On Wednesday in the journal Nature, two teams of scientists — one based at the University of Copenhagen and one based at Harvard University — presented the largest studies to date of ancient European DNA, extracted from 170 skeletons found in countries from Spain to Russia. Both studies indicate that today’s Europeans descend from three groups who moved into Europe at different stages of history.

First hunter-gatherers 45,000 years ago.
Farmers from near east 8,000 years ago.
nomadic sheepherders from western Russia & Ukraine about 4,500 years ago.

Until about 9,000 years ago, Europe was home to a genetically distinct population of hunter-gatherers, the researchers found. Then, 9,000 to 7,000 years ago, the genetic profiles of the inhabitants in some parts of Europe abruptly changed, acquiring DNA from Near Eastern populations. . . .

From 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, however, hunter-gatherer DNA began turning up in the genes of European farmers. “There’s a breakdown of these cultural barriers, and they mix,” Dr. Reich said.

About 4,500 years ago, the final piece of Europe’s genetic puzzle fell into place. A new infusion of DNA arrived — one that is still very common in living Europeans, especially in central and northern Europe.

The closest match to this new DNA, both teams of scientists found, comes from skeletons found in Yamnaya graves in western Russia and Ukraine.

www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/science/dna-deciphers-roots-of-modern-europeans.html?_r=2

He’s the Welsh reporter who defied the media to report on Holodomor. The Russians eventually killed him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6554442/Diaries-of-reporter-who-exposed-Stalins-atrocities-go-on-display.html

May 12, 1920.

The Honorable, The Secretary of State,
Department of State, Washington.

Sir:

In view of the present status in eastern Europe, and in deference to the unsettled affairs of the territory of the former Russian empire, which are now pressing for a definite solution, I, as the representative of the Government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, conceive it to be my duty to submit for your consideration this memorandum setting forth the just claims of the Ukrainian people to political and economic independence. As a consequence of the facts herein explained, I respectfully ask the Government of the United States of America to extend recognition to the Ukrainian People’s Republic as a free state.

The national aspirations of Ukraine embrace political liberation for all Ukrainians, consolidation of all free Ukrainians into one state, the erection of a constitutional democratic republic, and economic co-operation with neighboring and other states.

Ukraine’s claim to independence is based upon the following principal grounds:

(1) The existence of the Ukrainians as a well-defined, separate, group-conscious race, with a continuous historic and cultural tradition;

(2) Their occupation, over a period of centuries, of the lands where they now dwell;

(3) Their age-long efforts, increasingly of popular origin, to achieve and maintain political independence;

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33551/33551-h/33551-h.htm

The “Ryazan Miracle”. Yes, communism really was that stupid. And worse. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryazan_miracle

Alexei Larionov, the first secretary of the Ryazan Obkom (the effective head of the region in the Soviet system), announced a very ambitious goal of tripling the amount of meat produced in the region within the next year. The promise, in spite of being unrealistic, was confirmed at the regional party conference. On October 12, 1958 Larionov delivered the promise to Khrushchev in person, who became excited by the initiative.[2] On January 9, 1959 the promise was published in Pravda, the official party newspaper at the time. The publication was rushed by Khrushchev in spite of objections from the Agricultural Department of the Central Committee. The challenge was met by several other regions including Stavropol and Krasnodar. Even before starting its ambitious programme, the Ryazan region received several awards. In February 1959 the region was awarded with the Order of Lenin.[1]

In order to meet the promise, the region had to slaughter all the bovine herd of 1959, as well as a considerable part of its dairy stock. In addition, all cattle reared by kolkhoz farmers in their private households was appropriated “temporarily”. As the collected amount was still not enough to meet the target, obkom had to buy meat in neighbouring regions by relocating funds from other sources, such as the purchase of agricultural tools and construction. On December 16, 1959, Ryazan obkom was able to announce that the region delivered 150,000 tons of meat to the state, which was three times the amount delivered the previous year. On top of this, the regional authorities promised to deliver 180,000 in the next year.[3]

On December 27, 1959 the success was announced by Khruschev himself at the CPSU Plenum “On further development of agricultural production” (О дальнейшем развитии сельскохозяйственного производства). Also in December, Larionov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour.[2]

However, in 1960 production of meat in Ryazan oblast plummeted to 30,000 tons, since mass slaughter had reduced the amount of cattle by 65% in comparison to the level of 1958. To make matters worse, kolkhoz farmers whose private cattle were “temporarily” appropriated the year before refused to process kolkhoz land. This halved the amount of grain produced in Ryazan oblast. By the fall of 1960, it became impossible to hide the affair. In September 1960 Larionov was dismissed from his post, stripped of the title of Hero of Labour. On October 10, 1960, he committed suicide.

Clustered in what became known as “Displaced Persons (DP) camps”, Ukrainians rapidly formed unique self-governing groups and activated numerous cultural and other organizations. The notion of self-supporting cultural organizations (with no objections from the prevailing government) had been conceived during the period of Polish and Austro-Hungarian occupations of Ukrainian territories. Those that were organized in the DP camps later became springboards for organizations that are active today in the Diaspora. The time spent in the DP camps was effectively a “boot camp” for Ukrainians migrating to the West. Prof. Subtelny summed up this effect in his opening remarks: “We [the Ukrainian Diaspora] would not be here if it were not for the DP experience.”

. . . .

The 200,000+ ethnic Ukrainians who remained in the West were a diverse group coming from all walks of life. About 120,000 of them were forced laborers brought from Ukraine to work in German and Austrian factories or on farms. The rest were, as Prof. Subtelny put it, an “urbanized, educated intelligentsia.” Of this latter group most were Galician political activists with others being East bank Ukrainian activists, all working for an independent Ukraine: Petliurists (followers of Ukraine’s first president, Symon Petliura), Banderites (followers of Stepan Bandera), Melnykites (followers of Andrij Melnyk), Ukrainian monarchists (supporters of Hetman Skoropadsky), and other politically motivated Ukrainians. Further, many were students who had come to Germany or Austria before the war to pursue higher education, while others were family members of the Galicia Division soldiers who fought against the onslaught of the communist armies.

After the war the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) was deployed throughout Europe for the purpose of restoring order in the ravaged areas. DP facilities were quickly arranged in former German military barracks, labors camps and schools, although UNRRA was surprised to discover that as many as 2 million displaced foreigners remaining in Germany and Austria had no intention of returning to their native lands. Eventually (~1947), UNRRA turned operations over to the International Relief Organization (IRO) which managed the overwhelming task of resettling the DP’s. Initially, UNRRA resisted the idea of all-Ukrainian camps, but later relented under pressure from the already organized community leaders. Of 700 DP camps as many as 80 were for Ukrainians. The camps ranged in size from populations as large as 6,000 to as small as 500.

. . . .

The camp population was relatively young – 75% in the 18-35 range. About one-half of the youths joined an organization. 60% of the adult population was involved in at least one organization, and 70% of the women had joined a women’s group.

. . . .

Cultural life in the camps thrived. Public events from 1946 to 1947 in the American zone alone included some 1820 plays, 1315 concerts, and 2044 lectures. There were 49 choirs and 34 drama groups. Each camp had 2 or 3 events staged every week. One noteworthy positive effect was that the less educated were exposed to a rich cultural life that they would not otherwise have experienced in Ukraine.

. . . .

One of the most unique formations within the camp system was the school system set up by and for Ukrainians, and accomplished completely without assistance from UNRRA. 1500 Ukrainian educators, a “surfeit” of professional teachers, found themselves in the post-war free zones. Beginning with the kindergartens of which a total of 70 were created, the system grew to include 102 elementary schools, 30 high schools, 43 trade schools, and 2 universities.

http://www.brama.com/news/press/030311subtelny_DPcamps.html

The Holodomor Memorial Museum in Kyiv has organized an exhibition featuring archival documents on the Soviet policy of moving ethnic Russians to the Donbas to replace Ukrainian peasants who had perished during the Holodomor (famine/genocide) of 1932-33. Many historians believe current separatist attitudes in the Donbas are the direct result of these violent assimilation policies.

In 1939 the All-Union census recorded the changed ethnic population in Ukraine. Much later, the new “locals” in eastern Ukraine would tell Holodomor researchers that “there was no famine.” Lapchynska believes this mind-set, as well as separatist attitudes in modern Donbas, are the results of the population resettlements. Russians were brought to the Kharkiv Oblast in Ukraine from the Chernozem Oblast in Russia (which today is divided into the Kursk, Chernozem and Tambov oblasts). There were altogether 329 waves of migrants, representing close to 23,000 families. According to the Central Committee of the Soviet Union, the local government was responsible for welcoming the new arrivals.

“Ukrainian peasants had to clean and whitewash the houses, repair the yards (since the yards of the deceased were dismantled for wood), and remove the corpses,” Lapchynska explains. “They were ordered to prepare the housing and the farm implements so that the migrants could begin to work immediately. They (migrants) were also given incentives: exemption from agricultural and meat taxes for two years, etc.,” she says. . . .

According to Lapchynska, not only families but entire collectives were resettled. When a collective farm moved, it had to hand over grain and then upon presentation of a receipt was given the same amount of grain in the new location — the same amount that had been taken from Ukrainian peasants during the Holodomor.

Conflicts arose between the locals and the settlers since the locals received no benefits. “In one of the documents there is even testimony that the local collective farms had to purchase phonographs for the new settlers,” she says. Special Russian-language classes were organized for the Russians, and Russian language newspapers and books were brought in. Additionally, the Ukrainians who had left during the Holodomor and who succeeded in returning discovered that their homes had been occupied and that handing back property to the original owners was prohibited.

This exhibition is a logical continuation of previous projects of the Holodomor Memorial Museum, explains Yana Hrynko, a researcher at the museum.

“We have launched a series of exhibitions called The crimes of Soviet totalitarianism. This exhibition was preceded by an exhibition dedicated to the liberation struggle in the 1920s. After the first famine in the country there were about 4,000 uprisings. And the response to opposition was genocide. The Holodomor of 1932-33 was a powerful blow to Ukrainian independence. Here were are talking about a violent assimilation policy: to wipe out a part of the Ukrainian population and replace it with people presenting no threatening national concept,” Hrynko says.

1. Secret decision on population resettlements in Ukraine by the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR.

2. Secret decision on population resettlements in Ukraine.

3. Planned distribution of settlers on Ukrainian territories.

4. Politburo decision on reception of Russian migrants in Ukraine.

5. Secret decision to resettle 21,000 Russian families to Ukraine.

http://euromaidanpress.com/2015/05/17/holodomor-and-separatism-in-the-donbas/

click for higher resolution (it may load slowly)

click to see larger image

http://www.quora.com/What-was-it-like-working-in-the-Soviet-Union/answers/9307450?srid=O93F&share=1

Few details

It was public service – everything. Practically everyone was a salaried employee, even plumbers and waiters.

Soviet propaganda was praising USSR for distributing most of the wealth in non-monetary form. It was the access to that non-monetary things that were valued often ahead of salary – ability to receive housing (most was Government housing) in reasonable timeframe, ability to buy a car at official price, holidays, you name it.

In addition to the official distribution of wealth, there was unofficial – “taking from work” aka stealing. The scale you cannot imagine – at the official Moscow white-water slalom championship, not a single craft was made from materials that could be legally bought. Some parts I believe meant to fly into space.

Every organisation had a First Department, handling security, censorship and spying over employees – usually headed by an ex-KGB.

Bathrooms were shocking, and there was no such thing as kitchens at work. You want to make yourself tea or coffee, you go fill the kettle from the toilet sink. Occasionally nauseating.

Following up on sickening, Communist Party activists were doing their things with “political information” aka propaganda etc

Workplace was highly diversified up to the certain level. Nearly all adult women were working.

Women could even be seen doing heavy physical work, like road or railway maintenance. The Soviet system would pay them the same money for lesser productivity – say less volume dug.

Comes Autumn, every white-collar employee would remember where their gum boots, gloves and rain gear are – they were about to be sent to harvest potato and other vegetables, and no gear was provided. Once again, no discrimination on gender basis – a Ph.D.-qualified mother of three would go just as well, leaving the kid for her husband who would do the next 2-week shift.

As soon as security clearance (“dopusk”) comes into play, things gets immensely complicated. Like say how important was to keep as a state secret what Research Institute for Automatics was doing, considering it was described in details in In the First Circle widely sold in the West, and it doesn’t take a genius to make a connection considering the location is specified? Yet employees would get their individual entry and exit times, so American spies won’t guess how many people work there. I was lucky to avoid all that stuff.

There was a universally understood term “to work in a box”, as been employed by an organisation that is to be referred by its PO Box number.

Getting anything done in the “planned economy” was a major problem, as money didn’t really mean much on B2B level. Most things were done through exchange of favors and products.

One particular product, which was supplied to organisations that needed it, stood aside – ethanol aka “liquid currency”. If you have it, a lot of small problems could be easily solved.

Salaries were rather ridiculous – a basic Lada cost 3-year salary of an engineer. However even for that much, they still were distributed via employers – a new car on the black market would cost double that.

More on salaries. Artificially set prices were creating some bizarre effects. A pair of US-made jeans would cost over 6 week salary. A 100% wool suit would cost half that.

Anything to do with travelling abroad was creating immediate stream of income eclipsing salary, through buying stuff abroad, then selling it. However to have money to stock up on stuff, lucky travelers had to save on food, bringing everything with them and saving daily allowance. The urban legends about classic musicians cooking soup in washbasins using waterboilers [1] were abound.

The cases of sexual harassment etc could not go to court, however could be dealt with by the local Party committee if the offender was a Party member.

The need to be a Communist to have a management career was creating some bizarre situations. As I understand, because it was a Party of Proletariat, there was a quota for white collar workers. So in organisations with little blue-collar employees like design bureaus, career-minded educated young men would chase drunk plumbers and handymen (those would be salaried employees of the same organisations) begging them to join the Party thus creating an extra spot for a white-collar member.

For the same reason, some people including some [ex-]Presidents of post-Soviet states started their careers as factory floor workers after getting their degrees – to join the Party as Proletarians, not to learn the industry bottom-up.

There were no concepts like resume, there were no employment agents. In a bus you would see an ad inviting you to become a bus driver – and that about it. Practically any job, except for a graduate position after a college, was found through your network.

After receiving free education (with an extra serve of mandatory indoctrination, and military training if male), one was supposed to work for three years where told.

The behavior of recruiters talking to fresh graduates makes Western used car dealers look honest. Me and my mate were promised to be sent to the space station, in addition to medals and housing, if we just sign on the dotted line that we agree to work in the particular “Box”

The need for our agreement was due to rather unique circumstances. In general it would be quite close to a slave market – graduates would go where told.

The Betrayed and Forgotten #SovietHell

It is the unedited footage taken by an American army camera unit at a prisoner of war camp in southern Germany in February 1946. A card, headed “Return of Russian Prisoners to Russia,” identifies the subject matter of the film and the location where it was taken. . . .

it recorded was a small part of a vast operation that was one of the most sensitive of the Second World War, the handing over to Stalin of large numbers of Russians who in varying circumstances found themselves under German control . . .

The fate of these Russians was one of the best kept secrets of the war. . . .

Many were executed on the spot. In some instances, Allied guards responsible for turning over their prisoners could see their bodies hanging in the forests where the exchange took place. Some were transferred on the same boat that had brought the British delegation to Yalta a few months previously. They were shot behind warehouses on the quay side with low flying Soviet planes circling overhead to help drown the noise of the rifle fire. Many returned prisoners were tortured before being shot. The remainder disappeared into prison camps for long sentences, receiving the worst treatment of all the Gulag’s inmates. Needless to say all were immediately stripped of the new winter clothing and personal equipment that had been generously issued to them by the British in response to the cynical demands of Soviet liasion officers. American and British officers were the appalled eyewitnesses to many desperate acts of suicide by Russian men and women who preferred their own death and that of their wives and children to falling into the hands of the Cheka/NKVD/GPU/KGB. . . .

The film in the National Archives is thus a unique visual document, an extraordinary witness to a dark episode in this century’s history. . . .

[After repatriating refugees] The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees. On their return, even the SS men in a neighbouring compound lined the wire fence and railed at them for their behaviour. The Americans were too ashamed to reply. . . .

A few days later, on March 6, a photograph was published in the American forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, showing this same Russian. It’s an identical pose to a frame in the film. The caption to the photograph reads:

HURT: Russian repatriate Constantine Gustonon grimaces with pain after he slashed himself on the chest some 17 times in a suicide attempt to avoid being returned to Russia. He is held by Capt. Kenny Gardner, of the 66th Inf. Regt.. Gustonon’s was the first case of attempted suicide among the deportees from Platting [sic] to Russia as PWs.

The photograph is reproduced in Bethel’s book, described as “rare.” It is rare indeed, carried in only one edition of Stars and Stripes and with no accompanying story . . .

Russians interned at Dachau, site of the notorious Nazi concentration camp and not far from Plattling, had resisted their repatriation with a ferocity that stunned American military police, resulting in at least ten suicides. . . .

With the exception of Constantine Gustonon, the man who stabbed himself in the chest, we know no one’s name; but here are individual human beings whose images have been saved from the turmoil of a terrible century. A few lined and weary faces are recognizable, they speak for all of humanity, and who cannot single out among them a son, a brother, a husband?

http://www.bu.edu/jeremymb/papers/paper-y1.htm

See also The statement of a British sailor about Kozaks being repatriated by UK and US forces:

“I took part in the evacuation of Dunkirk. Our soldiers felt very badly. I helped to fish out Germans from the sunken Bismarck, which received the greatest number of torpedoes in history. I saw the population of Malta sitting in the cellars for many weeks. I saw Malta being bombed incessantly and deafened by explosions of bombs and shells. They were exhausted from constant explosions and alarms. I lived through the sinking of my own ship. I know about jumping into the water at night, dark and without bottom, and the terrifying shouts for help of the drowning, and then the boat, and looking for the rescue ship. It was a nightmare. I drove German prisoners captured during the invasion of Normandy. They were almost dying from fear. But all that is nothing. The real, terrible, unspeakable fear I saw during the convoying and repatriation of people to Soviet Russia. They were becoming white, green and grey with the fear that took hold of them. When we arrived at the port and were handing them over to the Russians, the repatriates were fainting and losing their senses. And only now I know what a man’s fear is who lived through hell, and that it is nothing compared to the fear of a man who is returning to the Soviet hell. ”

Before the London Convention of 1972, an international agreement that prohibited marine dumping, countries were free to use the oceans as a trash heep for nuclear waste. Though the Soviets signed the treaty in the late 1980s, it wasn’t until after the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 that the Russians opened up to the international community about the extent of the Arctic dumping campaign.

‘There could be environmental consequences if something goes wrong.’

Two years ago, the Russian government provided a tally: two submarines, 14 reactors — five of which contain spent nuclear fuel — 19 other vessels sunk with radioactive waste on board, and about 17,000 containers holding radioactive waste. The last known dumping occurred in 1993.

Of particular concern are the two submarines, the K-27, which was dumped into the Kara Sea in 1981, and the K-159, which sunk in 2003 into the Barents Sea, while being towed for dismantling.

https://news.vice.com/article/the-soviet-union-dumped-a-bunch-of-nuclear-submarines-reactors-and-containers-into-the-ocean?utm_source=vicenewsaunzfb

I think the generous thing to do is to attribute thier lying to their impossibly expansive and indefensible frontier — perhaps it led to their valuing strength above all else (even truth).

The less generous, but probably just as accurate, observation is that they are the bastard child of the Golden Horde, and inherited her institution, her mentality, and her crest — a two headed eagle.

A Russian civil servant bragging in 1839: “Russia lies, denies the facts, makes war on the evidence, and wins!”

“Russia is a nation of mutes; some magician has changed sixty million men into automatons.”

“I don’t reproach the Russians for being what they are; what I blame them for is their desire to appear to be what we [Europeans] are…. They are much less interested in being civilized than in making us believe them so… They would be quite content to be in effect more awful and barbaric than they actually are, if only others could thereby be made to believe them better and more civilized.”

LA RUSSIE, by Marquis de Custine.

“Custine eventually discovered that his knack was for travel writing. He wrote a decently received account of a trip to Spain and was encouraged by Honoré de Balzac to write accounts of other “half-European” parts of Europe, like southern Italy and Russia. . . .

He went to Russia looking for arguments against representative government, but he was appalled by autocracy as practiced in Russia, and equally by the Russian people’s apparent collaboration in their own oppression. . . .

He mocked contemporary Russia for its veneer of European civilization hiding an Asiatic soul. . . .

Most of Custine’s mocking was reserved for the Russian nobility and Nicholas I. Custine said Russia’s aristocracy had “just enough of the gloss of European civilization to be ‘spoiled as savages’ but not enough to become cultivated men. They were like ‘trained bears who made you long for the wild ones.’

Custine criticizes Nicholas for the constant spying he ordered and for repressing Poland. Custine had more than one conversation with the Tsar and concluded it was possible that the Tsar only behaved as he did because he felt he had to. “If the Emperor has no more of mercy in his heart than he reveals in his policies, then I pity Russia; if, on the other hand, his true sentiments are really superior to his acts, then I pity the Emperor.” . . .

describes Russia as a horrible domain of obsequious flattery of the Tsar and spying. Custine said the air felt freer the moment one crossed into Prussia. In the middle 20th century, many saw predictions of Joseph Stalin in Custine’s description of Nicholas I. . . .”

“In Russia, everything you notice, and everything that happens around you, has a terrifying uniformity; and the first thought that comes into the traveler’s mind, as he contemplates this symmetry, is that such entire consistency and regularity, so contrary to the natural inclination of mankind, cannot have been achieved and could not survive without violence. . . . Officially, such brutal tyranny is called respect for unity and love of order; and this bitter fruit of despotism appears so precious to the methodical mind that you are told it cannot be purchased at too high a price.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/219739/moscows-assault-vatican-ion-mihai-pacepa