Re: Those flexible USSR boundaries.

["John M. Legge" <jlegge@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I suspect that the Ukraine is a much bigger issue than Serbia: just on half of the population of the Ukraine have a Catholic background and historical links to the newly NATO-ised Poland while the other half are Orthodox and have traditionally (since Ivan the Terrible, at least) been Russian.

The current Polish government is in an economic crisis and a political deadlock: what happier idea than a new crusade to move their Eastern border to its 1939 location?  Some Poles may even identify with the ancient Kingdom of Livonia, whose borders at their high water mark ran to the gates of Moscow.  If Peter the Great had lost the battle of Poltava (in the Ukraine - shades of Kosovo) they probably still would.

Releasing the genie of redrawing Eastern European borders on confessional and linguistic lines (which seldom run through the same places, even when a line rather than a broad, disputed territory can be identified) can create enough wars, hot and cold, to keep every nation's military industrial complexes humming.  Military Keynesianism rules, OK?

JML

----- Original Message -----
From: Greg Nowell <GN842@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: POST-KEYNESIAN THOUGHT <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, 17 April 1999 5:49
Subject: Those flexible USSR boundaries.


> Nonpkt post, but wotthehell:
>
> What may be at stake here is
> defeating a great Russia pan-serbian movement that
> would restore boundaries
> of the old Soviet Union.
>
> GN:
>
> Er, excuse me, but given Hungary and Bulgaria, how do
> we get *restored* USSR boundaries out of Serbia?
>
> --
> Gregory P. Nowell
> Associate Professor
> Department of Political Science, Milne 100
> State University of New York
> 135 Western Ave.
> Albany, New York 12222
>
> Fax 518-442-5298
>
>