09-03-2009, 10:07 PM
Quote:Of course. I'm just saying that if people are going to remember a tragic event on the 1st, its mainly going to be about WW2, because it's effects are felt to this day. Beslan, whilst also a dark chapter in the bloodstained pages of history, had far less consequences. Many people forgot about it, moved on, aren't confronted with it in their daily lives, except the people who live there. WW2 is something no one forgets and something (at least we Europeans) are remembered of regularly. That's why, after all these decades, we still annually remember it, even though the generation that lived through it conciously is fast declining. And, of course, because we still are cleaning up the mess. We still find bombs in the ground and the seas, that sometimes claim victims. Children dig up WW2 grenades and unknowingly play with them. Farmers plowing their fields can still his a thousandpounder laying dormant for all this time. The number of fatalities has decreased dramatically the last two decades, but most people in a ' risk' trade hold their hearts when they stumble across a big piece of rust.
Back on topic, I'm absolutely not saying Beslan shouldn't be remembered. I'm just saying that it isn't as much in the media because WW2 overshadows it because it coincides on the same day. And Russia of course isn't big on admitting its mistakes so they're not going to make a big show out of it. Although there is some improvement, of late, as they're finally starting to admit that the MolotovâRibbentrop Pact was a mistake.
The russian government might have made a mistake in it's implimentation of the plan to rescue the hostages. However, the russian government was not the one who actually *took* those hostages.
As far as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.... it was not a mistake. It just did not work out exactly how Stalin and co. imagined it would. They miscalculated by a few weeks. If they had not, however, WW2 might have been very very different, and the number of "villains" would have been different also.