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In a war that never happened, formations of heavy and rather odd-looking Soviet tanks would have powered through atomic explosions in breakthrough attacks into West Germany. Enter the Object 279 tank, a curious oddity from the late 1950s which was obsolete — despite its design principles deliberately reflecting the fear of a nuclear battlefield — by the time it was produced. It was certainly not a success, as the Soviet Union only manufactured a handful of prototypes.

As Hitler's troops withdrew from Poland in 1945, Stalin's Red Army advanced towards Berlin. Instead of liberation, the Soviet troops raped and pillaged as they followed the retreating Nazis.  In January 1945, as the war continued, French authorities sent Dr Madeleine Pauliac to Moscow to assist with the efforts to repatriate any French prisoners of war discovered by the Soviets.

Military aircraft can have notoriously short lifespans, especially during periods of technological ferment. The most elite aircraft of World War I could become obsolete in a matter of months. Things weren’t much different in World War II. And at the dawn of the jet age, entire fleets of aircraft became passé as technologies matured. The advanced fighters that fought in the skies over Korea became junk just a few years later. But a few designs stand the test of the time. The B-52 Stratofortress first flew in 1952, yet remains in service today. New C-130s continue to roll off the...

The Democratic Convention kicked off today in complete chaos. The Bernie supporters silenced Chairwoman Marcia Fudge. Soviet Union flags were proudly displayed. Soviet flags fly proudly for #DemsInPhilly #FeelTheBern March. pic.twitter.com/LhgfkddO5q — RebelPundit™ (@RebelPundit) July 25, 2016 Photos via Rebel Pundit. The march was infested with Soviet flags. #FeelTheBern March infested with red communist flags. #DemsInPhilly #OccupyTheDNC #TrumpPence16 pic.twitter.com/cOpyDdlTWk — RebelPundit™ (@RebelPundit) July 25, 2016 #FeelTheBern communist march on #DemsInPhilly pic.twitter.com/hXp7dE1w78 — RebelPundit™ (@RebelPundit) July 25, 2016

Russian warplanes bombed an elite force of US-trained Syrian rebels on Thursday in an attack apparently aimed at weakening the group’s ability to fight Isil. The New Syrian Army (NSA), which receives training and direction from British, American and Jordanian special forces, said their base had been struck with cluster bombs. The strike left two people dead and another 18 injured, appearing to incapacitate at least half of the force and drawing a furious reaction from Washington. "Russia's latest actions raise serious concern about Russian intentions," a US official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We will seek an...

How about something a little lighter!? Soviet humor, where we can all certainly use a laugh at the inhuman system of enslavement we helped defeat. Find and post your own! Happy Tuesday .... ------------------------------- This is Armenian Radio; our listeners asked us: “What will be the results of the next elections?” We’re answering: “Nobody can tell.” Somebody has stolen yesterday the exact results of the next elections from the office of the Central Committee of the USSR.” ------------------------------- This is Armenian Radio; our listeners asked us: “Will the police still exist when communism is built?” We’re answering: “Of course, not....

Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov lived in the USSR and he is not feeling the bern. I'm enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means! Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty. Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes...

Since 1928, the battlefields of the world have seen an oddball Soviet-era weapon that proves the truth of the old saying, “Looks aren’t everything.” Its nickname was once “Stalin’s phonograph” — and the staccato tune it plays is the sound of automatic fire. Used by the Russians to gun down both the Finns and the Nazis, hefted by Chinese communist and North Korean troops fighting United Nations forces, and carried by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese when attacking American soldiers, the Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyaryova Pekhotny — better known as the DP light machine gun — has spilled a...

According to a recent report by the Institute for the Study of War, Russia's involvement in the Syrian civil war has shifted the battlefield momentum in favor of President Bashar al-Assad. It reads, "In Aleppo province, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and associated proxy forces launched a multipronged offensive on Oct. 15 that has seized large swaths of rebel-held terrain in the southern countryside of Aleppo City." According to the same report, pro-regime forces achieved tactical gains against the opposition in northeastern Latakia province. The FSA is currently present in northern Syria around Aleppo and Hama as well as in...

Newly declassified documents reveal the extent of America’s nuclear target list during the Cold War, showing the U.S. military was prepared to hit thousands of sites in the communist world stretching from Beijing to Moscow to East Berlin. The 800 pages of documents from a 1956 plan known as the “Atomic Weapons Requirements Study” were released by the National Archives and published this week for the first time by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. “As far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history,” the organization said,...

Brunei, Somalia and Tajikistan ban Christmas In yet another sign of increasing Islamist intolerance around the world, the celebration of Christmas has come under attack in at least three countries this year: Following in the footsteps of the English Puritans who banned Christmas in the Middle Ages, Brunei, Somalia and Tajikistan are now clamping down on the Christian festival. Now, the announcement from Somalia, which is struggling to get back on its feet after decades of civil war, is possibly the least surprising. The country is officially under sharia'h law; it has almost no native Christians; and Islamist militants still...

What is it about worn-out socialist "worker paradises" like the old Soviet Union and Cuba that bring out the romantic in American radical politicians? After Vermont senator Bernie Sanders announced his run for president, Britain’s Guardian newspaper pawed through old archives in his home town of Burlington, Vermont where he served as mayor in the 1980s. They discovered that Sanders really did practice the socialist solidarity he preached about rhetorically. During Bernie's mayoral tenure, Burlington formed an alliance with the Soviet city of Yaroslavl, 160 miles northeast of Moscow. When in 1988 he married his wife, Jane, the mayor decided...

File picture of former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. (Agence France-Presse) LAHORE: Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has admitted in an interview that Islamabad supported and trained groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in the 1990s to carry out militancy in Kashmir. The former army chief has also said that Lashkar leaders like Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi enjoyed the status of heroes at that time. Speaking to Pakistani news channel Dunya News on Sunday, Mr Musharraf said, "In the 1990s, the freedom struggle began in Kashmir...At that time, Lashkar-e- Taiba and 11 or 12 other organisations were formed. We supported...

LONDON: Russian President Vladimir Putin is reportedly sending 150,000 soldiers to Syria to wipe out the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). According to The Daily Star, he is apparently mounting an enormous military mission to take control of the terror group's stronghold of Raqqa. Raqqa is the self-declared capital of ISIS which is patrolled by as many as 5,000 jihadi members. Putin is set to mobilise 150,000 reservists whom he conscripted into the military earlier this week.

New York, September 16, 2015--The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores a decree signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko today which, according to a copy viewed by CPJ, bans at least 41 international journalists and bloggers from Ukraine for one year. The journalists and bloggers were among 388 people named as representing an "actual or potential threat to national interests, national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine," according to news reports. "We are dismayed by President Poroshenko's actions, including a ban on dozens of international media covering Ukraine," CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. "While the...

Anglo-American historian and poet who chronicled Stalin’s excesses dies in Palo Alto, Calif.Robert Conquest, an Anglo-American historian whose works on the terror and privation under Joseph Stalin made him the pre-eminent Western chronicler of the horrors of Soviet rule, died Monday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 98 years old. Mr. Conquest’s master work, “The Great Terror,” was the first detailed account of the Stalinist purges from 1937 to 1939. He estimated that under Stalin, 20 million people perished from famines, Soviet labor camps and executions—a toll that eclipsed that of the Holocaust. Writing at the height of the...

If adopted, ideas being considered by a Seattle housing committee would be devastating to the city’s appeal, KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson said. Get rid of single-family zoning in Seattle. That’s the big message in a draft report being worked on by Mayor Ed Murray’s housing committee, obtained by The Seattle Times. According to a draft letter, the city needs to move away from the idea that all families can live in their own home on a piece of land, the Times reports. “Today, as Seattle expands rapidly and experiences massive economic and population growth, we are held back by policies...

The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is systematically targeting civilians and hospitals, often with chemical weapons, to reverse recent setbacks in the country’s civil war, witnesses told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday. Assad’s forces have suffered a number of battlefield defeats in recent months, with the Islamic State and the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra gaining ground north of the capital Damascus and more moderate rebel groups achieving victories in the south. The Syrian army has also lost about half of its soldiers throughout the course of the four-year civil war and has increasingly relied on outside militant...

Events are being held in many countries to mark 70 years since the end of World War II in Europe on May 8, 1945, but in fact the last large-scale engagement of the conflict began three days after the Nazi capitulation. More than a thousand people, mostly German soldiers, were killed in a largely forgotten battle against U.S. and Soviet troops plus Czech irregulars on May 11-12, 1945. (RFE/RL)

Soviet War Dead [Infographic] Population Losses in the 20th Century: A Reference. Key Civilian Dead Military Dead Deaths as % of 1940 population