Russian President Vladimir Putin (RIA Novosti/Aleksey Nikolskyi)
ITAR-TASS: Putin acknowledges that Russia was close to Yugoslav scenario in 1990's
The president noted that the role of Russia's military in preserving the country's territorial integrity
ST. PETERSBURG, April 28. /TASS/. At the end of the 1990s Russia was pretty close to following the Yugoslav scenario but the unity and integrity of the country was preserved after all, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a media forum of the All-Russia Popular Front, as he commented on the documentary The President, the Rossiya-1 television channel aired last Sunday.
"We preserved the unity and territorial integrity of the country. We must be grateful to the ordinary guys, our military, who in those very complicated conditions were taking the necessary military measures in the North Caucasus. That’s who really deserves greater publicity. They protected the country with their own bodies," Putin said. "It was not just a local conflict. That local conflict could have caused the situation in Russia to follow the Yugoslav scenario."
WNU Editor: The Yugoslav conflict was deeply sectarian in nature that ended up in fracturing the country .... could a similar situation have occurred in Russia at the end of the 1990s? Maybe in places in the Caucasus .... but elsewhere .... no. I know from my own personal experience that Russians have always had a deep sense of unity .... and it would have survived even if the economic crisis at the time got worse.
4 comments:
Putin is on a publicity blitz.
Is he running for office?
Or is he beating the drums for some other reason?
Aizino Smith, I think he's always like this. It does (inexplicably in my eyes) aid his popularity among many people.
As for Yugoslavia and Russia, WNU, personally I agree with your assessment, especially as regards the late 90s. I am however reminded of how one of our history professors at the Ural Federal University, who specialised in Yugoslavia, compared Yeltsin to Milosevic (and no, before you ask, he was neither a communist nor an "imperialist" ideologically) and said that his Serbian colleagues had assured him that the same thing was going to happen here when the Soviet Union began to fall apart. Sadly he is dead now so I cannot ask for clarifications on whether or not he believed it really was possible. Perhaps it seemed more plausible when talking about the USSR as a whole rather than RSFSR/RF.
Basically it's not even about the sense of unity as the RF being a relatively homogenous country. Certainly as compared to Yugoslaiva most of our ethnic divisions tend to fade into the background these days, the main exception being Muslims - and even then I'm not sure what it would take for a rebellion to start in Tatarstan, easily the most secular and tolerant part of the Muslim world.
My understanding is that the Russian leaders have worked very hard with Kazan leaders so there would not be any problems (& I am not talking about breaking heads).
To me homogeneity is not about language,food, holidays or other things of culture. I mean everything comes printed in English, Spanish, & French. Soon everyone will have translators like at the UN.
It is about certain civic values and taxation.
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