Free Republic

25 December [1991] Gorbachev resigns; Russian flag replaces Soviet over Kremlin.

WASHINGTON — Negotiations with Russia to replace an expired Cold War-era arms control treaty have bogged down and now appear unlikely to be concluded by the end of the year as the White House had hoped. As the two sides seek a breakthrough, President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, plan to discuss the nuclear negotiations in a meeting Friday on the sidelines of United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark. The two leaders are not expected to seal a deal. U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, say negotiations with...

SNIPPET: "Venezuela's Marxist leader, Hugo Chavez, is receiving "thousands" of reliable, accurate, and very portable Russian ground-to-air missiles as part of a military buildup supposedly in anticipation of an anticipated U.S. assault. Chavez knows that there is no chance that the Obama administration will launch an attack against his regime. The real reason for Chavez's missile purchase and his military buildup in general remains hidden and disturbing. Chavez states that he is enraged that neighboring Colombia is permitting the United States to use six bases on Colombian territory. The troops had been stationed in Ecuador, but were expelled that nation's...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

“Uncle Joe” New National Hero Modern Russia Displays Red Roots thelastcrusade.org Joseph Stalin sent over 30 million Russians to their deaths during his reign of terror. His body was removed from the Kremlin. His name was taboo for decades. But the ruthless Soviet dictator is the new hero of modern Russia, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin now openly praises “Uncle Joe’s” achievements. In a recent appearance on national television, Mr. Putin gave credit to Stalin for making the Soviet Union an industrial superpower and for defeating Hitler in the Second World War. “It’s obvious that, from 1924 to 1953,...

The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line. The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress, with insiders from both parties arguing over whether the George W. Bush or the Obama administration is responsible.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Russia is building arms plants in Venezuela to produce AK-103 automatic rifles and cartridges and is finalizing contracts to send 53 military helicopters to the Andean nation, Moscow's envoy to Venezuela saidMonday. Ambassador Vladmir Zaemskiy told a news conference that Russian engineers and Venezuelan construction firms were building the rifle and cartridge plants which, when operational, would employ more than 1,500 workers. He gave no completion date for the plants under construction in the central state of Aragua. Details about Moscow's military shipments and projects have been scarce since socialist President Hugo Chavez's government began signing military...

Poles protest US Stalin memorial plan23.11.2009 11:06 The Polish community in the United States is outraged by a plan to honour Josef Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.  According to William McIntosh, the director of the Bradford museum, which is coordinating the project, the Soviet dictator deserves to be acknowledged alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has he was an ally of the US after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The plans have met with protests from Polish war veterans in New York.  President of the Kosciuszko Foundation,...

MINSK (Reuters) – The United States and Russia will sign a deal this year to cut vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons but may miss an early December deadline, a Kremlin source told Reuters on Friday. Diplomats from the two biggest nuclear powers are trying to prepare a new agreement on cutting atomic weapons before the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires on December 5. The new accord will be signed "in a European country" in December, the Kremlin source told Reuters in Minsk, where President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting regional leaders. "We may not be able to do...

November 26, 2009 Baroness Ashton denies taking funds for CND from Soviet Union Baroness Ashton of Upholland’s past came back to haunt her yesterday when the European Union’s new foreign affairs chief was forced to deny taking funds from the Soviet Union during her days as treasurer for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Lady Ashton, a surprise choice for her post, was challenged to deny that she had contact with Russian sources while she was in charge of its accounts at the height of the Cold War. The Times has learnt that concerns about her CND involvement are felt across...

Today, November 24, it is exactly 150 years since Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species. The world has been gearing up for this “second echelon” of celebrations for this international “Year of Darwin”, following on from the 200th anniversary of his birth this last February. Atheists and humanist groups in particular have seemed to be relishing the thought of giving further prominence to the ideas of their patron saint. Their adulation is heightened by their knowledge that...

Poles protest US Stalin memorial plan 23.11.2009 11:06 The Polish community in the United States is outraged by a plan to honour Josef Stalin by placing his bust on a pedestal at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. According to William McIntosh, the director of the Bradford museum, which is coordinating the project, the Soviet dictator deserves to be acknowledged alongside Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has he was an ally of the US after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The plans have met with protests from Polish war veterans in New York. President of the Kosciuszko...

Russia has provided an "unprecedented" 970 billion roubles (22.6 billion euros, 33.8 billion dollars) to its defence industry this year, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. State support for the sector had helped it grow by 3.8 percent since the start of the year despite the economic downturn, Putin said in comments reported by Russian news agencies. "During the recession we have allocated enough money to the military-industrial sector, which is a priority for government support. In 2009 funding reached an unprecedented level for our country: almost 970 billion roubles," Putin said. State aid had taken the form of reduced-rate...

This is the third article to appear on these pages from an IBD subscriber who lived in the Soviet Union until 1980. Click here to read the previous two articlesWhenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States. They don't understand why I am repulsed when I hear the president talk about "sacrificing for the collective good," which sounds so compassionate, as opposed to greedy capitalism. "Sacrifice for the collective good" is one of the founding principles of socialism, where the collective,...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has often described the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the greatest tragedy” of the 20th century, has now said that the “reunification” of Georgia has “already been decided,” a suggestion some of his listeners believe was a call for restoring Moscow’s control over Georgia and even the former USSR as a whole. In an intriguing commentary published in yesterday’s “Gazeta,” Bozhena Rynska describes both the celebration of the 80th birthday of longtime Soviet and Russian official Yevgeny Primakov and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s two very different toasts on that occasion (www.gazeta.ru/column/rynska/3287611.shtml). The celebration took...

The diaries of the journalist who helped expose the Soviet Terror Famine in the Ukraine are now on display in Cambridge. At the time of his writings he was denounced as a liar by Soviet sympathizers including Walter Duranty of the New York Times. Had he not died in suspicious circumstances he would no doubt have been pleased to see that the truth of his accounts is now accepted, although he would perhaps be disappointed to see that one of the outlets for his writing, the Guardian (then the Manchester Guardian), frequently publishes articles explicitly and implicitly supportive of totalitarian...

Russia is to build up its navy over the coming decade, President Dmitry Medvedev announced on Monday, as he visited a Russian guided missile cruiser in Singapore. Speaking to sailors on board the Russian Pacific Fleet's Varyag, Medvedev said around half of Russia's military hardware would have to be renewed by 2020. "Yes, an expansion of our naval presence is planned. Russia can only consider itself a full naval power if it has a full fleet that carries out training and combat tasks," he said, according to official Russian news agencies. The Varyag, built in the 1980s under the Soviet...

SINGAPORE: A major pact within tantalizing reach, President Barack Obama aims to nudge forward an arms-control deal in talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum brought Obama to Singapore, but he is focusing on individual meetings Sunday with Medvedev and with Indonesia's Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, president of the world's largest Muslim nation and Obama's home as a boy. The US-Russia meeting takes place as the nations seek a successor to a Cold War-era agreement. Obama planned another milestone: joining a larger meeting that includes the leader of military-ruled Myanmar. Obama is sure to face criticism...

Communism is alive and well. ....Far from being dead and buried, communism remains a potent force - one that is still a threat to Western nations that value freedom and capitalism. This is because the ideological roots of communism have not been defeated. Rather than being polar opposites, fascism and Marxism are evil twins. They are both socialist ideologies that espouse one-party rule, economic collectivism and social regimentation. They are implacably opposed to capitalism, the sovereignty of the family and Judeo-Christian civilization. They are aggressively imperialist, seeking world domination. The major difference between them is that while Marxism champions the...

Mikhail Gorbachev—the man who pulled the Soviet Union's troops out of Afghanistan after a decade of stalemate—says the US should do the same.

Nov 10, 2009 — When the Berlin wall fell 20 years ago, Dorothee Hubner first dared to think, “Are we allowed to leave and finally be free?” Her story and that of her parents Gerhard and Gertraude, scientists trapped in East Germany, was told by Andrew Curry, a freelance writer, in Science.[1] Dorothee was 23 years old in 1989. Her parents, also biochemists, “had spent decades struggling to do research in East Germany without compromising their personal ideals with allegiance to the ruling Communist Party.” By not pledging allegiance to the ruling Communist Party, the Hubners faced a life of...

We are approaching the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism. This comprehensively refuted the Communist claim to represent the people. Yet, the claim continues, sometimes dazzling a new generation of youngsters with no inkling of why the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989. In democratic Capitalism, said Karl Marx, the rich became richer and the poor poorer. Marxism inspired young idealists for over a century. Lenin's revolution in Russia in 1917 was hailed as a new dawn. Stalin's invasions brought Communism to Eastern Europe. Communist governments there pledged to create a paradise for workers, who would be freed...

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The Russian Ministry for Justice has proposed amendments to the law on "Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations" that, if adopted, will introduce stronger restrictions on the activities of Evangelicals in the country. The community is on alert: If the proposal becomes law, among other things the evangelicals can no longer pray freely without a permit and people with a “criminal record” will not be allowed become members of their communities. The latter condition, which also concerns other religious groups because it would clear the path for state interference in the individual freedom of conscience. The document...

TBILISI -- The chairman of Georgia's opposition Labor Party is in Washington to discuss Georgian-U.S.-Russian relations and the recognition of Kosovo and Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, RFE/RL's Georgian and Russian services report. Labor Party Secretary-General Joseph Shatberashvili told RFE/RL that the main goal of Shalva Natelashvili's visit to Washington is "to start a dialogue with Moscow and Washington� on Moscow’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Washington’s recognition of Kosovo. Shatberashvili says that Labor Party leaders believe that if Washington would revoke its recognition of Kosovo's independence it would cause Russia to reconsider its decision...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

SNIPPET: "Lula and Chavez have established a "strategic relationship," and recently agreed upon a joint Brazilian-Venezuelan oil venture worth billions of dollars. Lula and Chavez have joined with Daniel Ortega, the returned Nicaraguan Marxist dictator, to form an anti-U.S. Latin American military alliance - all with Russian assistance - funded by the region's abundant oil reserves. Brazil is engaged in its own arms build-up and Lula is determined that Brazil will become at least a first-rate regional power. Unfortunately, Lula is establishing Brazil as an anti-American military power by aligning with nations hostile or potentially hostile to the U.S. Lula...

In his first year in office, Bar ack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He has touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing Bill Clinton (three) and George W. Bush (11). It's an itinerary befitting a "citizen of the world." But there's one stop Obama won't make: He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His schedule is reportedly too crowded. John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, "Ich bin ein Berliner." On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama...

Capitalism and democracy have lost popularity in the former Soviet republics of Eastern and Central Europe, where many people felt better off economically under communism, a poll showed Monday. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, research by the Pew Research Center showed the percentage of people approving of democracy was markedly lower in the former Soviet bloc compared to a similar 1991 poll.

The armed forces are said to have carried out "war games" in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country's coast. Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland's leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus. The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops. The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature. more...

Russia 'simulates' nuclear attack on Poland Russia has provoked outrage in Poland by simulating an air and sea attack on the country during military exercises. By Matthew Day in Warsaw Published: 4:37PM GMT 01 Nov 2009 The armed forces are said to have carried out "war games" in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country's coast. Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland's leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus. The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian...

One of the most extraordinary episodes in the intellectual history of the twentieth century—if, indeed, something that lasted half a century or more can properly be called an episode—is the moral and sometimes material support given by much of the western intelligentsia to the Soviet tyranny, a tyranny that made all previous tyrannies seem relaxed, liberal, and almost amateurish by comparison. Men who found the slightest circumscription of their own freedom intolerable raised hosannas to the most systematic and concerted abrogation of personal liberty yet attempted; many were those who strained at gnats to swallow a camel.No doubt the explanation...

USSR, 1959: I am a "young pioneer" in school. History classes remind us that there is a higher authority than their parents and teachers: the leaders of the Communist Party. The story of young pioneer Pavlik Morozov is required reading. Pavlik reported his father to the secret police for disobeying government regulations. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to serve their government. From the first year in school, all of us are made aware of our ethnicity (ethnic Russian, Jewish, Asian, etc.) and class (proletariat, intelligentsia), around which society is structured. This inherent divisiveness makes it...

In early October, the Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Vladimir Popovkin announced the decision to take two heavy nuclear-powered missile cruisers (TAKR) out of conservation and restore them to the active fleet. This decision coming just one year after the Petr Velikii (Peter the Great), the fourth ship of its class and the only one then in service, set out on a long-range cruise that took it from Severomorsk, the home port of the Northern Fleet to the Mediterranean, Caribbean, South Atlantic, and the Indian Oceans. On this voyage, which lasted from September 22, 2008, to March 10, 2009, the...

The Obama administration's un-American attempt to vilify Fox News only increased the network's popularity. But this White House debacle can't be judged in isolation: There's a global leftwing assault on the freedom of information. Intense leftist sentiment in most of the international media isn't enough. Extremists seek total control. The one thing leftists just can't bear is criticism. (Mass murder's fine, but don't stray from the party line.) As early as the French Revolution, the left grasped that a free press is inherently subversive to its doctrines. The Obama administration's aborted Fox hunt simply aligned our government with the hounds...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Deposed President Manuel Zelaya and his opponents have agreed to a U.S.-brokered deal that he said will return him to power four months after a coup shook faith in Latin America's young democracies. The power-sharing agreement reached late Thursday calls for Congress to decide whether to reinstate the leftist Zelaya. While the legislature backed his June 28 ouster, congressional leaders have since said they won't stand in the way of an agreement that ends Honduras' diplomatic isolation and legitimizes presidential elections planned for Nov. 29. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said Friday that the two...

Russia’s new military doctrine, which is to come into force in 2010, has provoked a heated debate, first of all because it stipulates preemptive nuclear strikes. Moreover, it says that nuclear weapons may also be used in local conflicts in case of critical threats to Russia’s national security. The wording has encouraged some people to say that Russia intends to use nuclear weapons in conflicts with its closest neighbors – former Soviet republics. A critical threat to Russia’s national security can come from different types of conflicts, including a large-scale war with a block of countries, or a hypothetical territorial...

There's little doubt that at hand is an ongoing effort by the Obama White House to marginalize the Fox News Channel - especially after the administration attempted to leave Fox out of the White House pool last week. That is something conservative columnist Cal Thomas said is eerily comparable to Cold War tactics of the old Soviet Union. On the Fox News Channel's Oct. 24 "Fox News Watch," Thomas alluded to an Oct. 21 column he wrote, which he compared what the Soviets did with radio signals that penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver a message of freedom from Western...

START 'cheating' Republicans in the Senate are gearing up to battle the Obama administration over the high-priority plan to finish a new arms-control treaty with Russia before the end of the year.

BEIJING, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is ready to consider using the Russian and Chinese national currencies instead of the dollar in bilateral oil and gas dealings, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. The premier, currently on a visit to Beijing, said a final decision on the issue can only be made after a thorough expert analysis. "Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell...

MOSCOW — Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upon a model for future success: the Communist Party. Or at least, the one that reigns next door. Like an envious underachiever, Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia, is increasingly examining how it can emulate the Chinese Communist Party, especially its skill in shepherding China through the financial crisis relatively unbowed. United Russia’s leaders even convened a special meeting this month with senior Chinese Communist Party officials to hear firsthand how they wield power. ..." “The accomplishments of China’s Communist Party in developing its...

Meet Marina Kalashnikova: a Moscow-based historian, researcher and journalist. Last August she criticized foreign “experts� for suggesting that a conflict with Moscow will not happen because Russia’s elite is too closely associated with the West. According to Kalashnikova, “The West does not care to wake from the dream of its wishful thinking, even when Moscow turns to … reanimating Stalin’s cult of personality together with the ideology of the Cheka [i.e., the secret police].� I’m afraid that Marina Kalashnikova is right. The West has been dreaming, and the West will suffer the consequences. If the Kremlin likes Stalin, then there...

--snip--The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck, needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and "reset" buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivete, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.

A Russian historian investigating the fate of Germans imprisoned in the Soviet Union during the second world war has been arrested, in the latest apparent clampdown on historical research into the Stalin era by the Russian authorities. Mikhail Suprun was detained last month by officers from Russia's security services. They searched his apartment and carried off his entire personal archive. He has now been charged with violating privacy laws and, if convicted, faces up to four years in jail. Suprun had been researching Germans sent to Russia's Arctic gulags. A professor of history at Arkhangelsk's Pomorskiy university, his study included...

Russia in a new review of its policy on use of nuclear weapons will reserve the right to undertake a pre-emptive strike if it feels its security is endangered, a senior Kremlin official told a Russian newspaper. Russian and U.S. negotiators are in talks to find agreement on a new bilateral pact cutting stocks of strategic nuclear weapons. Both sides are working to a December deadline for a new treaty to replace the landmark Cold War-era START pact. While Moscow and Washington have made progress in strategic nuclear arms talks, Russia's security may come under threat from regional conflicts and...

This is a bad Peter Sellers movie. Can you see Ronald Reagan vomiting in his grave? Ayn Rand is weeping. The Republicans need a fierce leader. A Churchill. We are under attack from the White House. US transparency was never an issue. Has Russia ever been transparent? Putin is KGB for pete's sake. We are handing over the keys to the kingdom. It's laughable, only the joke is on us and the stakes could not be higher. Russia has been at war with the US for most of the twentieth century. Reagan bested them, but surely they were not conquered....

Russia and the United States have tentatively agreed to a weapons inspection program that would allow Russians to visit nuclear sites in America to count missiles and warheads. The plan, which Fox News has learned was agreed to in principle during negotiations, would constitute the most intrusive weapons inspection program the U.S. has ever accepted....

Washington will tone down its criticism of Russia's human rights record in order to win Kremlin backing for possible sanctions against Iran, it has been claimed. It is the latest in a number of concessions the US has made to Moscow in order to improve relations and encourage co-operation on international issues. The plan emerged as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visited Russia to discuss a range of issues including Iran's rogue nuclear programme. Mrs Clinton's trip was part of what Washington is calling a "reset" with Moscow, a new more constructive relationship with the Kremlin that President...

Yes, I wish that this was a satire piece, but unfortunately it appears that this is real. President Obama's Administration is going to allow Russia to inspect our nuclear facilities-- within the United States. This is an unprecedented move that damages US national security. Not only does it lift the veil of secrecy, but if Russia decided to sell the secret information to terrorists or rogue states, attacks could follow. This is a disgrace.

Just a little follow-up to Ed’s post earlier, tracking the progress of The One’s global disarmament efforts. Hey — the committee did say that Nobel was aspirational. In an interview published today in Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.” What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to...