Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

The gory and grotesque art of Soviet antireligious propaganda

The images below are from the Soviet anti-religious magazine, Bezbozhnik, which translates to “Atheist” or “The Godless.” It ran from 1922 to 1941, and its daily edition, “The Godless at the Workplace,” ran from 1923 to 1931. The scathing publication was founded by the League of Militant Atheists, an organization of the Soviet Communist Party members, members of its youth league, workers and veterans, so while it was in many ways a party project, it was not state-sponsored satire.

The Soviet Union adopted a formal position of state-atheism after the revolution but it wasn’t a clean break. The expropriation of church property and the murder or persecution of clergy was certainly the most obvious supplantation of power, but the USSR was a giant mass of land, most of it rural and much of it pious, so the cultural crusade against religion was an ongoing campaign for the hearts and minds of citizens who might resist a sudden massive secularization. The monstrous, violent art you see below depicted religion as the enemy of the worker and footman to capitalism. You’ll notice a wide array of religions depicted, as the USSR was very religiously diverse.

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More: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_gory_and_grotesque_art_of_soviet_antireligious_propaganda1

How — and why — Russians are losing their freedom to travel abroad.

Within days of the explosion of a Russian passenger plane over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on October 31, 2015, and with the official inquiry into the event still open, President

Vladimir Putin imposed an indefinite ban on all air travel between Egypt and Russia. Not even a month later, when the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian fighter jet, the Kremlin issued another open-ended ban, this time on all charter flights to Turkey.

Russian officials presented these sanctions as a necessary step against terrorism, and as a geopolitical display of control and power. But when viewed in the context of other restrictions on foreign travel for Russian citizens, and of the Kremlin’s ramped-up promotion of domestic tourism, they tell an altogether different story.

The main goal of these measures appears two-fold. First, they are designed to limit the exposure of the Russian population to the outside world at a time when the Kremlin is at pains to maintain the facade of resilience and victory-against-adversity it has crafted through its media. Second, they aim to redirect a significant portion of the nearly $54 billion Russian tourism cash flow back into the country to help prop up its struggling economy.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/29/in-russia-the-doors-are-closing-tourism-putin-human-rights/

Victims of Communism Day

Happy to see this in the Washington Post:

Today is May Day. Since 2007, I have defended the idea of using this date as an international Victims of Communism Day. I outlined the rationale for this proposal (which is not my original idea) in my very first post on the subject:

May Day began as a holiday for socialists and labor union activists, not just communists. But over time, the date was taken over by the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and used as a propaganda tool to prop up their [authority]. I suggest that we instead use it as a day to commemorate those regimes’ millions of victims. The authoritative Black Book of Communism estimates the total at 80 to 100 million dead, greater than that caused by all other twentieth century tyrannies combined. We appropriately have a Holocaust Memorial Day. It is equally appropriate to commemorate the victims of the twentieth century’s other great totalitarian tyranny. And May Day is the most fitting day to do so….

The main alternative to May 1 is November 7, the anniversary of the communist coup in Russia. However, choosing that date might be interpreted as focusing exclusively on the Soviet Union, while ignoring the equally horrendous communist mass murders in China, Cambodia, and elsewhere. So May 1 is the best choice.

Our relative neglect of communist crimes carries a real cost. Victims of Communism Day can serve the dual purpose of appropriately commemorating the millions of victims, and diminishing the likelihood that such atrocities will recur. Just as Holocaust Memorial Day and other such commemorations help sensitize us to the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, and radical nationalism, so Victims of Communism Day can increase awareness of the dangers of far left forms of totalitarianism, and extreme government control of the economy and civil society.

http://www.washingtonpost.stfi.re/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/01/victims-of-communism-day-2/

F-22 fighter jets are in Romania to keep tabs on Russia’s Black Sea antics

The U.S. sent its most sophisticated aircraft to Romania on Monday for exercises aimed to enhance training with other Europe-based aircraft.

Two F-22 Raptors and approximately 20 supporting airmen from the 95th Fighter Squadron, Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, landed at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base along with a KC-135 aircraft from the 916th Air Refueling Wing, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, officials with U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa said.

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2016/04/25/f-22s-continue-training-europe-land-romania/83489748/

What Moscow did to Koenigsberg, it will try to do to Crimea

Moscow’s destructive approach to its exclave of Kaliningrad [former East Prussian city of Koenigsberg – Ed.] over the last 70 years suggests what the Russian state will try to do to Crimea in the future: expelling the indigenous population, replacing it with Russians, militarizing the territory, and despoiling and degrading the economy and culture of the region.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/04/23/what-moscow-did-to-konigsberg-it-will-try-to-do-to-crimea/

New Wunderkind Ukrainian PM Has Some Skeletons in His Closet

Fudged degrees, sweetheart land deals and ties to organized crime percolate around little known Volodymir Groysman.

Right after his candidacy was announced, the persona of Mr. Groysman—who is virtually unknown outside of Ukraine—got under the magnifying glass the country’s friends and foes. And the more observers dug into his past, the less hopeful they were about “the path of change” that the Maidan revolution had tried to put the country on.

http://observer.com/2016/04/new-wunderkind-ukrainian-pm-has-some-skeletons-in-his-closet/