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In the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, the Supreme Soviet, as its separatist legislature is known, is nationalizing coal mines and reviving collective farms. At parades, people wave hammer-and-sickle flags; school officials talk of revising the curriculum to celebrate the triumphs of the Soviet Union. There is now a secret police force called the M.G.B., reminiscent of the K.G.B. Some rebels call it, only half-jokingly, the N.K.V.D., the notorious Stalin-era secret police force. The unrecognized separatist mini-states in eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, were rescued from a near-death experience last month, when a Russian military incursion routed...

This article is part of CIMSEC’s “Forgotten Naval Strategists Week.” It’s time to discuss the Soviet Navy, so dust off your Norman Polmar guides and your early Tom Clancy novels. Or just ask an old salt and Cold War vet if the Red Fleet used to be a big deal. You might even check with Vladimir Putin, who is well aware of this recent yet quickly forgotten chapter in Russian history. Putin would no doubt fondly recall the man responsible for the rise of the Soviet Navy and for its operational and intellectual direction in its heyday: Admiral Sergei Gorshkov....

The major thrust of the books on West’s list — namely that Roosevelt’s cabinet and much of the federal bureaucracy was filled with Communists, fellow travelers, dupes and “useful idiots,” and that at the very least this influenced an FDR agenda that proved heavily favorable towards “Uncle Joe” Stalin and the Soviet Union, enabling its expansion and increasing its sphere of influence well beyond its borders — leads to a total paradigm shift when thinking about the World War II era. It bears noting that in “American Betrayal,” West herself seeks to draw a parallel between the modern-day whitewashing of...

People in the Baltic states cannot feel secure. Russian President Vladimir Putin has a plan he has been working on for over a decade. So says former adviser to President Putin, Andrey Illarionov. Giving a presentation at a conference in Palanga, Lithuania, Illarionov, who advised Putin on economic policy in 2000-2005, referred to a question that was raised in the recent Riga Conference 2014: Can people in Riga sleep peacefully at night? “The same question could be raised in Tallinn, Vilnius, Palanga, Bucharest and other cities. No one in Riga could reply to it in the positive,” Illarionov said. “From...

In the era of Cold War the Western information space was full of numerous fantastic stories about Soviet submarines. Having taken shape in books and websites, those tales still keep Americans and Europeans on the trot. RusNavy.com tries to demolish the foremost fables of Western "folklore" of 1950-80's.

The Minsk Protocol, which has theoretically brought peace to Ukraine, gives the Russian leaders' time to regroup their clandestine and conventional forces for the sake of a future offensive operation. One observer, writing from Crimea, believes the Russian forces will move against Ukraine when the whether turns cold. At least one Polish journalist believes the Russians will move against Ukraine in a matter of weeks. The predictibly named People's Republic of Lugansk, and the People's Republic of Donetsk, have now been established (by the Minsk agreement) as permenant Russian enclaves inside Ukraine. Will Russia be satisfied with these gains? What...

All peninsula schools will be ransacked for the extremist literature. In the self-proclaimed Ministry of Education of Crimea stated that the local education departments in the cities and regions of the peninsula are authorized to conduct an inspection visits with respect to keeping of extremist matter and banned literature, Censor.NET reports citing Hromadske Radio. The list consists of 2,442 items, including books, articles, pamphlets, and even texts of some songs. The law enforcement officials together with experts from the Department of Education shall hold the upcoming revision at schools. In case of banned literature detection, members of the inspection will...

New 'Novorossiya' General Korsun Vows to Install Harsh Soviet-like System 23:31 (GMT) snip.. The new "United Army of Novorossiya" Gen. Korsun recently gave an interview to a local news site, news-portal.dn.ua from which we get a definite impression of a determined hardliner. snip Asked to be more specific on plans for the industrial rebirth of the Donbass, the general said exports would go to Russia. He said Novorossiya would be run as a socialist system. "Despite Western propaganda, there is nothing bad in socialism. Moreover, the most advertised Western countries are proud precisely of their social orientation. Sweden, Switzerland, and...

Russia has reopened 25-year-old cases that may lead to criminal charges against young people who refused to serve in the Soviet army in 1990-1991, shows a request for legal assistance received by the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office.

This week Major Theodore Van Kirk, the last surviving Veteran of the Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, joined the rest of his comrades. His passing is a reminder of why using the atomic bomb was the right thing. In August 1945 the Allied Powers, led by the United States, were at war with Imperial Japan in the latter days of World War II. Japan would not give up. For every ten thousand Japanese soldiers that were killed by the Allies only a minuscule amount gave up; usually in the single digits. We were at...

Russia could ask its richest citizens to help foot the bill for the annexation of Crimea by paying a "solidarity tax" proposed by a group of lawmakers. Deputies from the State Duma lower house of parliament, which is dominated by backers of President Vladimir Putin, have drawn up a draft law that would increase income tax for people earning more than more than 1 million roubles ($28,700) a month. It would affect less than 2 percent of the working population but the amounts could be huge for some individuals because the daft proposes they pay up to 30 percent of...

As members of Congress continue hammering out a bill to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs' beleaguered health care system, attention has focused on one man leading the charge: Bernie Sanders, Independent senator from Vermont and a self-described socialist. Sanders barely got 2 percent of the vote when he first tried breaking into Vermont politics in the 1970s, but now there's buzz that the man known simply as "Bernie" may be a presidential candidate in 2016."The cost of war is huge," the 72-year-old said recently during lunch at Henry's Diner in Burlington, Vt., where he rose to become an immensely...

It’s time to take action and do what we can to stop this imperial President. That includes the House doing its job and considering impeachment. I’m taking a stand and hope you will join me. Use your voice; call your Congressman today! We’ll be speaking to you directly more often in the near future like this – stay tuned. Thank you for being in this fight! Together we'll take our country back!Video Here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152565757973588

CAMBRIDGE, England – The papers spent years hidden in a milk churn beneath a Russian dacha and read like an encyclopedia of Cold War espionage. Original documents from one of the biggest intelligence leaks in history — a who's who of Soviet spying — were released Monday after being held in secret for two decades.

T he head of the Russian Orthodox Church has awarded Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov with an order for "glory and honor." Patriarch Kirill gave the order to Zyuganov in Moscow on June 27, one day after the longtime communist leader celebrated his 70th birthday. Kirill said Zyuganov -- who in 2010 called for the re-Stalinization of Russia and has called the Soviet Union "the most humane state in human history" -- deserves the award as "one of the most famous Russian politicians who has expressed interest in the welfare of the nation and the protection of traditional moral values."...

On June 26, 1948, the first American C-47 cargo aircraft were launched to supply West Berlin in what would eventually be known as the Berlin Airlift, following the Soviet Union's closure of water and land corridors between the western Allies sectors of occupied Germany and Berlin. Planes from the American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African Air Forces would eventually participate in the Airlift, flying over 200,000 flights over the next 11 months before the blockade was lifted.

<p>RussianFrom the middle of May to early of June 2014 the RUSSIAN FEDERATION undertook two large command-staff exercises testing the realization of a local nuclear attack. According to military experts there were never such dense and extensive testing scenarios of nuclear war even in the SOVIET UNION.</p>

The man who convened the meeting that buried the Soviet Union in 1991 has warned that it is being restored in his native Belarus and across the post-Soviet space. Stanislav Shushkevich – the politician who hosted the 1991 summit at which Belarus, Ukraine and Russia signed the USSR into obsolescence and paved the way for independence – said a mixture of despotic leaders, KGB-revivalism and Putin’s Ukraine interference all remind him of the worst of the Soviet Union. “What we see now is the restoration of Soviet order, in Belarus most of all,” Shushkevich said in his study in the modest central Minsk...

Volgograd may become Stalingrad once again after Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated he was in in favour of a referendum to change the name back in honour of the battle which precipitated the end of WWII. Putin offered his support for the referendum idea from a group of Russian WWII veterans he met during a D-Day anniversary event in France on Sunday. The idea is not new but never proved popular enough to be adopted. However, with a wave of patriotism washing over Russia that may be changing.

Four Russian strategic bombers triggered U.S. air defense systems while conducting practice bombing runs near Alaska this week, with two of the Tu-95 Bear H aircraft coming within 50 miles of the California coast, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) confirmed Wednesday.  “The last time we saw anything similar was two years ago on the Fourth of July,” Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Norad spokesman, told the Free Beacon. Davis said the latest Bear H incursions began Monday around 4:30 p.m. Pacific time when radar detected the four turbo-prop powered bombers approaching the U.S. air defense zone near the far...