poles on the anti-semitic crimes committed by Poles.

[–] Red_Scare@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I followed the link and read that they call liberation of Estonia from the Nazi occupation a "Soviet re-occupation" in Wikipedia. This is a disgrace.

[–] Rogelio_Marciano@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago

Oh yes, nothing surprising from Jimmy Wales, who thinks capitalism is bad but communism is worse. Both-siding but punching left harder than right.

Although I'm surprised about the gulags article. According to that, only 8.8% of inmates lost their lives (2.5 M out of 18 M). Looks like nobody takes Stéphane Courtois (The Black Book of Communism) seriously anymore.

For reference, between 60 and 90% of concentration camp inmates were murdered by nazis. Gulags were meant to re-educate, not kill, but abuses took place. Nazi camps were meant to exterminate.

[–] Богданова@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

While you're not wrong that there were protests in the city against Russians, telling them fuck off and go home and people were discouraged to speak Russian, refused to do so. There is no such thing as "Baltic people" Some areas are quite phobic, others less so, we still have ones where overwhelming majority speak Russian. And like I have gotten weird looks at school when my babushka once took me to school and everyone started talking about "omg her grandma speaks Russian :O" so I'm not gonna sit here and pretend like it's totally not a thing. ofc it has been even outside of the setup protests.

But it's quite complicated and in general people are pretty segregated along class and identity lines. But that's like liberalism they love segregating. In general the population has become totally pacified, the only constant thing everyone I've ever run into has in agreement is that Politicians are corrupt cockroaches who can't be trusted and nobody will do anything to stop them.

Another issue is that a lot of the most pro-soviet places have been obliterated by free market economics and de-industrialization. Pretty much completely erased from history. Like we literally had people burn books to stay warm in their homes after free market came in and sold off parts of the system, that were keeping people's homes heated. And this is like relatively tame all things considered I can't imagine the horror show people in Korea f.ex must have experienced.

[–] Red_Scare@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I didn't mean to suggest Baltic states are one people! And of course I'm aware of class and social differences. I lived through much of shock therapy suffering you mention, I wish we could talk in person, I have lots of thoughts I'm not sure how to put into writing...

I think culturally, from Catholicism and Lutheranism to Latin script to just architecture surrounding them in their cities, people in Baltic states feel European in the way Ukrainians, Moldovans, and Georgians simply can't.

I remember a lot of late-Soviet Russians coopting reactionary language - when state informed them of the crimes South African whites commited on the black population, Russians would say "aren't we whites too?" which was of course in part a joke, but there was an underlying sense of entitlement to be the oppressor, to be the slave master. I bet you'd find less of that in the Eastern republics where people still remembered living under Russian Empire yoke and had less reason to self-identify as prospective oppressors. When in the referendum Russians voted lowest of all the republics in support of preserving the USSR (except Baltic republics), I think this is a large part of the reason why (also worth mentioning Eastern republics voted by far the highest to preserve it). It's the feeling of belonging to a powerful, respected, "cultured" nation that deserves more than the plebs around them. I think Hungarians, Poles, Czechs, and Balts had even stronger claim to proper "Whiteness". Ukrainians on the other hand needed much more mental gymnastics to devise a theory where Russians were "Mongolised" since medieval times and Ukrainians were the only "pure" Slavs which also somehow made them essentially Nordics... They managed of course, but it was laborious.

Again I wish we could talk in person cause I can see I'm fumbling.

[–] Богданова@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I would like to say more, but there's like weird shit happening, like explosions at eternal flame memorials and part of me is scared the US aligned nationalists might drag everyone into a grave.

[–] davel@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 weeks ago

Off-topic, but I don’t think I’ve encountered a non-ASCII username on Lemmy before. There seems to be a subtle bug in the default web UI where this generates an error: https://lemmygrad.ml/u/%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0
while this doesn’t: https://lemmygrad.ml/u/%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0@lemmygrad.ml