So it's not a clear-cut picture. Stalin was a vile dictator, but he did a lot of GOOD things for the country.
As for WWII - Stalin's incompetence did result in some of great military blunders, but mostly he delegated authority to generals (and he was not destroying morale during WWII - on the contrary, he restored some of the older Orthodox Church). In the end, I don't think Nazis could have won over the USSR - the USSR had a lot more industrial power than Germany and a lot of strategic depth (Retreat a couple thousand kilometers? No problem - just read about evacuation of factories to Siberia).
Read a bit further into the history of Estonia. It was a part of Russian Empire before 1918.
But still, most part of Ukraine is made from Russian-speaking people (I _live_ in Ukraine and I never had a problem with my Russian language - almost everybody understands it). Still, Ukraine is not a part of Russia.
Lithuania granted citizenship to Russian-speakers as did Ukraine, Belorussia and generally all other xUSSR-countries. I don't see them rushing back into the Russian Federation.
There's a large difference between 'pick up some basics' and 'pass advanced language test'.
I don't have any problems with Finland (it's the birthplace of Linus Torvalds, after all) - you fought hard and managed to keep independence.
But Estonian politicians just disgust me. Estonia never really fought for its independence, both time independence was granted and they surrendered to USSR without a fight.
1. Not much. Somehow people forget, that it was a Nazi policy to exterminate Slavic people along with the Jews. And Estonia gladly took part in extermination, BTW (http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101/399/16745 _Baltic.html).
2. Autonomous Soviet Socialistic Estonian Republic had Estonian as a state language even during the peak of Russification. People were not required to learn Russian. The Great Independent Estonia even denied citizenship to Russians.
3. There's not much you can do to bury (mostly civilian) people killed by Nazi forces.
I currently live in Ukraine (I have a double citizenship: Ukrainian and Russian). It's a complex subject, nationalists are mostly moved by revanchism.
There's nothing wrong with Estonians wanting to move a memorial. But they should be prepared for consequences, and such actions in the past could have been used as a causus belli.
And don't give me crap about 'sovereign nations'. There's no such thing - USA demonstrated this. Only power and force matters.
Russians made the biggest part of USSR army. Belorussians, Armenians and some Ukrainians were also referred to as 'Russians' in WWII.
As for monuments... Well, Ukrainian nationalists in L'vov are going to remove Soviet war memorial: http://www.nr2.ru/lvov/118316.html (and already removed memorials to a famous Russian WWII spy). Poland also wants to remove all of the USSR memorials.
That's why I think it's important to show to all estonias of this world that Russia does care about war memorials.
BTW, Hungary was not 'indifferent' to which side won the WWII. They fought on the side of Axis for the most part of the war.
The problem is that Estonia now behaves EXACTLY like USSR did.
For example, about 30% of Russian-speaking people in Estonia do not have citizenship (they are 'aliens'). Russian schools are continuously pressured etc.
Russia lost 30 millions (yes, millions) of people in WWII - there's no WAY to recover all dead bodies, unfortunately. But there's still about 300 active salvage parties in Russia, they search for remains of dead soldiers, identify them and then rebury with military honors.
I know about 'export' (I've been using Subversion since 0.24 alpha, AFAIR:) ). But usually you need to tweak something directly inside/etc, check if it works and then commit the fix to repository.
Exporting and importing changes to working copy leads to more errors (if you forget to delete a file from repo, etc.).
Grep doesn't have a problem with/etc size, but.svn directories store the pristine copies of controlled files. So you'll get TWO matches instead of one.
SVK is built on top of SVN and written in Perl. It works pretty much everywhere, but you don't get nice GUI clients for it.
Subversion is the ideal solution - because it needs a lot of junk in.svn directories:( And it can mess with some scripts that do recursive grep or something similar.
SVK is better, but it is not as widely supported as SVN.
No, really BAD admins start fire in the building to cause a complete emergency evacuation of the building. Of course, during evacuation some people (the ones who read Slashdot, by sheer coincidence) do not make it to the fire escape.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm speaking about earlier period (when Stalin did most of his 'purges').
t _Union_(1927-1953)#Industrialization_in_practice with his ruthless methods. And I agree with historians who think that such a feat could not have been possible without Stalin's harsh measures.
You see, in the end of 20-s the USSR had very little industrial power. Stalin managed to build up industrial base very quickly - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Sovie
So it's not a clear-cut picture. Stalin was a vile dictator, but he did a lot of GOOD things for the country.
As for WWII - Stalin's incompetence did result in some of great military blunders, but mostly he delegated authority to generals (and he was not destroying morale during WWII - on the contrary, he restored some of the older Orthodox Church). In the end, I don't think Nazis could have won over the USSR - the USSR had a lot more industrial power than Germany and a lot of strategic depth (Retreat a couple thousand kilometers? No problem - just read about evacuation of factories to Siberia).
He was not shot by a firing squad, he was assassinated. Completely different things.
Read a bit further into the history of Estonia. It was a part of Russian Empire before 1918.
But still, most part of Ukraine is made from Russian-speaking people (I _live_ in Ukraine and I never had a problem with my Russian language - almost everybody understands it). Still, Ukraine is not a part of Russia.
Lithuania granted citizenship to Russian-speakers as did Ukraine, Belorussia and generally all other xUSSR-countries. I don't see them rushing back into the Russian Federation.
It's interesting to note, that Lithuania is also the only baltic country which has fought for independence in early 90-s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius_massacre
Well, Russian-speaking minority in Estonia can safely say that Estonia occupied them. For one, they were denied citizenship.
There's a large difference between 'pick up some basics' and 'pass advanced language test'. I don't have any problems with Finland (it's the birthplace of Linus Torvalds, after all) - you fought hard and managed to keep independence. But Estonian politicians just disgust me. Estonia never really fought for its independence, both time independence was granted and they surrendered to USSR without a fight.
There's a small difference. Russian-speaking people often lived for decades in Estonia, they were not immigrants.
Sure, I agree with this.
But I don't think that USSR could have won the WWII without Stalin's earlier industrialization of Russia.
You can also say that Abraham Lincoln should have been shot for starting The American Civil War.
1. Not much. Somehow people forget, that it was a Nazi policy to exterminate Slavic people along with the Jews. And Estonia gladly took part in extermination, BTW (http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101/399/16745 _Baltic.html).
2. Autonomous Soviet Socialistic Estonian Republic had Estonian as a state language even during the peak of Russification. People were not required to learn Russian. The Great Independent Estonia even denied citizenship to Russians.
3. There's not much you can do to bury (mostly civilian) people killed by Nazi forces.
I currently live in Ukraine (I have a double citizenship: Ukrainian and Russian). It's a complex subject, nationalists are mostly moved by revanchism.
There's nothing wrong with Estonians wanting to move a memorial. But they should be prepared for consequences, and such actions in the past could have been used as a causus belli.
And don't give me crap about 'sovereign nations'. There's no such thing - USA demonstrated this. Only power and force matters.
I meant that granting Estonia independence in 1918 was a mistake of the early communists. Stalin was merely undoing this mistake.
As for 'vile dictator'... Europe would have been conquered completely if it was not for USSR.
But there's no such thing as a gratitude in international politics. Russia understood this well in 90-s.
Russians made the biggest part of USSR army. Belorussians, Armenians and some Ukrainians were also referred to as 'Russians' in WWII.
As for monuments... Well, Ukrainian nationalists in L'vov are going to remove Soviet war memorial: http://www.nr2.ru/lvov/118316.html (and already removed memorials to a famous Russian WWII spy). Poland also wants to remove all of the USSR memorials.
That's why I think it's important to show to all estonias of this world that Russia does care about war memorials.
BTW, Hungary was not 'indifferent' to which side won the WWII. They fought on the side of Axis for the most part of the war.
No, they were not!
They were required to pass Estonian language and history exam. They were NOT granted citizenship automatically.
The problem is that Estonia now behaves EXACTLY like USSR did.
For example, about 30% of Russian-speaking people in Estonia do not have citizenship (they are 'aliens'). Russian schools are continuously pressured etc.
Be careful with your words.
Russia lost 30 millions (yes, millions) of people in WWII - there's no WAY to recover all dead bodies, unfortunately. But there's still about 300 active salvage parties in Russia, they search for remains of dead soldiers, identify them and then rebury with military honors.
How dare you call it 'occupation'??
Stalin was just undoing mistakes of his predecessors - including giving independency from Russian Empire to Estonia in 1918.
OpenVZ allows you to set CPU and RAM quotas, and in my experience they work just fine.
OpenVZ also has a very distinct advantage - all processes in guest VEs are visible to the tools on the main host.
I see it happening only after the global patent war. I don't think that anything less than that can move Congress to revise the patent law.
It's the Global Thermopatentular War! Let the shooting begin!
I'm a big fan of MAD, so we shall see how Microsoft, IBM and other big companies will mutually destroy themselves with patent lawsuits.
Yet one more reason not to wear pants :)
And, personally, I prefer to minimize number of 'failure points' in my workflow. I take Murhpy's laws very seriously.
I know about 'export' (I've been using Subversion since 0.24 alpha, AFAIR :) ). But usually you need to tweak something directly inside /etc, check if it works and then commit the fix to repository.
Exporting and importing changes to working copy leads to more errors (if you forget to delete a file from repo, etc.).
Why do you think that I'm protecting CVS?
I don't like --exclude because it leads to more typing and also can lead to errors if you forget to add it.
Grep doesn't have a problem with /etc size, but .svn directories store the pristine copies of controlled files. So you'll get TWO matches instead of one.
SVK is built on top of SVN and written in Perl. It works pretty much everywhere, but you don't get nice GUI clients for it.
Subversion is the ideal solution - because it needs a lot of junk in .svn directories :( And it can mess with some scripts that do recursive grep or something similar.
SVK is better, but it is not as widely supported as SVN.
No, really BAD admins start fire in the building to cause a complete emergency evacuation of the building. Of course, during evacuation some people (the ones who read Slashdot, by sheer coincidence) do not make it to the fire escape.
Can't allow them to browse Slashdot from home...
Well, you can always use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS
Oh wait...