Free Republic

Three Numbers In the Soviet Union preparations begin for the fiftieth anniversary of the communist revolution; in particular, a large collective "book epic" is conceived. The idea has been talked about in the Secretariat of the Union of Soviet Writers with Fedin, Twardowski, Tikhonov, Surkov Gribachev, etc., and, of course, the idea will be implemented. Not even one "book epic", probably, will be created. We decided to offer the authors of this undertaking three numbers that will be useful for any "book epic." NUMBER ONE It is a question of human losses in the revolutionary transformation of Russia. Ninety-plus years...

<p>These shocking pictures may look like something out of the Great Depression - but in fact they show life in the last years of the Soviet Union, less than three decades ago.</p> <p>Shop shelves were often bare, it was normal to have to join a long queue if you wanted to buy groceries and many of the people looked ground down after a century of desperate poverty.</p>

Seventy-five years ago, on August 5, 1937, one of the most horrific — and most ignored — episodes in human history began. “Operation Kulak” ("kulak" meaning rich peasants) was the Soviet Union’s effort to repress those farmers who had a little more than other farmers (according, at least, to the definitions of the Communist Party), and who resisted collectivization. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin (pictured) had begun the development of “Operation Kulak” the previous month, when he contacted all the regional Party leaders as well as the NKVD (roughly the Soviet equivalent of the Gestapo and SS in Nazi Germany), asking...

In the Russian Arctic lies buried an unfinished railway built by prisoners of Stalin's gulags. For decades, no-one talked about it. But one woman is now telling the story of the thousands who suffered there—and there is talk of bringing back to life the abandoned railway itself. … Lyudmila (Lipatova) and I had uncovered a tiny section of one of Joseph Stalin's cruelest and most ambitious projects—the Trans-Polar Main Line. It was (Stalin's) attempt to conquer the Arctic—part of what he called his Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature. The scheme was supposed to link the eastern and western...

Thirty officials of the North Korean regime who were involved in talks with South Korea have been executed or died in "staged traffic accidents," according to a human rights report.

Photographer Stefan Koppelkamm first photographed East Germany in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall but before the reunification. He revisited the same locations a decade later, and rephotographed them from exactly the same viewpoints to document the drastic social and economic transformations that came about during the time between the photos.

Say what you want about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, the man liked his Hennessy. For two years in the mid-1990s, he was the world's largest buyer of Hennessy Paradis cognac, importing up to $800,000 of the stuff a year, both to quaff himself and to give as gifts, and his death has caused a resurgence in discussion and commentary on his expensive cognac habits. So does Hennessy appreciate all of the free advertising provided by the coveted Dear Leader seal of approval? "There's been no negative feedback, but it hasn't affected sales either," Jennifer Yu, Director of Communications...

Occupy wall street is a great demonstration for us all. It is all the failures of Socialism captured in high speed! like a time-lapse photo of 40 years squeezed down to 2 months. First the exhilaration and chanting. All the liberal propogandists showing smiling happy 'protesters' organizeing to help 'The Workers'. The democrats and media propogandists express their loving support for 'The Workers'. Unlike their disdain for those other people with actual jobs- the TEA party. Then we see the lazy people sitting around waiting to be fed, crapping all over themselves (no one ‘assigned’ to wash them, I guess)...

I think my Ukrainian heritage fuels my twin obsessions with Soviet history and economics. Sadly, this often puts me on opposing ideological ground from my good friends and fellow alumni of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, which recently helped bring Utopia in Four Movements to Iowa City's local tax-supported theater. Sam Green, the filmmaker who narrated the exploration of "the battered state of the utopian impulse," on one hand described socialism has having gone "monstrously wrong" and on the other expressed open sentimentality for the Russian and Maoist revolutions. He showed pictures of executed Cambodians and also said a copy of...

Food and stability in North Korea Deprive and rule Why does North Korea’s dictatorship remain so entrenched despite causing such hunger and misery? Sep 17th 2011 | SEOUL | IF NOBODY else, at least Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s leader, appears to have found something to fill his belly with during the annual Chuseok harvest festival in North Korea this week. “His face beaming with a smile,” as his propaganda machine put it, he dropped into a shop in Pyongyang selling pancakes stuffed with meat. Outside the capital there are few such treats. Much of the rest of the country...

North Korea faces famine: 'Tell the world we are starving' More than a decade after North Korea was struck by a famine that killed up to a million people, the country's poorest are once again facing starvation, reports Peter Foster in Yanji By Peter Foster, Yanji 7:00PM BST 16 Jul 2011 It was an ice-cold day in the North Korean border town of Musan when a small crowd gathered round what looked like a bundle of rags on the platform of the railway station. "I went up to see what they were looking at," recalled 63-year-old Lee Sun Ok, a...

major segment of ObamaCare will force cuts in drug and medical device research that “will kill more people than it will help,” according to an astonishing study quoted in Reason Magazine May 24. The government medical program was sold as better health at lower cost. But estimated economic cost will total $1.7 trillion, resulting in 32 million lost years of life. The administration’s program is called federal Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER). The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 provided $1.1 billion for research and development in CER. This was to create an inventory of CER therapies to give...

For the seventh year in a row, a survey of chief executives has ranked California as the nation's worst state in which to do business. More than 500 U.S. CEOs polled by Greenwich, Conn.-based Chief Executive magazine based their opinions on numerous factors, including regulations, tax policies, work force quality, education resources, quality of living and infrastructure.

The National Labor Relations Board must have a broad definition of "coercion" when it comes to employers. With unions, the standard seems a lot narrower. On April 20, the board filed a 10-page complaint (see pdf) against Boeing alleging the company's decision in 2009 to relocate its second assembly plant in South Carolina represented illegal retaliation against employees belonging to the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM). As a remedy, the NLRB is seeking a judicial order for the company to shift all production of its planned 787 Dreamliner commercial jet back to its original facility in...

In 1928, as America lurched towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin revealed his master plan - nature was to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour. Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden. Today, Lysenko is a byword for fraud but in Stalin’s Russia his outlandish ideas about genetic inheritance and evolution became law. They reveal a world of science distorted by ideology, where ideas were literally a matter of life...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the expropriation of U.S.-based glass container manufacturer Owens-Illinois's subsidiary in the South American country. Company spokeswoman Stephanie Johnston said Tuesday that "we were surprised to learn of this decision and we are prepared to work with government officials to better understand the situation." Chavez announced plans to expropriate the company in a televised speech late Monday. The leftist leader criticized the company's practices in the country, saying it had been "taking away the money of Venezuelans" and exploiting local people.

~ EXCERPT ~ FAIRBANKS -- A judge ruled today that the Fairbanks North Star Borough must release personnel records of Senate candidate Joe Miller. In an unusual Saturday hearing, retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank ruled that the public's right to know about candidates outweighed Miller's right to privacy. Burbank ordered no release until at least Tuesday, however, to allow Miller to appeal the decision to the Alaska Supreme Court. Some of the documents will be redacted, he said. The case was brought by a group of Alaska news media organizations, who have been trying since summer to see borough...

And the winner is... Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history...

As in all major government takeovers of private companies in Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez declared that seizing beer-and-food giant Polar's facilities here would mark another victory for the poor in the country's march toward socialism. "Why is it that Polar has so much money?" Chávez asked in a February speech ... Except this time, the president's plans went badly awry, ... Polar [fought] back by taking its case to the Supreme Court, [and] its employees have risen up, too, rallying in opposition to Chávez's edict and holding all-night vigils to prevent a takeover. ... employees said they oppose the government...

For us it is a saddening sight - a magnificent bull elephant struck down in his old age. But for the starving of Zimbabwe, it was little short of a miracle. The carcass provided a vital source of food, and hundreds of desperate villagers in the Gonarezhou National Park descended on the dead animal within minutes of its discovery. Using machetes, axes and knives made from tin cans they set upon the six-ton carcass, which was found deep in scrubland.