it is important to remember this book smuggling as a symbol that even small nation can resist against huge empire like soviet union. every effort counts, and as a result, we in Lithuania still use our language.
Not sure why you blame USSR in this topic, as far as I know, it supported regional languages and printed many books, newspapers and magazines in the languages of its republics. I bet that books at that period were much cheaper than they're now.
"it supported regional languages and printed many books, newspapers and magazines in the languages of its republics."
The big boom in minority-language publishing came in the 1920s and early 1930s, when there were major drives to improve minority-language literacy and translate as a rule higher-education teaching materials into local languages. However, starting from Stalin, minority-language publishing was reduced to little more than a token effort, mostly socialist-realist poetry or fiction and newspapers of exceedingly local concern. Furthermore, the print runs for minority-language books were minuscule, even for very large minorities like the Tatars. It wasn't until glasnost that minority-language publishing took off again.
I grew up in a little republic which is smaller than Tatar Republic and we hadn't problems with the national literature. Of course it wasn't so rich, I've never managed to find Ulysses in that language. I have an impression that when Moscow sent plans like "to rise X new writers and to print out Y new books in the ______ language" , local party members were catching people on the streets to create new republican poets of them.
sorry, I mixed two different things which are kind of same - Russian empire before USSR and USSR. in both periods Lithuania was occupied by Russia. so my point is still the same - resistance against agressor is possible even for small countries.
actually it's not. yes, governments were different in different war events, but it's a broader issue - Russia views ex-soviet (or even countries occupied before USSR) countries as countries which belong to Russia , so this policy/opinion/view continues through generations.
In the other parts of partitioned PLC similar fight for culture was happening. Sometimes I even think, that some barricades were purposefully installed in Polish culture so that it will win again. In school you learn about the importance of Polish, how it was suppressed and people who learned it in secret were heroes... In day-to-day life many people will oppose using English words when Polish can be used, I even witnessed situation where foreign quest was invited for a speech and during q&a someone not only asked the question in Polish (there was a translator so no problem) but even stressed that the question will be in Polish, because we are in Poland...
When I visited Poland I found stuff like that very interesting. In particular, the large, old city of Szczecin, which was completely German for many, many years (and at times only had a few thousand Poles in it.) When I visited it seemed 100% Polish, and it was almost as if there was no trace of German anything in the whole city. This all despite the city being completely Germanized for many years and being only 2.9 miles from the German border.
I didn't know that, while i live in Lithuania for years. I know Russians tried to destroy old Belarusian ("Ruskaya Mova") language similarly though, and largely succeeded at that.
This reminds of the evils of Communism so much that it makes me feel like Communist ideology in fact didn't mean much for Russians. It is an evil by itself, before or after Communism too.
Your comment is absurdly wrong. Old Belarussian/Ukrainian is the circa-Early Middle Ages language of Kievan Rus that is the ancestor of modern Belarussian, Ukrainian, and Russian languages. What destroyed the use of Belarussian literary language in Lithuania/Belarus was the union with Poland - Polish gradually replaced Belarussian as a literary language.
My grandmother was born in the 1920s in Western Belarus - Belarussian only became an official language and started being used in higher education again after Western Belarus was annexed to the Belarussian SSR after the end of WWII. In her town most people spoke Belarussian and few were literate in Polish. This was the case for most of Western Belarus, but the literary Belarussian language was only taught at the primary school level (in those towns that were fortunate enough to have schools), and there were very few Belarussian books published (to place this in context, some of the first books printed in a Slavic language were in Belarussian in the early 16th century). The literacy policies of Belarussian SSR is what revived the Belarussian language.
What has happened after the fall of the Soviet Union is Lukashenko's government pursuing a policy of suppressing Belarussian as an official language in favor of Russian. Recently this has started to become a bigger issue of dissatisfaction in the country.
And in Canada we tried to destroy native language and culture, as well as various immigrant cultures.
My mom went to school before 'multiculturalism' was a thing, and was beaten by the teachers for speaking Ukrainian anywhere on the school grounds. And of course residential schools are a more known and somewhat more extreme example of the attempts to create homogeneous culture in Canada in the mid 20th century.
Nearly every (large) nation on earth has done similar things.
I think the point is that what we today might think of as Cold War style rhetoric and rivalry has antecedents in the Russian empire and points earlier.
I would even go so far as to say the whole thing is from the Great Schism. One side has the Latin alphabet and Western churches. Another side has Greek-derived Cyrillic and Orthodox church. Note in this article, the Russians are said to be removing religious shrines and trying to get the Lithuanian language to use Cyrillic instead of Latin characters. Both of these kind sound strange, but it's not really accidental symbolism.
A couple months ago in the context of all the US-Russia political drama I was thinking of this... Some people say the current tension is trying to re-live the Cold War, but if you read about events from centuries ago the tension is all still there mostly in its present form. What if the whole point of conflict is really about how they learned to write and be Christians from Greeks?
> I think the point is that what we today might think of as Cold War style rhetoric and rivalry has antecedents in the Russian empire and points earlier.
Is probably true, people just reference Cold War because it's well known symbol and the rest of the history is not needed for them...
> I would even go so far as to say the whole thing is from the Great Schism. (...)
No, not really... The story in the article is placed when PLC was conquered, and similar things happened not only in Lithuania but also in Poland, where it was done by both Cyrillic Russia and Latin Germany. I'm not an expert on Russian history, but I could bet that at certain times they also tried to uproot other Cyrillic cultures who were deemed unwelcome by the rulers (both communist and before). I agree with the other person that this is just authoritarian thing.
> A couple months ago in the context of all the US-Russia political drama I was thinking of this...(...)
Well this one depends on the general world view I guess? If you tell history as a story of clashing ideas, then there will be a clear narration and you will easily see patterns as you describe, ever repeating conflicts of similar forces. But just one way of looking is often not enough to see the whole thing. I also see the direction of looking at the past tensions as promising, but then when do you stop? In this particular case the way of writing could be just an artifact of an older conflict used to reinforce the current one. We dnn't need to repeat the past, we can just reuse it.
It absolutely dates back to the Great Schism. And the (Roman Catholic) west has constantly been antagonising the east. When the Orthodox requested assistance against the invading Muslims, the crusaders instead conquered for themselves, even sacking Constantinople. How about the Uniate churches? How many times have western powers (Poland-Lithuania, Germany, France, Great Britain, etc...) invaded or attempted to invade Russia? How many times has the west even allied themselves with Islamic empires to attack Russia? Even in modern history, there's a ton of anti-Serbian (read Orthodox) propaganda relating to the Balkans, ignoring the atrocities of every other side. How about the Greek default? The invasion of Cyprus by Turkey. The CIA in Chechnya. Colour revolutions (which all targeting majority Orthodox countries). And so on.
Yes, it goes back to the Great Schism, however it's not Russia which has repeatedly attacked the west. It's not Russia which has a military alliance on the US or Europe's doorstep.
And relating to Lithuania, the earliest conflicts between Lithuania and the then Duchy of Moscow were initiated by the Lithuanians. And today, NATO troops are in Lithuania. To respond to a 'Russian' threat we all know will never happen, given the whole NATO thing.
History is long enough to dig up as many examples to "prove" a certain antagonism exists.
How many times has Russia invaded or attempted to invade other Orthodox countries?
* Ukraine 2014-ongoing
* Georgia in 2008
* Declared war on Bulgaria 1944
* In cooperation with Nazi Germany, it annexed Moldova from Romania 1940
* Genocide against Ukrainians 30s and 40s
* Ukraine and Georgia again in 1917, 1918
* Declared war on Bulgaria: 1915
* Supported the Serbian invasion of Bulgaria 1886
* Harsh military occupation of Moldova and Wallachia 1829-1834
* Annexed Bessarabia from Moldova 1809
* Annexed Georgia in 1800
* Invaded the Cossack Hetmanate in 1659
And so on, back to the Middle Ages, when Northern Russian princes sacked Kiev.
Does this "prove" that as a historical rule Russia invades any Orthodox country it shares a border with? Should we blame modern-day Russians for things their un-elected government did before they were born?
Also, Russia has invaded 2 Orthodox countries in the last 10 years, this is very different from digging up ancient history.
Most of these 'examples' are so revisionist they can't even be found online.
> Invaded the Cossack Hetmanate in 1659
You mean invaded the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth which the Hetmanate was rebelling against in the first place, which is why the Cossacks joined the Russian empire and were integrated into its army for generations.
As for everything about Bulgaria, Bulgaria was initially annexed by the Ottoman empire, but the third Bulgarian state was created via treaty after a war between Russia and the Ottoman empire. Later the Russians/Serbs/Greeks supported them in a war against the Ottomans, although in WWI/WWII Bulgaria was allied with the Central/Axis powers.
Ukraine/Georgia recently are more complicated, but the issues there go back to the colour revolutions, which were rather openly supported by the west.
> And the (Roman Catholic) west has constantly been antagonising the east.
The west is not a religiously unified entity. For example, about one third of the German population died during the religious wars of the 17th century between Protestants and Catholics [1]. Not to mention the more recent Troubles in Northern Ireland.
> Colour revolutions (which all targeting majority Orthodox countries).
The countries that underwent a Colour Revolution (failed or successful) were mostly non-Christian, according to the Wikipedia list of Colour Revolutions [2].
But let's take a look at one successful Colour Revolution in an Orthodox country: the Rose Revolution [3] in Georgia in 2003. In that case, a corrupt authoritarian regime, led by a former Soviet functionary, was overthrown and replaced by a democracy. It is fair to say that most Georgians are glad this revolution took place. Similar things could be said about the Colour Revolutions in Serbia and Ukraine. So I'm not sure why you include Colour Revolutions in your list of bad things supposedly done by the Roman Catholics to people of Orthodox faith.
Georgia is an interesting case, by the way. The Georgian Orthodox Church is the most trusted institution in Georgia [4]. At the same time, successive Georgian governments have carried out a consistently pro-NATO policy, presumably with the acquiescence of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Probably something to do with the tensions between Orthodox Georgia and its Orthodox neighbor, Russia.
You're claiming some extreme continuity between the politics of dozens of major political entities over thousands of years and your only supporting argument is that it makes sense to you.
And nearly every post in this thread, and likely the intent of the OP in the first place was to show continuity between the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and current Russian Federation.
In fact, it's exactly this rhetoric (Putin wants to bring back the USSR/Russian Empire) which is responsible for current western foreign policy.
First your comment reads quite... emotional? Both aggressive and defensive, almost to the point that one wants to avoid the discussion, but you asked in the edit so I reply. I assume you deeply care about the subject, but you need to understand, that if you want others to understand and maybe adopt your view it's better to tone down, avoid many short accusing questions etc... Also defending/explaining war by "but they started first before" always put you in a bad light...
Now, about how are you wrong. Wrong is too strong word here, I'm unfamiliar with many historical events you mentioned but I assume they really did happened. The general idea that Great Schism was a big source of tension, and directly and indirectly by events that resulted from it is and will be a source of tension, this is also true. The problem as I see it is the strength of this effect, you are right that it exists, but your comment reads as it was the dominating force that shaped this part of history, which many people not agree with. You also leave out many historical events that do not fit in, like Russia and Prussia working together to conquer PLC and later attacking Poland in 1939... Similarly when for example Napoleon attacked Russia, the west-east conflict was not the reason, it was just a tool to reinforce the conflict, and Napoleon actually wanted to conquer all and Russia was just one of many...
Wars can start for more "practical" reasons too (like oil) and historical/religious/ethnic reasons will soon follow, they can be present but they are not always the main reason.
Finally that bit about NATO troops could for some people change your comment from "comment about history" to "comment about politics pretending to be about history"...
"This reminds of the evils of Communism so much that it makes me feel like Communist ideology in fact didn't mean much for Russians. It is an evil by itself, before or after Communism too.
reply
"
No, it's the nature of old empires. All large empires have eradicated - or tried to eradicate - minorities at one point or the other. Not through genocide mind you - you don't have to destroy the genetic inheritance. It's sufficient to destroy cultural inheritance and implant the cultural identity of the master. Language is one of the strongest markers of cultural identity and thus it's understandable why it would be one of the things on the 'hit list' - and literature especially. Since we don't have an oral tradition anymore, destroying books effectively would have destroyed the cultural inheritance in a generation.
Even Denmark quite forcefully tried to "civilize" Greenlanders in the 20th century with very bad mental health results.
Even today, countries like France enact policies in order to suppress or exterminate languages that don't benefit the state. [1] When do you think Canada stopped trying to force its indigenous cultures into extinction? [2] Communism is not some essentially more evil ideology than the ideologies it competed with. Far more than ideology, the material interests of the ruling classes in all nations is what drives social and economic policy.
Late tsarist Russia had simply imported the "progressive" Western European policy of suppressing minority languages and scripts. 19th and early 20th century Britain, France, Germany, Italy, etc. were all engaged in similar practices to erase the distinct languages and identities of their ethnic minorities in the name of "national unity".
Here are just a few examples:
> In the later 19th century, virtually all teaching in the schools of Wales was in English, even in areas where the pupils barely understood English. Some schools used the Welsh Not, a piece of wood, often bearing the letters "WN", which was hung around the neck of any pupil caught speaking Welsh. The pupil could pass it on to any schoolmate heard speaking Welsh, with the pupil wearing it at the end of the day being given a beating. [1]
> Francization is also a designation applied to a number of ethnic assimilation policies implemented by French authorities from the French Revolution to present. These policies aimed to impose or to maintain the dominance of French language (which at this time was still a minority language in the numerical sense, despite being the prestige language of France and an increasingly important vernacular for writing, with the decline of Latin) and culture by encouraging or compelling people of other ethnic groups to adopt them, and thereby developing a French identity, at the expense of their existing identity. Coupled with this policy was the deliberate suppression of minority languages. Quickly after the end of the Ancien Régime, the new revolutionary government adopted a policy of promotion of French as a unifying and modernizing language, simultaneously denigrating the status of minority languages as bulwarks of feudalism, Church control of the state, and backwardness in general. In less than a year after coming to power (1792), the Committee for Public Instruction mandated that the newly expanded public education would be buttressed by the sending of French-speaking teachers to areas that spoke other languages. The 19th century saw this programme, and similar initiatives and wider cultural prorogatives, achieve many of its intended aims: the French language became much more expansive among the population, and by the 1860s, nearly 80 percent of the national population were able to speak French. [2]
> The programme of Italianization was particularly forcefully applied in schools, aiming at the destruction of the German school system. As of 1928, Italian had become the only language of instruction in 760 South Tyrolean classes, affecting over 360 schools and 30,000 pupils. Likewise, German Kindergarten were required to use Italian, while substitutes were forced to shut down. German teachers were systematically dismissed on the grounds of "insufficient didactics", or transferred to the south, from where Italian teachers were recruited instead. Degrees from Austrian or German universities became valid only through an additional stay of one year at an Italian university. [3]
