Free Republic

From the very beginning, the Moscow Metro was designed as an instrument of propaganda as well as transportation. Its grandiose stations were not only a projection of the power of the regime but also designed as a promise of sorts, a glimpse for the Soviet people of the heaven on earth that communism would (one day) deliver. It was perhaps thus appropriate that some of its marble was said (probably accurately) to have come from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which had been blown up on Stalin’s orders just a year or two before work on the metro began...

The Moscow-installed authorities of the port city of Mariupol, which fell to Russian forces after a devastating siege earlier in the year, took down a monument to Ukrainian victims of Stalin's famine on Wednesday. Kyiv has been calling the 1930s man-made hunger under Josef Stalin a "genocide," while Moscow has been downplaying it as an episode of famine all over the Soviet Union. The state-run RIA Novosti news agency published a video of a truck uprooting the monument in Mariupol. "We are not taking out a memorial, we are getting rid of a symbol of the political disinformation of the...

1 March 1953: Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin suffers a stroke and collapses; he dies four days later. (Source)

A Russian historian whose exposure of Soviet leader Josef Stalin's crimes angered state officials is due to begin enforced psychiatric testing this week amid fears he will be falsely declared insane, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Yuri Dmitriev, 61, is on trial in northwest Russia on charges brought by state prosecutors of involving his adopted daughter, then 11, in child pornography, of illegally possessing "the main elements of" a firearm, and of depravity involving a minor. Some of Russia's leading cultural figures say Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin's crimes - he found a mass grave with up...

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, pundits offered a variety of reasons for its failure: economic, political, military. Few thought to add a fourth, more elusive cause: the regime’s total loss of credibility. This hard-to-measure process had started in 1956, when Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave his so-called secret speech to party leaders, in which he denounced Josef Stalin’s purges and officially revealed the existence of the gulag prison system. Not long afterward, Boris Pasternak allowed his suppressed novel “Doctor Zhivago” to be published in the West, tearing another hole in the Iron Curtain. Then, in 1962, the literary magazine...

T he United States and Russia traded accusations on December 11 over the conflict in Ukraine at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Russia delayed the meeting for an hour and a half with an attempt to block testimony by UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic, prompting Washington to accuse the Kremlin of trying to suppress public discussion of facts about Ukraine's war with pro-Russian separatists in the east. In the end, Simonovic spoke at the meeting despite protests from Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who said human rights discussions should take place in Geneva at...

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has taken part in ceremonies to commemorate the millions who died of famine under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Poroshenko attended a ceremony in the capital, Kyiv, at the museum dedicated to the famine, or Holodomor. A minute of silence was also held across Ukraine. November 28 has been marked in Ukraine as the day to commemorate the victims of the Holodomor since 2006. The famine took place in 1932 and 1933 as Soviet leader Stalin's police forced peasants in Ukraine to join collective farms by requisitioning their grain and other foodstuffs. It is estimated that up...

Hard-core Communists in Hollywood, and by that I mean those with party cards and whose allegiance was to Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, not the United States, made a major effort to take over the movie industry and nearly succeeded. The much-maligned House Un-American Activities Committee, as even liberal Hollywood historians Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund acknowledge, uncovered over 200 party members in Hollywood. My dad, Morrie Ryskind, one of the few outspoken anti-Communist screenwriters in Hollywood, said the number was closer to 300. They were part of a broad conspiracy of subversives who had penetrated America’s most critical...

MOSCOW, April 21. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree on rehabilitation of Crimean Tatars and other nationalities of Crimea, who were victims of Stalin-era repressions. “Taking advantage of an opportunity, I would like to inform colleagues that I have signed a decree on rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatars, the Armenian population, Germans, Greeks - all those who suffered from Stalin’s repressions,” Putin said. Other Crimean ethnic groups repressed by Stalin would also be rehabilitated, he said, listing Armenians, Germans and Greeks among them in a move reaching out to some 250,000 mainly Sunnite Tatars in a modern...

Poland marks 65 years since Stalin's deportation of Poles to Siberia AP Friday, February 11, 2005 WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Survivors marked 65 years yesterday since Soviet occupiers began sending Poles to Siberian labour camps after signing a pact with Nazi Germany to divide up Poland. Under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, at least 320,000 Poles from what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania were deported between February 1940 and June 1941. Historians estimate that some 20 to 30 per cent perished from forced labour in subfreezing temperatures, disease and starvation. A wreath-laying ceremony at a monument to the deportees marked...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) - Survivors marked 65 years yesterday since Soviet occupiers began sending Poles to Siberian labour camps after signing a pact with Nazi Germany to divide up Poland. Under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, at least 320,000 Poles from what is now Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania were deported between February 1940 and June 1941. Historians estimate that some 20 to 30 per cent perished from forced labour in subfreezing temperatures, disease and starvation. A wreath-laying ceremony at a monument to the deportees marked the anniversary of the first transport of Poles on February 10, 1940, and survivors talked about...

Hitler's ghost was roaming about Europe until 1970 Posted on Saturday, May 07 @ 18:08:37 CDT His mortal remains were reburied 8 times and eventually destroyed by fire Adolf Hitler put down his own funeral arrangements back in 1938 as he dreamt of the world domination and his worldwide glory. He wished to be laid to rest in the city of Lintz, in a giant burial vault of the National Socialist Party. A golden sepulcher decorated with gems from the Ural Mountains should have been installed in the center of the vault. A badly charred corpse of Hitler was found...

American POWS sent secret coded messages to Washington with news of a Soviet atrocity: In 1943 they saw rows of corpses in an advanced state of decay in the Katyn forest, on the western edge of Russia, proof that the killers could not have been the Nazis who had only recently occupied the area. The testimony about the infamous massacre of Polish officers might have lessened the tragic fate that befell Poland under the Soviets, some scholars believe. Instead, it mysteriously vanished into the heart of American power. The long-held suspicion is that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn't want to...

The small town of Bedford, Va., is home to 21 men who sacrificed their lives on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It is now also the home of one of the world's few public memorial busts of communist dictator Josef Stalin.

"... the community organizer ... must first rub raw the resentments of the people; fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression.'     -- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals "THERE IS ONLY THE FIGHT --- An analysis of the Alinsky Model."  -- Hillary Clinton, BA Honors Thesis, Wellesley College, 1969. "(Barack) Obama worked in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, who made Chicago the birthplace of modern community organizing...."  -- The Nation  A psychopath is a person without conscience; someone who constantly breaks the moral rules of the community. Saul Alinsky was a "community organizer" who found a career that...

Bill Engvale is a member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. For years he’s been doing a routine about stupid things that people say. Each example ends with the tag line, “Here’s your sign.” That means a big sign with STUPID written on it. Although geopolitics are not Bill’s metier, he offers a way to cut through the twaddle about the beginning of WW III. Let’s start with Howard Dean. (Remember him? He was in all the papers.) Dean cropped up today giving a fire-breathing speech to the faithful (and forlorn), screaming that we wouldn’t have these problems in the...

The New York Times is very upset it has been singled out for revealing a government program that tracks terrorists through financial transactions. The Times notes the same story was simultaneously broken by the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, but so far they have not come in for the same criticism.

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Weapons of mass disinformationBy Richard W. RahnPublished March 21, 2005 If someone advocates an ideology that has contempt for the individual and has caused untold economic misery and the deaths of hundreds of millions at the hands of their governments, what would you think of that person?     The ideology I refer to is, of course, socialism and its numerous variations, including the utopian socialists, the Fabian socialists, the National Socialists, and, naturally, the communists. Socialism is simply an economic system where the government (or collective) owns and controls the means of production. Given that the two...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...

A few weeks ago I opened my mail to find a letter from King County. It turns out that since two of my boys participate in Little League they are eligible to apply for a King County Sports/Academics Award. My interest turned to dismay when I saw for whom the Award was named, Paul Robeson. Paul Robeson was without a question a talented athlete, an incredible singer and a civil rights visionary, well ahead of his time. He was a brilliant law student who overcame formidable obstacles. But amongst students of history, Paul Robeson is as well known for these...