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"I am not a simple peasant, not of the working class, but the son of a
deacon, and when I was free I lived at Kursk; I used to wear a frockcoat,
and now I have brought myself to such a pass that I can sleep naked on the
ground and eat grass. And I wish no one a better life. I want nothing and I
am afraid of nobody, and the way I look at it is that there is nobody richer
and freer than I am. When they sent me here from Russia from the first day I
stuck it out; I want nothing! The devil was at me about my wife and about my
home and about freedom, but I told him: 'I want nothing.' I stuck to it, and
here you see I live well, and I don't complain, and if anyone gives way to
the devil and listens to him, if but once, he is lost, there is no salvation
for him: he is sunk in the bog to the crown of his head and will never get
out."
So spoke old Semyon, nicknamed Canny, the protagonist of Chekhov's short
story >In Exile<. The great Russian writer, with an exceptional style,
painted a picture of the worries and depresision of people without hope,
without ideals, of people who are 'disposable', of people who have lived the
greyness of life in the Siberian plains and had lost all desire for
anything.
It was precisely this short story that I was reminded of while analyzing
Russia's arrogant diplomacy, determined to provoke a global crisis at any
cost and so threaten peace and international order for, essentially,
nothing. Where do they get this courage from? Where does all the arrogance
in Russia's diplomacy and their establishment stem from, this arrogance that
so easily threatens peace and the new world order, based on the princples of
liberal democracy and standards that ensure the protection of human rights
and freedoms - and they do this with the smaller issue of Kosovo as well.
Can they not see that the arguments they throw around, whilst defending Serb
expansionism, are anachronistic and belong to the period of pan-Slavism? How
can they not realize that a global role can only be played through
implementing universal values, human rights, and in particular the
inalienable right of nations to freedom and self-determination?
Why are they not aware that their cynic arguments are unendurable for anyone
that knows at least a little about Kosovo? How can they dare to speak so
easily and cynically about a compromise, when it is clear to everyone that
one cannot compromise with those who have tried for centuries to exterminate
a nation they consider to be parasitic weed, and who still, today, do not
hide their wishes to try to use old methods once more to reduce Albanians
into an unimportant factor? Why do they give the status of Kosovo such a
diabolic meaning - it would allegedly initiate a tidal wave of secession all
over the world? If that is the case, how is it that the collapse of former
Yugoslavia did not have such an effect on countries close and far? Why do
new countries emerge all the time and are accepted into the United Nations,
whilst at the same time this, according to the magical formula of the domino
effect, does not spark of anarchy? How serious can they be, those that claim
Kosovo's independence would set a dangerous precedent, when we all know that
the number of United Nations members increased fourfold since the year 1945?
If Kosovo would be a negative precedent, then what would be a positive
example - perhaps Chechnya? Let us compare the two. In the case of Kosovo,
Christianity and Islam are in harmony, because humanism prevails: the
Christian civilization intervenes and does not permit genocide against one
predominantly Muslim nation from the side of the other, let us say Christian
nation. Furthermore, Kosovo sends a message about successful democratic
elections, elections that have proceeded better than those in almost all
transition countries. In Kosovo, the rights of ethnic and religious
minorities are protected, so that today, the Serbs in Kosovo have more
rights than they did in the period of Milosevic. And what message is sent by
the other, by the opposite example? A vast rift between religions,
successful genocide, failed democratization, and the dismantling of human
dignity. What precedent, then, is there at the heart of Russian diplomacy?
When speaking of precedents, these must be analyzed from a normative
perspective, not simply formally. We cannot forget that there are negative
and positive precedents, just because of the amount of noise made regarding
this issue. The latter is always connected to the inalienable right of a
nation for freedom and self-determination.
Finally, on the topic of precedents, we must remember that, when browsing
Russian archives in the post-October revolution period, particularly those
from 1924, around the emergence of the Kosovo issue, that the then-Soviet
authorities viewed the first Yugoslavia as a manufactured entity and worked
towards its dissolution; furthermore, as far as the Albanian question is
concerned, it contacted the Kosovo Committee (lead by the well-known Kosovo
patriot Bajram Curri) prior to Albania's international recognition in order
to establish diplomatic relations with the new Albanian government under Fan
Noli. At that time, the precursors of Putin's contemporary diplomacy, such
as G.V. Cicerini, wrote to the Politbureau of the Russian Communist Party
(on the 22nd of July 1924) that Serbia, regarding the Bucharest agreement of
1913, annexed >Kosovo and Metohija< and absorbed them into the Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918.
There are many such paradoxes, inconsistencies and questions, as well as
answers. What is interesting is the analysis of the socio-cultural substrate
that forms evaluations, the level of seriousness, responsibility, judgments
and positions, both individual as well as collective, that leads to
prejudices, resistance to hypocrisy, and the teaching of methods for
unlimited manipulations of the public.
The answer to all this can be found in the dominant pattern of thought of
the Russian establishment, which always, in a systematic manner, tolerated
the creation of the social category of 'disposable' people, people towards
whom state and society hold no obligation or responsibility; for they are
disposable and even God turned his back on them.
THE RUSSIAN 'DISPOSABLE' AND KOSOVO
Russia's intensive colonial expansionism, particularly mastering territories
with extreme climates, demanded people without hope, without alternatives,
without goals and perspectives, criminals, proletarians, people without home
and property who were promised a splendid future in a time of merciless
industrialization. Masses of adventurers, criminals, prisoners and people
opposed to the government thus headed for the vast plains of Siberia. They
did this convinced that they would be fortunate and that their hope would be
restored, but ended up with the painful revelation that they are abandoned,
'redundant', cheated; in short, accepted by no one. No one took these people
into consideration. They were left without an alternative in the dirty mud
of Siberia, and became the secret power of Russian imperialism - a force
that managed not only to achieve territorial gains but was also able to
resist numerous armies that attacked the Eurasian dinosaur, itself always
provocative and hungry for new territory.
Aside from colonialism, the formation of the social category of disposable
people was also affected by accelerating industrialization,
collectivization, and an ever-increasing impoverishment of wide sectors of
society. These people, with all hope lost forever, were coldly exploited as
expendable material for territorial expansion, for the colonization of
foreign countries, for accelerated economic development and to strengthen
Russia's global role - and this is precisely what Russia is now doing with
Kosovo. The difference between colonialism of the Russian variety and that
of other nations lies in the fact that Russia expanded onto neighboring
countries, so that today, the distinction between colony and own state is
completely blurred, something which was, for example, never true for France.
To be fair, many other nations all over the globe have behaved in precisely
the same way, from the creation of their states up until today, that is,
from slave-owning up until democratic system. However, we cannot look at
every nation and culture from a relativistic point of view. Some nations and
cultures have developed a system of fixing mistakes, whilst others have not
been as successful in doing so and, instead of fixing their mistakes, have
been engaged in an arrogant and scandalous attempt to use rhetoric to cover
up the bitter truth.
Today, we are witnessing a similar strategy, which attempts to, by way of
creating and exploiting 'disposable people', use suicidal tactics to make up
for the economic, scientific, and social inequality between so-called
Western and Islamic countries. There exists a difference between Russian
methods and these anarcho-politial groups that hide behind the veil of
religious convictions as they abuse Islam. Whilst the category of Russia's
'disposable people' is a product of accelerated industrialization and
colonialism, the category of 'holy warriors - kamikazes' is a product of
extreme indoctrination and ruthless political manipulation.
STATES THAT (DON'T) FIX MISTAKES
Slavery existed in the United States alongside racism and legalized
discrimination. Yet the history of states that belong to the circle of
Western civilization has shown that these states are more than capable of
engaging in attempts to fix their mistakes, whilst states with an
authoritarian pattern of thought have never been able to free themselves of
their prejudices. The former U.S. President Bill Clinton, in his book 'My
Life', gave his thanks to nine black students that protested racial
segregation in schools in 1957. >At the end of the summer of 1957, nine
students gave their contribution to the ideal that everybody, white and
black alike, could free themselves of the chains of racial prejudices,< is
written not by just anybody, but by the former President of the U.S. Bill
Clinton. Thanks to the value of correcting past mistakes, >enemies on the
inside< became among the most appreciated human beings in American
civilization, such as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, and many
others.
The pattern of thought that tolerates the existence of 'disposable people'
as a social category has created a military doctrine, according to which
victory is achieved with unlimited sacrifice of soldiers, who are treated as
expendable material. Stalin's saying that the dead are counted only when the
war is over is a sad testament to this. Such a degrading and humiliating
view on human life was shared by former Czars and Communist leaders, and is
shared with todays false democrats. More than 20 million 'disposable people'
died in the October revolution due to starvation. Lenin, the charismatic
leader of the revolution, coldly viewed this tragedy as favorable for the
revolution, as the masses would blame the previous regime for it, and so
those affected would have no will to resist the Red Army. During the second
World War, the disposable layers of Russian society sacrificed more than 20
million people, only to allow the dictator Stalin to enjoy global importance
and the influence to make geostrategic decisions. Today, Russia's President
Putin would, without a second thought, sacrifice the crew of the sunken
submarine Kursk, rather than ask for Western help; by this, he decided for
the continuation of immoral military secrecy above the lives of those
unfortunate sailors, marked as 'disposable'.
The Beslan hostage tragedy, where 313 victims, mostly children, were killed
alongside the terrorists, exposed a cultural and political tradition where
human life matters little. Today's Russian democrats are quick to criticize
the authoritarian leaders of the USSR-period, which creates the illusion
that the leaders today respect democratic tradition and ideals. Yet the fate
that faces Chechnya today is more tragic than the fate which befell the
Tatar nation, the Baltic states, or the Germans that were expelled into
Kazakhstan or other former Soviet Republics in the time of the previous
regime. The Tatars, Germans, Lithuanians and others were persecuted in order
to change the demographic structure so that it would be more in favor fo
Slavs; today, in a period of flourishing democracy, the Chechens, as a
'disposable' national group, face classical genocide.
Following the pattern of thought that, without a second thought, holds
global influence and strength to be of more importance than the lives,
destinies, and fortunes of millions of people, we must ask ourselves the
following question: what kind of values do states that aspire global power
proclaim? Russian politicians, unfortunately, are unable to hide that they
are intoxicated by brutal extortion, that they defend racist ideas, and that
they selfishly, in every issue in the world, defend Russian and Slavic
interests. Speaking of immobile borders whilst being aware that borders are
constantly changing, frightening the world with the apocalyptic promise of
the domino effect, all this is simply rhetoric to divert attention. Of
course, other states pursue their own interests when dealing on a global
agenda, but they do this with the spread of human rights in mind. The
difference between democratic liberal and non-liberal social structures lies
in the fact that the latter always breed dictators who are ready to use
unproportional violence as a method of punishing even the smallest of
infractions.
The category of disposable people enables the quick spread of conflict,
helps forming massive armies of soldiers who are worthless, creates massess
of prostitutes and criminals, all who infiltrate every institution, from
sport to religion, and poison them with criminal logic.
DO ALBANIANS HAVE 'DISPOSABLES' AS WELL?
Do Albanians produce people of this category too? There might exist
indicators that this does happen, but the proportion remains small. Reasons
for that could be found in the lack of industrialization, a process that is
programmed to create expropriated sectors of society. It could also be due
to tribal structures, healthy families, and a corresponding high level of
solidarity among members of these structures. Having this explanation in
mind, we can look at the fact that in Albanian speech, there is no term that
would be the equivalent of 'ghetto'. This has resulted in the respect that
Albanians have for one another - which at the same time weakened their
military capabilities and throughout history has caused loss of territory.
Although the category of 'disposable' people does not exist in internal
relations between Albanians, it does not hold true for relations between
Albanians and others. Throughout history, others have treated Albanians, as
well as Bosniaks, as disposable, and this is occuring to this day, where
attempts at peace in the Balkans are directed to be at the expense of
Albanians, whose economic opportunities and territory are being infringed
upon. To prevent the aim of categorizing Albanians as a 'disposable nation',
Albanian society must be organized on the basis of values and ideals. The
further a society moves from ideals, the higher the possibility that it will
become 'disposable', and thereby change to barter with. No functional state
today can be stable without the sacrifices made for it by ideals and without
the aims of a legitimate state. Nepotism, corruption, crime,
authoritarianism, and theocratism are all factors that eat away at the
foundations of a society that is meant to be for the good of all citizens
and ethnicities.
The authors is former President of the Democratic Party of Albanians (PDSH)
in Macedonia and member of the Macedonian Parliament. This article was first
published by International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan Studies
(IFIMES) - Ljubljana, Slovenia
Source: http://www.dtt-net.com/en/index.php?page=view-article&article=3481
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