Child Kidnappings by the Western-European States

[Naine]

http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/tema/zpravy/zemanovi-se-nelibi-postup-norskych-uradu-v-pripade-ceskych-deti/1177922&id_seznam=35
The Czech president is not pleased.
The president of the republic expressed his dissatisfaction with the actions of Norway services, which are keeping all documents relevant for the assessment of the whole issue secrete and asked the ambassador of the Norwegian Kingdom to keep him up to inform about the whole issue.

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[Marianne Skanland]

  

Marianne, just a note: Checheniya is Russia, …….
This case was thus also within Astahov's jurisdiction from the Russian side.

Yes, I know, I wasn't trying to turn it into some political question when I wrote "Russia / Chechniya", quite the contrary. I think I might perhaps have written in the same way about Kamchatka, for that matter. Rather, I feel that regardless of what we think of all sorts of in themselves important questions in life, regarding child protection the central point is: Children need to be with THEIR OWN parents or other close relatives if AT ALL possible, in all kinds of societies.

Do not misunderstand me, folks: It is NOT possible if the parents ill-treat or abuse the child and cannot be trusted to stop.

In this case I agree that Astahov's hand is important and can only be positive.

*

… it's one of the financially better off regions of Russia).

All the better if so, but not even that is the most decisive thing. – I remember a case about 20 years ago, it was something like this:

Some Cubans, a mother with a small son, got into a boat and headed for Miami, as refugees . The boat capsized and the boy was the only survivor. He was rescued by the American coast-guard and brought to some distant relatives of his in Miami. His father and mother had been divorced. The father had not objected to his son going with the mother, but now he of course wanted his son to return to himself. There was a lot of hullabaloo in Florida, which has a large community of Cubans hostile to communist Cuba, saying the boy must not be "victimised" by Cuba and "forced" to go back; the boy's relatives claimed to love him so very deeply (after having known him for a few weeks or even just a few days) that they could not do without him. Quite materialistic arguments (actually quite like a communistic way of thinking, Nemo?) about life and politics being so much better in the USA were very prominent - so many people shouting at the top of their lungs about how terrible it would be if the boy was going to go back to Cuba, that his father in Cuba was very poor, and his mother having wanted him to go to the USA, and Cuba being the big bad Satan.
    Cuba was not too fond of people escaping to the USA but they allowed the father to go peacefully and try to get his son back (the father was not an oppositional and it was positive advertisement for Cuba). The American social authorities kept him there for some little time, I think with the usual mumbo-jumbo which we know so well: they had to see whether the boy "could get used to him" etc. It ended with father and son going back to Cuba. – Which I think must have been the best thing. Even if the boy had not been living with his father before but with his mother, neither the political conditions nor a modest economic standard (as long as neither was an absolute, life-threatening disaster) should trump the principle of the boy being with his own parent.

The importance of the parent-child bond is what social services are taught to disrespect and forget, and so that is what we have to work to have reinstated.
    

[Lethn]

Wow, this thread has turned into so many arguments. You guys should cool down a bit.

Anarchists in particular like to debate about things instead of avoid a topic This is pretty normal we talk about all sorts of stuff

[Nemo1024]

Yes, I know, I wasn't trying to turn it into some political question when I wrote "Russia / Chechniya", quite the contrary.

Marianne, sorry if my previous comment came out harsher than it should have. This is a carry-over from the other, politically charged threads, where I am trying to be as pedantic as possible, when it comes to definitions, as I am often on the defensive with regard to topics that concern Russia.

Back to the topic at hand, where I am in full agreement with you: solution to this problem must transcend nationalities, politics and country boundaries.

[dyalldough]

I have also seen may news stories of Russian children being taken away from parents for no apparent reason.
This has been going-on for many years now. I believe it to be politically motivated as well as financially motivated.
These private services are paid very well by the government for taking and housing these children away from the parents.
Stay away from Norway and Finland if you have children!

[Marianne Skanland]

  

Marianne, sorry if my previous comment came out harsher than it should have.

No no, I wasn't offended and I didn't interpret it as harsh at all. Besides, even if I had I wouldn't exactly have shrivelled; criticising the CPS (child protection services) as I have done for many years, I expect – and frequently get – real "comments" about my "irrelevancy".

Actually, the political aspects of the CPS questions are interesting but somewhat unusual, and dyalldough is right:

This has been going-on for many years now. I believe it to be politically motivated as well as financially motivated.

It is just that the politics of it does not boil down to quite the usual alternatives. Certainly, some CPS ideology is in accord with socialistic thinking, and probably a very large majority of social workers here in Norway vote for socialistic parties. But the conservative and more or less liberal (in the European sense of the word) parties in our parliament are just as strong supporters of the CPS, and the sections of the population voting for them are the same, they just dress up their attitudes differently. All of them are completely superficial and avoid looking into what is actually going on. Conservatives believe that the CPS "fixes" criminal youngsters and parents, the Christian People's Party believe that parents attacked by the CPS are inevitably "bad" parents, the party Venstre ("Left", who call themselves social-liberal) have top politicians whose families are heavily into foster home activities, country communities with sympathy for the Centre Party (previously called Farmers' Party) do considerable business in taking foster children.

The only people in politics who take / have taken a principled stand against this destruction of families have been single individuals, usually in tiny, peripheral parties.

 

These private services are paid very well by the government for taking and housing these children away from the parents.

Yes, that is quite right, but it is not the basic reason, just a "business opportunity" which these people see once it is there. So it is a money machine but it doesn't matter that some of it is private enterprise. The state-run foster places and other things established in connection with it are just as bad and the ideology is the same.

Stay away from Norway and Finland if you have children!

Absolutely right! You have to add some other countries as well, though. Here are some links to articles (don't worry, they are in English) about Slovaks running into British child 'protection':
Protester i Storbritannia, og Slovakia har suksess (Protests in Britain, and Slovakia is successful)
And this site about the USA, which was posted in this thread recently, is illuminating:
Medical Kidnap

This whole way of "protecting" children is a plague. The Western countries are hard hit, probably because they are "educating" too many social workers and psychologists, but it is spreading, through ideology about what constitutes a good society and a good life.

 

  

[BitMos]

The only people in politics who take / have taken a principled stand against this destruction of families have been single individuals, usually in tiny, peripheral parties.

...

This whole way of "protecting" children is a plague. The Western countries are hard hit, probably because they are "educating" too many social workers and psychologists, but it is spreading, through ideology about what constitutes a good society and a good life.

No, don't believe that... I defy any C.P.S. worldwide including those of the homefront to take the child of a single member of the USMIIC... it's possible they do, until the chain of command is aware. then.

on your second remark you have to accept that non humans are aiming to take control of the world. they have very extensive sexual needs. To destroy the family and the values behind it, are key objectives of theirs. It's a war, even if stealth.

they just try to force the Children of God to accept their domination. it will be avenged, here or thereafter, mercilessly.
It's called the Path. they can't do anything against it, it would be like trying to stop a spinning galaxy.

[Marianne Skanland]

  
I think enryk feels "saturated":

Wow, this thread has turned into so many arguments. You guys should cool down a bit.

I plead guilty! I have a number of bad character qualities and one of them is that I write way too long tirades, and mine are of course among the longest here. But it's too late in my life now to change noticeably. So please forgive! After all, one of the advantages of the internet is that what we write does not disappear with yesterday's newspaper – people who need info can search and find it long after. Those of us who try to collect and spread information about CPS madness see it as if we are a tiny wolf-pack laying down a trail, available for others to follow if they want. There are many who are struck down by the CPS all the time and who want allies and information.

Regards from Marianne
  

[BitMos]

Dear Marianne,

I think this one will make enryk goes into selfcombustion . Understand that those criminals saluting before death are smart enough to have been able to commit atrocious crimes, that require expertise. Understand that if they could manage to do such harm, impunitly for so long, they are smart enough to understand like Kerry that the younger their victims are the lower their risk of contracting any diseases. It's a war. let's kill them, where ever they hide, however they cloak. It's just part of the training to dismantle the "suitcases" rings. It will be hardcore. Gitmo is soft in comparison. Do what they got a do. Or said in the Wild West the Sheriffs are in town the party is over mof. And the sharks said: frenzy on, nothing that a good old blood bath can't solve... And if you want to call it more politically corrected: Risk management, it's good with me. Or if you prefer, Algos don't rape. They are not beasts, even trough their inherent efficiency appearing ruthless absolutely not fully understandable for any human collective or individual not used to play with them. The question isn't if heads must roll but how far will they go... (so no basket to catch, so it can be betted). And who doesn't like fiat $ being blown on hunting down sexual criminals... "Keynesianism" at work! In 3 words: no pity, no mercy, to death.

ex101: they better start, now, to make their prayers.

[TECSHARE]

Wow, this thread has turned into so many arguments. You guys should cool down a bit.

No one here is arguing except for you. The rest of us are having a discussion. Perhaps you should contribute in stead of trying to dismantle it by attempting to cast it as an argument and sew discord.

[leopard2]

Basically IMO, this mentality is a global push to force the socialization/indoctrination of children by requiring they participate in it by law, or by selective enforcement of the law. The concept of children being property of the state is at the core of socialist tenets, and it is a growing threat to the family unit world wide. The state wants to make sure its chattel property is properly indoctrinated and compliant, and the CPS system is just another way to mandate this.

That is correct. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, East Germany, dictators love to own the little ones to indoctrinate and train them.

Abuse by parents does exist but the scale of magnitude is much smaller.

In other words, the suffering inflicted by organized governments is much, much worse than that inflicted by bad parenting.

Naturally if kids die because their parents abuse them, this is inflated to grotesque proportions in the media, in order to promote more dictatorial steps.

IMHO mandatory school/kindergarten and whatnot, is just as dangerous to liberty as gun control (and just as much used by dictators). 

[girb16]

The problem here is that the law focuses on the right of the child and the parents?
But they are really one in the same.

[Naine]

I think one of the reasons is really certain ideology.
Namely - Polish, Slovak ....families are patriarchal, authoritarian and the parents smack children (true on all counts), so we must to save the nice children from their parents.

[Naine]

According the Czech radio:
The Czech Republic will continue to put diplomatic pressure on Norway in connection with the case of two Czech brothers who were taken into care in the country, Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka told their mother Eva Michaláková in a meeting on Tuesday. A children’s welfare official from Brno is due to visit Norway in the coming days to discuss extending the mother’s visiting rights and to ensure the boys receive Czech lessons. He will also relay a Czech pledge to monitor the boys’ welfare if they are returned to the Czech Republic.

[Marianne Skanland]

  
A prominent article in the Norwegian newspaper VG (one of the largest) yesterday:

Tsjekkias president sammenligner norsk barnevern med nazi-program (The president of the Czech Republic compares Norwegian child protection with Nazi program)
VG, 9 February 2015

So VG has at long last woken up a little bit. Jan Simonsen has given them information long ago, but as usual the journalists have ignored, with a yawn probably, information about tragic and dramatic child protection cases. (The Norwegian press corps is chock-a-block full of political correctness, and political correctness says that info and protests against the CPS should be ignored.)

There is a short notice about this article on text-tv on NRK (the national tv company) also.

Simonsen has written about it on his own blog also:
Knallhard kritikk av norsk barnevern fra Tsjekkias president (Rock hard criticism of Norwegian child protection from the president of the Czech Republic)


The president has been interviewed by the Czech media house Blesk. He says the foster places where the boys have been put resemble the Lebernsborn program. The boys are being de-nationalised (away from Czech) and being raised to become young Norwegians.


Of course the article is also full of babbleibabb from Norwegian officials. (Never an article without wide scope given to our authorities.) We have heard it all before. It doesn't become right just because they repeat how wonderfully Norway takes care of all children, regardless of nationality.

*

Journlist in Blesk Ladislav Leimer says something even more interesting:
"Der er nok av lignende saker i Europa, det er alltid det samme: Barnevernet tar barn fra utenlandske foreldre, uten noe bevis, for å gi dem til fosterfamilier." (There are plenty of similar cases in Europe, it is always the same: The child protection takes children from foreign families, without any proof, to give them to foster families.)

The very positive thing here is that Leimer is aware that child protection units in many countries operate like the Norwegian agency does. He is mistaken if he thinks the majority of families attacked are foreigners, though. But it is true in Norway - and quite possibly in other countries – that foreign families are over-represented. They are even easier to attack than natives.
  

[Naine]

 

The president has been interviewed by the Czech media house Blesk. He says the foster places where the boys have been put resemble the Lebernsborn program. The boys are being de-nationalised (away from Czech) and being raised to become young Norwegians.

  

I have seen it, but I would correct the information. It was only reprinted in Blesk ( Blesk is not a serious newspaper).

It is exactly what I said. This is not going away. Czechs are not Russians.

a) It is true that the Russian family is different. Russia is eastwards from the Hajnal line and the Russian family was form by slash and burn agriculture. You can see it very easily if you open Russians fairly tales. A father and a mother and tree sons, all of them with wives living under one roof. You will not find this in Grimm's fairy tales.  Czech families were often forced to adopt Russian model under the communist, but the Czech family is an European family, that is, it is a product of a manorial system of land ownership. It is a nuclear and neolocal family, and Czechs returned after the fall of the communism  to this model very swiftly. But there is difference between the Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Great Britain. A child is not required to leaf the family at age of 18. Very often the parents support their child. If it is a middle class family, which has a space, the child can live with parents and paid some symbolic sum for the upkeep of the home on the condition that he/she put some money aside for the own flat. The property ladder is not known and the family and friend are seen as very important.
http://girlinczechland.com/2013/03/13/death-to-dishonesty-3-ways-czechs-reject-the-fakery-of-modern-life/
According value survey (1995) 83,7% of Russians said that the family is very important, 12,6% agreed that it is very important. Czech numbers were 90,8% and 7,2%. So if for Russians is the family important, for Czechs is important even more.
Horizontal mobility is small. People will commute, they will accept a pay cut, but they will not move. Austrians  and Czechs are two nation in the EU which are the least wiling to move abroad to get a very well paid job.
If there is a problem in a family - an unknown father + an alcoholic mother - the children will go to the grandparents or an aunt.
Also if the parents do not have money to support their children, the grand parents must step in, they can be sued for support. On the other land, the grand children must support grand parents.

b) It is true that 20th century was not very kind to the Central Europe. It is true that Czechs as a nation emerged from years of communism and occupation as on of the most damages nations, if not the most damages one. A low trust society, a parochial and an intolerant society, a society of cynics, egoists living according "he who does not steal from the common, steals from his family". A society which was very aptly described as a society where is nothing shameful, a society which is sometime nicknamed "Chechnya under Bohemian forest".   It is also true that the economic transformation was a bit disaster and country is ruled by peoples born in 1950s or 1960s, that is by the most damages generations. But there are first green branches on the scorched land, a new free generation was born, generation which is not taught to say one thing at home and an another in school, a generation of open borders, a generation of the internet, a generation which is less materialistic (it does not remember empty shops) and less obedient. So there is slow revival of civic society and if you have a look at Inglehat's map, you can see that self expressions is more valued then self-survival. It means Czechs are more ready than Russians to sign a petition ...to do something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart%E2%80%93Welzel_cultural_map_of_the_world#mediaviewer/File:Inglehart_Values_Map2.svg
In this case
- there were collecting money for a lawyer, there was few demonstrations and petitions, there is a constant pressure on the government, ministers Diensbier and Marksová-Tominová are criticised for not doing enough.
- CPS  has a new page in Wikipedia
- Dominik Hašek - promised his golden medial from Nagano to person who will get the children back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominik_Ha%C5%A1ek

c) there is the question that the boys are Czech citizens and the same goes for their parents. Also it is not only one case, they are minimally  five cases (Gabriela Lode..) So Norway is sorting a Czech family? Hu?

d) there is the language question. I am not sure if you understand it.  I think Peter the Great prohibited to use Ukrainian for printing books in 1720, the prohibition was repeated. Lithuanian were prohibited to print anything in Lithuanian, but few church books and they had to be printed in Russian alphabet. "What the Russian bayonet didn't accomplish, the Russian school will."  Austrian post offices did not accept a telegram in Czech or in Slovenian in 19th century. The first Czech high school was open 1848 (I think), the University in Warsaw was closed by Russians. Prague university got its Czech branch only in 1882.
If your mother tongue is Estonian, Czech, Polish, Lithuanian it is for you not a self evident fact, but a result of a long fight for every Czech school, every Polish book, for every child.
Look the anthems - it is nothing along the line Rule Britania. It is Poland is not dead yet, Ukraine is not dead yet, Slovaks will be reborn, Where is my home ? (the Czech anthem)
If you open autobiographies of local "saint" , you will find a constant motive - how they were humiliated, getting beating, being punished and mock for crime of using their mother tongue. I suppose for you is Rosa Luxemburg a German socialist, but she was from a Polish, Jewish family and in her youth she used to pick her friends for their ability to speak French, to avoid conversation in occupants languages (German and Russian), to use Polish was a punishable offence.
The best book written about the Czech language is a book written under Nazi occupation, it was written by a Prague German speaking Jew and it name is "Czech  as a temple and a fortified house. The language is sacred. It is a heirloom.  To prohibit a Czech mother to speak with her children in Czech is something comparable with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Maybe worse. It is an attack on the whole community. It got people to switch in a short thinking mode.
Poles compared CPS in Norway with Hitlerjugend, in the Czech republic are they compared with Lebensborn. On the Czech blogs (no it the press) are people asking why the hell  is Norway not nuked yet, nuke the Nazi. There is believe in Lithuania, in the Czech republic in in Poland that the goal of CPS is to steal others people children, because children are valuable resource. 

e)also it sells newspapers and brings points to opposition.

[Nemo1024]

Naine, I don't know about your background, but I would like to make a few observations so as to keep the historical aspects correct. I don't want this to grow too much off-topic, so here are a few short bullt-points

a. Yes, Russians and Czechs are different, mostly in that Czechs have been under Germanic influence for a prolonged period. The reason for the family structure lies indeed in agriculture, abut also in the availability of land and in the system of serfdom in Russia that didn't allow peasants to move out up until 1800s.
Don't take the results of social studies from the 90s Russia too literally. Russia was experiencing a violent post-Soviet social disintegration at that time and that reflected in the values. Also, if the studies were conducted in Moscow and St.Petersburg, then they would be skewed as these "city-states" are more "Western", than the rest of the country.

This leads to
b. Everyone somehow forgets that the most damaged nation after 70 years of communism was Russia. What you write at the beginning of point (b) very much applies to Russia too. Czechia made a comparatively peaceful transition, and even during the Soviet rule, Czechia had an inflow of capital and industrialisation from Soviet Union during the post-war reconstruction. I remember visiting Pague for the first time in 1986, when it at all became possible to travel abroad. I was blown away by how well-off Czechs were, at the riches of the "abroad". And I came from Moscow...

d. The prohibition of the Ukrainian language by Peter is a myth (and 1729 is the time of Peter II), fostered during the end of 1800s, beginning of 1900s. Some censorship did find place around 1860s, but it was by far not that restrictive.
http://vk.com/topic-1001828_22087206?offset=20
By the way, there was no Ukraine back then - you had a Novorossia, Malorossia and Galicia regions. The first two spoke largely Russian or a very close dialect of it - Surzhik. The Galician dialect was more interspersed with German and Polish words, but still there was less difference with Russian than, say, between Trøndersk dialect and Oslo dialect of Norwegian.
Ukrainian anthem was written by Polish pani, thus the similarity. More info on this in the following article, but it's well outside the scope of this topic
https://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/free-earth-shift-report-2-the-falsified-history-of-ukraine-and-its-lessons/

[Nemo1024]

 
A prominent article in the Norwegian newspaper VG (one of the largest) yesterday:

Tsjekkias president sammenligner norsk barnevern med nazi-program (The president of the Czech Republic compares Norwegian child protection with Nazi program)
VG, 9 February 2015

So VG has at long last woken up a little bit. Jan Simonsen has given them information long ago, but as usual the journalists have ignored, with a yawn probably, information about tragic and dramatic child protection cases. (The Norwegian press corps is chock-a-block full of political correctness, and political correctness says that info and protests against the CPS should be ignored.)

And that VG article went even to mention that there were protests from Russia, India and Poland, tough not going into details of the other cases. It's definitely a step in the right direction.
However, such articles are few and far in between.
The previous article is from 2011, when a Polish embassy worker called Norwegian CPS for Hitlerjugend:
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/polsk-avis-ambassade-ansatt-kalte-norsk-barnevern-for-hitlerjugend/a/10088287/

Another CPS speciality in an article from 2012:
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/norske-barnevernsbarn-sendt-paa-straffeturer-med-marinejegere/a/10061715/
Children under CPS "care" were disciplined by rather brutal military means, using physical and psychological torture. At least 21 such cases are documented from 1990s and these people were seeking compensation through courts.


A thought about CPS in the Southern Europe. I don't see many (any) complaints about it. Having lived in Spain and travelled around Italy, I can say that family structure and  bonds there is very close to those of Russians and Eastern Europeans. A Spanish family as a whole would fight tooth and nail if a child is even slightly inconvenienced, independent of how distant a relative that child is.

I wonder if it's only my impression or if it is actually better to move South to avoid CPS harassment that surfaces in Scandinavia, Finland, GB, Holland, Germany, Switzerland..?

[Marianne Skanland]

  
  
From one of our "Lithuania threads":

Lithuanian interpreter Neringa Ozolina leads demonstration
against the CPS (barnevernet) in Ålesund (in Western Norway)
and gives unequivocal statements to Lithuanian media


Tolken ledet aksjon mot barnevernet  (The interpreter lead the action against the CPS)
Romsdals Budstikke (newspaper on the west coast of Norway, north of Bergen),
11 February 2015

The text under the picture says "Demonstrerte: Tolk Neringa Ozolina deltok i markeringen utenfor fylkesnemndas møte i Molde mandag." (Demonstrated: Interpreter Neringa Ozolina took part in the demonstration outside the county committee's meeting in Molde on Monday.)

She has a courageous and upright attitude, I think:
"Til litauisk media har tolken omtalt Norge som korrupt, og at barnevernets omsorgsovertakelser drives fram av et profittmotiv, med litauiske barn som attraktiv gevinst."
(To Lithuanian media the interpreter has spoken of Norway as corrupt, and said that the child protection service's take-overs of custody of children is driven by a profit motive, with Lithuanian children as attractive gain.)

"… Den litauiske tolken har engasjert seg i flere litauiske barnevernsaker som har gått i fylkesnemnd og domstol, sist saka med 7-åringen som ble bortført fra Molde i januar."
(The Lithuanian interpreter has taken a stand in several Lithuanian CPS cases which have been up for county committee and court treatment, the latest being the case of the 7-year-old who was abducted from Molde in January.)

Of course Norwegian authorities more or less try to spread fear, saying that "– En tolk er avhengig av tillit fra alle parter, på samme måte som domstolene er det. Så får man sjøl avgjøre om dette styrker tilliten eller ikke, sier Karterud." (– An interpreter is dependent on confidence from all parties, in the same way that the courts are. So then one must oneself decide whether this strengthens confidence or not, says Karterud.)

(Terje Karterud is senior adviser in the administration of the courts.)
  

[Naine]

Protest of EMP P. Mach in the EU parliament (in Czech), he hold a paper with names of three mothers (from Lithuania, the Czech republic and Sweden)of kidnapped children and speaks about the fact, that some states are kidnapping children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdqhZ-Fx60g

Response of the Norwegian minister (in English)
https://www.sojdrova.cz/zpravy/2015/02/odpoved-norskeho-ministerstva-po-vice-nez-trech-mesicich-a-bez-konkretnich-navrhu

a blog
http://motls.blogspot.nl/2015/01/norways-theft-of-two-czech-boys-is.html

X mass presents  for Michalák boys
http://euportal.parlamentnilisty.cz/PrintArticle/13185-ministryne-marksova-tominova-opet-nezklamala-kasle-na-ochranu-ceskych-deti-pred-tyranim.aspx

a Czech joke
http://g.cz/adoptuj-si-sveho-nora
Adopt your Norwegian child.
During school holidays are many Norwegian teenagers coming to Prague to get drunk, it means that their biological parents do something wrong.
So we propose:
a) to hunt them down
b) get them to a Czech family for re-education, they can see their parents twice a year, the only allowed language will be Czech
c) everybody(CPS, parents, the Norwegian government) must understand that it is in the interest of the children, they must be protected from biological parents, they must be given to families with positive attitude to alcohol and learn that it is better to drink a small amount every day than to drink the same amount of alcohol  once a week.

a) The prohibition of the Ukrainian language by Peter is a myth.

b)Czechia made a comparatively peaceful transition, and even during the Soviet rule, Czechia had an inflow of capital and industrialisation from Soviet Union during the post-war reconstruction. I remember visiting Pague for the first time in 1986, when it at all became possible to travel abroad. I was blown away by how well-off Czechs were, at the riches of the "abroad".

a) Thanks for the correction. Taken from Wikipedia, I am afraid. Not a fan of Russian history, to depressive.
b) Not to get off the topic to much. It is more complex. I was in Moscow in 1986. I agree that the living standards were very different. I agree that 1990s were not economically such a disaster as in Russia, although the Czech economic transformation is a disaster in comparison with the rest "returned Europe" (the worse results apart Hungary and Croatia).
But it is more subtle than that. After WWI the living standard of the Czech lands was higher than in Austria. It was an industrial base of the whole Empire. School was obligatory since the second half of 18.the century.   After WWII the Czech living standard got up a bit, but at the end (1989) it ended at 1/3 of the Austrian one.  If you live in a tiny country, you see in the neighbour's plate, so Czechs were not satisfied. After WWI Russia was still peasant and illiterate. Communist were not seen in Russia as 100% an economic disaster. But it was not my point.  The Czech land were richer than Russia, true, but the moral marasmus was much worse and destructive in the Czech lands than in Slovakia or in Russia. Russians were not satisfied with many things, but they identified with the system (there were also more isolated = having less information), the self expression value are not so strong in Russia, so they were not forced to lie everyday in such degree as Czechs. Plus one of consequences of 1968 was not only an another emigration wave, but also the fact that 10% of population was kicked out of job(an the peoples in question were not cleaning ladies = destruction of cultural capital).  In the second half of 1980s Russia was more free than Czechoslovakia.