Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[kaur]

Firn and Outlaw, thanks for comments.

Couple more observers.

Zhdanok became politically active in the late 1980s, at first a member of the Popular Front, she soon became one of the leaders of the Interfront, a political organization opposing Latvia's independence from the Soviet Union and market reforms. Prior to that, she taught mathematics at the University of Latvia, where she received her doctorate in mathematics in 1992. In 1989, she was elected to the Riga city Soviet, and in 1990, to the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR. Zhdanok was also active with the Communist Party of Latvia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatjana_%C5%BDdanoka

Bckman

Nashi protests in Helsinki[edit]

Bckman arranged the "Nashi-protest" on 23 March 2009. The handful of demonstrators were the focus of attention for about 40 representatives of the media.[38]
In March 2009 Bckman as part of the Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee arranged a series of protests in Helsinki attended by activists of Russian Nashi, Night Watch, against what they called the opening [of] a new anti-Russian front of information warfare on the territory of Finland by [the] Estonian embassy. Also Abdullah Tammi and his followers from the prospective Finnish Islamic Party participated. The protests were aimed against seminars, against a book about the Soviet occupation of Estonia, and against films presented by the Estonian embassy in Finland, especially the film Soviet Story by Edvins Snore.[38] In media commentaries for Swedish, Finnish and Russian press, television and radio, Bckman claimed that the Soviet Union did not occupy Estonia, and belittled the significance of the Soviet deportations from Estonia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_B%C3%A4ckman

[carl]

95% vote in Crimea for becoming part of the siloviki state. Putin and the boys aren't even trying to make it look good anymore, it's just a straight up power play.

[AdamG]

Has Putin begun undoing the collapse of the Soviet Union, much like Stalin did to undo the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk?

Many Americans have trouble understanding modern Russia or leader Vladimir Putin. That’s in good part because they have little or no understanding of Russia’s history or geopolitics.

“The Soviets Union will return” I wrote in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR deprived the Russian imperium of a third of its territory, almost half its people and much of its world power.

A similar disaster for Russia occurred in 1918 at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Defeated by the German-Austrian-Bulgarian-Turkish Central Powers in World War I and racked by revolution, Lenin’s new Bolshevik regime bowed to German demands to hand over the Baltic states and allow Ukraine to become independent.

As soon as Josef Stalin consolidated power, he began undoing the Brest-Litovsk surrender. The Baltic states, Ukraine, the southern Caucasus and parts of “Greater Romania” were reoccupied. Half of Poland again fell under Russian control. Stalin restored his nation to its pre-war 1914 borders, killing millions in the process.

http://www.unz.com/emargolis/another...uss-in-crimea/