But what of Birobidzhan and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, I hear you ask?

By  Anonymous, at Monday, August 11, 2008 9:48:00 am  

You mean it would have been better if all the new states would have been improvised in the style of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Serbian_Krajina? Can't see how that would have been better than the orderly secession of a Slovenia or an Estonia.

By  Anonymous, at Monday, August 11, 2008 2:12:00 pm  

When Socrates acted dumb, that was irony: Socrates was smart.
When Stalin was cruel, dishonest, short-sighted- it wasn't irony.

By  Anonymous, at Tuesday, August 12, 2008 5:55:00 am  

The trouble is, Ken, multi-national republics (or monarchies for that matter) need internal administration; and that means internal boundaries; and that means lines on maps.
We're screwed.

By  Anonymous, at Tuesday, August 12, 2008 7:48:00 pm  

"Future multi-national republics might do well to avoid the mistake made by the author of Marxism and the National Question. Languages, customs, costumes, dances and cookery, yes. But for the rest, the component nations and nationalities of multinational states should be left not so much as a line on a map."

Kinda strongly implies this is advice for a non-voluntary association: I mean, should it be an objective of a theoretical more closely integrated future EU to eliminate old national borders by law as well as by changed circumstance?

And it seems (8/12) to be mostly over, sans escalating. Was there any real chance it would? Our Peerless Leaders haven't even worked up the nerve for a surprise attack on quite-entirely-nuke-free Iran...

Bruce

By  Anonymous, at Tuesday, August 12, 2008 10:26:00 pm  

Good points, all, though I might not agree with all of them. I'll zap up another post about the new war soon.

Meanwhile, I have to admit that I let my irritation with the endless manipulation of the national question get the better of my reason in the last sentence of my post ...

By  Ken, at Wednesday, August 13, 2008 8:32:00 pm  

Just tell me one thing: Why can't the US (plus Europe) and Russia be friends? The Russians aren't communists anymore. They have a democracy that functions almost as well as that of the US (yeah, I know).

So why are we always working on cornering the Russians in (NATO expansions, missile shield), when we could cooperate with them on making the world a better place.

I don't get it.

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, August 13, 2008 8:47:00 pm  

"But for the rest, the component nations and nationalities of multinational states should be left not so much as a line on a map."

Interestingly in Otto Bauer's book on nationalities (which Stalin mentions) I believe he advances the idea of nations being organized as 'associations' of people within a multinational unit, not delineated in patches of land. So one would presumably have an English or Welsh membership card...

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, August 13, 2008 11:36:00 pm  

"So why are we always working on cornering the Russians in (NATO expansions, missile shield), when we could cooperate with them on making the world a better place.

I don't get it."

It's got something to do with cut-throat capitalism and cut-throat competition for increasingly scarce energy resources, not to mention the natural tendency of imperialism to try and subjugate its rivals...

You're welcome!

By  Daniel, at Friday, August 15, 2008 7:33:00 am  

Just tell me one thing: Why can't the US (plus Europe) and Russia be friends? The Russians aren't communists anymore.

...because the Russians still want to dominate the politics of their "near abroad" - the European states of the former Soviet Empire - and those states don't want to be dominated.

By  Anonymous, at Friday, August 15, 2008 10:49:00 am  

There is something to be said about the US dominating the politics of their own near abroad, too, during the last half of a century, but that's of course all justifiable. In a way yes, in a way perhaps no.

The Major Problem for me while trying to decide what kind of a stand to take on the Georgia-Russia situation is, that there is no way for me to get any even remotely trustworthy information on the situation. Who did what? Who had been doing what already for a long time?

I have no doubt, that Putin is mightily pissed by the prospect of Georgia joining NATO, but I neither doubt the ability of Sakashvili to try to use Russians' bad reputation to foster his own politics. After Afghanistan, Chechnyia and all, how easy it is to make the Russians look like monsters trying to suck the life out of the free and democratic Georgia. This game is not easy to play, and the Westerns public opinion is bound the accept the easiest and ethically simplest solution.

I'm sad, and I feel immense pity for the people caught in the middle of this all, but I can feel no sympathy for the governments of either countries.

By  Anonymous, at Friday, August 15, 2008 5:24:00 pm  

Several years ago I gradually lost my interest in what John le Carre was up to, about the time of "Single & Single", whose plot driver is the struggle for um, er South Ossetia.

Still a dull book, mind, but does capture, via the incomprehension of the protagonists, the profound lack of understanding we have in the west of this region and [insert number at random] others within the former USSR.

Sadly, we no longer have any living politicians who might give Vladimir useful advice as to how to cope with the chaos once your lovely empire is gone.

Nice pic of cat in previous post, mate.

Dave H

By  Anonymous, at Sunday, August 17, 2008 5:44:00 pm  

The controversial British and
Irish Communist Organisation
reprinted "Marxism and the
National Question" in 1974.

I vaguely remember the Le Carre
book-it was partly about Chechnya
and Ossetia and Ingushietia
and the difficulties with
the numerous ethnic groups there.
I reckon JLC might have
scored what Thomas M Disch
called "prophetic points"
with his insight into
post-Soviet ethnic conflict.

By  Anonymous, at Sunday, August 24, 2008 10:19:00 pm  

I must check out the Le Carre.

The B&ICO was controversial partly because of their views on the 'marvellous Georgian' and partly because of how they applied the ideas he put forward in that pamphlet: they argued that on his definition of a nation there were two nations in Ireland. The NI Protestants were either part of the British nation or (possibly, though I don't recall this being a major emphasis) a nation in their own right. Either way, the Protestants couldn't (and shouldn't) be treated as misguided Irish who had to be convinced, forcibly if necessary, that their true intersts lay in a United Ireland.

Strangely enough, now that almost everyone accepts the 'two nations' thesis (under the name of 'two communities' or 'two traditions') the successors of the B&ICO (the same people, under a different name) now argues for a United Ireland and supports Sinn Fein. The consistency is that they don't regard NI as a viable arena for normal class-based politics, and now that there is no chance of its being incorporated fully into the UK, its incorporation into Ireland is the only way forward.

I really must link to Atholl Books, the current B&ICO incarnation, which continues to produce interesting and provocative work.

By  Ken, at Monday, August 25, 2008 9:46:00 pm  

I take it the "marvellous Georgian"
the B&ICO admired wasn't 18th
century architecture.

The "two-nations" idea is interesting,but it doesn't really hold water,since most Ulster Protestants haven't identified
themselves as a separate nation. For most Ulster Unionists ,when independence of the rest of
Ireland was inevitable,wanted
to remain tightly linked to
another nation (the UK),not
express themselves as a separate
nation.

There were some Ulster Loyalists
who advocated an Independent
Ulster in the 1970s,but IIRC
the B&ICO were very strongly
against any such idea.

They do have a point,though, about
NI not being a "viable arena" for
class-based politics to work
in due to the sectarian divisions,
an issue other NI Marxists from
different groups such as
Eamonn McCann have also discussed.

By  Anonymous, at Tuesday, August 26, 2008 6:03:00 pm  

Anon, the 'two nations' idea is that the Protestants/Unionists are separate from the Irish nation (and not that the NI Protestants are themselves a nation). Most people who hold that view think, like the B&ICO, that the Protestants are part of the British nation. As you correctly point out, the B&ICO opposed the notion of an independent Ulster: one of their most interesting and best-written pamphlets was Against Ulster Nationalism.

I've seen arguments against the 'two nations' theory that swing from saying the Protestants can't be a nation because they never sought independence, to saying they can't be British because some of them have said that if they'd prefer an independent Ulster to a United Ireland.

I intend to look out a copy of The Two Irish Nations some day. It went into all this in a lot of polemic against Eamonn McCann and others.

By  Ken, at Tuesday, August 26, 2008 9:01:00 pm  

The better Le Carré book about the Caucasus is Our game, which focuses on the Ingush struggle against Russian domination (and in which the North Ossetains are secondary baddies, just in case anyone was concerned about this all being insufficently complicated).

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, August 27, 2008 12:37:00 pm  

..."the 'two nations' idea is that the Protestants/Unionists are separate from the Irish nation (and not that the NI Protestants are themselves a nation). Most people who hold that view think, like the B&ICO, that the Protestants are part of the British nation."

Interesting,but if the Ulster
Protestants aren't a "nation" in
themselves,doesn't that make
them just an ethnic group?
Or a group of Irish people
who wish to remain under
British rule for religious
and cultural reasons?

There was an awful lot of
controversy about the "two-nations
theory" in Ireland. The
concept is much older than
the B&ICO;the Victorian
Unionist Thomas MacKnight
advocated it in his
book "Ulster as It Is",and
the Irish Free State issued
a book in the 1920s called
"Handbook of the Ulster
Question" which advocated
Irish Unity. This book contained
an essay arguing against
"The Two Nations Theory" as
a justification for partition.

If you are interested in these
issues, Stephen Howe's book
"Ireland and Empire" and
"Ireland: Divided Nation,
Divided Class" by Austen Morgan
and Bob Purdie have discussions
of the issues of Marxism,
Northern Ireland, and
"two-nations theories".

By  Anonymous, at Wednesday, August 27, 2008 6:48:00 pm