{"id":1049,"date":"2008-08-17T10:15:31","date_gmt":"2008-08-17T09:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2008-08-17T10:15:31","modified_gmt":"2008-08-17T09:15:31","slug":"what-does-it-mean-to-be-russian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=1049","title":{"rendered":"What does it mean to be Russian?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week I have felt the pain of the people of Georgia even more than I would have done last week. This is because I have spent the past week in the Baltic States and two of them &#8211; Estonia and Latvia &#8211; have substantial Russian minority populations. Many of the local people with whom we spoke were anxious and despondent about what the events in Georgia could mean for them.<br \/>\nIf Russia is going to take the view that it can act militarily to defend the interests of people who define themselves as Russian, then the independence of many former Soviet Republics is gravely threatened. This is brought out clearly in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/world\/2008\/aug\/17\/georgia.russia1\">an article<\/a> by Rafael Behr in this week&#8217;s week &#8220;Observer&#8221; newspaper.<br \/>\nOn her father&#8217;s side, my wife&#8217;s family is Czech. We remember 1938 when the Nazis took over vast swathes of then Czechoslovakia on the grounds that they were defending the Sudeten Germans. We remember 1968 when Warsaw Pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia on the grounds that Dubceck&#8217;s &#8216;Communism with a human face&#8217; was counter-revolutionary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week I have felt the pain of the people of Georgia even more than I would have done last week. This is because I have spent the past week in the Baltic States and two of them &#8211; Estonia and Latvia &#8211; have substantial Russian minority populations. Many of the local people with whom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}