Thursday, January 29, 2015

Russian Story

It is a comical way of hitting back at Germany....but Russia laid down a card that requires some pondering.

The speaker of the Russian Duma....their parliament....has asked for a review over the idea of condemning Germany for "grabbing East Germany" in 1990 and performing an annex of the area, without allowing a vote.

It's slamming Germany over the Ukraine business, and the way that the Crimea was handled (allowing a vote process).

What can be said back in 1990....is that as the East German (DDR) government fell....it was a rather quick process of negotiation, and consolidation.  No vote was ever set to a stage.....asking West Germans if they wanted to take back to the former part of Germany.....or asking East Germans if they wanted to be part of Germany.

The Russians may have a point on the process, and that a vote would have sealed the whole process, unlike what was done in Ukraine or Crimea.

The outcome in 1990 if a vote had occurred?  No one can say.  There might have been a quarter of the population who wanted to continue on with the DDR government.  If you walked around today and asked if eastern Germans wanted their own republic.....they might get a quarter of the vote to support such an idea.  You might even get a quarter of the west German population who demand that it be split off.

It's a decent Russia front-page story for twenty-four hours.....if you ask me....without much value.

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