Soviet Union Map Physical

Written by Selwyn Duke

It is 1991, and Yugoslavia, born of the ashes of WWI, is starting to break up. It is a violent affair that will be long, painful, bloody, and complex. Numerous wars in the multi-ethnic region will be fought, with Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia declaring independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia and, in turn, Serb minorities seeking independence from the last two regions. Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians (virtually all Muslim), and Albanians (largely Muslim) will battle Serbs. Croats and Bosnians will unite to battle them — then fight each other as well — then unite again; and Albanians will take up the sword against Macedonians. Muslims will burn churches, and minority populations will be purged from many of these regions. They are the first conflicts since WWII to be formerly deemed genocidal, and these wars will introduce English-speakers to a new term: ethnic cleansing.

None of this was any surprise. Ethnic and cultural ties ultimately trump citizenship status just as family ties do. This is why East and West Germany were reunited two decades ago: Their peoples were both German and shared the same culture, making their separation artificial and, therefore, temporary. Yet artificial unity tends to be no less temporary; it teaches us that, sometimes, the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole. And while Yugoslavia may be the current poster boy for this phenomenon, many other states are similarly diverse and, to varying degrees, struggle with ethnic/sectarian turmoil. Some, such as Iraq and Rwanda, are still making history; others, such as the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, are history. And then there are yet other nations. These are not places conceived in the ashes of war or the minds of colonial masters, but lands, such as the United States, Britain, and France, in which unprecedented immigration is creating a situation described by another term born of that tumultuous part of southeastern Europe: balkanization. For most of man’s history, the norm was to keep foreign elements out of your land. When a people couldn’t, it often meant their conquest and subjugation — if not subsumption, as happened to the Ainus on the Japanese islands. Things have changed in modern times, however; the practice of inviting foreigners to your shores, known as immigration, has become a Western norm. But man’s nature doesn’t change. Thus, invitations cannot prevent the clash of civilizations that will inevitably result when a flood of new arrivals overwhelms a society’s ability to acculturate them. Traditionally, assimilation was thought the solution to this problem. In fact, it was expected. For example, our 26th President, Teddy Roosevelt, did insist in 1919 that an immigrant must be treated just like any other American.

Geographic Travels: The Thinking Behind the Drawing of the ...

August 13th was the fiftieth anniversary of the Berlin Wall being erected.  The division of Berlin and of Germany was the fruit of both the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences.  The occupation of Germany with various zones was agreed to at Yalta while the loss of much of eastern Germany to Poland and the Soviet Union occurred because of negotiations before and at Potsdam. One may wonder why the Soviet Union, which fought Germany much more than the Western Allies in terms of strength and loses, only received the northeastern corner of Germany.  This is a failure of geographical imagine on oneself.  It was only at Potsdam that it was agreed much of pre-World War II eastern Germany would be lost.  In between Yalta and Potsdam, when the various zones were being proposed and finalized, the Allies took into consideration all of eastern Germany going into the Soviets' control.  The map planners used and produced maps which look like the one below (which is a recent addition to my personal map library) The map also shows how the Allies considered Hitler's changes to Germany's borders illegitimate.  France and the United Kingdom did not object at the time to Hitler's annexation with Austria, allowed the Sudetenland to be adsorbed, and stood by while Germany annexed most of Czechoslovakia.  However, the map shows international boundaries from 1937, right before Hitler began his aggressive territorial expansion but after  The Territory of the Saar Basin  legitimately voted freely under League of Nations' guidelines to rejoin Germany in 1935.

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