| If I can split your argument into three, then > I think the point is that what we today might think of as Cold War style rhetoric and rivalry has antecedents in the Russian empire and points earlier. Is probably true, people just reference Cold War because it's well known symbol and the rest of the history is not needed for them... > I would even go so far as to say the whole thing is from the Great Schism. (...) No, not really... The story in the article is placed when PLC was conquered, and similar things happened not only in Lithuania but also in Poland, where it was done by both Cyrillic Russia and Latin Germany. I'm not an expert on Russian history, but I could bet that at certain times they also tried to uproot other Cyrillic cultures who were deemed unwelcome by the rulers (both communist and before). I agree with the other person that this is just authoritarian thing. > A couple months ago in the context of all the US-Russia political drama I was thinking of this...(...) Well this one depends on the general world view I guess? If you tell history as a story of clashing ideas, then there will be a clear narration and you will easily see patterns as you describe, ever repeating conflicts of similar forces. But just one way of looking is often not enough to see the whole thing. I also see the direction of looking at the past tensions as promising, but then when do you stop? In this particular case the way of writing could be just an artifact of an older conflict used to reinforce the current one. We dnn't need to repeat the past, we can just reuse it. |