The soldiers were told to grow their hair long and were given civilian clothes. From then on, their superiors said, they would be addressed — and were to address one another — as “comrade tourist” as they sailed aboard a cruise liner to Syria.
With this simple trick, the Soviet Union managed to sneak thousands of soldiers into Syria in 1983 during the Lebanese civil war, in which Syria, Moscow’s close ally, was deeply involved.
Category Archives: History
Monument to Soviet-Afghan war in Khmelnytsky (2007)
Help Save Soviet Jews / No Refuge for Soviet Gentiles
Steve Sailer: NEW YORK TIMES–‘Nancy Morawetz, a professor of clinical law at New York University, says: “I cannot recall any historical precedent for denying immigration based on religion.”’
I can: Soviet non-Jews. if they could document being Jewish by descent, they could qualify for legal immigration to the U.S. But if they were just a run of the mill Orthodox Christian, too bad, they were legally out of luck.
Країна Моксель, або Московія – expose book on Ukrainian History
I would LOVE there to be a translation of this book.
Paper about Crimea — good historic survey data
This paper: http://opus.bath.ac.uk/36013/3/Malyarenko_and_Galbreath_Crimea.docx.pdf
***
According to the census of 1939, Crimea constituted: Russians 49.6%, Ukrainians 13.7%, Crimean Tatars 19.4% and Jews 5.8%. After the deportation of the Crimean Tatars following the Second World War to Central Asia, the territory of Crimea was populated by Russians and Ukrainians. To illustrate the change, in the 1959 Soviet census (first census after WWII) the population of Crimea consisted of Russians 71.4%, Ukrainians 22.3% and Jews 2.2% (Polyan 2001). In accordance with the last census in 2001, the Slavic (Russian and Ukrainian) population of Crimea are approximately 58.5% and 24.4% respectively (National Population Census in Ukraine, 2001).
***
According to opinion polls in May 2009, 32.3% of Crimean residents supported an idea of separation of Crimea from Ukraine. In May 2011, this rate fell to 24.4%.
Furthermore, the number of residents who would support a plan for a Crimean Russian national autonomous region inside of Ukraine has also decreased (19.5% in 2009, 2.3% in 2011). Instead, the percentage of residents supporting a broad autonomous region inside Ukraine has increased to 30.9% (Opinion Polls: Crimea, 2006-2011, Razumkov Centre).
***
Any separatist activity of the Tatar ethnic minority has been rarely analysed as a real phenomenon and a conflict factor in Crimea, but recent opinion polls show that at least 2% of Crimea’s residents support separation of the Crimea and subsequent annexation of this territory to Turkey, bearing in mind that Crimean Tatars constitute just over 12% of the regional population (Opinion Polls: Crimea, Razumkov Centre, April – May 2011).
***
In comparison to other regions in Ukraine, the process by which institutional exclusion occurs in Crimea is arguably more devastating, underwritten by corrupt commercial and political networks that are created around the illegal distribution of land with the full knowledge and even participation of local authorities. Local public servants play the decisive role and manage the process of the illegal land business.
Ukrainian Protester at 1976 soccer game!
1976. Soccer game between USSR & East Germany. Protester runs out with Ukrainian flag and dances hopak. I wonder what happened to this brave man.
Georgia War Propaganda
I hate to say it, but at the time of Russia’s invasion of Georgia (which annexed 20% of their territory), I had the story completely wrong. I had been reading to much Lew Rockwell who tends to shill for the Kremlin.
The typical narrative in the alternative Libertarian press was complete Kremlin propaganda.
The reality is that Russia, alarmed by Georgia’s anti-corruption reforms and strengthening ties with the west, sparked an ethnic cleansing of Georgians at the hands of the Ossetians, and had all their “Genocie of Ossetians” propaganda ready for when the Georgian government responded.
Wikipedia:
—“South Ossetian separatists began attacking the Georgian villages in early August 2008, in order to force Georgia to respond militarily, thus giving a pretext for pre-planned Russian invasion. Russia was preparing to go to war with Georgia for years before 2008 and intended to achieve geopolitical goals. Some researchers paid attention to the military exercise “Kavkaz 2008”, which concluded in early August. During this exercise a written notice entitled “Soldier, know your probable enemy” (the enemy was clarified as Georgia) was circulated among the Russian participants. Russian journalists began arriving in Tskhinvali on 2 August to cover a war that had not yet begun. Some Russian regular troops entered South Ossetia before the Georgian military operation against Tskhinvali began on 7 August.”—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_for_the_Russo-Georgian_War
Evidence of ethnic cleansing of Georgians:
Top 10 Russian lies about Georgia war (http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/08/16/top-10-russian-lies-about-the-georgia-war/):
1. Inflated numbers of the death toll in South Ossetia during the Georgian operation, while in fact more Georgians were killed by the Russian invasion. 2000 instead of 162.
2. Russian media claimed that Tskhinvali was leveled by Georgian artillery. Actually, only 5% of building were affected.
3. Georgian operation was provoked by a long period of escalation and week of open hostilities.
4. Russian troops were in South Ossetia long before Russia was asked for help.
5. Russian peacekeepers weren’t attacked by Georgian forces.
6. Russia’s claims of a US citizen fighting for Georgia based on passport lost in airport in 2005.
7. Russia built a military base in the breakaway region before the war in 2008.
8. Investigation shows Russia’s claims of Ukrainian far-right fighters aiding Georgia are unfounded.
9. Russian media released a fake interview attempting to give away award-winning photos of victims of Russian bombing at Gori as staged, probe finds they are real.
10. Russian news edits real Fox News interview to produce example of “censorship by Western media” for domestic audiences.
When Russians welcomed Nazis as “Christian Crusaders”
Third Reich opened up 470 churches in north-western Russia alone and reinstated priests driven from their pulpits by Stalin. . . .
Perhaps most astonishingly, the Germans even shipped numerous mayors, journalists, policeman and teachers back to the Reich to show them the ‘German way of life.’
Russia has always portrayed the war against the Germans as a historic struggle which cost 27million lives but ultimately defeated the Nazis forever.
Until now, there has been little examination of the extent of collaboration by Soviet citizens with the invaders.
Good History of Ukraine’s 20th Century
by Olga Kaczmar
In this thesis, I will explore the United States’ role in the downfall of life and liberty of the Ukrainian peoples, the division of Ukrainian lands, and the economic support to Ukraine’s three major enemies of modern time: Poland, Russia and Germany. The US puts out a lot of propaganda about how it wants democracy in Europe. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and even, William Clinton policies shaped Ukraine’s subservience. I will also touch on the mass evacuations and devastation to lives after all the treaties were signed (Operation Vistula in 1947). But first . . . a little history to bring you up to speed and help you understand.
NATO’s Standoff with the USSR over Yugoslavia
Stalin felt threatened by Tito’s effectiveness and support for Greek communists. He wanted to depose Tito. There were proxy wars, border incursions, assassination attempts, and 80,000-soldier military drills. There were enormous purges of spies or suspected spies with many people getting executed. In the Eastern block, the “Titoists” became the enemy of the day for a while.
NATO decided to defend Tito, even though he was communist because Yugoslavia was a buffer to Italy and Greece. Starting in 1950, NATO provided military aid and drafted a plan to make their line of defense of Europe within the territory of Yugoslavia.
http://romaninukraine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Dodging_Armageddon.pdf
When a mass grave was revealed in Kolpashevo, Siberia in 1979 — A story about Soviet man. A story about Russia.
(Jesus Christ…. This is disturbing. Westerners have no freaking idea about the dark depths of Russian nihilism. They have no idea what they’re dealing with.)
This is a story about the Soviet man. It’s about our compatriots and our countrymen, and our brothers and our sisters. It is a story about the way of life in Siberia. It’s about the moral code of the Builder of Communism.
In 1979, a river in a Siberian town began exposing a mass grave.
Then from Tomsk came new orders containing an interesting, ingenious engineering solution. Up the Ob, they dispatched two powerful tugboats and sent them right up to the riverbank, where there were tied with ropes to the shore, facing the ships away from the land. Then they set their engines on full throttle. The waves from the ships’ propellers began to erode the cliff, and bodies started falling into the water, where most of them were cut to pieces by the same propellers. The crew working these tugboats was made up of ordinary civilians. Nobody selected these men specifically for this task. Nobody switched the crew.
The people of Kolpashevo watched the whole operation with interest. No one protested.
Then it turned out that some of the bodies had washed away downstream, escaping the propellers. The mummified corpses managed quite well in the water, floating not sinking. So down the river they stationed a row of motorboats, where people sat with fishing hooks. Their job was to catch the bodies in the water. These people were volunteers, recruited from the local male population: laborers, public servants, and the so-called workers’ intelligentsia. A barge loaded with scrap metal from a nearby factory came up to the boats. The men were to tie pieces of scrap metal wire to the bodies they caught and then sink them in the deepest part of the river. This work went on for several days.
The people of Kolpashevo kept watching the tugboats and their propellers thrashing in the water. The tugboats had to be refueled with diesel regularly: all together, each ship burned through about 60 tons of fuel. Nobody was particularly surprised or outraged.
The last team—also composed of local volunteers—worked a bit farther downstream: people on motorboats rounded the shores, collecting the bodies that slipped through the row of boats higher up the river. Some of these remains they buried on shore (in unmarked graves), but more often they buried them in the river, smashing the bones with their oars, or sinking the bones by tying them to stones. This cleanup continued almost until the end of the summer.
Life in Kolpashevo that summer, generally speaking, was calm. It was like it always was. And that’s the story.
. . . . On the banks of the Ob River, directly across from Lenin Street in the center of Kolpashevo, to this day there is still a long triangular cavity preserved in the sandbank. For some reason, the river doesn’t wash it away.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict bw/ Azerbaijan and Armenia
Secession in 1988 led to a war that killed some 30,000 people. A shaky ceasefire ensued in 1994, with Azerbaijan losing 14% of its territory. Exchanges of fire along the front have long been common, but the clashes this year have been the worst since 1994.
The Worst Nuclear Testing You’ve Never Heard Of
From 1949 to 1989, the USSR secretly conducted over 400 nuclear tests in Kazakhstan, exposing 200,000 to dangerous levels of radiation.
You already know that the United States and Russia have nuclear weapons. In total, nine countries have an estimated 16,000 warheads. Still, the U.S. and Russia own about 90 percent of the total.
http://seekernetwork.com/thishappenedhere/the-worst-nuclear-testing-you-ve-never-heard-of
Hundreds of desperate letters written to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the 1940s and 1950s have been found in Moldova’s National Archive.
Hundreds of desperate letters written to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the 1940s and 1950s have been found in Moldova’s National Archive. Faced with starvation and deportation, many Moldovan families appealed directly to Stalin for help.
http://www.rferl.org/media/video/moldova-lost-letters-to-stalin/27283399.html
Soviet Union’s Operation “West” – the deportation of Western Ukrainians
A forcible eviction of the Ukrainian people from the territories of Western Ukraine under code name the Operation “West” was initiated by the Soviet government on October 21, 1947. Over 76 thousands of Ukrainians were deported to Siberia during a day. The main objective of the operation was to weaken the Ukrainian national-liberation movement at the Western Ukraine’s territories and further assimilation the Ukrainian people with other nations of the USSR to create so-called a “Soviet man.”
http://ukrainiancrusade.blogspot.com/2015/10/operation-west-another-attempt-to.html
The Atlantic on Jews in the NKVD
The Soviet Union was a multinational state, using a multinational apparatus of repression to carry out national killing campaigns. At the time when the NKVD was killing members of national minorities, most of its leading officers were themselves members of national minorities. In 1937 and 1938, NKVD officers, many of whom were of Jewish, Latvian, Polish, or German nationality, were implementing policies of national killing that exceeded anything that Hitler and his SS had (yet) attempted. In carrying out these ethnic massacres, which of course they had to if they wished to preserve their positions and their lives, they comprised an ethic of internationalism, which must have been important to some of them. Then they were killed anyway, as the Terror continued, and usually replaced by Russians.
The Jewish officers who brought the Polish operation to Ukraine and Belarus, such as Izrail Leplevskii, Lev Raikhman, and Boris Berman, were arrested and executed. This was part of a larger trend. When the mass killing of the Great Terror began, about a third of the high-ranking NKVD officers were Jewish by nationality. By the time Stalin brought it to an end on 17 November 1938, about twenty percent of the high-ranking officers were. A year later that figure was less than four percent. The Great Terror could be, and by many would be, blamed on the Jews.
To reason this way was to fall into a Stalinist trap: Stalin certainly understood that Jewish NKVD officers would be a convenient scapegoat for national killing actions, especially after both the Jewish secret policemen and the national elites were dead. In any event, the institutional beneficiaries of the Terror were not Jews or members of other national minorities but Russians who moved up in the ranks. By 1939 Russians (two thirds of the ranking officers) had replaced Jews at the heights of the NKVD, a state of affairs that would become permanent. Russians became an overrepresented national majority; their population share at the heights of the NKVD was greater than their share in the Soviet population generally. The only national minority that was highly overrepresented in the NKVD at the end of the Great Terror were the Georgians—Stalin’s own.
I don’t know. The structure of the argument seems like apologism/justification. It also fails to mention many of the top leaders, like Lazar Kaganovych who masterminded Holodomor.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/01/grappling-with-holodomor/282816/
Author- Ta-Nehisi Coates
Holodomor in the Don Basin
Realize that Holodomor was inflicted on the Don Basin too. This was territory claimed as Ukrainian when Ukrainians made a bid for statehood in 1920.
Photographs of Monuments to Peoples Deported by the Soviets
The Daily Beast: Russia Denies Holodomor
>ehem< How about the NY Times? How about the Village Voice? How about countless American University professors?
Full-throated apologetics for Josef Stalin are not part of the standard fare. But last week, Sputnik ran a feature that offered exactly that—along with what can be reasonably called genocide denial.The title of the article, by one Ekaterina Blinova—who has no bio on the site, but describes herself on Twitter as an “independent political analyst”—speaks for itself: “Holodomor Hoax: The Anatomy of a Lie Invented by West’s Propaganda Machine.” The Holodomor, roughly translated as “murder by starvation,” is the Ukrainian term for what the late Robert Conquest called “the Terror-Famine”—the devastating, human-made hunger epidemic that killed as many as seven million Soviet peasants, most of them Ukrainians, in 1932-33.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/31/russia-denies-stalin-s-killer-famine.html
Joseph Stalin’s deadly railway to nowhere
“She got 10 years hard labour for that supposedly political crime,” explains Lyudmila, “but what did it have to do with politics?”
Image caption Nadezhda Kukushina (right) was sent to work on the railway after rats ate money in her employer’s safeLyudmila has many such stories. At the Salekhard museum where she used to be the director and now a retired senior researcher, she shows me a picture of a young woman with dimpled cheeks and curly brown hair.
Nadezhda Kukushina was a book-keeper at a state enterprise in Ukraine. When rats got into the safe and chewed up some banknotes, she was accused of embezzlement and sent to work on the railway.
Other prisoners had already endured German prisoner-of-war camps. When they eventually returned home to the Soviet Union, the authorities branded them traitors and sent them to the Arctic.
According to some estimates 300,000 prisoners were enslaved on the project and nearly a third of them perished in the process.
