Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 15 – Peoples who
live in regions where borders have been changed frequently often find
themselves at odds with each other when those in one country celebrate a past
which involves places that are now on the territory of other states, with what
may seem to be small things growing into major issues.
Perhaps the most famous case of this
involves Armenia which put on its national coat of arms Mount Ararat, which has
been under Turkish rule for some time. That provoked an exchange between
Turkish and Soviet diplomats in the early 1920s, with the Turks complaining
about this attack on their sovereignty.
The Soviet response at the time was
classical and perhaps should serve as a model for others. The representatives of
the Bolshevik regime said they saw no reason for Turkey to object to the
Armenian action because after all, they pointed out, the Turks had put the moon
on their flag, a place clearly beyond the sovereign control of their
government.
But however that may be, problems of
this kind keep arising, and two have surfaced in the last month that affect
Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, all countries that have seen their
borders shift many times over the centuries and in particular during and after the
second world war.
The first arose because the Polish
government has its citizens to vote on the pictures to be used in a new Polish
passport to be issued next year on the occasion of the centenary of Poland’s
independence. Among the choices offered are
portrayals of places significant in Polish history but no longer within Poland’s
borders.
They include places in Lithuania and
Ukraine, and not surprisingly, officials in both those countries and others, including
the Russian Federation, have expressed concern. Warsaw has responded that no
final decision has been made and that the government views its poll as
consultative rather than decisive (rosbalt.ru/world/2017/08/15/1638547.html).
Although it has
stayed out of this conflict – even though it might in fact have entered it as
well – the Belarusian government has found itself embroiled in the issue that
the Polish passport case illustrates because “absolutely unofficially,” it has
territorial claims on Lithuania, Poland and Russia.
For many Belarusians, Vilnius, now
the capital of Lithuania (and more recently part of Poland), is the center of
Belarusian history. And that reality has
been highlighted by the release of three new beers in honor of the centenary of
the declaration of the city of Minsk as the capital of Belarus.
This hasn’t sparked official
protests at least not yet, but over time, “the only way to avoid such conflicts
in Eastern Europe is to recognize that many symbol and architectural and
geographic objects of the region are elements of the common history of various
countries,” the Rosbalt report on these developments suggests.
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