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- Herausgeber: Goeran B Johansson
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
This book describes the development of events on the global stage in connection with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We get a brief look back at the geopolitical situation in Russia, which was very vulnerable at the time before and after the Kosovo war in 1999, and during the catastrophic development of the return of capitalism during the time of President Boris Yeltsin.
However, since Vladimir Putin took office in 2000, he has been acting resolutely to resolve the border dispute with China and link Germany and Turkey to Russia through various gas pipeline projects. Furthermore, he develops and strengthens relations with SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).
The author visits Santa Fe and Cebu in the Philippines, where he dialogues with a retired major from the Swedish military intelligence service, a former US commander of the US Pacific Fleet, and a retired colonel for the border police between Mexico and the United States.
Even at this early stage, there are clear signs of Russia's intentions in the coming years, which may have dramatic global consequences in the near future—detailed source list
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Seitenzahl: 93
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Vladimir Putin
Prologue Sweden
That morning, Wednesday, March 24th 1999, I, a music teacher, was on my way to, lo and behold, teach a lesson in German. The new teaching rules said that teachers must be able to go in and teach a lesson in any subject. They were expected to watch the students while they did their private individual studies. This was so that the school would not have to hire substitutes and thereby save money. Yes, yes, nice thought but students were not as much interested in, because they wanted a teacher who mastered the subject. Although I had a complete mastery of music, here in the German class, I felt quite lost.
I took a deep breath for courage and entered into the hall with steady steps. Articulated with attractive labial plosive and thunderous voice, out came my poor vocabulary of German words from elementary school repertoire without any time to think about it:
- Guten Morgen Swedische Jugend!
The students responded with a single voice:
- Guten Morgen mein Fuhrer!
The boys stood up together like men and made a Hitler salute. The girls were apparently not so amused and had down turned mouths showing signs of unease and fear.
The old German doyen, who at the moment was teaching in the hallnext door, opened the door, looked in, smiled sweetly and then the lesson continued very well. The students studied in silence according to the instructions I gave to them.
After class, I took a break and went to the cafe to have my morning coffee before the next lesson, but it was canceled and this free time I spent at the coffee table with a delicious cheese sandwich and freshly brewed coffee with a mazarin pastry and read newspapers. Cafeteria staff turned on the TV and the news trumpeted that NATO 1had just attacked Yugoslavia and Serbia. I now had to reluctantly see something really vulgar and distasteful as the American pop singer Mariah Carey, lying lightly dressed on the wing of B-1 bomber, singing mushily,caressedthe wing plate as if it were an erotic object. This nasty process had an extremely strong negative impression on me.
I will always remember the day when the USA and NATO attacked the sovereign Yugoslavia in the Kosovo War without UN Security Council approval
A Brief History of Russian Geopolitical Development
“What a colossus”, I say, when I look at the Russian Empire map from the 1800s. Alaska still belonged to Russia at this point,although later it was sold to the USA.
On the globe, the dark green areas show the Russian Empire, when it was at its greatest, from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. The light green areas show spheres of Russian influence. Wikipedia: The territories, that were at one time or another, part of the Russian Empire. April 22nd 2011. Graphics: Shadowxfox
Expansion, expansion and again expansion. The result of a necessity to defend the geographically vulnerable European part – the core of the country. There is no natural geographical protection in the form of rivers, mountains or swamps along the borders. People were forced to rely on climate and forests for defense.
But forests only stopped the Mongol riders temporarily. In the early 1200s the Mongols occupied the Russianmore or less independent principalities - remnants of Kievan Rus. Then Russia came to be occupied by the Mongols for the next 250 years.
First, with Ivan III (Ivan the Great) in the late 1400s began the process of consolidation around Moscow, and the Russian expansion, mainly north towards the Arctic and also towards the Ural Mountains, accelerates through the constant battles against the invaders.
Ivan IV, nicknamed Ivan the Terrible, fought against Sweden, Poland, Lithuania and the state of Teutonic Order in the effort to conquer and secure areas westwards. The expansion of Russia continued south wards to the Caspian Sea, the Crimea and Grozny. The latter would be a very strategic point in the Caucasus during the Chechen Wars after the dissolution of the USSR in the late 1900s. They also conquered Siberia with the Cossacks and had in the mid-1600s under the Romanov dynasty reached to the Pacific Ocean.
In the 1700s, Peter the Great came to the Baltic Seaand the new capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, was founded. His successor, Catherine II, secured the vulnerable flanks around the Baltics and Ukraine. Through the centuries, Russia had become geopolitically a huge empire that stretched itself from Eastern Europe through the Asian continent to the Pacific and from the Arctic in the north to the Black Sea and Asian deserts in the south.
Russia hardly needed to fear any attack from the Arctic in that situation. Nor from Siberia where the Tien Shan Massif, an offshoot of the Himalayas, provided a good protection.
The Caspian Sea protected Russia from Iran and along the border in Central Asia was mostly lowland consisting of deserts that made any attack virtually unfeasible. Apart from a small area at the border to Afghanistan, a weak point which concerned Russia through the ages.
The Tsar Cannon in the Kremlin. Watercolor by the author.
The Last Decades of the Soviet Union
The year 1945 marked for Europe, and particularly the European part of the Soviet Union, the end of the devastating Second World War.
Harry Truman, the U.S. President at the end of the war, was ultimately responsible for the mass murder of unarmed civilians on August 6th, 1945 when the USA dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which abruptly ended the war in the Pacific Ocean area.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union). Wikipedia. Graphics: Ssolbergj. March 30th 2009.
The Soviet Union, the biggest single winner in the Second World War and the only power that could defeat Nazi Germany in a land war, had now secured its borders and exercised control up to the Elbe River in eastern Germany. East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland were part of the Soviet Union sphere of influence.
The Baltic States were incorporated into the Soviet Union and thus the number of republics that the Soviet Union consisted of finally came up to fifteen. So the open landscape along the North German plateau and Poland which tempted outsider powers for centuries to attack Russia had been blocked.
The Soviet Union also incorporated a German territory around the former Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) and the southernmost of the Kuril Islands, which even in the current situation is looked upon with disapproval by the defeated powers in WW2.
After the war there was a long period during the Cold War which was characterized by a massive arms race between the two superpowers, the USA and the USSR. It was a heavy burden for the Soviet system that was wrestling with bureaucracy and inefficiency. Mikhail Gorbachev’s 2attempts to reform the Soviet economy and democratize the society resulted in the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26th 1991.
In close contact with the Russian soul
In the 1970s my interest in Russia was aroused, first in music, then in the country. I found the depth, power and the melodic sound of Russian folk music was so intertwined with the drama of the eternal struggle against invaders which characterized the Russian history through the centuries. I started to readRussian. I married a Russian, and we had children.
I continued to play Russian accordion in a balalaika orchestra in Stockholm. Thanks to the orchestra, I had contact with several prominent Russian musicians at the time.
One of them was Dmitri Pokrovsky from Moscow, who devoted his life to recording and popularizing the authentic folk music that still existed in rural areas.
I visited Moscow and met Pokrovsky as often as I could. I sang along with his fellow artists, and not just in their rehearsals.
Once Pokrovsky invited me to follow him to a concert in Suzdal, a small town with a very old and well-preserved architecture from ancient times. I wanted to join him but did not have a valid visa to go there.
“It will be all right”, said Pokrovsky. It was in the 1980s. Very strict rules were in force at the time, with quite refractoryacts from Russian intellectuals.
We went with the whole group of 40 people by a private bus from Moscow to Suzdal and on the way we stopped to drink tea with piroshky buns. "We will have some coffee at an airport," said Dmitri, because nowhere else was open then.
It was a military airport. I realized that when we met two armed guards at the gate. They came into the bus to check passengers but Pokrovsky who was known by the guards said that everything was okay. They did not see me at all because one of the singers suddenly showed an interest in me. She leaned towards me with a smile and endowed me with a wonderful cool and controlled kiss.
We went through a closely guarded area and came to a building, where there were only soldiers and airmen in uniform. Outside the apron, some aircraft were arranged, which I recognized as Mikoyan MiG-25. I had my heart in my mouth all the time, because if someone noticed me without my passport, which remained at the hotel, I would certainly have been arrested and deported for life. I was really nervous, though I admit it was exciting.
The guards never noticed that a foreigner was in the group, the piroshky tasted excellent, so everything went well. At the concert in Suzdal, I was on stage and was honored tosing a song introduction which one singer usually does in Cossack songs.
On another occasion I and another balalaika orchestra member sang when Pokrovsky gave a concert for the Soviet party elite in a cozy church on the Red Square in Moscow. We sang a Russian Cossack song with a very ancient text that described a beautifully ornate Viking ship. We were greeted with tumultuous applause. But the KGB 3security director in charge of the event got no further appreciation, as I heard later.He was not even aware of the uncontrolled foreigners who would perform in front of top party officials! Yes, Pokrovsky knew the art of teasing power. Despite the fact he was so popular, he was not allowed to travel out of the country and perform in the rest of the world.
I presented Pokrovsky with the latest model of Sony Walkman with high quality recording - handy on his many trips out to the remote Russian villages where he recorded old songs and he gave me a beautifully decorated single-row accordion. A handmade Saratovskaya Harmonica 4with handmade clocks and carved woodwork. I wondered how I could get the treasure out of the country.
