- I can't believe you so proponent towards bloodshed. Either indirectly or directly it's just sick even to read. Not like russians performed any atrocities justifiyng that position. Blood leads to more blood, what good about that?
I believe that bloodshed is unavoidable whatever Ukrainians will do. Not resisting the evil will lead to more blood but later. I never wanted blood in January when I started the thread, but I knew that it is unavoidable
A note first, as I think I haven't explicitly stated it before: I'm from Poland*
I just wanted to note, before going to bed, that this is something that (as I see, but I might be mistaken) is so much harder to understand for people in the West. Their most horrible collective memories are world wars, and they generally think that 'peace' as in 'lack of war' is better than war. The people who actually lived through 'peace' as in 'Soviet occupation' (or actually, 'German occupation' or even 'Austrian occupation'**) know that there are things worse than war. There is a person here, in Central Europe, we consider the stupidest politician in all the history. Neville Chamberlain. A man who thought that if a dictator asks for just a part of another country, he should be given it to avoid war...*** In Poland, we lost 20 times as much civilians as soldiers, despite being first to fight and fighting till the fall of Berlin (literally; there were Polish soldiers in that battle in quite a number, although under Soviet command). And many, many more were displaced and killed before and after war by Soviets (German didn't have that chance, actually). The war is not a nice thing, but it is sometimes better than the alternative. We found - hard way - that war with Russia is almost always better than the alternative****. I hope you, people of the West, won't find it hard way, too. This time, after fifty years of communism and another twenty - five of post-communism (we are far from both democracy***** and capitalism****** here), we probably won't send our pilots to protect London, our sailors to protect convoys from the US, our infantry to take Monte Cassino or our tankers (as in, people driving tanks) to blast through the Normandy; nobody here wants to die for Warsaw, let alone any place outside our borders.
*)Some of my ancestors were actually from Ukraine. Still, I don't like Bandera and his bands, but this is something to be talked about after the Russia is back in its place, probably.
**)It was back in times when Austria was quite huge. Also, it was by far the least horrible of the occupations.
***)Neat little anecdote: when Hitler ordered troops to march into Rhineland, he was asked by his generals what to do if the England and France call mobilization after this (as they should, given the treaties and stuff). His answer? "I will shoot myself, and of you will call the soldiers back." Would save the world quite a lot of trouble, wouldn't it?
****)I mean, obviously, situations like today with Crimea, not general time of life. It might (but also opposite may be true) be better idea to just coexist peacefully with Russia in periods when it is actually peaceful.
*****)I dislike democracy personally, especially what is called liberal democracy now (UR, it seems that we have plenty in common). Then again, I like the current situation even less.
******)I might have taken the asterisks things a bit too far, but anyway, I'm strong Laissez-faire capitalist, I dislike socialistic economy, and I would prefer living in Singapore or New Zeland, or in some states in USA (Texas comes to mind) than in Sweden or even Finland. What we have in Poland is actually standing in the middle of the road, with worst of both world and best of none.
EDIT: Veering off of the USSR politics, and into Owlbread - inspired idea of smaller countries; while the idea might be pretty nice, there is a problem of scale; most importantly, there are countries that would be pretty hard to divide; China, aside from USA, Canada and Australia would be an excellent example and the best to illustrate what I want to say. China is mostly Han Chinese; they are totally dominant in terms of population. China is additionally an autocracy, more or less. And if the world would be divided into smaller countries, it would be easier for major, non-democratic one to just swallow some of them, one after another. Would it happen? I don't know, but judging from what happened in Europe in late Middle Ages and beyond, up to Imperial Age... I think that the urge to just gobble a few neighbours might be too strong to resist for some big countries. And artificially dividing China isn't all that good of an idea either, I think.