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Comment by nopassrecover | Hacker News Reader

The history lesson is good context, but the "pampered Westerner" reference seems unnecessary, particularly when the article is discussing young Latvians rather than the war generation.

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Especially since many Westerners have similar family histories, if you count the previous generation. My Greek grandfather survived a bout of ethnic cleansing [1], a civil war in the first country he fled to [2], a Nazi occupation in the 2nd place he fled [3], and a civil war between the leftist anti-Nazi partisans and the Western-backed government in exile [4]. So he had sort of an, "eh, I've seen worse" attitude.

Lots of American Jews, Armenians, Lebanese, etc. are not in the U.S. purely for reasons of voluntary relocation, either.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_occupation_of_Greece

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War

The thing is that some form of genocide was carried out during soviet times, thus suppressing development of the nations intelligence, with many from the best and brightest being deported/surpressed etc. Westerners usually does not understand that what ended in the West after WWII did not end in the Baltic states, it continued, just in a bit "softer" form. Yes, it was not war, but it was not actual peace either.

Well, I am a Westerner myself, and the war generation were young too, when it happened (and then, happened again). If this were an article about our Millenials, it would be very different, was my point.

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