OT: FSU Politics/Current Events Thread IV

So what's up with all the earthquakes? Are we (Cali) next?

Just a weird story all around. I have no idea what the US parents knew about the boy and even if they thought he was "bad", sending him back to Russia like that was not right.

I would never adopt a kid from a Russian or Ukrainian orphanage if they were more than a year old. THose places are mini torture chambers and scars kids for life.

I used to help facilitate placements within the metro area for Russian kids coming in to the TC metro area with little or no English skills...stopped doing it after I came to the conclusion that most Russian orphanages seem to be trying to run adoption as a "for profit" scheme - the more you're willing to pay, the less maladjusted of a kid you'd be entitled to. For every one that has worked out, I've seen some awful arrangements - kids with severe undisclosed health problems (one that was terminal, within 6 months of arrival, with (of course) no recourse), severely maladjusted kids with all kinds of emotional disorders, kids arriving in various states of addiction, etc.

Some of these parents had absolutely no idea what they were in for - basically street kids with a 2-3 week intense cleaning/grooming/feeding session, then off ya go, laddie.

There are MANY good Russian and Ukrainian based adoption agencies, doing great work with little or no funding support from either government, who do make good faith attempts at placement with the best interests of the children and prospective parents in mind. I've personally seen some very heartwarming success stories that only a truly hardened soul would not be moved by. Unfortunately, these agencies get lost amongst the majority; separating the wheat from the chaff is not a very easy endeavor.

Sending the poor kid back on a plane was obviously the wrong thing to do in this instance - turning the kid over to social services within the US and pursuing redress later would have been a much more responsible option. The child in question is young enough, with professional help and treatment it is not inconceivable that the child could have been returned to the adoptive parent - so these two goofs that perpetuated this are totally in the wrong on this one.

I'm sure this is not his area of expertise, but I'd be interested in nicephoras' take on the legalities re: redress when dealing with international adoptions, he being the FSU rezident Juris Doctor. There's GOTTA be some kind of international convention regarding this....right?

Following one of the hot button topics of the last thread...

Could one make a case for "ethnic cleansing" of the Russian speaking minorities in the Baltic States? The Russian Federation has alleged this numerous times; no one doubts or denies that the Soviets practiced Russification on a grand scale in the Baltic States, especially the period directly after the conclusion of WWII (1945-52; the KGB Museum of Genocide in Vilnius sells many good English and Lithuanian (curiously, nothing in Russian) histories of this period, one of which I just finished:

Kuodyte, Dalia and Tracevskis, Rokas. Sibiras: Mass Deportations from Lithuania to the USSR. Vilnius: Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, 2005. Print (English).

However - looking at Estonia's language laws and the documented mistreatment of the Russian speaking minority there - does that NOT fit the definition of ethnic cleansing? On the surface, no, considering this definition from Britannica:

"Forcible displacement" may apply here, as Estonia will not issue Estonian (EU) passports to those who do not pass their language laws - in practice, the Russian speaking majority in Estonia is free to travel in one direction only, that being east - a form of forcible displacement?

Contrast that with the definition from the US Military dictionary:

Doesn't seem to fit that.

The UN definition:

Well...now we might be on to something. Or is this simply not the same, considering the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans were mostly predicated upon use of extreme violence, to include mass executions and wanton acts of murder?

Which definition is most correct? Does ethnic cleansing always have to be tied to murder and/or genocide? For me, no, but your mileage may vary.

It would be the makings of a good doctoral dissertation, pro or con, methinks.

I don't think what the Estonian government is doing is ethnic cleansing. If they were coming around to people's doors and dragging them onto trains heading east, I would change my mind, but otherwise no. It seems to me that the government is simply trying to protect itself from the Trojan horse left over by the invaders.

What we have is a case of clean up. The country was invaded by a foreign power, the Soviet Union, who did perpetrate ethnic cleansing and tried to settle the region with Russian settlers.

So in this case, maybe a more interesting question is, how do you clean up ethnic cleansing and -sification? Forty years ago the Soviets cleaned out the region of a good number of Estonians, and replaced them with ethnic Russians. Now that the occupying force has left, what do you do with the tools of that previous ethnic cleansing? Is it okay to use the same methods to reverse what was done to you?

Personally I think those Russians there have no right to be there. They are remnants of an occupying force. They have either 3 choices. They can learn the language and culture of the country and assimilate into society, they can return to Russia, or they can continue to live a marginal life as non citizens. In no way should Estonia have to comprise itself to please a former occupying power.





Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer. I am just a humble fellow with a book collection and an internet connection. All of the above are opinions based on my own twisted sense of how the world should work.

Can we all ignore Dima so we can have a constructive conversation?

You can't do that, the trains path, it gets ugly and you just end up on the list of bad guys. Your plan has merits and it sounds similar to mine. I guess we agree that there is no way you can let them in the door, ie citizenship.