Cultural Revolution: Soviet Union and Kosovo
Introduction
The following paper is a transcript of two interviews. The first one was made with a 40-year old female Russian resident. The other interview featured a 28-year old male Kosovo resident. The transcript presents the views of the two interviewed on the cultural revolutions, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the War in Kosovo consequently, examines the impact of the revolutions on the people’s lives, and draws conclusions on the basis of the similarities and dissimilarities of these two cultural revolutions.
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The dissolution of the Soviet Union
The view on the revolution
It was the year of 1991 when the world observed in shock the Soviet Union collapsing into fifteen detached states. Its breakdown was addressed by the West as a triumph of liberty and equality over despotism, and an indication of the dominance of capitalism over communism (Czechowska, & Olszewski, 2012). In the interviewed person’s opinion, the breakup of the Soviet Union altered the entire world’s political state of affairs, leading to a wide-ranging reconstruction of party-political, commercial, and armed alliances all over the world. She also points out that the collapse of the Soviet Union began on the margins, in the parts that were not Russia.
The impact of the revolution
The dissolution of the Soviet Union made life much more challenging. Even though Russia is an enormous country that possesses numerous resources, life became unbalanced. Everything has been changed – starting with the governmental design and policies to the people’s common opinion about the country and its residents. The family life did not change a lot in its general sense, but the so-called “deficit” imposed various restrictions on people’s everyday life and their perception of the Russian government.
At first, the quiet and peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union seemed to be seen as something natural, something that should have had eventually happened way before, but it caught most of the people by surprise. Instead of joining the efforts in an attempt to save the previously visible equality, the community split into layers.
The War in Kosovo
The view on the revolution
Continuing cultural tautness between Kosovo’s Albanian and Serb inhabitants left the area ethnologically separated, resultant in intercultural viciousness, ending in the Kosovo War, part of the broader local Yugoslav Wars. The war was over when the armed interference of NATO enforced the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to extract its armed forces from Kosovo (Allin, 2014). An important note was made by the interviewed when he mentioned that the tension between Kosovo and Serbia still exists even though the conflict is currently usually being seen as resolved by the majority of the European populace.
The impact of the revolution
Just like any other revolution, this one was unconsciously designed to improve people’s life in Kosovo, but the War did not do any good for the country. The area was distressed by the hostilities, and the people were scared. In the respondent’s opinion, the country is now poor by European ideals with high joblessness rates, still not having completely recuperated from the historical war (O’Neil, 2014). As an example, the interviewed cites his father, who lost his official job because of the war and not yet found another to this day. He makes his living by growing and selling vegetables in the village.
His siblings are not able to get higher education and believe that they have no future in Kosovo at all. The respondent also believes that the conflict produced only issues, both major and minor, for the neighboring countries as well. For instance, he mentioned the environmental and political issues in Macedonia and the major crime and corruption issues that can be observed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This once again confirms the tragic consequences of the War that found their reflection not only in the participating countries but the nearby countries as well.
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Conclusion
If one compares the two cultural and political revolutions, the similarities between the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the War in Kosovo are obvious and appealing. The changes that should have been brought by the revolutions should have been strictly positive, but the divergence of the political and cultural views of both the governments and the residents has caused total confusion and led to a series of successive crises.
Generally speaking, the current situation once again proves the importance of the revolution as a whole, but we must pay attention to how forthright and intransigent are both of them. The political, economic, and, most importantly, cultural issues caused by these two events are explicitly graphic. Both Russia and Kosovo must soberly assess the risk of recurrence of such situations, and make every effort so that dire consequences would not repeat themselves.
References
Allin, D. H. (2014). NATO’s Balkan Interventions. New York, NY: Routledge.
Czechowska, L., & Olszewski, K. (2012). Central Europe on the Threshold of the 21st Century: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Challenges in Politics and Society. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub.
O’Neil, P. H. (2014). Post-communism and the Media in Eastern Europe. New York, NY: Routledge.
