MIM Notes 186 May 15 1999

Yugoslavian government votes for union with Russia & 
Belarus
by MC5

The Yugoslavian Parliament voted April 12 to join the union of 
Russia and Belarus, two republics of the former Soviet Union. "At 
the lower house, out of 115 deputies present, 110 supported the 
motion, while five abstained. At the upper house, of the 27 
delegates present, 26 were in favor and one abstained."(1)

We noted the "reports that Serbs want to join the union of Russia 
and Belarus" in MN#183.
The peoples of Eastern Europe ranging from the Balkans in the 
south to the Baltics in the north have always faced a squeeze from 
major powers on both sides--east and west. War clarifies political 
alliances and compels those countries of relatively small 
populations to take sides.

Yugoslavia does not even border Russia or Belarus. However, the 
NATO bombing coming two weeks after Hungary, Czech Republic and 
Poland joined NATO could not be more perfect for causing the 
Russian right-wing to respond and ally with the pseudo-communists 
of Russia. The chauvinist pseudo-communists and right-wingers work 
to make a favorable political atmosphere for the Serbs to either 
contribute to reforming the Soviet Union or to take up the cause 
of Pan-Slavic unity. They are also forcing the Western-influenced 
Russian liberals to sing the same song.

The special connection between Serbs and Russia goes back to the 
800s. Seeking to reduce the influence of German missionary work 
among Western Slavic peoples that now occupy the Czech Republic, 
government leaders invited Greek missionaries to come preach 
Catholicism in Slavic language. Despite the consecration of the 
Pope, a certain Methodius ended up in jail for two years at German 
instigation.

Methodius's followers invented the Cyrillic alphabet in the late 
800s. Eventually, Slavic Catholics splintered from Catholicism and 
formed the Orthodox Church, the monopoly power of Russian religion 
to this day. The Russians use a modified form of the Cyrillic 
alphabet. Croats and Slovenes use the Roman alphabet while the 
other former Yugoslav republics and Bulgarians use an alphabet 
similar to the Russian one.

Like respective Christian right-wingers in the West, most Russian 
right-wingers believe all is lost without their church, the 
Orthodox Christian Church. As the Chinese communists under Mao 
pointed out, a few years after the death of Stalin, the Soviet 
phony Communist Party loosened restrictions on the Orthodox Church 
to allow it to propagate its religion in addition to its mystical 
nationalism that Stalin found useful during World War II.

An author who believes Stalin to have been worse than Hitler, 
Walter Laquer nonetheless pointed out that the Russian right-
wingers hold many kooky ideas with Orthodox Christianity as the 
glue: "Religion has traditionally played a central part in Russian 
national ideology. To be Russian, Dostoyevsky said, is to be 
Orthodox. It was therefore not by accident that, parallel with the 
nationalist revival of the 1960s and 1970s, a religious resurgence 
took place. Not all who became active in church affairs gravitated 
to the right, nor was the reverse the case, but there was a 
significant overlap."(2)

Pan-Slavic unity and the ensuing wars of the Balkans is the price 
we of 1999 pay for too much retreat from the road of Lenin and 
Stalin. The capitalist Great Powers have taken us right back to 
the primitive historical situation before the Russian Revolution 
and Bolshevism took power in 1917. Somehow we have managed to give 
this crazy system that produced two world wars already this 
century a third chance in the exact same countries that caused the 
first two world wars.

Notes:
1. http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9904/12/BC-Yugoslavia-
SlavicAlli.ap/
2. Walter Laquer, Black Hundred: The Rise of the Extremist Right 
in Russia (NY: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 66.