EU looks East, proposes new partnership to the Eastern countries

[Dachs]

Well if it wasn't for the swede, i would've been rich now! My ancestor owned a big company in Krakow untill the swedes looted and destroyed it..

But you guys never actually did anything else, and nothing at all positive...

Oooh, oooh, is this time for "your ancestor screwed over my ancestor" time? Can I talk about how my family's estate was ruined by the Russians at the end of World War II and now belongs to the Poles? I would've been rich now if it weren't for you Poles and Russians!

 

[TheLastOne36]

Oh, and can't wait to bring Ukraine and Moldova in the EU. (although I totally understand the economy would make it impossible at the time) I'm sure it will be treated as the Third Union of All Romanians here, soon after it happens.

Let's say that Moldova is economically stable and is in the EU. Will there ever be a chance for Moldova to join Romania?

 

[TheLastOne36]

Oooh, oooh, is this time for "your ancestor screwed over my ancestor" time? Can I talk about how my family's estate was ruined by the Russians at the end of World War II and now belongs to the Poles? I would've been rich now if it weren't for you Poles and Russians!

OOH Story time!

My ancestors from pre-wwII era owned a big factory in Moscow, but then the nazi's destroyed it, then it was rebuilt with MY FAMILY's CASH and then USSR killed most of the workers and sent the rest to somewhere in Siberia and then took over the factory half a year later.

On my other family side, my great great grandfather owned a huge plantation in haiti, and then the haitians thought it was a perfect time for a civil war, and my great great grandfather lost everything and escaped haitian prison and came to venezuela by a small boat.

So yes, i would've been rich a number of ways but my family got screwed instead, by Swedes, Russians and Haitians.

 

[philippe]

my grandfathers tobacco processing plant got destroyed by the nazis.

 

[Yeekim]

But you guys never actually did anything else, and nothing at all positive...

Well, Estonia owes its first university and gymnasium to Swedes. Gustav II Adolf to be precise. Swedish rule (1561-1721) is also very positively remembered here, strangely in spite of it being essentially nothing but war, plague and hunger. During which hunger Sweden exported lots of grain to make vodka to sell and finance their military conquests.

I guess then they behaved nicely otherwise ...

 

[TheLastOne36]

Well, Estonia owes its first university and gymnasium to Swedes. Gustav II Adolf to be precise. Swedish rule (1561-1721) is also very positively remembered here, strangely in spite of it being essentially nothing but war, plague and hunger. During which hunger Sweden exported lots of grain to make vodka to sell and finance their military conquests.

I guess then they behaved nicely otherwise ...

I had Estonia in mind, but i knew you'd say something and you understand Estonian history much better then i do.

 

[Winner]

I can recommend a visit, not least for Central Europeans who might be interested in where their stuff ended up.

Are you on a secret mission to spread hatred towards Sweden?

Anyway, I only need to travel some 150 kilometers south to see a very beautiful city built mostly from Bohemian money. Somebody should give us the credit for being the greatest involuntary donor to other countries' coffers

 

[ArneHD]

Are you on a secret mission to spread hatred towards Sweden?

Anyway, I only need to travel some 150 kilometers south to see a very beautiful city built mostly from Bohemian money. Somebody should give us the credit for being the greatest involuntary donor to other countries' coffers

Hey, If you are willing to forgive Germany after 60 years, you should at least forgive Sweden after 200 of doing nothing at all.

 

[silver 2039]

Here we go again: an utterly irrelevant and logically flawed black/white comparison based on personal prejudice.

Central and Eastern Europe would have bene much better off, if it hadn't been for both Nazis and Commies. The whole world would have been better. As I explained in another thread, USSR was actively helping the Nazis to achieve their goals until 1941, so it shares the same amount of blame. Without their support, Hitler would have never had the guts to go after Poland facing the risk of war on two fronts from the beginning. USSR was very cooperative in destroying Central European nations, while it democided Eastern Europe on its own (Ukraine could tell - how many people did the good commies kill there in the 1930s? Were it 2 or 3 millions people?).

So, why should anybody be gratefull to the USSR? I am not. We've paid for their "help" with 1/5 of our territory (annexed by USSR after WW2) and 40 years of communist oppression, including one invasion and thousands of dead people.

So, just for the heck of it: India was much better off under British rule. India owes its very existence as a unified nation to the British, who brough civilization to the primitive peoples there, built railroads and the whole infrastructure and stopped the natives from killing each other for sport. You should thank the British for their selfless assistance every minute of every day in your life

Once again you refuse to acknowledge that your nation wouldn't have existed AT ALL if the Nazi's had won. You would have been annexed into the Glorious Greater German Reich or whatever the hell they called it.

As for the rest of the easterners first the Germans would have set up puppet states controlled by the SS and they would have starved the population with famine and slave labor, and then sent in German colonists. That was their plan since WWI.

Compare that to what the Russians did which was set up puppet states with local tyrants might I point out your oppressors were your own, rebuild after the war, build up heavy industry. Compared to what the Nazi rule would have been the USSR was positively benign. But your anti-Russian hysteria blinds you to that fact of course.

I'm not sure what India has to do with this, that's a pretty random red herring there. But I suppose that should be expected from you.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Once again you refuse to acknowledge that your nation wouldn't have existed AT ALL if the Nazi's had won. You would have been annexed into the Glorious Greater German Reich or whatever the hell they called it.

As for the rest of the easterners first the Germans would have set up puppet states controlled by the SS and they would have starved the population with famine and slave labor, and then sent in German colonists. That was their plan since WWI.

Compare that to what the Russians did which was set up puppet states with local tyrants might I point out your oppressors were your own, rebuild after the war, build up heavy industry. Compared to what the Nazi rule would have been the USSR was positively benign. But your anti-Russian hysteria blinds you to that fact of course.

This is like saying that India benefit's from Pakistan's existence. Just because we might've been better of under soviet rule rather then nazi rule doesn't mean that soviet rule was heaven.

 

[silver 2039]

This is like saying that India benefit's from Pakistan's existence.

Again with the red herrings.

Just because we might've been better of under soviet rule rather then nazi rule doesn't mean that soviet rule was heaven.

Did I say it was? Its a lot better than any of the alternatives which is what you fail to understand and why you owe Russia.

 

[Gabryel Karolin]

Well if it wasn't for the swede, i would've been rich now! My ancestor owned a big company in Krakow untill the swedes looted and destroyed it..

But you guys never actually did anything else, and nothing at all positive...

Meh, if nothing else we saved Finland and the Baltics from becoming Russian and Europe from papism. Even today we provide work for the thousands of Polacks who come here every year.

Poland is just sporadic independence and constant bellyaching how you're not appreciated enough. A large European country of 40m, and you're not known for anything, that must suck. Just a mini-Russia without any of the accomplishments.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Meh, if nothing else we saved Finland and the Baltics from becoming Russian and Europe from papism. Even today we provide work for the thousands of Polacks who come here every year.

Poland is just sporadic independence and constant bellyaching how you're not appreciated enough. A large European country of 40m, and you're not known for anything, that must suck. Just a mini-Russia without any of the accomplishments.

I was talking about Central and Eastern Europe in terms of development, if you didn't get that.

And i'm assuming your kidding around with the second part.

Again with the red herrings.

Red Herring? Maybe India is a bad example, but i meant that a country has a terrorist attack, but afterwards get's better security which it benefits from.

I'm not saying it is equal, i'm just saying it seems like a smaller version of what happened to Poland. Now let's compare Poland:

9/11 happens -1 -------- WWII happens -1
USA Tightens security +1 --------- Soviet's liberate us and help a bit with rebuilding infrastructure +1

Basically 1 big bad thing happens, (IE WWII, 9/11 or Mumbai)
then a small good thing happens, (IE Better Security vs terroism or we rebuild our infrastructure).
But if we alter the scenerio a bit, things would've been better for all, (IE, the West liberate us and build our infrastructure after the war, or the terrorists on the planes have failed because there was a group of commando's on the plane heading home, or Pakistan was a stable govornment and Mumbai wouldn't have been attacked.)

Anyway, my arguements are hugely flawed, and i know that, but it's point is to explain to you that yes, the Soviets did help us slightly, by giving a bit of help with rebuilding infrastructure. And the Terrorists did help as well by providing better security for future attacks. But if the whole damned thing was avoided in the first place (ie the west liberating us or Terrorist's never succeeded). Thus your arguement of us being "benefited from Soviet's existence" is about as equal to "India being benefited from Pakistan's existence".

I just wrote a long and horrible explanation to you, i hope you understand my comparison now.

Did I say it was? Its a lot better than any of the alternatives which is what you fail to understand and why you owe Russia.

How do we owe the USSR(repeat, USSR not RUSSIA) exactly? For sending us to Sibieria, killing all the minorities, starving us, putting us in basic misery while we could have benefited from the west and Poland could've been a mini-germany economically now, and the rest of central europe would've been on par with Western Europe. (Eastern Europe in the most likeliest scenerio would've still been part of the Eastern Bloc.)

 

[Verbose]

Did I say it was? Its a lot better than any of the alternatives which is what you fail to understand and why you owe Russia.

No, but you end up saying that whatever is (or in this case was), is right.

Nice Panglossism.

And then you get called on it, through the application of the same logic, that since the Brits lorded it over India (destroying things like world class Indian textile industry, creating the off famine etc.) that was obvioulsy also right and proper, since they did after all end up doing it.

 

[silver 2039]

And then you get called on it, through the application of the same logic, that since the Brits lorded it over India (destroying things like world class Indian textile industry, creating the off famine etc.) that was obvioulsy also right and proper, since they did after all end up doing it.

No a more apt comparison would be that the British were far better than the French. Or the Portuguese, is essentially what I'm saying both of which would have been infinitely worse than the British. Similarly USSR>Nazi Germany and Britain>France

 

[Verbose]

No a more apt comparison would be that the British were far better than the French. Or the Portuguese, is essentially what I'm saying both of which would have been infinitely worse than the British. Similarly USSR>Nazi Germany and Britain>France

That wasn't all you were saying.

Essentially you get the Poles and the Czechs etc. caught between a killler and a rapist. The rapist then lays the killer out. That's fine. Better be at the mercy of a rapist than a killer after all.

But since you went on to invoke a debt of gratitude on the part of various central and eastern European nations, you essentially end up claiming that after the rapist has had his way, the Poles, and the Czech etc., out of gratitude should now lick him clean as well, simply because it's better to get raped than to get killed.

The initial fates of France and Poland in WWII are not entirely dissimilar. But just compare how France came out of WWII to the utterly raw deal the Poles were dealt, by Stalin specifically. Looking into the fate of Poland is good way of spotting why the Soviet Union was a political monstrosity.

 

[TheLastOne36]

That wasn't all you were saying.

Essentially you get the Poles and the Czechs etc. caught between a killler and a rapist. The rapist then lays the killer out. That's fine. Better be at the mercy of a rapist than a killer after all.

But since you went on to invoke a debt of gratitude on the part of various central and eastern European nations, you essentially end up claiming that after the rapist has had his way, the Poles, and the Czech etc., out of gratitude should now lick him clean as well, simply because it's better to get raped than to get killed.

The initial fates of France and Poland in WWII are not entirely dissimilar. But just compare how France came out of WWII to the utterly raw deal the Poles were dealt, by Stalin specifically. Looking into the fate of Poland is good way of spotting why the Soviet Union was a political monstrosity.

QFT. Finally someone from outside central/eastern europe who understands!

 

[Arwon]

That's a very good analogy, Verbose.

Stalinists were a little better than the Nazis (you sorta had a chance of surviving), but they were still downright awful.

 

[Winner]

Once again you refuse to acknowledge that your nation wouldn't have existed AT ALL if the Nazi's had won.

And once again you're repeating a stupid phrase totally unrelated to history.

You would have been annexed into the Glorious Greater German Reich or whatever the hell they called it.

We've been part of Austria-Hungary for 500 years and we survived. Germans would be just another occupant. It would certainly be worse than Communism, but...

I DON'T CARE. You're using a common cowardly debating practice: you give me only two bad options and say "it's either this or this, you choose". I am not going to play along. I say that Nazi Germany and Soviet Union acted in collusion and as a result, Central European countries were partitioned and consumed by one of these powers.

I owe NOTHING to any of them. As far as I am concerned, both were the same kind of evil. First they cooperated to destroy us, then they fought each other and one of them won and imposed its version of totalitarian system on us. Surely I have every reason to be grateful, right?

As for the rest of the easterners first the Germans would have set up puppet states controlled by the SS and they would have starved the population with famine and slave labor, and then sent in German colonists. That was their plan since WWI.

Sure thing Mr. Alternate History. We don't know what would have really happened. Soviets once promised a world revolution and victorious march of the Red Army throughout the world, destroying the evil capitalists, clergy, aristocracy etc. It didn't happen either.

Compare that to what the Russians did which was set up puppet states with local tyrants might I point out your oppressors were your own, rebuild after the war, build up heavy industry.

Russians didn't rebuild anything in the puppet states. They merely ordered the local commies what should they build while they continued to exploit the satellite states.

Compared to what the Nazi rule would have been the USSR was positively benign. But your anti-Russian hysteria blinds you to that fact of course.

Hysteria? I am pretty realistic here, it's you who's being hysterical - all your doomsday scenarios, black&thinking and historical revisionism just underlines that.

It's kinda funny that an American boy who pretends to be an Indian lectures me about the positives of the Soviet/Communist regime in Central and Eastern Europe. You have practically zero experience and obviously also very insufficient knowledge of this matter, but you're so quick to make conclusions. Youth...

You know what? Go cry for nuclear war with Pakistan and don't bother us in this thread.

I'm not sure what India has to do with this, that's a pretty random red herring there. But I suppose that should be expected from you.

I am just letting you taste your own medicine. Some of your own "arguments" apply on British India case too - but suddenly you can't appreciate it