It states there that the problem of ethnic Russian groups in the neighbouring countries cannot be solved by Russia by diplomatic means alone. Those ethnic Russian groups, however, have oftentimes settled down in the wake of occupants and mass deportations of the native population.
So I am worried that once again irrationalism is getting out of hand in Russian foreign policy and Russian political philosophy. Years ago Solzhenitsyn called on Russians to bid farewell to the empire and instead concentrate on themselves. He used the word "self-restriction" and demanded that the Russians should solve their own economic, social, and also intellectual problems. Neglecting this imperative of their great compatriot's, responsible Russian politicians have suddenly, once again, begun to speak openly about the purported "special role" of Russia, about a "peacekeeper" function that the new Russia has to fulfil throughout the whole territory of the former USSR.
Mr Karaganov, one of President Yeltsin's closest advisors, recently expressed this in seemingly unobtrusive form but, in fact quite harshly, when he said that Russia was to play the role of "primus inter pares" - the first among equals - in the entire area of the former Soviet empire. This reminds me of a phrase once coined by George Orwell about Soviet communism: "All are equal, but some are more equal than others!"
Whoever really wants to help Russia and the Russian people today must make it emphatically clear to the Russian leadership that another imperialist expansion will not stand a chance. Whoever fails to do so will actually help the enemies of democracy in Russia and other post-communist states.
Either the neo-imperialist policy of a great eastern power will be tolerated, financed, and in the short term, possibly even profited from; that, dear listeners, would be a policy unable to see an inch further than one's nose. Or the notions of democracy, freedom, responsibility and peace will be helped on the road to success across the whole gigantic area between the Baltic Sea and the Pacific Ocean;if one wants to do that, the democratic West should resolutely contribute to the stability and security of the medium and smaller-sized states to the east of the German border. Here I mean the whole area of Central Europe, which in my view reaches from the Estonian border town of Narva, on the Baltic Sea, to the Adriatic, also including Ukraine
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If, however, those states, including Estonia, are left to their own devices and exposed to the potential neo-imperialist appetites of Moscow, the price for it would be too high, even for all Europe, to pay.
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