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AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF EUROPE
by William M. BrintonChapter Five:
Rome (Italy), Athens (Greece) and Ankara (Turkey)
Plaque with a Heroic Male Nude (Egypt, Early Byzantine)
Mirror of Medieval World, p. 30.In the early 4th century, the Emperor Constantine established a new capital for the Roman Empire. It was situated on the site of a Greek colony, Byzantium, and historians named it the Byzantine Empire. At its highest point, in the 6th century, the Byzantine Empire stretched from southern Spain to the borders of ancient Persia. Constantine had effectively legalized Christianity, and over the years this religion became the official religion of the empire, as well as of medieval Europe. The Byzantine Empire lasted until the 15th century. Around 1400, the Ottoman Turks came to dominate most but not all of this empire. The result was a decline in the power of the Byantine Empire, one that Edward Gibbon described in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Exiles from Constantinople (now Istanbul) fled to Italy where they helped restore the Greek language.
...the restoration of the Greek letters in Italy was prosecuted by a series of emigrants who were destitute of fortune and endowed with learning, or at least with language. From the terror or oppression of the Turkish arms, the natives of Thessalonica and Constantinople escaped to a land of freedom, curiosity, and wealth... I shall not attempt to enumerate the restorers of Greek literature in the 15th century; and it may be sufficient to mention with gratitude the names of Theodore Gaza, of George of Treizond, of John Argyropulus and Demetrius Chalcocondyles, who taught their native language in the schools of Florence and Rome. (Gibbon, 7:129-30)
The Ambassadors of Agememnon in Tent of Achilles (1801)
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)Perhaps the finest writing of the Greek civilization may be found in The Iliad and The Odyssey, epic poems attributed to a poet named Homer, who is believed to have lived around 700 B.C. The epics, respectively 16,000 and 12,000 lines long, were about events that had happened roughly five centuries earlier. Both stories involve the Trojan War. This war happened because a prince of Troy (now central Turkey) was a kidnapper. Paris abducted Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, from her husband, Menelaus. His brother was Agamemnon, the king of all the Greeks. To avenge this act, Agamemnon gathered a great fleet and all the Greek heroes: Achilles, Diomedes, Odysseus, Ajax and many others. The war went on for ten years, and finally the Greeks took the city and restored Helen to her husband. Just one of the many legends appearing in this epic is the story describing the Trojan Horse. The Greeks built a large horse on wheels and hid a number of Greek warriors inside. They offered it as a gift to the Trojans, who accepted it and wheeled it inside their gates. One of the Trojan heroes said, in the Latin version, "Timeo Graecis, donae ferentes" (I fear the Greeks, even those bearing gifts). This ruse worked so well that the city was overwhelmed quickly. The defeat of Troy occurred around 1200 B.C.
Two hundred years after Homer, the Greeks punished Socrates for impiety. Literature flowered in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the great writers of tragedies. Art reached heights never since rivaled in the sculptures of the Parthenon in Athens and the temple of Apollo at Olympus. Plato and Aristotle made their contributions to literature and philosophy, while Herodotus wrote history and Xerxes appeared as the losing leader of Persia. Thucydides also wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War (431 - 404 B.C.). In this war, Athens and Sparta fought for leadership in the Greek world and Athens lost, thus ending the golden age of classical civilization. The Greek word "demokratia" meant popular government in this world. Thus Athenian democracy gave every male citizen a stake in the success of his city. Every citizen was eager to learn so he could properly take part in ruling the city and making the great decisions necessary to protect its power. Sparta was militaristic and some scholars argue that Nazi Germany looked to Sparta for political guidance.
Adoration of the Shepherds (1485)
Domenico Ghirlandaio
Mark Harden's ArtchiveIn the 14th century, Constantinople was the target for occupation by Catholic soldiers from parts of Europe. This period was also the last of the Byzantine Empire. The Turkish king, John V, knew he had to obtain help from the Christian powers in Europe, so he set out to form alliances with them against the rapidly advancing Ottomans led by Murad who was to become sultan. Early in 1355, John gave his sister in marriage to an Italian adventurer from Genoa. Her husband was made a lord of Mitylene, the capital of Lesbos, now a Greek island. John later gave the Genoese the Greek island of Chios. In the meantime, John took off for Rome to get help from the Pope. After a civil war and several deaths, Manuel II, son and heir of John V, became sole emperor in 1391. Manuel was crowned in 1392, the day after his marriage to the Serbian princess, Helena Dragas. Meanwhile the Ottomans were becoming stronger by the day. Early in 1389 Murad II led a campaign against Serbia where an anti-Turkish coalition had been formed. The two armies met on the plain of Kosovo, again the locale of fighting today. The Ottomans defeated the Christian allies, slaughtering most of the Serbs. The rapid advance of the Ottomans alarmed the Christians, who formed an army with soldiers from Hungary, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and England. Ships from Venice and Genoa patrolled the straits of Bosporus. On land the Ottoman forces once again routed the Christians, and their siege of Constantinople was renewed. It finally fell to the Ottomans in 1453. The surviving Italians escaped on board Venetian ships, leaving the Greeks to face their fate. The Ottomans' success led many Greeks and Muslim Albanians to settle in various parts of the Balkans. Turkish sultans reigned until 1918, when the Ottoman Empire was broken up by the victorious allies of World War I. In 1923, Turkey became a republic with its capital in Ankara. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was its first president. Greece and Turkey signed a separate agreement providing for the compulsory exchange of populations. Some 1.3 million Greeks and 500,000 Turks were uprooted in 1924.Constantinople was renamed Istanbul in 1930.
Enthroned Madonna (Italy, 1285)
Duccio di Buoninsegna
Italian Renaissance, p. 43.For centuries, Greece and Turkey have been uneasy neighbors never far from hostilities. Italy is a potential ally of Greece. In 1920, the Dodecanese Islands which face Turkey in the Aegean Sea were ceded to Italy. They were later ceded to Greece. However, Turkey has not yet given up on exercising sovereignty in all twelve of these islands. Constantinople, the capital of Turkey, was named after the Emperor Constantine who lived in Rome but designated Christianity as the religion he would protect. When Constantinople fell in 1453, the last of its rulers fled to Rome where he requested asylum from Pope Pius II. His request was granted, and the Pope granted him a lodging and a pension which he enjoyed until his death in 1465. However, 535 years later Italy was not so charitable.
In late 1998 and early 1999, Italy attracted international attention when Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan fled Turkey and asked for asylum in Italy. Despite pressure from Ankara, the country refused to extradite Ocalan to Turkey for trial. He had been accused of terrorism and Italy declined to extradite him on the grounds he would be sentenced to death after any trial there. In February 1999, Ocalan was formally charged with treason, a crime that can carry the death penalty. Ocalan is not alone in terrorism. Turkey has waged war against the Kurds for over fourteen years. Turkish jets, helicopters and tanks all manufactured in the United States and sold to Turkey as a NATO partner have been used almost entirely by Turks in Turkey's war against the Kurds. Some 20 million Kurds inhabit parts of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. By the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, the Kurds were given local autonomy in Kurdistan. Smyrna (now Izmir) and the Ionian hinterlands were placed under Greek administration for five years, the Dodecanese were ceded to Italy, Imbros and Tenedos to Greece, and Turkey recognized Greek sovereignty in Lemnos, Samothrace, Mitylene, Chios, Samos, and Nikaria. Unfortunately, this treaty was never ratified. The Treaty of Lausanne specified that the part of Turkey assigned to Kurdistan in 1918 be transferred to Iraq. However, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk took care of this by uniting Turkey in 1923 within borders that included Kurdistan. In the Treaty of Lausanne of 1922, at the insistence of Great Britain, no mention of the earlier promise appeared. Great Britain was in the process of creating a new country, Iraq, to be ruled by Arabs sympathetic with British policies. Iraq was in fact carved out of the old Ottoman Empire which had collapsed its defeat in World War I. Thus, in 1999, the Kurds were still without a homeland. Furthermore, the United States betrayed the Kurds in 1979, when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Shah of Iran he would not interfere with such action as the Shah might take. Saddam Hussein of Iraq used poison gas against the Kurds in 1981. Hussein also slaughtered Kurds in the No Fly Zone of Iraq after the Persian Gulf War. Turkey used Special Operations personnel to capture Ocalan in Kenya sparking violent demonstrations against it in various European cities. In Turkey itself, the Kurds have been subjected to genocide at the hands of well-armed Turks in Anatolia. Speaking Kurdish in public and teaching the Kurdish language are crimes in Turkey, and Turkish violence against the Kurds falls within the meaning of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a treaty ratified by the United States in 1988 and also ratified by Turkey. Article 2 states, "Genocide means acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."
The Birth of Venus (c. 1485)
Sandros Boticelli
Mark Harden's ArtchiveThe status of Kurdistan is vital to Turkey. In eastern Anatolia, it has built massive dams to generate electric energy and eventually irrigate much of Turkey's agriculture. However, the dams collect water that would normally flow down the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Both rivers flow into the Persian Gulf. Syria and Iraq have accused Turkey of unlawfully diverting water to its own use. Whether this claim is supported by relevant evidence is almost immaterial. Yitzhak Rabin, a water engineer and once prime minister of Israel, noted a few years ago that "if we solve every other problem in the Middle East but do not satisfactorily resolve the water problem, our region will explode." The late ruler of Jordan, King Hussein, asserted that conflicts over water could "drive other nations to war." Israel is currently exploring getting water from Turkey shipped by sea. A glimpse at the map of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq shows that a Kurdish state would have to be carved out of Iraq and Turkey itself. A possible Middle East settlement of all these problems might be to give the Kurds local autonomy, which is all they want, in exchange for Iraq's cession of enough land to draw the lines of Kurdistan as set forth in the Treaty of Sèvres of 1920. Iraq itself had been artificially created in 1921 by the British. The British wanted some political stability and a country that was willing to serve Britain's oil interests.
The Confirmation of the Rule of the..., (Italy, 1480)
Domenico GhirlandaioThe New York Times for February 19, 1999, reported what Magnus Ranstorp said about the Kurds: "What European governments do not see is that in many ways, the Kurdish struggle reflects the early days of the Palestinian struggle; putting an issue on the international agenda through terrorism, the situation could become more and more inflamed." Ranstorp is an expert on Middle Eastern affairs at St. Andrew University in Scotland. He added that "the arrest of Ocalan has united the Kurdish people." Unfortunately, the United States failed to take this into account in deciding how much to help the Turks in capturing Ocalan. American jets use Turkish facilities the air base at Incirlik to bomb targets in Iraq. Apparently the Central Intelligence Agency had some of its personnel in Nairobi, Kenya, investigating the embassy bombing months ago. They helped Turkey locate him there, but in a way that might have provided cover for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. On television before leaving for Paris to negotiate with Milosevic, she denied that the United States had a role in the actual "capture" of Ocalan. On October 8, 1996, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) was designated as a "terrorist organization" by the Clinton Administration, subject to an appeal from the finding. This appeal has not occurred, and the designation under the Anti-Terrorist Act of 1996 has no application beyond the borders of the United States. NATO aircraft have used Avianno in Italy as a base from which to launch its jets against Belgrade, so neither Italy nor Turkey would like the United States to support a terrorist.
Primavera [detail] (c. 1482)
Sandro Botticelli
Mark Harden's ArtchiveThis entire saga began in Italy, where Ocalan requested asylum, and ended with Greece. Ocalan was being sheltered by the Greek embassy in Nairobi. About ten years ago, Italy refused to extradite a terrorist aboard the tour ship Achille Lauro. In escaping from custody by the American forces in Italy, this terrorist he had pushed a Jewish American citizen overboard in his wheelchair had escaped prosecution in the United States for murder on the high seas. Italy refused to extradite this felon, but it failed to act consistently when Turkey applied its considerable diplomatic pressure to Italy when it was sheltering Ocalan. Instead, Italy requested he leave for another jurisdiction, and he wound up in Kenya. Ocalan's arrest in Nairobi occurred when he was being protected by Greek diplomats. As a result, the government of Simitis was humiliated and three cabinet members resigned. There is concern in Athens for Abdullah Ocalan whose fight for Kurdish independence is one that many Greeks see as an echo of their own struggle to avoid Turkish attacks on Greece before the Ottoman Empire was liquidated in 1923. Turkey partitioned Cyprus in 1974, and was sued in the European Court of Human Rights. The Commission took evidence and made findings of some 300 pages. No other country has extended diplomatic recognition to the partition of Cyprus, known in Ankara as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. In 1996, the European Court of Human Rights decided that another case Loizidou v. Turkey was a continuing violation of law, in that effective control was exercised by Turkey over the territory of northern Cyprus where the real property of the plaintiff was located and from which she was excluded by Turkish troops.
It seems realistic here to treat the history of Rome, Athens and Ankara separately from other European capitals. A map shows just how close two of the capitals are to each other, and Ankara is closely linked to both because of ancient feuds. In 1998, Turkey was denied membership in the European Union due to its dismal human rights record. Only NATO membership unites all three. For further discussion of Turkey's modern history, see, funnelweb.utcc.utk.edu/~utktsa/mka.html for a thumbnail biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/OTTOMAN/EUROPE.htm. They represent about eight pages of text.
The Internet offers a condensed history of Italy at www.arcaini.com/Italy%20history.html. This site divides the topic into periods beginning with "Early Italy" and ending with "Postwar Italy," and all in twelve pages. Another website, www.idbsu.edu/courses/hy309/docs/burckhardt/burckhardt.html, offers some 300 pages. This represents a textbook written by Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Actually, Italy did not really have a history as we know this subject until the late 19th century when it was united by Camillo Cavour, Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi. The Italian national liberation movement was in action about 75 years before its objective was achieved in 1861. The movement was known as Il Risorgimento, the resurgence, after a newspaper founded in 1847 by its most effective leader, Count Camillo di Cavour (1810 - 1861), prime minister of Sardinia. Supporters included the composers Giuseppe Verdi (Aida) and Giacomo Puccini (Tosca). During the 19th century, Italy had been occupied by French armies under Napoleon and Austrian armies from the Habsburg Empire. After unification in 1861, Italy sought to join the other European coutnries in their rush to colonize less militarily successful parts of the world by occupying Ethiopia. In 1896, Italy lost a battle at Adua, which postponed Italian annexation of Ethiopia until 1936, just before World War II. Benito Mussolini was the Fascist dictator of Italy, having been installed as its elected president in 1924. In 1929, Italy and the Vatican executed the Lateran Treaty that gave a small portion of Rome to be the home of the Catholic Church and its papal leaders.
The Last Supper (1498)
Leonardo da Vinci
Mark Harden's ArtchiveRome is the world capital of religious art from the time of the Renaissance. The Sistine Chapel, perhaps the greatest monument to this art, was commissioned by Pope Julius della Rovere in 1508. Michelangelo was hired to repaint the ceilings. The Sistine Chapel had been built between 1475 and 1483 in the time of Pope Sixtus IV della Rovere. Originally, it served as the Palatine Chapel. On the Internet, the Web Gallery of Art at sunserv.kfki.hu/~arthp/tours/sistina/ offers "A visit to the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican." The trip through this monument is exciting and should be taken by all readers. Michelangel did the ceiling frescoes and the Last Judgment over the altar. Artists who painted the walls include Botticelli, Perugino, Luca Signorelli, Cosimo Rosselli, and Piero di Cosimo. This guided tour is linked to various steps and explanatory text.
Madonna of the Long Neck (1534)
Parmigianino
Mark Harden's ArtchiveEarly in the 16th century, two Italian intellectuals, Leonardo da Vinci and Nicolo Machiavelli, met quite by chance probably in 1502. Da Vinci was famous for his paintings including the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper. Machiavelli wrote The Prince, which tried to convert military theory into a science. The paths of these two crossed at the court of Cesare Borgia. Da Vinci was there as Borgia's military architect and engineer, while Machiavelli was on a diplomatic mission to keep an eye on the unscrupulous Cesare Borgia. They both agreed to support the diversion of the Arno River through a canal which, if successful, would have turned Florence into a seaport. At this time, Italy was not yet an independent state. The French occupied Milan. So when the Arno project failed because of incompetency and a weak leader, Soderini, Leonardo da Vinci was at loose ends. The French governor of Milan, Charles d'Amboise, invited Da Vinci to come to Milan and design both a palace and improvements to the locks and dams of the city's canals. The Florentine government of Soderini had little choice but to approve a three-month leave of absence. France, after all, was a key ally in the Florentine war against Pisa.
Chalice (Italy, 1320)
Tondino di Guerriono
Mirror of Medieval World, p. 146Later in this same century, the dreaded Inquisition was created in Spain. The chief inquisitor, Torquemada, was a Spaniard. The Catholic Church ruled by the Popes of this period condoned the use of torture to extract confessions and the names of heretics. Waves from those following different religions started the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Both were movements of intolerance, exclusiveness and puritanism. In 1542, Pope Paul III approved the establishment of the Roman branch of the Holy Office, or Inquisition. The moving spirit behind Paul III's organization of the Inquisition in Rome was a Neapolitan, Cardinal Giovanni Craffara. Six years after the death of Paul III, this cardinal was elected as Pope Paul IV. He was a fanatic determined to stamp out heresy. During his reign, the Council of Trent deliberated. In 1564, Pope Pius IV announced the work of the Council of Trent, Among other things, it confirmed the doctrine of papal infallibility 1870 under Pope Pius IX. During this period (1542 - 1564) the Inquisition stepped up its campaign to unearth heretics. Italians branded as heretics included intellectuals like Galileo Galilei, a physicist best known for his discovery that all falling bodies, regardless of weight, fall at the same rate of speed. Galileo, however, ran afoul of the church when he accepted the Copernican astronomy, by which the earth was held to move around the sun. Members of the Inquisition forced him to renounce his approval of Copernicus, but since he still believed in the church, he was not burned at the stake as were some of his colleagues.
While Italy was to a degree excluded from the mainstream of European politics, two wars were important in determining its final boundaries. The first was the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1701 to 1714. The Peace of Utrecht that concluded that war marked one of the important turning points of Italian history. Austria acquired Mantua and Milan and the Island of Sardinia. The domination of Italy passed from Spain to Austria. The Austrians occupied Naples in 1707. They also retained Sardinia, exchanging it for Sicily in 1720 after the War of the Polish Succession. In Chapter 26 of his book, The Prince, Machiavelli appealed for a native Italian leader to drive the foreign barbarians out of Italy. His prayer was to be answered by Cavour, Garibaldi and Mazzini. For the period between 1750 and 1861, Italy, not yet unified, saw one war after another to expel the barbarians or deal with the Austrians, French, or Habsburg occupants of various city-states. These included Piedmont, Savoy, Milan, Venice, Parma, Genoa, Modena, Florence, Naples, Tuscany and Rome, plus the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. At various times, these city-states were kingdoms or republics, and the influence of Napoleon Bonaparte was felt throughout the entire area until 1815 and the Concert of Vienna. Both politics and military operations were by the Risorgimento. Unification occurred in 1861, but not until 1871 were the last French troops driven out of Rome, which then became the Italian capital, a role previously played by Florence. The temporal authority of the Pope in Italy came to an end. By joining France and Britain in the Treaty of London in 1915, Italy gained more land when Germany and Austria surrendered at the end of World War I. Italy got the South Tyrol and Trieste. Although Mussolini was a Socialist, he saw the advantages of joining forces with the Fascists. Fascism was really a force against Socialism and parliamentary liberalism, rather than for any idea of its own. A Fascist reality in the streets, very much like the early Nazis, was provided by the arditi, gangs of striker-breaking thugs whose existence led to arson, street-fighting, and loss of life. During the war itself, Italy never got the recognition it deserved. In 1917, Italy fought a pitched battle with Austria. Its casualties were on the same scale as Britain's, but the Italians were defeated at Caporetto. The United States joined the Allied Powers in 1917, sending some 1,200,000 soldiers to France.
The Dammned [detail] (Italy, 1499)
Luca Signorelli
Carol Gerten's Fine Art (CGFA)During 1912 - 1913 three regional wars were fought in the Balkans. In May 1912, Italy attacked the Ottoman Empire, seizing Rhodes, Tripoli and Cyrenica. In October 1912, with the Sublime Porte diverted by an uprising in Albania, the Balkan League of Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece took the offensive against the Ottomans in Macedonia. In June 1913, Bulgaria attacked Serbia to start the Balkan War of Partition. This part of Europe was a powderkeg, and its nations accelerated their preparations for war. On June 14, 1914, a deranged student shot and killed Archduke Ferdinand, an heir to the throne of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. He had unwisely chosen to visit Sarajevo on the anniversary of the battle of Kosovo in 1389 in which the Serbs were slaughtered. Within a month, Europe was at war.
World War I pitted Germany allied with the Habsburg Empire of Austria and Hungary against Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and later, Italy, while Sweden, Norway, Spain and Switzerland remained neutral. Norway had only recently become a monarchy after some 400 years of Danish rule. Almost all the fighting occurred on French soil where trench warfare prevailed. Germany and France plus Britain fought to advance a few miles at great cost in lives and treasure. Finally, the Allied Powers reached the Rhine River and the border of Germany. Between May 1915 and October 1917, some eleven battles were fought along the Isonzo River. Over 115,000 Italian soldiers and 90,000 Austrian troops were killed. Following the Austrian victory at Caporetto, over 260,000 Italians were taken prisoner and about 200,000 Italian deserters were scattered throughout Italy. Germany was finally isolated by November 3, 1918, and agreed to sign an armistice. On this date, Austria-Hungary also agreed to an armistice. Czechs and Slovaks had already declared their independence as had the Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnians. Turkey, which fought on the German side, surrendered on October 30, 1918. In March 1917, Czar Nicholas of Russia abdicated. A new provisional government promised the Allied Powers it would continue to fight the Central Powers, even though the Russian people were tired of fighting. Three months later, however, an uprising in Petrograd, a Russian naval station, demanded an immediate end to the war. Although by July their agitation had been suppressed, thousands of Russian troops were won over by Bolshevik propaganda and threw down their weapons. In August, factory workers all over Russia went on strike and demanded an end to the war. Russia had signed an armistice effective December 5, 1917. In 1918, twelve European states attacked Russia to enforce territorial claims against Russia. These powers were essentially disunited so by 1922, their troops were withdrawn, and Russia was left to the tender mercies of Josef Stalin and Lenin, at least until 1923, when Lenin died.
What happened next was almost preordained to fail. It must be remembered that three empires had collapsed with the end of World War I and the Versailles treaty the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. Even before the peace conference convened in Paris, hitherto unknown ethnic or other groups declared their independence. These included Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Parts of the Ottoman Empire were spun off to create new states such as Iraq, Palestine, and Syria. Other countries on the periphery of Russia, such as Ukraine, also declared independence. In the case of Ukraine, it became a victim of power politics from Stalinesque Communists insisting on a Soviet Union. The postwar dust had not settled when Poland defeated Russia at the battle of the Vistula River. Soviet forces had explored ways of linking the war against Germany to creating a way through Poland. The Polish army spiked this plan and forced Lenin and Stalin to focus on Russia's domestic policies. There were enough of these to go around as Soviet citizens soon discovered. Collectivist farmers were assigned targets for production and then terrorized for failure to meet them. Prisons were a huge growth industry in the Soviet Union. And as time passed the terror spiraled out of control. Hardly any Russian really believed these stories, until Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote Gulag Archipelago in 1978. Andrei Sakharov was another person with courage who wound up in the gulag for speaking out.
Prague Spring Invasion (1968)
(Photos...)In 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev made a big point by inviting Sakharov to return to Moscow from the gulag and, in effect, become a scholar in residence. Gorbachev had just become the fourth general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in four years. He found the Soviet Union in sorry condition. Military spending was out of control to the point that no improvement in living standards was possible. The technology gap was widening daily, and the Party itself was corrupt and unable to plan properly or at all. The young were turning their backs on Communist ideology, and the citizens had lost patience with empty promises. The war in Afghanistan was a sure loser, and Gorbachev had decided to withdraw Soviet troops that had been stopped cold by Afghan tribesmen and American weapons like the handheld anticraft weapon, the Stinger. General Secretary Gorbachev had never been elected to anything, so he was in the anomalous position of being an avowed Communist who wanted to humanize the system, not dump it. In 1989, however, Gorbachev was in Beijing and saw the single student who stopped a tank in Tianenmen Square. Gorbachev got the message, so when he returned to Moscow, his first visit was to Warsaw. There, he advised the Polish leaders that they could not expect Soviet help to maintain the status quo. Solidarity worked out an agreement to hold elections. It was allowed to compete for a limited number of seats in the Polish Sejm, or parliament. All the Solidarity candidates won, so the Communists had to invite Solidarity to form a government. This was a landmark. Next came freedom for East Germans, then Hungary, and finally Czechoslovakia. The Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, and the two Germanys were reunited on October 3, 1990. Rumania had fallen in 1989, and the Ceausescus were shot on December 25, 1989. Bulgaria and Albania were next, while Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia all declared their independence. Yugoslavia fell apart into its constituent republics. These included Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. The latter had a population that was 90 percent Albanian Moslem. The Serbs were all Greek Orthodox, and Milosevic remembers the Ottoman defeat of the Serbs in 1389. He has conveniently forgotten another defeat on the plains of Kosovo in 1450. Once again the Serbs were losers. Some of them are still at war.
On the periphery of the old Soviet Union, several other countries also declared their independence. These included Chechnya, Georgia, Moldavia and Ukraine. In 1991, the old Soviet Union reconstituted itself into a federation with nations on the periphery demanding independence. Russia was on the road to bankruptcy. Nothing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) did helped to stave off the economic vacuum of the center. Some Russians have become millionaires, including those who diverted IMF funds to secret Swiss bank accounts. Today, Boris Yeltsin, in poor health, cannot even collect income taxes, so he has had to print more money to pay Russian workers and members of the armed forces. Observers predict that Russia will collapse sometime during 1999. It has not even repaid debts contracted ten years earlier to stave off what seems to be occurring with frightening speed. This utter failure of a nation may well occur at the same time the so-called Y2K bug occurs, with unpredictable consequences. Russia's nuclear missiles may get an incorrect command to launch these weapons of mass destruction against whatever they have been targeted for by those in the Kremlin. The date is well known. It is midnight on December 31, 1999. Midnight in Moscow is 4 P.M. EST in Washington.
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All contents © 1999 William M. Brinton