Paul Goble
Staunton, July 25 – Following its meeting in Prague last week, non-Russian activists affiliated with the League of Free Nations organized demonstrations in ten countries around the world over the weekend, all of them committed to the idea that the only salvation these peoples now within the borders of the Russian Federation have is independence from Moscow.
Its meetings took place in Estonia, Sweden, Lithuania, Germany, the Netherlands, Montenegro, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Turkey and the United States and included activists from Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Buddhist and Cossacks, underscoring both the diversity of these émigré communities and their shared commitment to the goal of independence.
Most of the meetings were small, but many attracted support from Ukrainian, Belarusian and even Russian emigres who shared the view of organizers that Moscow is a threat to all their communities and to the world. And their co-nationals in their homelands are certainly encouraged by this just as the captive nations of Soviet times were.
These meetings took place at the end of Captive Nations Week which has been marked every year since the US Congress created it in 1959. But at no time since the disintegration of the Soviet bloc and the USSR have so many people come out in support of the idea that free peoples should live in independent countries rather than under the boot of Moscow.
It is a remarkable development that reflects the coming together of three things: the growing size of non-Russian diasporas, the increasing repression of the Putin regime against all but his own supporters, and recognition in the West that captive nations are all those who suffer under imperialism and not just those who suffer under the communist variant of that.
For more on this convergence and its possible consequences, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/new-era-of-national-independence.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/biden-reinvigorates-captive-nations.html.
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