Free Republic

ST. PETERSBURG, September 3 (RIA Novosti) - Two farms in north-east Estonia have joined forces to declare an independent "Soviet republic" and intend to seek Russia's recognition, a Russian communist organization said on Wednesday. "We no longer want to live in bourgeois Estonia, where nobody cares about the common people...with raging unemployment and corruption, and where everything depends on NATO and the Americans," Russian communists from St Petersburg, who are assisting the 'republic,' quoted its founder, Andres Tamm, as saying. Residents and founders of the 'Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic' have already formed a national 'Soviet government,' a police force, and...

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin claims he acted "rationally" in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a Russian school book claims. The book, A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will be used as a teaching guide in Russian schools, 55 years after Stalin died. It is designed for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young, and seems to follow an attempt backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to re-evaluate Stalin's record in a more positive light. Historians believe up to 20 million people died as a result of his actions, many times more than were killed under Hitler's...

MOSCOW -- For months, the owner of a muckraking news Web site had stayed away from his home after receiving warnings to tone down his critique of Kremlin-backed authorities in the Russian province of Ingushetia, friends said. But Magomed Yevloyev finally boarded a plane to return to Ingushetia this week, and there he encountered a surprise: The local governor was riding on the same plane, a few seats away from him in business class. When the plane landed in Ingushetia, the governor was met by a Mercedes that whisked him away. And Mr. Yevloyev was arrested at the airport, deposited...

How does Keith Olbermann view pre-Obama America? Apparently akin to the Soviet Union, and South Africa under apartheid. Here was his statement from the top of tonight's DNC coverage. CHRIS MATTHEWS: It is an iconic night in history: we'll all remember this night as long as we live. This is the night that the first Western government, the first Western political power, or party, has nominated an African-American, someone of African heritage, to lead the country. It's something that took a long time to happen, almost like an old Polaroid film developing. But here it is. It happened officially last...

MOSCOW, Aug 28--Russia on Thursday successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile designed to overcome anti-missile systems, short after the United States got signed a controversial anti-missile base deal in Poland earlier this month. The Topol RS-12M missile was tested "to develop equipment for potential combat use against ground-based ballistic missiles," Alexander Vovk, a spokesman for the forces, was quoted as saying by Interfax. In the face of Russia's vehement opposition, Warsaw and Washington signed a preliminary deal on August 20 basing part of the US missile shield in Poland which Russia considers as a threat to its national security. Moscow...

Russia put the West on alert for a new Cold War that the Kremlin is ready to fight, its President said yesterday. President Medvedev set tensions soaring when he recognised the independence of two breakaway republics inside Georgia. “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War,” he said. Hours earlier he had ordered his Foreign Ministry to start establishing diplomatic ties with the secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The move brought instant condemnation from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other Western countries. President Bush appealed to the Kremlin to “reconsider this...

Moscow-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking in the midst of one of the lowest points in the Russia-West relationship since the breakup of the Soviet Union 17 years ago, said Tuesday that his country did not seek a new Cold War-but neither was it afraid of one.

They were right. Starting at the moment of his famous address at Harvard in 1978 (see http://snipurl.com/harvardspeech), Solzhenitsyn became, in effect, mute. Why? Because the cultural elite of the West is just as unhappy to hear itself criticized as the political elite of the Soviet Nomenklatura. How dare Solzehenitsyn fail to recognize that the American intellectual establishment was not in possession of Truth! How dare he point out that in our arrogance, we of the West were as blind to our own doom as the Communists? Let me quote just one passage from Solzhenitsyn's speech: "A decline in courage may...

Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) The general dissatisfaction within the Czechoslovak military became increasingly evident. In 1966 Czechoslovakia, following the lead of Romania, rejected the Soviet Union's call for more military integration within the Warsaw Pact and sought greater input in planning and strategy for the Warsaw Pact's non-Soviet members. At the same time, plans to effect great structural changes in Czechoslovak military organizations were under discussion. All these debates heated up in 1968 during the period of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring, when CSLA commanders put forward plans to democratize the armed forces, plans that included limiting...

The most grotesque aspect of Russia’s aggression in Georgia is the repeated Russian claim that Georgia poses a threat to Russia and its citizens. In language harking back to the Orwellian rhetoric of the Cold War, all Russian troops are “peacekeepers” and all Georgian forces are “diversionaries” and “terrorists.” Russian troops are now openly occupying Georgian territory on the grounds that law and order in Georgia has collapsed. Of course it has. Russian tanks and airplanes crushed it underfoot. Moscow bemoans the absence of “legitimate political leadership” in Georgian territories like Gori even as its troops occupy Gori without the...

Headline at http://www.marketwatch.com/ Crude tops $121 to close at a more than two-week high; natural gas gains SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures climbed above $121 a barrel Thursday to close at a more than two-week high, as the dollar fell against other major currencies and as tensions between the U.S. and Russia worsened.

Remains of Polish soldiers found in Belarus 21.08.2008 The remains of Polish soldiers who fought the Nazis and were killed by the Soviets in September 1939, have been found in Kobryn, Belarus. After the Nazi invasion of Poland at the beginning of September, Kobryn was an important outpost for Polish defences in its eastern territories. On the 17th and 18th September 1939, Polish forces fought against the Nazi invaders, only to take up arms against the Soviet aggressor soon after. Andrzej Przewoźnik, secretary of the Rada Ochrona Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa, a council protecting the memory of Poland’s fallen troops,...

The United States has been left diplomatically isolated after European members of NATO moved to reject an American proposal to scale back ties with Moscow following Russia's invasion of Georgia. US diplomats attending an emergency NATO summit in Brussels had called on the alliance to suspend ministerial meetings with Russia, held twice a year, as a way of demonstrating the West's disapproval of the war. But other members of the alliance, including Britain, rejected the plan, saying that it would be foolish to isolate Russia. Instead diplomats released their strongly-worded statement, stopping short of concrete action, at least for now....

Russia yesterday threatened to 'crush' anyone who dared to defy it, after moving missile launchers within range of Georgia's capital. The provocative move throws down the gauntlet to Nato leaders meeting today in emergency session on the new Cold War crisis. U.S. intelligence said the Kremlin had moved several SS-21 missile launchers into the rebel enclave of South Ossetia, putting them in range of Tbilisi. The move allows Russia to pull out of Georgia proper as it has promised but punish Tbilisi at any moment at the push of a button. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev vowed a 'crushing response' if...

CARACAS: President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that Russian President Dimitri Medvedev wants to send a Russian naval fleet to visit Venezuela. "Russia has informed us they intend to visit Venezuela, that is, the intention that a Russian fleet should come to the Caribbean," Chavez said on his weekly radio program. "I told the president (Medvedev), 'If you're coming to the Caribbean, we'll welcome you,'" Chavez said, adding that the Russian naval fleet would pay "a friendly and working" visit to Venezuela. Under leftist President Chavez, Venezuela has been seeking closer relations with Moscow, in part to buy military hardware,...

TWENTY YEARS after the fall of the Soviet empire, it is much easier to see that the current Russian regime wants to reclaim great power status. It more resembles the earlier Soviet regime and those of the czars than it does any Middle European liberal state. Indeed, its exploitation of Russian-speaking minorities in the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and Ossetia as pawns is reminiscent of the tactics of the Nazi regime in the 1930s. Russia has invaded Georgia not just to punish Georgia's elected leadership, but also to reclaim Russian control of gas and oil pipelines in the Caucasus region....

Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess By Spengler The Americans play chess for career and perceived advantage. Russia is playing for its life, literally, as it has passed the point of no return in terms of fertility - it is a dying population. This demographic predicament stands at the center of Moscow's calculations in "accumulating" the millions of ethnic Russians scattered in its near abroad. After Georgia, Ukraine is next

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a US missile defense battery exposes the country to attack, pointing out that Russian military doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons in such a situation, the Interfax news agency reported. *** Interfax said he added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." Nogovitsyn said that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, according to Interfax.

"Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep. We want to accomplish three things: One, we want the Americans to withdraw conventional forces from Europe. Two, we want them to withdraw nuclear forces from Europe. Three, we want the Americans to stop proceeding with Strategic Defense Initiative." Quote by: Mikhail Gorbachev (1931- ) General...

Perhaps it is time they went back to this again, more accurate.

MOSCOW — Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili vowed Sunday that his country would not give up the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This comes as Russia's president said troops would begin pulling out of Georgia on Monday, but made no mention of leaving the separatist province at the heart of the conflict between the countries.

The crimes of georgian's army in S. Ossetia.

Ever since Vladimir Putin became Russia's president in 2000, Russian authorities have used the power of the state to gut Russian companies and seize their assets for a fraction of their value. Yukos, once Russia's largest oil producer, was seized by Russian authorities allegedly for back taxes. Its assets were auctioned off at bargain prices to Russia's state-owned energy giants, Rosneft and Gazprom, while its CEO and other company officials were arrested and imprisoned. The government's seizure also deprived ExxonMobil and Chevron from buying major stakes in Yukos. Sibneft, Russneft, and other Russian hydrocarbon companies have suffered similar fates. More...

Link only: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,404301,00.html

THE Russians are alcohol-sodden barbarians, but now and then they vomit up a genius. Prime Minister - and now generalissimo - Vladimir Putin is Mother Russia's latest world-class wonder. Let's be honest: Putin's the most effective leader in the world today. That doesn't mean he's good news for anybody - not even for the Russians, in the long run. His ruthless ambition and gambler's audacity may end terribly. But, for now, give the devil his due: After a long string of successes, from his personal mastery of Russia's government and media to his coldblooded energy brinkmanship, Putin has capped his...

TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia's prime minister said a convoy of more than 100 Russian tanks and other vehicles are moving from the western city of Zugdidi deeper into Georgia. Lado Gurgenidze said it is unclear where the tanks were going or why, calling it "a rather large column of Russian armor, over 100 pieces." He suggested in a teleconference with reporters that the Russian forces "are trying to rattle the civilian population." Georgia's president, meanwhile, claimed that Russian forces now control one-third of Georgian territory.

Russian troops are indiscriminately murdering civilians and interning them in concentration camps, the embattled Georgian president charged yesterday, as he begged the West not to "appease" Moscow as it did with Nazi Germany. The startling accusations came as Russian troops blatantly violated a cease-fire by sending an armored convoy through the strategic city of Gori. The invaders first poured into Georgia five days ago - ostensibly in defense of a pro-Moscow breakaway region, South Ossetia. "What they are doing is exactly what Stalin did to Finland, what they've done to Afghanistan, what in the Second World War Germany was doing...

Our nation’s anti-war freaks can call George Bush and the U.S. military ‘war criminals’ all they want, but I don’t recall seeing Dubya directing military operations from the front lines in Iraq. Putin seemed to savor the act of sending is troops into Georgian cities.....

Ukraine threatened to blockade the Russian Black Sea Fleet yesterday in an act of solidarity with Georgia that risked escalating the conflict. After flying to Tbilisi to assure Georgians of his country’s support, President Yushchenko signed an order imposing tough restrictions on the Russian fleet, which is based in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. Mr Yushchenko’s decree instructs Russia to give 72 hours’ notice of any movement of ships, aircraft or personnel in Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities were given the power to alter those plans. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry had already warned Russia that it will bar ships from returning...

Recent fighting between Russian and Georgian forces (ostensibly over Georgia’s breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia) has spawned fears of a widening war in the Caucasus, Moscow’s resurging military aggressiveness, and the perceived inability of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to deal with either. So far, the sum total of the West’s response to the Russian invasion has been negligible. And experts contend the invasion may be the kick-start needed to re-galvanize the nearly 60-year-old mutual-defense alliance formed during the early years of the Cold War as a means of collective defense against the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, a...

Soviet Internet Domain Survives – in Obscurity 13 August 2008 By Anna Yukhananov / Special to The Moscow Times In the culmination of a decades-long debate, the international community has finally recognized the Soviet Union — online, that is. The ISO, or International Organization for Standardization, voted this summer to grant the .su domain the status of exclusively reserved. Previously, all web sites ending in .su were to be phased out by 2042, at the latest. "The zone is stable, it lives, and it will always live," Vladimir Molchanov, deputy director of the nonprofit Foundation for Internet Development, told a...

I remember back a few years seeing Free Tibet bumper stickers on progressive Saabs and hippie VWs. Tibet is still in China's clutches, Russia is busy slapping around it's former vassal states, but the world is focused on the supposed crimes of George Bush. I can understand the argument that we never should have invaded Iraq, although I think that point is now moot. I can also understand those who think war is wrong and who insist that might doesn't make right. What I can't understand is those on the left who criminalize the Iraq invasion but see nothing wrong...

MOSCOW, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Tuesday he would pull his country out of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) grouping ex-Soviet states, Russian news agencies reported. "We are leaving the CIS for good and propose that other countries leave this body run by Russia," Interfax news agency said Saakashvili told a big rally in his support outside Georgia's parliament

Barack Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA, wrote a poem dedicated to the Soviet Red Army "Smash on, victory-eating Red Army" he declared. He also wrote poems attacking traditional Christianity and the work of Christian missionaries. The "Red Army" poem goes beyond hoping for the communists to beat the Nazis in World War II and hails the Soviet revolution. It says:Show the marveling multitudesAmericans, British, all your allied brothersHow strong you areHow great you areHow your young tree of new unityPlanted twenty-five years ago Bears today the golden fruit of victory!http://www.aim.org/aim-report/obamas-red-mentor-praised-red-army/

GORI, Georgia — The conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia moved toward full-scale war on Saturday, as Russia sent warships to land ground troops in the disputed territory of Abkhazia and broadened its bombing campaign across Georgia. The fighting that had sharply escalated when Georgian forces tried to retake the capital of South Ossetia, a pro-Russian region that won de facto autonomy from Georgia in the early 1990s, appeared to be developing into the worst clashes between Russia and a foreign military since the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Shortly before dawn on Sunday, Georgia’s Interior...

"In the meantime, it became known that the Georgian troops conducted volley-fire cleansings of several South Ossetian settlements, where people’s houses were simply leveled. “The number of victims with women, children and elderly people among them, can be counted in hundreds and even thousands,” a source from South Ossetian government in the capital of Tskhinvali said. The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters that Georgia’s actions in South Ossetia question its consistency as a state and as aresponsible member of the international community, Interfax reports. "Civilians, including women, children and elderly people are dying in South...

Here are numerous pictures from various online Russian and Georgian news outlest of the conflict in Georgia where Russia has now intevened on the ground and in the air and invaded Georgia over the Ossetian Seperatists. Russian tanks and vehicles moving toward and into Georgia Russian aircraft attackintg Georgia positions Georgian troops movingn toward the fighting Burniing Georgian Armor Georgian forces engaging seperatists

VIENNA, Austria: Russian and Georgian officials at a leading European security organized sparred Friday over who is to blame for the bloodshed in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia. Georgia's ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Victor Dolidze, accused Russia of "clear, open, military aggression from one OSCE country to another — its neighbor, unfortunately."But Vladimir Voronkov, Russia's top delegate to the Vienna-based body, denied any Russian military involvement, saying that just 500 Russian peacekeepers were in the province. "I can't speak about any Russian forces present: This is a very obvious trick of the Georgian side to...

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's anti-Sovietism was heroic and influential, but its other side became clearer upon the Union's collapse. The death of the literary colossus and anti-Soviet dissident has, quite rightly, been greeted with an outpouring of praise for his principled and brave unmasking of the horrors of the Soviet regime. His literary achievements, closely connected with his dissident activities, have also justifiably received much attention. But there is another side to Solzhenitsyn – one which most obituaries have mentioned only in passing, if at all. Solzhenitsyn's analysis of Soviet communism was based on the notion that the Bolsheviks imposed a totalitarian...

Russia to move rockets to EU border if Poland hosts US missile shield Russia threatened to deploy bombers and short-range missiles on the Polish border if Warsaw agrees to host elements of a US missile defence shield on its territory. By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow Last Updated: 6:41PM BST 06 Aug 2008 The warning marks a further escalation in the diplomatic crisis between Russia and the United States. Russian military hardware has not been stationed on the border of what is now the European Union since the Cold War. Russia's ambassador to Minsk, Alexander Surikov, said that bombers and short-range...

Posted: Tuesday, Aug. 05, 2008 MOSCOW Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio could take on the role of Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin in a new black comedy, a Russian screenwriter has said. "As we compared his (DiCaprio's) photos with those of Lenin ... the similarity was striking. I should even say that Leo could play the role of the revolutionary leader without make-up," said Russian screenwriter Alexander Borodyansky on Sunday. The director of the Moscow International Film Festival, Natalya Semina, said, "It is common knowledge that DiCaprio has Slavic roots. His ancestors on his mother's side emigrated from Russia to Germany."...

This is a very sad book, the story of thousands of Americans who, during the Depression, lured by sham Soviet propaganda and pro-Soviet falsehoods spread by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and the corrupt New York Times Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, migrated to the USSR in search of jobs and a role in the "building of socialism." It was, in the words of the author, "the least heralded migration in American history" and a period when "for the first time in her short history more people were leaving the United States than were arriving." Most of these expatriates, not...

Russia plans to form a state grain trading company to control up to half of the country’s cereal exports, intensifying fears that Moscow wants to use food exports as a diplomatic weapon in the same way as Gazprom has manipulated natural gas sales. The move by Moscow, the world’s fifth-biggest exporter of cereals, has been sharply criticised by US agriculture diplomats as a “giant step back” to the Soviet era. The decision to control food exports is the latest sign of how soaring food prices are reshaping the agriculture industry. The recreation of Soviet-style state trading will aggravate anxieties of...

The demented Roman Emperor Caligula once mused that if all the people of Rome had one neck he would cut it just to be rid of his troublesome people. The trouble was there were simply too many Romans to kill them all. Many centuries later, the brutal Soviet dictator Josef Stalin reflected that he would have liked to deport the entire Ukrainian nation, but 20 million were too many to move even for him. So he found another solution: starvation. Now, 75 years after one of the great forgotten crimes of modern times, Stalin's man-made famine of 1932/3, the former...

Foreign investors have become extremely wary of the Russian stock market after the Kremlin moved yet again to tighten its noose around the country's energy and mining sector, launching anti-trust probes against London-listed Evraz Holding and Raspadsky Coal. The move follows last week's assault on steel and coal giant Mechel for alleged overpricing of raw materials and using off-shore trading to cut its tax bill. Moscow's RTS stock market index has fallen by 25pc since May on fears premier Vladimir Putin is once again using probes or other heavy-handed methods to reorder the strategic landscape. The bare-knuckle fight for control...

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has called for a strategic relationship with Russia to counter aggression from the United States. With a long shopping list for state-of-the-art defence equipment under his arm, Mr Chavez did his best to ingratiate himself with his hosts. He first signed off on a deal giving Russia's state-owned energy companies – often accused of doubling as private piggy banks for powerful Kremlin forces – exclusive rights to develop new deposits Venezuela's Orinoco Oil Belt. Then he switched smoothly to flattery, with a call for the Russian rouble to replace the US dollar as the world's...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Saturday that U.S. President George W. Bush had insulted veterans of World War Two by equating the evils of Soviet communism with Nazi fascism. The Foreign Ministry said Bush had coupled Nazi fascism and Soviet communism as "a single evil" and thus "hurt the hearts" of World War Two veterans in Russia and allied countries, including the United States. "While condemning the abuse of power and unjustified severity of the Soviet regime's internal policies, we nevertheless can neither treat indifferently attempts to equate Communism and Nazism nor agree that they were inspired by the...

Russia has become an autocracy under Vladimir Putin and the Russian president-turned-prime minister has taken the country down a "very harmful" path, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Sunday. "We need to improve their behavior," McCain told ABC television when asked about his threat to exclude Russia from the Group of Eight if he wins the White House in November. "His government -- former president Putin, and now Prime Minister Putin -- has taken his country down a path that I think is very harmful," McCain said. "They've become an autocracy." "In the last week or so, look at Russia's...

National Security: In 1962 the Soviets tested a young American president by putting nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida. Barack Obama fancies himself the next JFK. He may get to find out.In June 1961, a young and ambitious President Kennedy met with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, Austria, to discuss Cold War issues, particularly the situation in Berlin. Khrushchev came away unimpressed, convinced the young Kennedy could be had. Two months later the Berlin Wall was going up. By the following spring the Soviet leader was making plans for installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy quickly found out that "aggressive personal...

MOSCOW - Russian strategic bombers may soon be deployed at airbases in Cuba, Venezuela and Algeria as a response to the U.S. missile shield in Europe and NATO's expansion, Russian daily Izvestia said on Thursday. Moscow has strongly opposed the possible deployment by the U.S. of 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and an accompanying tracking radar in the Czech RFepublic as a treat to its national security. Washington says the defenses are needed to deter a possible strike from Iran, or other "rogue" states...