Free Republic

Russian statement on Soviet monuments surprising - Ukraine 16:34 | 15/ 05/ 2007 KIEV, May 15 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's Foreign Ministry is surprised at Russia's reaction to the situation around Soviet memorials in the western Ukrainian city of Lvov, a ministry spokesman said Tuesday. "Such close attention of the Russian side to protection of monuments and memorial signs in Ukraine is surprising, taking into account that in the Russian Federation... there are plans to remove two memorials in order to use the site for construction and a parking lot," Andrey Deshchitsa said. The Lvov city legislature decided May 10...

Poland's national conservatives prepare anti-Soviet symbols law May 15, 2007, 18:03 GMT Warsaw - Poland's governing national conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) announced Tuesday it has tabled legislation in parliament to rid the country of communist era symbols and ban them. The move would make it easier 'to mark an end of the communist era and come to terms with an inglorious past', PiS parliamentary leader Marek Kuchcinski told reporters in Warsaw. The legislation would provide not only for streets, public squares and buildings to be renamed, but also for people to be stripped of medals, awards and diplomas...

MOSCOW, May 9 — President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to obliquely compare the foreign policy of the United States to the Third Reich in a speech on Wednesday commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. The comments were the latest in a series of sharply worded Russian criticisms of the foreign policy of the United States — on Iraq, missile defense, NATO expansion and, more broadly, United States unilateralism in foreign affairs. Many Russians say the sharper edge reflects a frustration that Russia’s views, in particular opposition to NATO expansion, have been ignored in the West. Outside...

Less than fifteen years after the last Soviet troops pulled out of the Baltic States, a new survey has shown that young Swedes are still in the dark about the fate of its neighbours behind the Iron Curtain. A poll carried out by Demoskop on behalf of the Organization for Information on Communism (Föreningen för upplysning om kommunismen - UOK) found that 90 percent of Swedes between the ages of 15 and 20 had never heard of the Gulag. This can be contrasted with the 95 percent who knew of Auschwitz. "Unfortunately we were not at all surprised by the...

Russia's ageing but revered scientific geniuses are on a collision course with Vladimir Putin after the 1,200-member Academy of Sciences rejected Kremlin proposals to end its unique independence from state control. Since it was founded by Tsar Peter I in 1724, the Academy has enjoyed immunity from government interference. Freedom to think and work unfettered has enabled 17 of its alumni since 1904 to win science's highest plaudit, the Nobel prize. Of those, 14 have been within the past 50 years and the most recent, Vitaly Ginzburg and Alexei Abrikosov, shared the prize for physics in 2003. Now, however, its...

Mother's memoir reveals sensitive Stalin Last Updated: 1:01am BST 07/05/2007 Josef Stalin, the monstrous Soviet dictator responsible for the deaths of millions, was a "sensitive child" with a love of flowers, his mother's memoirs have revealed. Keke Djugashvili: son installed her in a former Tsarist palace Stalin was born in Georgia in 1878, the only child of a cobbler, Beso Djugashvili and his wife, Keke. In her memoirs, released from a secret Soviet archive, she detailed how a series of illnesses and accidents left "Soso" - her nickname for Josef - partially crippled, and how he coped with a violent...

The Prince of Wales was a "most likeable person", President Gaddafi a "mad clown" and Michael Jackson was "surprisingly shy". The private diaries of Ronald Reagan, which are about to be published for the first time, reveal a US president who was worried about imminent Armageddon but who also fretted about how he would handle chopsticks in front of the Chinese. The man who was credited with ending the Cold War reveals that he was "lonesome" when his wife, Nancy, was away and refused to talk to their son, Ron Junior, after he hung up on him. His carefully handwritten...

Estonia denounces embassy 'siege' April 30, 2007 - 8:09PM Estonia denounced a "psycho-terror" siege at its Moscow embassy today, where it said dozens of Estonians were trapped by youths protesting over the removal of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn. "The situation around the Estonian embassy in Moscow is psycho-terror," President Toomas Hendrik Ilves told AFP. "Nearly two dozen citizens of Estonia are in the embassy building, as if taken hostage. Other citizens of Estonia are blocked from entering the embassy." Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said his country would press the European Union, of which it is a member,...

Estonia unearths Soviet war dead The Estonian authorities say they have found the coffins of 12 Soviet soldiers buried at a controversial war memorial, amid a continuing row with Russia. Estonia's decision to remove the statue of a Red Army soldier sparked riots last week. One Russian died and 153 were injured in the unrest. Protesters are now blockading Estonia's Moscow embassy, according to officials. Estonians say the soldier symbolised Soviet occupation. Russians say it is a tribute to those who fought the Nazis. It has now been relocated to a military cemetery, away from the centre of the capital...

Estonia puts Soviet memorial in new spot By JARI TANNER, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 30, 11:32 AM ET TALLINN, Estonia - A statue commemorating Soviet soldiers killed during World War II was erected at a new location Monday, three days after its removal from a downtown square in Estonia's capital provoked riots by ethnic Russians. The Bronze Soldier is now open for public viewing at the Defense Forces Cemetery, Defense Ministry spokeswoman Aet Kukk said. Police clashed over three nights with Russian-speaking Estonians angered by the decision to move the statue and a nearby war grave. One man was...

Poland to remove communist memorials WARSAW, Poland, April 30 (UPI) -- Poland's culture minister said symbols of the communist dictatorship will be removed from the streets all over the country, Polish media reported Monday. Following a move taken by Estonia, Polish Culture Minister Kazimierz Ujazdowski said a new law that will make it easier for local authorities to remove both Soviet memorials and Polish communist symbols will go into effect May 15, the Serbian news agency Beta reported. During the weekend, the Polish government supported Estonia in its dispute with Russia over the removal of the World War II Soviet...

Poland should also remove Soviet monuments - Katyn Committee 21:35 | 28/ 04/ 2007 WARSAW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) - The time has come to remove Soviet-era monuments in Poland, a Polish public organization said Saturday echoing the Estonian government's decision to remove the Bronze Soldier statue in central Tallinn. The Katyn Committee which is made up of relatives of Polish officers, who were executed on the orders of the Soviet authorities in the village of Katyn near Smolensk in western Russia in 1940, said just like Estonia Poland "suffered from the Soviet occupation, while Soviet monuments have always been...

Boris Yeltsin, who died on April 23, was a towering figure in Russian political history. But was he, as so many US obituaries and editorials have described him, the "Father of Russian Democracy"? As though a wave of historical amnesia had swept over the media, few commentators seemed to remember that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, upon becoming Soviet leader in 1985, who launched the democratic reforms of "perestroika" and "glasnost"--ending censorship, permitting, even encouraging, opposition rallies and demonstrations, beginning market reforms and holding the first free, multi-candidate elections. (Indeed, Yeltsin was the chief beneficiary of those reforms.) [...] After August...

Recently Russian authorities have remembered of all those people who lost their money kept in the Savings Bank of the RF in the year of 1991. That is the time when state-controlled prices were released according to the new economical policy of the country. The cost of products rose enormously within several months, the ruble as a national currency decreased in value with the same speed. People wanted to withdraw their deposits made earlier, but the Savings Bank was prohibited to pay out funds, while money got cheaper with every day passed. The situation was aggravated by the fact that...

Katyn 67th anniversary 03.04.2007 Today marks the 67th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. In 1940 the Stalinist NKVD secret police executed over 20 thousand Polish army and police officers, who had been held in POW camps in Ukraine since the Soviets invaded Polish territory in September 1939, on the basis of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact signed with the Nazis. Commemorative events are being held throughout Poland. In Warsaw, a symbolic wreath has been placed by Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski at the Katyn quarters in the Powazki Military Cemetery.

UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST; U.S. Praises Poland's Plans To Fly Soviet Jews to Israel REUTERS Published: March 28, 1990 LEAD: The United States praised Poland today for agreeing to fly Soviet Jews to Israel and deplored the decision of the Hungarian airline, Malev, to stop flights in the face of threats of terrorism. The United States praised Poland today for agreeing to fly Soviet Jews to Israel and deplored the decision of the Hungarian airline, Malev, to stop flights in the face of threats of terrorism. [ Snip ] Poland offered Monday to increase its flights to Israel to accommodate...

Alarm bells rang in Moscow and Washington when China conducted its first nuclear weapons test on October 16, 1964. India also woke up to the capabilities of a nuclear-armed China that had invaded our territory less than two years earlier. President Lyndon Johnson appointed a high-powered Commission to suggest new directions to American policy in 1965. The Commission that included then CIA Director Allen Dulles rejected the suggestion that China should be countered by assisting India and Japan to go nuclear. It proposed that dialogue with China and the Soviet Union should be intensified to prevent new entrants to the...

Russia's latest version of fighter aircraft, the MiG-35, will be unveiled at next week's air show in Bangalore amid Moscow's keen interest to sell these planes to India. The MiG-35 fighters, top-of-the-line multi-role aircraft, will be on display along with the most sophisticated jets from the US, including the F-18 and F-16, and those from other countries at the five-day Aero-India International Defence show beginning next week in Bangalore, capital of Karnataka state. "It will be for the first time that the final version of MiG-35 fighter will be displayed," PTI reported here quoting an official of the Russian embassy....

Holocaust: Sweden's complex legacy On 27th January 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz, an event commemorated around the world on Holocaust Memorial Day. David Stavrou looks at the complex legacy of the Holocaust in Sweden, where the battle to promote tolerance still rages. Chavka Folman-Raban is a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz who arrived in Sweden a few days before the end of the Second World War. Like many other survivors, she was liberated by the Red Cross and found refuge in Sweden. "I'm not sure I can describe with absolute certainty the transition from being a prisoner in a concentration...

Russia has suffered terribly at the hands of Islamic terrorism over the centuries and continues suffer today. Yet, Russia is the best friend of the terrorism-exporting Muslim countries. Russia is actively helping Iran towards its ambition to extiprate Israel. Will Russia learn a lesson?