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to Stalin till 1948.
I believe that for us, the Romanians,
it would be very interesting to know something about a testament,
a famous testament in the modern world history.
The testament of Peter the Great.
The enlightened Tsar of Russia, the one who created the great reforms, pro-West,
but who has a vision regarding the neighbours that should worry us.
The thing that is surprisingly, and you are highlighting very well in the book,
that this Imperialistic Tsarist ambition didn't stop under Bolshevik rule.
Stalin was nothing than a Tsar, a different Tsar,
but the Soviets' foreign policy was no different at all with the Imperial Tsarist policy.
It seems that it's continuing right now,
under the new Tsar, or the new Tsars, the Putin - Medveev couple.
Their foreign policy remained somehow locked on this aim of Peter the Great, to conquer the world.
What can you say to us about that ?
It is very important that always to draw a line between
plans, strategies, and mentalities
that are letting a legacy that goes forward more than a generation,
especially, if a mentality is rooted in the education system, too.
During this time, when Engels wrote this famous article
in which he made Romanian as a class popolous
that must dissapear, because it was an obstacle in the way of a global Revolution .
In the same time the Imperialistic policies from Tsarist Russia and
from Austro - Hungary saw Romania as an area where the population,
where the Romanian population existed, as a Imperialistic expansion area.
And the only justification for...
an Empire to go into somebody's house and to say
"Now we are staying here, you're not and you have to leave without any rights".
It is to say that "they are not quite humans",
"They are something, they are lesser",
or " they are savages, barbarians",
"they don't deserve rights", and "they are quite a danger for the people in general".
"We are here to provide a Service, we are civilizing, it is another step toward progress".
Here it is the shovinism as a policy of Empires and the shovinism as a Communist policy.
Together against Romania in this area, which was o sort of...
the first, at least on the ideological level, the first Red - White coallition that was created.
And this was important very clearly in the Comintern era when,
because of this global expansion, this Revolution looked similar with the Imperialist expansion.
And both sides saw almost the same area,
for the Bolshevik Russia, Romania was a particular problem especially,
because there was a line through Slavs countries and the pan-Slavs movement was very strong at that time,
that went exactly through Romania or Dobruja,
who had at some time a big enough Slav Community,
even if it wasn't in majority
and after that Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia.
This situation was very interesting because of the people who travelled in the area of Transylvania,
in that era, the same period of time in the 19th century
said that very clearly, it was published few times, not by the same people,
that the Vallachs occupied the same position in Transylvania
as the Native Americans and Afro-Americans occupied in USA.