Historical Illustration

For many Russians, the demise of Mir is a sad day, its crash into the Pacific a symbol of Russia's own decline from hi-tech superpower to a poverty-stricken exporter of raw materials. In Russian, the word "Mir" means both "peace" and "world", and some Russians have reacted as though both will now come to an end with the death of the space station. They cherish Mir nostalgia in their hearts. "If we lose this station we just lose our position in the world - many other countries don't treat us as a big power," says one among the Muscovite demonstrators appealing to the government for a last-minute reprieve. The columns in the nation's press also expresses Russian’s memory of a more idealistic age when cosmonauts were heroes, Soviet space technology was a world leader and duty and patriotism meant more than money. “In a country where nostalgia is an undisputed feature of the national character, the end of Mir prompts tears for times gone by” says Segodnya, a columnist.

“The world has, almost gleefully at times, reported the station's dotage, allowing its glory days to fade virtually to oblivion," wrote the English-language Moscow Times, in an editorial this week" (BBC March 23, 2001). And the simple fact is that Mir has been a tremendous accomplishment of the space exploration. As the Moscow Times says, “Godspeed, Mir ,and we salute you,” its allusion is to the decline of the Russian space science as the nation struggles to adjust to the new economic environment.

An Example of Ethnic Division

The Macedonian government says its latest offensive against ethnic-Albanian rebels in the north of the country is over, although "mopping up operations" are continuing. Since Macedonians voted for independence in 1991, their new state's external stability has been gradually strengthened as Skopje has overcome the hostility and suspicions of its neighbors. But internal security remains at times precarious in the face of what are often tense inter-ethnic relations between the Macedonian Slav majority and the ethnic Albanian minority. Macedonia is a country made of two peoples who are barely speaking to each other. While the Macedonians are Orthodox Slavs, kith and kin of the Serbs, the Albanians are mainly Muslim. (March 24, 2001)

Macedonia came through the Kosovo crisis better than expected, accommodating hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees without upsetting the delicate ethnic balance in the country.
Macedonian Slavs say that Albanians are treated as equals, and they point to the fact that ethnic Albanian representatives have some of the top jobs in government. But radical ethnic Albanians claim that their community is continuing to suffer discrimination in a whole range of areas - from access to public service jobs to education in their own language (BBC 27 February, 2001). Thus, in Macedonia, it is the ethnic difference that is responsible to the divide of the nation.

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