Paul Goble reports:
A group of Sakhalin residents, after a visit to Tokyo, are not only studying Japanese but also collecting signatures on a petition asking that Moscow hand over their island to Japan so that they can live and raise their children in a rich, modern country that is not fighting a war with anyone else.
This remarkable action surfaced today when radical Moscow commentator Valeriya Novodvorskaya reported in her Grani.ru column that one of the organizers, who she indicated had to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, had approached her to ask to whom he should forward their appeal.
Novodvorskaya said that she advised him to “send the signatures to the Japanese emperor” where they could serve as “compensation” for the harm that Japan has experienced at Russia’s hands given Moscow’s continuing unwillingness ever to return the four islands Soviet forces seized at the end of World War II.
The columnist pointed out that “typically supporters of a powerful state of the junior officer level point to Japan’s role in World War II as an aggressor and the seizure of islands from her as a former of punishment. But if this is so,” Novodvorskaya said, then she “knows another country which unleashed the second world war and thus should be considered an aggressor too.”
That country is “our Russia,” which despite that managed to seize not a small group of islands but “a good chunk of Poland in the form of Western Ukraine and Belarus and also Bessarabia, that is, Moldova” – areas that passed out of Moscow’s “pirate hands” only after 1991 when those countries became independent.
But if those territories now are in the hands of others, the Grani columnist continued, another war prize Moscow took in is not: Vyborg. That was land Stalin seized from Finland during the winter war, an action for which “the Soviet Union was excluded from the League of Nations! So why should Vyborg not be returned to Finland?”
These are not issues even Russian liberals have wanted to talk about, she said. Only Gennady Burbulis in the early 1990s was prepared to return the four islands to Japan, and after he was attacked by the nationalists and not defended by then-President Boris Yeltsin, no one else in that camp has shown much interest in taking the risk of backing the idea. But in the near future, Novodvorskaya suggested, they and other Russians may have to face up to more demands of this kind. Many in Kaliningrad have “long been dreaming about their return to the world of the first European economy, and they have an organization that is pressing for such that.
If Hitler and Stalin were each “half responsible” for the start of the war, she argued, then “why should Koenigsberg and the grave of Kant remain with [Russia}? For the ‘Philosopher boats?’” – a reference to Lenin’s expulsion by ship of the flower of the pre-1917 Russian intelligentsia in 1922. Moreover, she wrote, the Far East routinely looks toward America and as this case showed even toward Japan, pointedly noting that in contrast, “Alaska is not thinking about joining the Russian Federation.” The Caucasus is also looking for a way out, and it is even possible, she suggested, that people in Eastern and Western Siberia are thinking that way as well.
One indication that these are not entirely frivolous pursuits, she said, is that those considering leaving are to be found “in the holy of holies of the regime – in the military and defense sector,” where some senior officers “not having received the apartments they were promised sent a declaration to the US saying that they wanted to serve in the American army.” Thus, “the collection of signatures on Sakhalin is not a rarity. Soon they will begin to be collected in Moscow.” And according to Novodvorskaya, just one thing remains: “to divide up the territory and people of Russia among the United States, Japan and the European Union” so that the Russian people will be able to live better.
As for Putin, Medvedev and the chekists surrounding them, the outspoken Moscow commentator concluded, they and others like them should be put inside a special Moscow park limited to the territory of the Kremlin, the Lubyanka,
La Russophobe 
we,the chechen mujahideen,do everything to decompose the russian empire.Just since july 1 at least 110 Kadyrovites were killed and the Jihad goes on!
Sakhalin belongs Japan, Japan would do better with its resources than the corrupt Siloviki thugs of Gazprom and Rosneft.
With Russia’s inevitable economic collapse and fragmentation, the Russian Far East will be under Chinese and Japanese auspices as it should be. Russian imperial expansionism will be reversed.
By the way, Vyborg is not the only Russian territory that is still part of Russia as “spoils of war” by aggressor. Former Abrene district in Pskov area used to be part of Latvia until WW2. As Russian troops were moving westward, Abrene was renamed Pytalovo and became part of Pskov oblast.
Wikipedia quotes Putin discussing return of Pytalovo to Latvia: “Instead of Pytalovo they will get ears from dead donkey”
I love how Russians always accuse others from having the same problems as themselves. West is hypocrite with double-standards in their eyes, economy of Baltic states is in freefall, USA is going to disintegrate in a year and so on. Look at yourselves, comrades..
Deith, the whole point of those arguments is; can you find a similar “la_americaphobe” website on Russian internet?
The whole Russian government and media is a “la americaphobe” website.
Deith,
Right on! There are a dozen sites in UK alone that loathe Zimbabwe and mock Mugabe’s policies. But can you find a similar site on Zimbabwean internet that is dwelling on 10,000 per cent inflation in UK? Doesn’t it tell you how hypocritical the Brits are?!
Since 78 per cent of Russian seem to agree with the paragraph above – it tells you how delusional Russia has become in the last decade (“They hate us”; “they are afraid of us”; “They want to attack us”, etc.) It is much easier and much more satisfying to feel hated and feared, than to accept that you are playing in the same league as Nigeria and Venezuela.
To be fair to Nicaragua, it is well above Russia’s level, it has a strong and vocal opposition as does Venezuela.
There is still hope for Nicaragua & Venezuela, as for Russia……
Maybe those Sakhalin signatories should move to the new country declarted by the Lacota Indians?
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/12/lakota-withdraw.html
The Lakota Sioux Indians have withdrawn from all treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government and have declared their independence.
The Lakota say the United States has never honored the pacts, signed with the Great Sioux Nation in 1851 and 1868 at Fort Laramie, Wyo.
“We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children,” said Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977.
In 1974, the Lakota drafted a declaration of continuing independence. Their cause got a boost in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. The Bush administration opposed the measure.
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” said Russell Means, a longtime Indian rights activist. “This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically Article 6 of the Constitution,” which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land.
“It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the U.S. and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent,” he added during a press conference yesterday in Washington.
The new country would issue its own passports and driver licenses, and living there would be tax-free, provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,”
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVC1KMTOgwiSoMQyT2LwZc9HyAgA
“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us”
Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies — less than 44 years — in the world.
Yeah, yeah, my hypocrite friend.
Have any of them been assasinated since making this declaration? Have their towns been carpet bombed? Have their villages been levelled?
Look at Chechnya, Daghestan, Ingushetia, and Russian actions in Georgia’s breakaway regions for good examples of the difference between the (generally law abiding) USA and (generally genocidal and barbaric) Russia.
It was not “declarted” by “the Lacota Indians” (learn2spell), but by the Lakotah Freedom Delegation, a group of Lakota activists (which then further split into two groups). And in particlar by the actor Russell Means (maybe he should now declare independence in the name of Hollywood).
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Lakota_Freedom_Delegation_says_spokesman_Russell_Means_%27hijacked%27_organization
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8204670.stm
Eleven die in Russia bomb attack
At least 11 people have been killed in a bomb attack at a police station in southern Russia, officials and hospital sources say.
The suspected suicide bombing in Nazran, main city in the republic of Ingushetia, injured many others.
It is reported to have occurred as staff gathered in a courtyard.
Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, has recently been rocked by shootings, bombings and other attacks on police and government officials.
The attacker was reported to have rammed his vehicle into the gates of the police compound as officers were reporting for inspection, the Associated Press quoted a government spokesman, Kaloi Akhilgov, as saying.
The bomber was thought to be among the dead, although this could not be confirmed.
Much of the violence in Ingushetia has been similar to the continuing violence in Chechnya, with escalating clashes between security forces and armed militants in the past year.
Less than a week ago Ingushetia’s construction minister was shot dead by masked gunmen.
That followed the shooting dead of three employees of Russia’s emergencies ministry.
In Chechnya, Russian forces were engaged in heavy fighting with separatist rebels until a few years ago, though the fighting has become much less intense recently.
MIA: group of snipers is shelling militia [police] posts in Dagestan
http://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/10931
Now, all the entrances and exits to and from the capital of Dagestan are blocked, all the vehicles are examined, documents of drivers of trucks
and cars are checked, and the passenger motor transport is checked, as reported by the “Dni.Ru” edition.
The law enforcement bodies suspect that the attacks are committed by a group of snipers, which has been hunting militiamen for several days already.
@At least 11 people have been killed in a bomb attack at a police station
Suicide truck bomb kills at least 20 in Russia
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090817/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_caucasus_violence
At least 20 people were killed, Gorbakova said, though official figures on the number of wounded varied. Gorbakova said 57 people were hurt, including 10 in critical condition. Ruslan Koloyev, the acting head of the Emergency Ministry’s branch in Ingushetia, said on Rossiya television that 92 people were injured.
@The bomber was thought to be among the dead, although this could not be confirmed.
The attacker and the truck were pulverized by the blast, said Svetlana Gorbakova of the regional branch of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Prosecutor General’s office.
(…)
[President] Yevkurov, a former officer of the Russian GRU military intelligence service, also accused the United States, Britain and Israel of fomenting instability in the North Caucasus.
“The West will try to prevent Russia from restoring its Soviet-era might,” he said in the interview, without elaborating.
In late June, a day or two after the start of the large-scale federal Russian military operation in Chechnya and Ingushetia, one of Dokka Umarov’s commanders – a man named Abdul-Malik – contacted the North Caucasus service of Radio Svoboda. He said that a large unit of Kadyrov’s police, together with Russian soldiers, were combing an area of mountain and forest in the vicinity of Shali. He added that a mujahedin detachment of 20 men had left the mountains and gone down to the plain. The task of each of these volunteers – each man had taken the decision of his own accord – was to detonate an explosive device strapped to his body at a place where police officers assembled, and to cause the maximum number of casualties among them.
http://www.watchdog.cz/?show=000000-000024-000001-000015&lang=1