Canada and the World Backgrounder articles from September 1994

Canada and the World Backgrounder archives from September 1994

Casualties of the bloodless revolution. (economic problems follow fall of communism)(includes related information)(Eastern Europe - Comment)(Editorial)
September 1, 1994... The feared superpower, it turns out, was so backward it couldn't run a paper route if it only had one customer. The only things behind the Iron Curtain that worked were the police states and the propaganda machines. The factories were ancient,...

The world according to Marx. (communist philosophy of Karl Marx and Soviet history)(Eastern Europe - Communism)
September 1, 1994... The Soviet Union was born in violence and led by a man who believed deeply that communism had the potential for being the most humane form of government For centuries Russians suffered under the absolute rule of the Tsars (kings). But, the...

Control. (communist government of East Germany used kidnapping to control dissidents)(Eastern Europe - Communism)
September 1, 1994... Arrest and imprisonment without trial were common behind the iron Curtain; torture and forced labour were normal functions of state policy. For those people who still refused to toe the line there was always state-sponsored murder. Now, another...

Life in Absurdistan. (restaurant meal in Ukraine costs $2.40 but average monthly salary is only $5)(Eastern Europe - Communism)
September 1, 1994... In 1992, Lubomyr Luciuk wrote a letter to the Globe and Mail about one aspect of life in Ukraine. Mr. Luciuk is a professor of geography at the Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston. "Go out to supper in one of Kiev's better...

Reform fatigue.(Eastern Europe - Political Reform)
September 1, 1994... In the heady days of the Soviet Union's collapse, the states of Eastern Europe looked eagerly toward independence, multi-party democracy, and a swift transition to free market economies. Five years later, they have woken from the dream to hard...

Ghosts in the closet. (problems of trying to punish those guilty of injustices under former communist governments)(Eastern Europe - Political Reform)
September 1, 1994... The Romanians acted swiftly and brutally; within hours of the fall of communism they executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. Later, there was a show trial of four henchmen. With shaved heads and dressed in striped prison suits the...

Joining the clubs. (international security in Europe)(Eastern Europe - Security)
September 1, 1994... When the Iron Curtain dividing Europe fell five years ago, it freed the nations of Central and Eastern Europe to plan new destinies. It also left them without the protection of Soviet occupying armies which faced the West under the Warsaw Pact....

An idle army. (former Soviet soldiers move back to Russia)(Eastern Europe - Security)
September 1, 1994... There are too many soldiers in Russia. There are 400,000 officers alone, and most of them have nothing to do. They command vast numbers of enlisted men and women who also have nothing to do. For almost 50 years, millions of Soviet soldiers...

Boundaries. (ethnic minorities and boundary disputes in Eastern Europe)(Eastern Europe - Security)
September 1, 1994... The boundaries of Central and Eastern Europe have been redrawn many times over the years. One result of this is many pockets of ethnic groups now isolated from their former homelands. It's quite possible that pressure will come to redraw some...

The powder keg.(Eastern Europe - The Balkans)
September 1, 1994... Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie is a man with a gift for giving quotable quotes. He commanded the United Nations peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia, and one of his more difficult jobs was leading Canadian troops in the reopening of...

The more thing change.... (Balkan Wars of 1912-13)(Eastern Europe - The Balkans)
September 1, 1994... "The Muslim population endured during the early weeks of the war a period of lawless vengeance and unmeasured suffering. In many districts, the Muslim villages were systematically burned... The fighting was desperate as though extermination...

Memories of Ustashe. (Ustashe movement in 1940s Croatia)(Eastern Europe - The Balkans)
September 1, 1994... Croatia introduced a new currency in the summer of 1994. It's called the kuna, a name that has sent shudders down the spines of many. During World War 11, Germany installed a Nazi puppet government in Croatia. Ante Pavelic led the so-called...

Sanctions. (sanctions fail to work in Serbia and other areas)(Eastern Europe - The Balkans)
September 1, 1994... In medieval times sanctions worked. You stationed soldiers around an enemy's castle and made sure nothing went in and nothing came out. Eventually, the people inside the castle were starved into surrendering. History gives us several examples...

The Balkans - a sort of definition. (Eastern Europe - The Balkans)
September 1, 1994... The Balkan Peninsula is the forested and mountainous region southeastern Europe. Although the peninsula's boundaries are not precise, it is often defined as the region south of the Danube and Sava rivers, bounded by the Adriatic and Ionian Seas...

Will the dominoes fall? (danger that Bosnian dispute will spread to Macedonia)(Eastern Europe - The Balkans)
September 1, 1994... The nightmare for the balkans is that the fighting in Bosnia will spread. One candidate if other Balkan dominoes start to fall is Macedonia. The former Yugoslav republic is struggling to establish itself as an independent state. So far, the...

Quote ... unquote. (Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic)(Eastern Europe - The Balkans)
September 1, 1994... Radovan Karadzic is leader of the Serbs in Bosnia. He describes the Serbian view of their own situation: "The sufferings of the divided Serbian people have gone on for 6000 years. One can hear the moans of the parts as orphans long for...

The velvet divorce. (peaceful division of former Czechoslovakia)(Eastern Europe - The Czech and Slovak Republics)
September 1, 1994... Many former Czechoslovakians now think they might have made a mistake. In a recent public opinion poll, 57% of Slovakians said they would not have voted in favor of splitting from the Czech Republic in 1992. But, they didn't get a chance to...

Scapegoats. (racist attacks on Gypsies in Eastern Europe)(Eastern Europe - The Czech and Slovak Republics)
September 1, 1994... A cross Eastern Europe an old racism is stirring back to life. The targets are Gypsies, and they're getting blamed for many of the things that are going wrong. in the former Czechoslovakia, at least a dozen Gypsies have been killed in...

The shock of freedom. (freedom of the press in Eastern Europe)(Eastern Europe - The Czech and Slovak Republics)
September 1, 1994... Under communism all media were owned by the Communist Party. This meant that readers, viewers, and listeners were fed a constant diet of praise for the leadership of their countries. Instead of exposing the toxic wastes spewing out of factories...

Reunion blues.(Eastern Europe - Germany)
September 1, 1994... When the communists fell in East Germany many people believed that joining with West Germany would lead to a bright new future. It hasn't quite worked out that way Every cloud, it's said, has a silver lining. The silver lining for the...

Yes we have no bananas. (East German consumption of bananas soars after reunification)(Eastern Europe - Germany)
September 1, 1994... Under communism in East Germany bananas were considered a luxury and were available only to very reunification East Germans went bananas over the yellow fruit. In 1991, they packed away 25.5 kilos of bananas per capita. Compare this with...

What's in a name. (German population grows in Kalingrad, Russia, following Soviet collapse)(Eastern Europe - Germany)
September 1, 1994... To the Germans it's called Koenigsberg; to the Russians it's Kaliningrad. For 700 years, Koenigsberg was the capital of East Prussia. Then, in 1945, the Soviet army rolled across Eastern Europe as it chased the defeated troops of Hitler's Nazi...

A cesspool.(Eastern Europe - The Environment)
September 1, 1994... A year after the Berlin Wall came down E Magazine reported on some of the environmental horrors from behind the Iron Curtain: "In Poland, nearly three quarters of all the fresh water is too polluted even for industrial uses. Buildings in...

The big bang. (Chernobyl nuclear disaster)(Eastern Europe - The Environment)
September 1, 1994... Chernobyl was a turning point. Until the nuclear reactor there exploded in April 1986, most Westerners bought the notion that the Soviet Union was a genuine superpower. After the Chernobyl disaster, it began to sink in that the USSR was really...

Population bust. (population decreases in former communist countries of Eastern Europe)(Eastern Europe - The Environment)
September 1, 1994... The population of Russia is going down. Infant mortality rates have been rising since 1991, and 60% of the children born today have rickets, a calcium deficiency causing soft and deformed bones. Prenatal care for pregnant women is poor and so...

From Marx to market.(Eastern Europe - Economic Reform)
September 1, 1994... Since the fall of communism, the countries of Eastern Europe have struggled to embrace a market-driven economic system. Poland has gone further than most. The switch to capitalism has been compared to leaping from a crashing plane without...

Profit is no longer a dirty word. (Rolls-Royce opens showroom in Moscow, Russia)(Eastern Europe - Economic Reform)
September 1, 1994... While 80% of Russia's people live below the poverty line, a shortage of money is clearly not a problem for some. On 15 July 1993, the first Rolls-Royce showroom in Eastern Europe opened on Mytna Street in Moscow. Within a couple of hours...

Heritage for sale. (widespread art thefts in Eastern Europe)(Eastern Europe - Economic Reform)
September 1, 1994... Eastern Europe is being stripped of its cultural heritage by gangs of criminals. Many churches have lost religious artifacts that now grace the walls of Western collectors. Museums and art galleries often have primitive security systems that...

Worthless money. (hyperinflation leads to barter economy in Eastern Europe)(Eastern Europe - Economic Reform)
September 1, 1994... We use money as a simple way of exchanging goods and services. Instead of giving the dentist eight chickens for filling a tooth we give her $50. The dentist can then use the money to buy clothes, gasoline for her car, or whatever. You can carry...

Distorted image. (Bulgarians have idealized view of U.S.)(Eastern Europe - Economic Reform)
September 1, 1994... According to the Washington Post, Bulgaria has become infatuated with all things American. The newspaper quotes Blagovest Sendov, the president of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences as saying: "Right now the American is the ideal. Bulgarians...

The wild east.(Eastern Europe - Crime)
September 1, 1994... Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a general breakdown of law and order in Eastern Europe, nowhere more so than in Russia During the summer of 1994, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) opened an office in...

Cycle of revenge. (blood feud killings increase in Albania)(Eastern Europe - Crime)
September 1, 1994... Northern Albanians have a reputation for not bothering the court system to decide disputes they may have with one another. For 600 years, the taking of blood has been a favoured method for settling scores. The communist police state managed to...

Privatization hijacked. (crime syndicates commit frauds at privatization auctions in Russia)(Eastern Europe - Crime)
September 1, 1994... Russia decided, in 1992, to place all its state-owned enterprises into private hands. All citizens were given vouchers which had a cash value. Millions of privatization vouchers were printed and distributed. State-owned property was to be...

Signs of the times. (facts about crime in East Europe)(Eastern Europe - Crime)
September 1, 1994... * In 1993, the association of Russian bankers asked President Boris Yeltsin to help prevent organized gangs from taking over the country's banks. * Mikhail Dalman is the founder of a trading company in Vladivostok. He was quoted in The...