Tag Archives: WWII

The Wall: the Unaccounted Tragedies.

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As pre­vi­ously stated by George Orwell, war is peace. So when Wal­ter Ulbricht, the Leader of the Ger­man Social­ist Unity Party, on June 15, 1961 said: “No one has the inten­tion of build­ing the wall!”, it took only about two months for the con­struc­tion to begin. The run­down state of the East­ern part was forc­ing peo­ple to flee in the search of bet­ter lives in the West of Ger­many: in the first six months of the year 1961, about 150 000 peo­ple left their houses. How­ever, more stayed — and so the Wall did not only sep­a­rate the city — it cut fam­i­lies in halves.

1 500x333 The Wall: the Unaccounted Tragedies.

On the morn­ing of August 13, 1961 the Berlini­ans woke up to the first layer of bricks being erected.

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The Victory Aftermath. Russia in Second World War.

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den pobedy 500x385 The Victory Aftermath. Russia in Second World War.

The V-Day. Copy­right unknown

On May, 25th 1945 Joseph Stalin made a cel­e­bra­tory speech devoted to the end of the Russ­ian Great Patri­otic War. The Sec­ond World War was com­ing to an end, but the Soviet Union was done fight­ing. The Russ­ian troops had exited Ger­many and ahead lied a long road of rebuild­ing and reha­bil­i­ta­tion. So in Krem­lin, at the V-day Meet­ing, Stalin had said the following:

Do not expect me to say any­thing extra­or­di­nary today. I have a very sim­ple, very ordi­nary toast to make. I would like to raise a glass to health of those peo­ple who are low in rank and invis­i­ble in the hier­ar­chy. Of those who we con­sider to be the “small screws” of our huge state mech­a­nism — they might be small but with­out them us gen­er­als, mar­shals and other top army lead­ers wouldn’t have made it. They are plen­ti­ful, they are a legion, it is tens of mil­lions of peo­ple who have not been heard of — yet they hold us together, as the base holds the top. To their health!

Today we have brought to your atten­tion a frag­ment of the inter­view with Yelena Bon­ner, a human rights activist, a dis­si­dent, a writer, and a widow of the late Andrei Sakharov — dur­ing the war she was a teen and now, cour­tesy to the Internet-magazine Snob.ru, she tells us about her expe­ri­ence dur­ing the war.

So — We did not fight for Stalin or the Soviet Union. We fought because we had no other choice.

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Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?

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28 500x333 Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?

Image cour­tesy of Léonard Gianadda, a Swiss pho­togra­her who vis­ited Moscow in 1957.


This is prob­a­bly one of the length­i­est and most con­tro­ver­sial top­ics to attempt, yet it is very impor­tant for our blog to  answer — or at least to raise  this ques­tion. If you have been fol­low­ing us for a lit­tle while, you would know that by mid 1980s the atmos­phere in Rus­sia was tense. The mir­a­cle of doing well in the WWII had been wear­ing out. The total deficit of every­thing and the black mar­kets did not con­tribute to keep­ing the morale up. The Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter as well as war action in Afghanistan had drained the coun­try both finan­cially and psy­cho­log­i­cally. The pub­lic resent­ment was grow­ing: the com­mon joke was that you could find truth any­where except in Pravda and the news any­where except in Izves­tia. (both are the Russ­ian news­pa­pers, the first one lit­er­ally mean­ing truth and the lat­ter one – news). For years the gov­ermnent had been run­ning in the red but it did not catch up with them till late 1980s – and it was too lit­tle too late for a change.

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The Great Patriotic War: the Villainous Hitler’s Plan or the Provoсation?

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43504001 1241631100 427 big 500x330 The Great Patriotic War: the Villainous Hitlers Plan or the Provoсation?

Mil­i­tary Parade in Moscow

In accor­dance with the offi­cial his­tory the Sec­ond World War  (in Rus­sia called ‘the Great Patri­otic War’) was com­menced on the Soviet ter­ri­tory by Ger­many: the treach­er­ous attack on 22 June, 1941when they invaded into the USSR.  This offi­cial ver­sion of the Soviet Gov­ern­ment is writ­ten in every his­tory book.  At the same time there is numer­ous evi­dence of Stalin’s desire to start the war first with the inten­tion sim­i­lar to Hitler’s . And that is why there is the the­ory that Stalin pro­voked Ger­man aggres­sion against the USSR.

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Cold Clone War

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buran vs shuttle large1 410x500 Cold Clone War

Buran VS Shuttle

Accord­ing to the Soviet pro­pa­ganda, every­thing which wasn’t invented by the ancient Chi­nese, was invented by the Soviet engi­neers in the USSR. Ah, they were said to invent the best weaponry, the best tanks and the best cars.

In real­ity, of course, the path of inven­tions had a very mod­er­ate devel­op­ment but in order to keep the morale up, Soviet gov­ern­ment had the engi­neers copy­ing things off their Amer­i­can, Cana­dian or Japan­ese coun­ter­parts. Cer­tainly, noth­ing is wrong with it  per se– such strate­gies usu­ally allow to save time and money by buy­ing and recre­at­ing a licensed ver­sion. How­ever, the root of all evils is the men­tioned Soviet brain­wash on the topic of Soviet  supe­ri­or­ity in all fields of engi­neer­ing research and  development.

Let’s have a closer look at who really invented what.

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