Free Republic

Perhaps the only thing that outrages Russian defenders of Stalin more than the obvious parallels between his regime and Hitler’s is any reference to the alliance the two dictators formed in 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, one that opened the way to war in Europe and lasted until Hitler turned on his former ally in June 1941. But now there may be something even more offensive to such defenders of Stalin and his system: the discovery of documents which confirm that the NKVD cooperated closely with the Gestapo well before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed and that may have paved...

"Even if this story were made up from start to finish, even if there had been no Panfilov, even if there had been nothing at all,"... "this is a sacred legend, which simply cannot be touched. And those who do so are washed-up scumbags." Russia's culture minister has revealed historical records that he claims prove the authenticity of a World War II legend largely debunked by historians, delivering the latest salvo in a long-running dispute that challenges the official narrative of the Soviet Union's war experience. Commonly referred to as "Panfilov's 28 men," the legend is among the most controversial...

Volume 7, No. 3 - September 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE COLD WAR'S LONGEST COVER-UP: HOW AND WHY THE USSR INSTIGATED THE 1967 WAR By Isabella Ginor The Soviet warning to Egypt about supposed Israeli troop concentrations on the Syrian border in May 1967 has long been considered a blunder that precipitated a war which the USSR neither desired nor expected. New evidence from Soviet and other Warsaw Pact documents, as well as memoirs of contemporary actors, contradicts this accepted theory. The author demonstrates that this warning was deliberate disinformation, part of a plan approved at the highest level of Soviet leadership...

Oksana Ostapenko was 12 years old and facing death from hunger when a stranger saved her life by taking the girl into his family and sharing the last of their food. Today, aged 97, the Ukrainian's voice trembles when she recalls the terrible famine that hit her country in the 1930s due to policies enforced by Joseph Stalin's police. "They came and took away all our grain..." The death toll of the famine - known as the "Holodomor" in Ukrainian - remains debated among historians. But Kiev authorities estimate the number of those who died at around four million, or...

At a ceremony marking the centenary of Russia's military intelligence agency, Putin, in comments likely to be seen as provocative in the West, saluted its operatives for carrying out daring special operations and said they provided a model for a future generation. The GRU has been in the spotlight since two men whom London blames for the Skripal poisoning admitted on Russian TV they had been in Salisbury on the day of the attack, but said they had only been there to see the city's famous cathedral spire. The GRU was founded as the Registration Directorate in 1918 after the...

Good display clearly un-American ideas, methods during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings; the Soviet courts would not have treated the enemies of socialism any better during the Great Purge in the 1930s If they break so blatantly and without regard to decency, truth, ethics, and respect for the Republic, all the rules that obstruct their getting what they want for a supposedly good cause even when they are but a minority opposition party, then what would make you think that they will not do the same for a bad cause when they grab a monopoly on political power? If they so...

Socialists and Communists are not known to be rational thinkers, they are indoctrinated sheeple who memorize and repeat what they are told without questioning, in exchange for special benefits People used to ask me what we ate when I was growing up in communist Eastern Europe. Women were quite thin and beautiful, on the “Ceausescu diet.” We were not just told how much to eat by decree but food was quite scarce and highly rationed. If a person dared to stash more food than the Communist Party deemed necessary, that person paid dearly in fines and eventually jail. Of course...

The United States has confirmed plans to more double the number of troops based in Norway, a move Russia has already criticized as “clearly unfriendly”. The Norwegian Defense Ministry on Wednesday said that the US had recently informed them that they would push forward with a plan to increase the number of US marines stationed in Norway from 300 to “up to 700”. […] When the plans were first floated in June, Russia’s embassy to Norway complained that they contravened assurances Norway gave the Soviet Union when it joined NATO in 1949 that no foreign combat troops would be stationed...

The number of Russians residing and working in the Czech Republic has been steadily growing in recent years. Today Russians are the fourth strongest foreign minority in the country, after Vietnamese, Slovak and Ukrainian nationals. In the last decade their number rose from 23,000 to 37,000. For young Russians, Prague is an attractive city free of the constraints of the Putin regime, and a good place for business and entertainment. The language barrier is easily surmountable due to both nations speaking a Slavic language. However there is one barrier that is harder to cross and that is the stigma of...

In August 1968 Soviet tanks rolled into communist Czechoslovakia to crush a burgeoning democratic reform movement known as the Prague Spring. Here is a recap of the shock intervention that reined in the Soviet satellite state, its aspirations for democracy warded off for another 20 years. "At 11:00 pm, Soviet, Polish, East German, Bulgarian and Hungarian troops crossed the Czechoslovak border," AFP reported early on August 21, picking up Radio Prague's announcement of the overnight invasion. Tensions had been mounting between then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the reformist government that had taken over in the Central European state. In...

Russia is the birthplace of modern terrorism,” with 19th century Russian nihilists and secret societies advocating a violent overthrow of Tsarist rule. Soviet aid to terrorist organizations was a staple of Moscow’s strategy against the West and its allies during the Cold War. Yasser Arafat, a founder of the Palestinian Fatah movement and future head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Palestinian Authority (PA), received KGB training in east Moscow in the early 1960s. According to The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, a book by historian Christopher Andrew and the...

The Gulag Museum in Moscow alleged last month that Russian officials permanently destroyed cards with the personal information and the release dates of former inmates. In response to concerns that authorities were attempting to erase the history of Soviet repression, the Interior Ministry noted that physical copies of the records were digitized for permanent storage. The Interior Ministry now admits it does delete some records of gulag survivors, but only those who were not convicted of committing political crimes against the Soviet Union, Russia’s Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday. In a letter sent to gulag historian Sergei Prudovsky, who originally...

urope's tallest skyscraper is nearly finished. The Lakhta Centre in St Petersburg, Russia, now stands at 462m (1,516ft) tall – making it the 13th tallest building in the world. The 87-storey tower takes the title of the tallest building in Europe from Moscow's Federation Tower, which stands at 374m (1,227ft). The building's facade is made from 16,500 individual panes of glass that have been fitted with automatic shutters and valves in a bid to reduce heat loss.

Angela Merkel appeared to hit back at US President Donald Trump's claim that "Germany is a captive of Russia" by drawing on her own upbringing in Soviet-controlled East Germany. "I wanted to say that, because of current events, I have witnessed this myself, that a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. And I am very happy that we are today unified in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany," she said in an arrival statement at the NATO Summit Wednesday. Merkel, who was born in Hamburg in 1954, has spoken on numerous occasions about her upbringing under...

Over the course of the Cold War, the balance of forces between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union changed dramatically. At different points, a war would have played out in far different ways in the major theaters, including Central Europe, the Arctic, the North Atlantic, the Far East and even in space. For the most part, changes to each side’s forces came slowly, with only a few significant shifts due to technological advances.

Russian officials are reportedly destroying the records of gulag prisoners under a secret order passed in 2014, Russian media have reported. An estimated 3-12 million victims of Soviet repression were imprisoned in the gulag network of prisons and forced labor camps in the former Soviet Union. Registration records kept by the Museum of the History of the Gulag, now threatened with destruction, include the permanent records of those killed, as well as archival files detailing those who survived the gulag and when they were released. A 2014 inter-agency order labeled “for internal use” instructs files to be destroyed once the...

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy. "On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged...

Moscow, April 13, Interfax - A prompt decision needs to be made on the burial of the remains of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and on the transfer of the remains of Joseph Stalin to Georgia, Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya, said. "If I was asked, I would make this decision today, without waiting until tomorrow. Why torture Lenin's dead body, clean it constantly, keep this mummy? Who needs it? He is not a holy person. I am firmly convinced that Lenin's remains should be buried and Stalin's remains should be sent to his homeland, to Georgia," he said in...

On Thursday, March 29, the US state of Massachusetts announced through its Ukrainian Embassy the state’s decision to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide of the Ukrainian people. “Another American state joined the recognition of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine as a genocide against the Ukrainian people,” Massachusetts Governor Charles Baker stated in a corresponding proclamation. Currently, the Holodomor in Ukraine is recognized as genocide in the US states of Washington, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and now Massachusetts.

The Russian Ministry of Defense is looking to install the 25-ton monument in Elizabeth City, which is the near the headquarters of a secret WWII mission called "Project Zebra," in which hundreds of Soviet aviators were trained at a time when U.S. and Soviet forces were allied in the fight against the Nazis. But the Elizabeth City council voted 5-3 on March 23 against a previously signed memorandum of understanding. If the plan had come to fruition, the Russian Defense Ministry would have paid for the monument, with the city then covering some $228,000 for improvements to the park where...