Free Republic

Great expectations characterised 1989...The Gorbachev era brought about a frenzy of change, and people witnessed incredible events on a weekly basis: they snatched up newspapers, hung on every word broadcast on TV, and with every passing day they felt more alive and free. By the mid-1990s, nostalgia for the Soviet period started to creep in. The greyness of the Brezhnev era, with its endless queues and empty shops, started to be recalled as a peaceful, prosperous time. And gradually something that had seemed impossible during perestroika, became real: Stalin’s shadow loomed large again. Vladimir Putin’s rise to power came accompanied...

Vladimir Putin is now threatening all of the Ukraine. See here. Robert Mackey notes how, "As the United States condemned a referendum on the future of the Crimean peninsula staged by pro-Russian separatists on Sunday, one of Russia’s most influential television hosts appeared on the evening news in Moscow, before a huge mushroom cloud graphic, to remind viewers that Russia is still “the only country in the world capable of turning the U.S.A. into radioactive dust.” Rita Biesemans, in a comment left one post on this Blog dealing with masonic infiltration of the Catholic Church, had this to say: "When...

In light of what is going on in Ukraine, I ran across these vids. Beck mentioned the author, today. Pretty interesting stuff (and chilling). Anyone read the books mentioned? Thinking about buying.

Many conservatives and Christians see the encroachments of socialism and secularism. If they want to know what is driving this process forward, and the answer is surprising. It has been the work of the Communist International led by Moscow -- decade after decade.

A Hidden History of Evil Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives? In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains...

Op-Ed Contributor Moscow PERESTROIKA, the series of political and economic reforms I undertook in the Soviet Union in 1985, has been the subject of heated debate ever since. Today the controversy has taken on a new urgency — not just because of the 25th anniversary, but also because Russia is again facing the challenge of change. In moments like this, it is appropriate and necessary to look back. We introduced perestroika because our people and the country’s leaders understood that we could no longer continue as we had. The Soviet system, created on the precepts of socialism amid great efforts...

The bourgeoisie will have to be put to sleep.  So we shall begin by launching the most spectacular peace movement on record...The capitalist countries, stupid and decadent, will rejoice to cooperate in their own destruction.  They will leap at another chance to be friends.  - Dimitri Manuilski, Prof. at the Lenin School of Political Warfare in Moscow, 1930[1] The Cold War is over and Communism is a non-issue for most Americans.  Communism is such a non-issue that Communist plans to undermine American society have proceeded for years virtually undetected and unhindered.  Recent events have aided this process, with President...

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called for a perestroika, or top-to-bottom reform, in the West, arguing that its current economic model was "unsustainable" and needed replacement. Commenting on the current global economic crisis, the ex-Soviet president who presided over the collapse of his country, said that it was now clear to him "that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich. "The model that emerged during the final decades of the 20th century has turned out to be unsustainable," Gorbachev wrote in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post. "It was based on a drive...

In the 1930s even some of the older and more intellectual Russians, including those who had seen a bit of the world in their youth, believed that the United States was the land of the Yellow Devil, meaning gold. It was said that when one American met another in the street, he greeted him as follows: “Make money?” To which the other replied, with Puritan candour: “Very much, thank you.” To those Americans, our grandfathers knew, nothing was sacred. Their tabernacles were to Moloch, their culture was as venal as their women, and needless to say their women were all...

Mikhail Gorbachev is calling for Messiah-Elect Barack Hussein Obama that the U.S. needs comprehensive ‘perestroika’ reforms to surmount the financial crisis and restore balance in the world.

Sure to please the America hating left that elected a Marxist as our new president, a Senior Russian Political Analyst now says “Obama's victory in the presidential election marks an end to the superpower era for the United States.” Sergei Rogov, director of the U.S. and Canada Institute says, “The U.S. presidential election has great significance. I would qualify its results as the end of an era ...of several decades when the U.S. became a superpower and attempted to emerge as the only superpower in a unipolar world after the end of the Cold War.” Does Rogov recognize that sole...

"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...

Cuban President Raul Castro is giving over more state-owned land to private owners. http://youtube.com/watch?v=4xLR4g7wcN8

THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR The Making of the Radical Behind Perestroika By Christopher Shulgan McClelland & Stewart, 359 pages, $34.99 Christopher Shulgan has done an excellent job in documenting Yakovlev's career in the Soviet government and describing his exceptional role in the events that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. But he skirts over one of the most significant episodes of Yakovlev's life - his chairmanship, beginning in 1988, of the Commission to Rehabilitate Victims of Political Repression. While he went to great efforts in disclosing the crimes of Lenin and Stalin, Yakovlev stopped short of looking into the repressions...

By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury Imagine Russia in 2050! According to Paul Goble, a specialist on ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation has predicted that within the next several decades, Russia will become a Muslim majority state. There is another bad news with fast decline in country’s population. This has already become a headache for Russian politicians and policy makers. President Vladimir Putin has called already for Russian women to have more children, because demographers predict that Russia’s population will fall from 143 million to 100 million by 2050. This situation has alarmed Russians as well Western leaders, more so...

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin warned yesterday that the U.S.-Russian arms race is not over and called for a strengthening of his nation's nuclear and conventional forces so Moscow can better resist foreign pressure.     The remarks, in his seventh state of the nation address since taking power in 2000, follow increasingly sharp criticism of Russia's democratic and foreign policy directions from the United States, including a harsh rebuke by Vice President Dick Cheney last week in Lithuania.     "It is premature to speak of the end of the arms race," said Mr. Putin, who pointed out in the nationally televised address...

The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later. Indeed, the Chernobyl catastrophe was a historic turning point: there was the era before the disaster, and there is the very different era that has followed. The morning of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear station on April 26, 1986, the Politburo met to discuss the situation, and then organized a government commission to deal with the consequences. The commission was to control the situation, and to ensure...

WASHINGTON: The US and Russia had both emerged victorious at the end of the Cold War, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said. "I would not be making a mistake to say that perestroika won. It succeeded," he said during a celebration of the 20th anniversary of reforms that ultimately ended the hostilities between the two nations. Mr Gorbachev also reflected on the current state of world affairs, noting the role of the US as the sole superpower. "America has a right to be a leader," he said, adding that "this leadership should be realised through partnership, not domination". Former US...

BEIJING -- In a speech evoking bodybuilding, civil rights icon Rosa Parks and the power of individual accomplishment, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gently urged a university audience to emerge from the constraints of the Chinese system and attain success in the global world. "America is a nation that believes in the power of the individual and what the individual can accomplish -- no matter the color, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background of the individual," Schwarzenegger told about 500 students at Beijing's elite Qinghua University. "Imagine what could be accomplished if the dreams of China's 1.3 billion individuals...

SACRAMENTO – Fighting global poverty and creating stronger international alliances are the keys to security and spreading democracy, former Soviet president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev said Wednesday. "It is hard to imagine a calm, safe and secure world" where so many people live in poverty, Gorbachev said through an interpreter. He spoke Wednesday as part of a lecture series at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. "If people's lives are not becoming better, people begin to change their minds and say democracy is worthless," he said during an hour-long question-and-answer session before...