Elections are just estimates all sorts of situational factors come into play. Estimating is how you govern societies. You do the best you can to figure out policy preferences and usually those estimates are going to be pretty good. If you are wrong things change. The point is to try and align the government with the population.
Still, a proper method is to actually perform proper elections. This was not done in Crimea.
No I'm not entirely sure. But it appears the Crimean people wanted more than just material wealth, otherwise they would have supported joining the EU.
Crimea is the worst when it comes to pro-Russian propaganda. How can you expect a "free" choice from people who are receiving information pre-packaged in a certain way, and having no or very weak alternatives?
You don't see a problem with attributing pro-Ukrainian beliefs to reason and pro-Russian beliefs to brainwashing? It is hard to argue if you are going to believe that no one could possibly disagree with you based on their analysis of the plusses and minuses.
I did my research and yet to hear a good reason to join Russia or their "Customs Union", as opposed to making an alliance with EU. You are free to discuss your arguments if you feel so, or have any. Just please hesitate to make any use of cultural, language or ethnicity-based ones. I'll respond to economical, social and educational ones only.
Language is part of culture. Ethnicity is a question of identification. A French child raised in Russia would be Russian.
It appears that these days being "Russian" means you ought to obey Kremlin. Independent opinions don't matter; if you speak Russian, look Russian, you must obey Kremlin to (and be) Russian. To me, this sounds very much imperialistic, totalitarian, unintelligent and will result in yet another 20-30 years of inevitable poverty, banditism, suffering, hunger and pain for roughly 150 million of people - which is, so to speak, a standard state of things in a world governed by natural selection and evolution. How come Russians to this day can't find an escape in a higher order, so nicely exemplified by U.S. and EU ?
No it is supported by solid evidence. Ranging from polling to a referendum to street interviews to public reaction.
This so called "solid evidence" was accepted only by Russia and a number of it's satellite allies. What is called "developed world" these days did not accept their "solid evidence" as anything but a profanity. Now, who am I to trust? A country deploying military and lying each step of the way, or a union of developed countries making and reporting observations which happen to coincide with what I'm exposed to myself, living and operating in a region threatened by above-mentioned militia?
Well if you are going to attribute their views to brainwashing you can't. If on the other hand you assume that people are evaluating their circumstances and deciding based on those evaluations then you could look at things like election results.
It was Kremlin I was unable to grant with democratic values, not people of Crimea. And I'm unable to look at election results in this particular case, as most if not all democratic procedures were severely violated -
a) a list of registered voters was absent
b) no access to independent information
c) a list of options did not include an option to stay in the same state
d) there were no independent observers
e) militia was out on streets with guns
f) no independent press allowed
The grand irony of this "referendum" is that (some) people "voted" for joining a country where referendums are outlawed.
We have to estimate using the best data we have. And the best data is strong support.
.. And estimations vary drastically depending on who's estimating. What's the point of estimating then? To make oneself feel a bit better regarding something you have no definite data of ?
So far there has been very little violence. Conversely the overthrow of the pro-Russian government by the pro-Western faction was extremely violent from the start. I'm not sure how this standard doesn't cut the other way.
It surely works both ways. Over a 100 people were killed in Kyiv by Ukrainian armed forces while Yanukovich was still in power, backed up by Putin. Now, you observe all of that in your TV set for 3 months while sitting comfortably in Crimea. The killings are over, new intermediate PM is in power, etc.. And suddenly you see armed people in the streets, supported by Putin. Are you entirely sure no killings will occur in your city?
And there was violence - a lot of people were beaten, some killed, thousands had to relocate to mainland Ukraine. And who's to say that more is not to come ? Chechnya, Pridnestrovye, Abhasiya, South Osetiya - these places were captured by Russian military and not showing any signs of prosperity, long after the war aggression was over. Are you entirely sure that the Crimean people are that stupid as to not realize that the Russian troops freely walking on the streets aren't exactly the sign of the same "prosperity" coming to Crimea as well?
- a lot of Russians think Alaska should be "returned" to motherland as well.
That analogy doesn't fit because Alaskans don't want to return to Russia. They are happy to be in America. There is no harm to self determination in allowing Alaskans to remain American.
This is not an analogy. This is an example of how Russians think these days. There's a large number of Russians supporting such world views - and they were carefully brainwashed by Russian propaganda machine. I don't know how far this is going to go, but the outlook surely does not seem to be in support of freedom, self-determination and democracy - ironically enough, the very values Russians claim to support fully while erecting a new kind of hatred and outright stupidity.
Okey, so originally it was ethnicity, now it's language. You can also try perhaps the color of skin, theological views, left- or right-handedness. All of this is nothing but pure speculations.
Those 2.5m people are asking for it to be redone.
Do you realize this claim is not supported in any way, except for wild speculations?
I know lots of people in Russia they do like their life there. Obviously some want to leave. OTOH I also know Ukrainians who want to leave.
There's always plenty of "patriots", lots of people who are satisfied with what they have, and a lot of those who simply can't leave. After all, USSR dissolved only very recently. Think Africa, again - there are language barriers, educational barriers, inability to get visa, find jobs or sustain any kind of "modern" life in a modern society. Plenty of people don't even have a slightest idea what these things mean. The Russian brainwashing machine is quite successful at making people actually NOT want to have democracy, free society, separation of state and religion. For example, 30% of local municipalities in Russia do not elect mayors; they are assigned instead. Orthodox christianity taught by priests is a mandatory course in schools and universities. A "rotting EU", "gay EU", "rotting US" are popular terms even among intellectuals. Like I said before, the concrete criticism of modern Russia is enormously and dangerously rich area of discourse full of plan and simple facts.
Well yes. Polling typically changes radically when a policy proposal is on the table vs. when it is something that's only supported by a small group of activists. Once a policy is genuinely being considered you would almost always expect support to go up. The only question is how far.
I have another plausible argument - wanting something is one thing, seeing armed people and violence in the streets is quite another. There has been a lot of reports that the support for secession went down considerably prior to polls, and per unofficial (as if there are any official) results, only 34% of people attended. You see, anything beyond proper referendum is a wild guess, and we really ought not to take it into account.
The problem with international law as it exists today is that it doesn't include a right to self determination. We have a bad international law. I'd certainly agree that good international law is preferable to war but I don't agree that avoiding war is reason to give up self determination.
The funny thing is that this "self-determination" idea comes up when a certain politician wants some power and appreciation and uses nationalistic ideology to do so. It's the same as with religions, it just takes a somewhat bigger effort to get one group of people get angry with another group of people based on nationality. Still, it's doable, and Putin made a great example of just that. The Russian TV has been full of one-sided, highly skewed reports regarding everything there is to say about Ukraine, including "how bad Ukrainians are to Russians", etc. Pretty much nothing of this sort happened thus far - and I live in a Russian-speaking Odessa region, with ~30% of people of Russian descent. BTW, there's only one way for me to figure out who considers herself a Ukrainian or Russian - by asking. The whole situation resembles that of Rwanda ca '94.
My wife (Russian) has been and she always considered Crimea to be Russian because the people are Russian not Ukrainian.
Well, guess what - a lot of Russians think Alaska should be "returned" to motherland as well. I am not joking. It appears to be more about what they teach you at schools and brainwash on TV, versus what the current political and social reality is. Some governments just won't let you think for yourself.
58.5% of Crimeans are of Russian ethnicity. Are you entirely sure all of them would want to join up Russia? See, today's Russia is not some kind of a prosperous country on the rise, far from that. It's a highly corrupted autocracy with appalling business conditions, disastrous social situation, and very little hope for any change. There are lots of arguments to support these claims, and I'll save them for some other time. Ukraine isn't doing much better, perhaps worse in some areas. What's definitely more interesting in Ukraine these days is that we do not have Putin, we just kicked off Yanukovich (once again). This is in part a result of the past 23 years when a new generation came into being, raised in a freer society and looking to build a proper country based on 21st century ideas. In other words, we had less of Russian TV and more of EU/US TV. More books to read. More countries to visit. We are not looking to be governed by some kind of KGB despot who, for example, may get Wikipedia banned for whatever reason (almost happened a few times in the past few years). I have a lot of friends here in Odessa who are ethnic Russians and see things the same way. Here, it's really not about nationality (the way Russia tries to make it look like); it is about values of a higher order. None of the countries who broke up with Russia in 20th century want to get back to it's despotic ideas of what economy and social life is. Ukraine is simply the next in line.
The idea of annexing more parts of Ukraine based on "nationality" is also not based on facts. See here for % of ethnic Ukrainians, per region: http://en
You really out to have some sort of argumentation as to whether polling changed when Russian military sprang all over the peninsula, and if it did, into which direction it happened to change and how far. The only proper way to answer the question of whether Crimean people really wanted to separate or not would be via a properly arranged referendum, with international observation, etc. What we have on our hands instead is a "poll" performed under Russian regime, which is known to NEVER in it's history to have opposition win any kind of important elections. The only methods Russians used to get their powers to change are via a murder (Tsar times), a revolution (1917, 1991), or a special KGB ops (2000). Would you trust any numbers coming out of polls performed by this kind of "democratic" tradition?
As for Africa - the "nations" thing in developed world is no longer used to draw borders. Do "nations" and "nationalities" influence elections? Sure. Cultural/theological policies - you bet. Economics - maybe. But borders? Not since 1945, and for a good reason. Military actions tend to bring on destruction, which is always much worse economically and socially than, say, policies and contracts based on international law - which is the very thing Russia broke with Crimea, and continues doing so with the rest of Ukraine (my home country, btw).
On the economics question. A quick answer is this - Crimea was not really developed up until 1941, was occupied by Nazis during WW2 and left in ruins. In 1945-1954, while still part of Russia, it was neglected - USSR was rebuilding elsewhere. In 1954, due to it's geographical connections to mainland Ukraine, it was decided by Khrushev to make Kyiv (Ukraine) responsible for [re]building Crimea. Which Ukraine did, and kept doing, up until 2014. For example, Crimea has very few natural water supplies, something like ~10% of what's required for modern agriculture, plants, drinking water. Back in 50-60, Ukraine built a system of aqueducts, running all the way from the Dniepr river (Kherson region, mainland Ukraine). Less than 20% of electricity is produced locally; the rest is coming from mainland Ukraine as well. Remember, there's no land connection with Russia. Natural gas, electricity, water - everything was coming from mainland Ukraine, and was sold at exceptionally low prices - in other words, donated. Officially, it's economic deficit is 1 billion USD yearly.
I've visited Crimea on numerous occasions (15 times or so) during past decade. It is a relatively developed region of Ukraine, but still a lot of people have to make their rather poor living via private small farming and tourism. Now, ~60% of tourists (~5 million) were coming from Ukraine. Only 20-30% were from Russia. Guess how badly this annexation is going to hurt?
"Independent" Ukrainian polls in mid-February 2014, while Yanukovich regime was still in power, showed that 41% of Crimeans considered joining Russia. On one hand, it's quite far from 90%+ reported by this "poll", on the other, Ukraine invested tons and tons of money into Crimean infrastructure and development, starting from 1954 when Crimea joined then-USSR. Crimean infrastructure, business, economy are heavily dependent on mainland Ukraine. This annexation will, on one hand, decrease the social/economic situation in this region dramatically, on another, it will prolongate Putin's regime in Russia for a few more years. That's ~2.3 million of people versus one.
There's a lot of "who owns whom what"-style arguments going on, and this is why the modern society uses economy and laws, rather than active warfare, to resolve issues. If you still insist on supporting military-style actions, look at how much good it did to, say, Africa.
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Elections are just estimates all sorts of situational factors come into play. Estimating is how you govern societies. You do the best you can to figure out policy preferences and usually those estimates are going to be pretty good. If you are wrong things change. The point is to try and align the government with the population.
Still, a proper method is to actually perform proper elections. This was not done in Crimea.
No I'm not entirely sure. But it appears the Crimean people wanted more than just material wealth, otherwise they would have supported joining the EU.
Crimea is the worst when it comes to pro-Russian propaganda. How can you expect a "free" choice from people who are receiving information pre-packaged in a certain way, and having no or very weak alternatives?
You don't see a problem with attributing pro-Ukrainian beliefs to reason and pro-Russian beliefs to brainwashing? It is hard to argue if you are going to believe that no one could possibly disagree with you based on their analysis of the plusses and minuses.
I did my research and yet to hear a good reason to join Russia or their "Customs Union", as opposed to making an alliance with EU. You are free to discuss your arguments if you feel so, or have any. Just please hesitate to make any use of cultural, language or ethnicity-based ones. I'll respond to economical, social and educational ones only.
Language is part of culture. Ethnicity is a question of identification. A French child raised in Russia would be Russian.
It appears that these days being "Russian" means you ought to obey Kremlin. Independent opinions don't matter; if you speak Russian, look Russian, you must obey Kremlin to (and be) Russian. To me, this sounds very much imperialistic, totalitarian, unintelligent and will result in yet another 20-30 years of inevitable poverty, banditism, suffering, hunger and pain for roughly 150 million of people - which is, so to speak, a standard state of things in a world governed by natural selection and evolution. How come Russians to this day can't find an escape in a higher order, so nicely exemplified by U.S. and EU ?
No it is supported by solid evidence. Ranging from polling to a referendum to street interviews to public reaction.
This so called "solid evidence" was accepted only by Russia and a number of it's satellite allies. What is called "developed world" these days did not accept their "solid evidence" as anything but a profanity. Now, who am I to trust? A country deploying military and lying each step of the way, or a union of developed countries making and reporting observations which happen to coincide with what I'm exposed to myself, living and operating in a region threatened by above-mentioned militia?
Well if you are going to attribute their views to brainwashing you can't. If on the other hand you assume that people are evaluating their circumstances and deciding based on those evaluations then you could look at things like election results.
It was Kremlin I was unable to grant with democratic values, not people of Crimea. And I'm unable to look at election results in this particular case, as most if not all democratic procedures were severely violated -
a) a list of registered voters was absent
b) no access to independent information
c) a list of options did not include an option to stay in the same state
d) there were no independent observers
e) militia was out on streets with guns
f) no independent press allowed
The grand irony of this "referendum" is that (some) people "voted" for joining a country where referendums are outlawed.
We have to estimate using the best data we have. And the best data is strong support.
.. And estimations vary drastically depending on who's estimating. What's the point of estimating then? To make oneself feel a bit better regarding something you have no definite data of ?
So far there has been very little violence. Conversely the overthrow of the pro-Russian government by the pro-Western faction was extremely violent from the start. I'm not sure how this standard doesn't cut the other way.
It surely works both ways. Over a 100 people were killed in Kyiv by Ukrainian armed forces while Yanukovich was still in power, backed up by Putin. Now, you observe all of that in your TV set for 3 months while sitting comfortably in Crimea. The killings are over, new intermediate PM is in power, etc.. And suddenly you see armed people in the streets, supported by Putin. Are you entirely sure no killings will occur in your city?
And there was violence - a lot of people were beaten, some killed, thousands had to relocate to mainland Ukraine. And who's to say that more is not to come ? Chechnya, Pridnestrovye, Abhasiya, South Osetiya - these places were captured by Russian military and not showing any signs of prosperity, long after the war aggression was over. Are you entirely sure that the Crimean people are that stupid as to not realize that the Russian troops freely walking on the streets aren't exactly the sign of the same "prosperity" coming to Crimea as well?
- a lot of Russians think Alaska should be "returned" to motherland as well.
That analogy doesn't fit because Alaskans don't want to return to Russia. They are happy to be in America. There is no harm to self determination in allowing Alaskans to remain American.
This is not an analogy. This is an example of how Russians think these days. There's a large number of Russians supporting such world views - and they were carefully brainwashed by Russian propaganda machine. I don't know how far this is going to go, but the outlook surely does not seem to be in support of freedom, self-determination and democracy - ironically enough, the very values Russians claim to support fully while erecting a new kind of hatred and outright stupidity.
I'd use language spoken at home as a better metric then you get: http://blogs-images.forbes.com... [forbes.com]
Okey, so originally it was ethnicity, now it's language. You can also try perhaps the color of skin, theological views, left- or right-handedness. All of this is nothing but pure speculations.
Those 2.5m people are asking for it to be redone.
Do you realize this claim is not supported in any way, except for wild speculations?
I know lots of people in Russia they do like their life there. Obviously some want to leave. OTOH I also know Ukrainians who want to leave.
There's always plenty of "patriots", lots of people who are satisfied with what they have, and a lot of those who simply can't leave. After all, USSR dissolved only very recently. Think Africa, again - there are language barriers, educational barriers, inability to get visa, find jobs or sustain any kind of "modern" life in a modern society. Plenty of people don't even have a slightest idea what these things mean. The Russian brainwashing machine is quite successful at making people actually NOT want to have democracy, free society, separation of state and religion. For example, 30% of local municipalities in Russia do not elect mayors; they are assigned instead. Orthodox christianity taught by priests is a mandatory course in schools and universities. A "rotting EU", "gay EU", "rotting US" are popular terms even among intellectuals. Like I said before, the concrete criticism of modern Russia is enormously and dangerously rich area of discourse full of plan and simple facts.
Now, a lot of my friends here had a cha
Well yes. Polling typically changes radically when a policy proposal is on the table vs. when it is something that's only supported by a small group of activists. Once a policy is genuinely being considered you would almost always expect support to go up. The only question is how far.
I have another plausible argument - wanting something is one thing, seeing armed people and violence in the streets is quite another. There has been a lot of reports that the support for secession went down considerably prior to polls, and per unofficial (as if there are any official) results, only 34% of people attended. You see, anything beyond proper referendum is a wild guess, and we really ought not to take it into account.
The problem with international law as it exists today is that it doesn't include a right to self determination. We have a bad international law. I'd certainly agree that good international law is preferable to war but I don't agree that avoiding war is reason to give up self determination.
The funny thing is that this "self-determination" idea comes up when a certain politician wants some power and appreciation and uses nationalistic ideology to do so. It's the same as with religions, it just takes a somewhat bigger effort to get one group of people get angry with another group of people based on nationality. Still, it's doable, and Putin made a great example of just that. The Russian TV has been full of one-sided, highly skewed reports regarding everything there is to say about Ukraine, including "how bad Ukrainians are to Russians", etc. Pretty much nothing of this sort happened thus far - and I live in a Russian-speaking Odessa region, with ~30% of people of Russian descent. BTW, there's only one way for me to figure out who considers herself a Ukrainian or Russian - by asking. The whole situation resembles that of Rwanda ca '94.
My wife (Russian) has been and she always considered Crimea to be Russian because the people are Russian not Ukrainian.
Well, guess what - a lot of Russians think Alaska should be "returned" to motherland as well. I am not joking. It appears to be more about what they teach you at schools and brainwash on TV, versus what the current political and social reality is. Some governments just won't let you think for yourself.
58.5% of Crimeans are of Russian ethnicity. Are you entirely sure all of them would want to join up Russia? See, today's Russia is not some kind of a prosperous country on the rise, far from that. It's a highly corrupted autocracy with appalling business conditions, disastrous social situation, and very little hope for any change. There are lots of arguments to support these claims, and I'll save them for some other time. Ukraine isn't doing much better, perhaps worse in some areas. What's definitely more interesting in Ukraine these days is that we do not have Putin, we just kicked off Yanukovich (once again). This is in part a result of the past 23 years when a new generation came into being, raised in a freer society and looking to build a proper country based on 21st century ideas. In other words, we had less of Russian TV and more of EU/US TV. More books to read. More countries to visit. We are not looking to be governed by some kind of KGB despot who, for example, may get Wikipedia banned for whatever reason (almost happened a few times in the past few years). I have a lot of friends here in Odessa who are ethnic Russians and see things the same way. Here, it's really not about nationality (the way Russia tries to make it look like); it is about values of a higher order. None of the countries who broke up with Russia in 20th century want to get back to it's despotic ideas of what economy and social life is. Ukraine is simply the next in line.
The idea of annexing more parts of Ukraine based on "nationality" is also not based on facts. See here for % of ethnic Ukrainians, per region: http://en
You really out to have some sort of argumentation as to whether polling changed when Russian military sprang all over the peninsula, and if it did, into which direction it happened to change and how far. The only proper way to answer the question of whether Crimean people really wanted to separate or not would be via a properly arranged referendum, with international observation, etc. What we have on our hands instead is a "poll" performed under Russian regime, which is known to NEVER in it's history to have opposition win any kind of important elections. The only methods Russians used to get their powers to change are via a murder (Tsar times), a revolution (1917, 1991), or a special KGB ops (2000). Would you trust any numbers coming out of polls performed by this kind of "democratic" tradition?
As for Africa - the "nations" thing in developed world is no longer used to draw borders. Do "nations" and "nationalities" influence elections? Sure. Cultural/theological policies - you bet. Economics - maybe. But borders? Not since 1945, and for a good reason. Military actions tend to bring on destruction, which is always much worse economically and socially than, say, policies and contracts based on international law - which is the very thing Russia broke with Crimea, and continues doing so with the rest of Ukraine (my home country, btw).
On the economics question. A quick answer is this - Crimea was not really developed up until 1941, was occupied by Nazis during WW2 and left in ruins. In 1945-1954, while still part of Russia, it was neglected - USSR was rebuilding elsewhere. In 1954, due to it's geographical connections to mainland Ukraine, it was decided by Khrushev to make Kyiv (Ukraine) responsible for [re]building Crimea. Which Ukraine did, and kept doing, up until 2014. For example, Crimea has very few natural water supplies, something like ~10% of what's required for modern agriculture, plants, drinking water. Back in 50-60, Ukraine built a system of aqueducts, running all the way from the Dniepr river (Kherson region, mainland Ukraine). Less than 20% of electricity is produced locally; the rest is coming from mainland Ukraine as well. Remember, there's no land connection with Russia. Natural gas, electricity, water - everything was coming from mainland Ukraine, and was sold at exceptionally low prices - in other words, donated. Officially, it's economic deficit is 1 billion USD yearly.
I've visited Crimea on numerous occasions (15 times or so) during past decade. It is a relatively developed region of Ukraine, but still a lot of people have to make their rather poor living via private small farming and tourism. Now, ~60% of tourists (~5 million) were coming from Ukraine. Only 20-30% were from Russia. Guess how badly this annexation is going to hurt?
"Independent" Ukrainian polls in mid-February 2014, while Yanukovich regime was still in power, showed that 41% of Crimeans considered joining Russia. On one hand, it's quite far from 90%+ reported by this "poll", on the other, Ukraine invested tons and tons of money into Crimean infrastructure and development, starting from 1954 when Crimea joined then-USSR. Crimean infrastructure, business, economy are heavily dependent on mainland Ukraine. This annexation will, on one hand, decrease the social/economic situation in this region dramatically, on another, it will prolongate Putin's regime in Russia for a few more years. That's ~2.3 million of people versus one. There's a lot of "who owns whom what"-style arguments going on, and this is why the modern society uses economy and laws, rather than active warfare, to resolve issues. If you still insist on supporting military-style actions, look at how much good it did to, say, Africa.