Response to JI7 (Reply #3)
Wed Mar 26, 2014, 11:49 PM
Star Member sabrina 1 (42,851 posts)
225. An overwhelming number of Crimeans voted for that annex to Russia. A majority of Crimeans ARE
Russian or descended from Russians. There is just NO WAY to try to compare Crimea/Russia to Iraq/USA and the very fact that the President is trying to 'explain' demonstrates that the ONLY people on the planet who do not understand the Crimea situation are right here in the US listening to the Corporate media.
And why are there a bunch of Russians in Crimea?
During World War II, the Stalin regime used the resources of a highly organized state with a modern rail system to rapidly exile entire nations from their ancestral homelands. The Soviet government targeted the Muslim nationalities of the Caucasus and Crimea for deportation in their entirety. The Soviet political police, NKVD (Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs) exiled the Karachays, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks to Kazakhstan, Central Asia, Siberia, and other remote areas of the USSR in 1943 and 1944.
The Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks, however, remained exiled far from their roots. Only after 1989, could a significant number of Crimean Tatars return to their ancestral homeland. Today more than 250,000 (more than 50% of the total population in the former USSR) Crimean Tatars reside in the Crimea.[3] Although they still suffer from discrimination and exclusion in their homeland, the Crimean Tatars have made significant progress in repairing the damage inflicted upon their national existence by Stalin.
http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/jopohl.html