Stupid question, I know: Why shouldn't Ukraine split in two?

[thucythucy]

97. Looks like he was a pretty run of the mill politician,

except for the parts about making dissent illegal and shooting down protesters in the street. Had that not been the response to the demonstrations, we might not be where we are today.

Then again, I don't pretend to understand what's going on in Ukraine today, or for that matter in much of the rest of the world. I would of course prefer peaceful solutions to all these problems, but that doesn't look very likely at the moment.

Part of the issue here is the living history--that is, people in Ukraine have a living memory of what it's like to live under Russian domination, and it wasn't pretty. So the stakes for them are higher than anything Americans might experience. Look at the outrage Obama gets met with over something as innocuous at health insurance reform. "FEMA camps" "death panels" etc. Imagine if there was an actual history of that sort of widespread tyranny, of genocide and forced starvation and relocations etc., all within living memory here. Political power shifts in a climate like that are more than a game of who wins and who loses--it's life or death. If I thought my government was on the verge of returning me to a state of foreign domination--a domination with which I or my family had personal experience--I'd probably be out in the street myself.

In a situation like that, people are far less likely to trust a democratic process--hence the unwillingness to wait for the next election. Again, it didn't help that the immediate response to opposition in the streets was an attempt to shut down dissent and physically exterminate some of the dissenters.

What I wish for is a peaceful, prosperous, democratic Ukraine. What will actually happen is anybody's guess.

What was that statement by Joyce? "History is the nightmare from which I'm trying to awake"? That's not it exactly, but it's close.

Best wishes.