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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: More double standards
Message-ID: <359@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Nov-85 15:15:17 EST
Article-I.D.: ubvax.359
Posted: Thu Nov 14 15:15:17 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Nov-85 21:24:42 EST
References: <544@qantel.UUCP> <7800608@inmet.UUCP> <1576@teddy.UUCP> <776@mmintl.UUCP>
Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, Ca.
Lines: 55

In article <776@mmintl.UUCP> franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) writes:
>What American empire?  The U.S. is a large country, but that doesn't make
>it an empire.  Culturally and socially, it is a unit -- not totally
>lacking regional diversity, but relatively so.  The same applies to China,
>with the exception of Tibet, which is occupied territoritory.
>(Historically, China was an empire, but successfully imposed its culture
>on much of the occupied territory.  Most of the exceptions, such as
>Korea, are today independent.)
>
>Russia today, however, has a dominant Russian culture, which rules a variety
>of subject peoples of diverse cultures -- the various central Asian
>Moslem peoples, Ukrainians, Georgians, and the nations of eastern Europe.
>This is an empire.
>
>(India, by the way, is not an empire because of the lack of a dominant
>culture.  It isn't overwhelmingly stable, either.)
>
>Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
>Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108

Wow.   Sounds so pellucid.  The US is a unit?  Harlem, El Paso, New Berne,
San Francisco, Charleston, Atlanta, Miami are similar, culturally and
socially?  Mississippi and Massachusetts similar?  "relatively so?"

And if the US has successfully "imposed" its culture, it was imposed by
the extermination of the Indians as a culture.  "Russia" did much less.

I also don't think the "subject" peoples of "Russia" are any more "subject"
than Hispanics or Blacks here, to just choose two.  Especially in the
central Asian republics, where natives have a higher standard of living
than Russian immigrants, so much so that Russians are migrating
back to Russia from the CA republics.  There is no indication that
CA residents are EVER going to speak Russian as a native tongue.

So where is the "cultural" dominance?  Note, I'm not talking about
political dominance -- you have that here too; Congress is very far
from being a cross-section of the US citizenry.

As far as "dominant" culture goes, was Stalin (a Georgian) some
kind of aberrant case?  Or when crowds screamed for Kasparov during
the recent world chess championship (Kasparov is half-Jew, half-Armenian),
was that some kind of repressive tolerance on the part of the dominant
culture?

As most all journalists and experts on the Soviet Union would attest,
the vast, vast majority of residents of the USSR do not want any
other system of government than the one they have right now.
Democratic sentiments have less support than bringing Stalinism
back.

Why then do some continue to maintain that Russians have an empire
over the other Soviet republics?  I don't get it.

Tony Wuersch
{amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw