Free Republic

This is the third article to appear on these pages from an IBD subscriber who lived in the Soviet Union until 1980. Click here to read the previous two articlesWhenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States. They don't understand why I am repulsed when I hear the president talk about "sacrificing for the collective good," which sounds so compassionate, as opposed to greedy capitalism. "Sacrifice for the collective good" is one of the founding principles of socialism, where the collective,...

The first years of Perestroika were marked with the growing epidemic of AIDS in the West and the rising popularity of TV call-in shows featuring Soviet and American citizens in Russia. I watched all these shows but one. I know about the one I missed from my grandmother who gave me an enthusiastic recap: “Some American woman asked a question about sex, and a Russian woman got up and said “There is no sex in the USSR!”” Later, this phrase became proverbial. The poor woman became a laughing stock. However, there was some truth to her words as there was...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KHcQsjFdC8&feature=channel Joseph Stalin declassified. Newly revealed documents about Stalin and the founding of the USSR and his inner circle. About the purges and memos concerning STalin.

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago today. When it happened, I thought it would be the clear turning point: the left would admit it was wrong, if not clueless, about central planning. But it was I who was wrong. Congress legislates like the Wall never fell. There was one bad thing about the fall of the USSR: We lost a very visible bad example of big centralized government. With Washington now turning to central planning to “fix” healthcare, clean the environment, and “create” jobs, it’s helpful to have role models of failure. They remind citizens of the politicians’ arrogance....

Once the butt of jokes the world over, communist-era East European goods from sweets, to rustic washing machines and clunky cars are all the rage again. As the world prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, souvenirs such as portraits of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu are now avidly sought at markets. In Belgrade, cafes are named after Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito or even the Soviet KGB secret police.

In the dense forests of the idyllic Danube island of Persin, home to the endangered sea eagle and the pygmy cormorant, lie the ghastly remains of a communist-era death camp. Hundreds "enemies of the regime" perished from beatings, malnutrition and exhaustion in 1949-59 in Bulgaria's Belene concentration camp, where dead bodies were fed to pigs. Twenty years after the fall of communism, Belene is largely forgotten -- only a small marble plaque tells its horrific story. And nostalgia for the past is growing in the small Balkan country and across the former Soviet bloc. Capitalism's failure to lift living standards,...

Just how deep the tentacles of communism reached into the heart of British government has now been revealed with the emergence of an extraordinary diary by Anatoly Chernyaev, the Soviet Union's contact man with the West at the icy height of the Cold War. Meticulously detailed and written by hand on lined notepaper, the diary has come to light in the U.S. National Security Archive.

SNIPPET: "Lula and Chavez have established a "strategic relationship," and recently agreed upon a joint Brazilian-Venezuelan oil venture worth billions of dollars. Lula and Chavez have joined with Daniel Ortega, the returned Nicaraguan Marxist dictator, to form an anti-U.S. Latin American military alliance - all with Russian assistance - funded by the region's abundant oil reserves. Brazil is engaged in its own arms build-up and Lula is determined that Brazil will become at least a first-rate regional power. Unfortunately, Lula is establishing Brazil as an anti-American military power by aligning with nations hostile or potentially hostile to the U.S. Lula...

USSR, 1959: I am a "young pioneer" in school. History classes remind us that there is a higher authority than their parents and teachers: the leaders of the Communist Party. The story of young pioneer Pavlik Morozov is required reading. Pavlik reported his father to the secret police for disobeying government regulations. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to serve their government. From the first year in school, all of us are made aware of our ethnicity (ethnic Russian, Jewish, Asian, etc.) and class (proletariat, intelligentsia), around which society is structured. This inherent divisiveness makes it...

Russia’s new military doctrine, which is to come into force in 2010, has provoked a heated debate, first of all because it stipulates preemptive nuclear strikes. Moreover, it says that nuclear weapons may also be used in local conflicts in case of critical threats to Russia’s national security. The wording has encouraged some people to say that Russia intends to use nuclear weapons in conflicts with its closest neighbors – former Soviet republics. A critical threat to Russia’s national security can come from different types of conflicts, including a large-scale war with a block of countries, or a hypothetical territorial...

PRESIDENT Obama, who found time to go on a 24-hour jaunt to Copenha gen on Oct. 2 to seek the 2016 Olympic Games for Chicago, apparently can't find the time for a 24-hour trip to Berlin on Nov. 9 for a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Well, we all have our priorities, and the president can't be everywhere at once, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will surely represent America ably in Berlin. Still, it seemed an odd decision to me -- until I went back and got the speech that candidate Obama...

Eight years into the war in Afghanistan: the most senior defence official running the conflict receives a letter from one of his officers. It is a depressing list of political and tactical failures. "We should honestly admit," he writes, "that our efforts over the last eight years have not led to the expected results. Huge material resources and considerable casualties did not produce a positive end result – stabilisation of military-political situation in the country. The protracted character of the military struggle and the absence of any serious success, which could lead to a breakthrough in the entire strategic situation,...

MOSCOW — Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upon a model for future success: the Communist Party. Or at least, the one that reigns next door. Like an envious underachiever, Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia, is increasingly examining how it can emulate the Chinese Communist Party, especially its skill in shepherding China through the financial crisis relatively unbowed. United Russia’s leaders even convened a special meeting this month with senior Chinese Communist Party officials to hear firsthand how they wield power. ..." “The accomplishments of China’s Communist Party in developing its...

The Constitution of the U.S.S.R. - (1918, 1936, 1977) At first glance, it would appear that the citizens of the USSR had more rights than their American counterparts. Stalin's constitution guaranteed the people the right to work, the right to rest and leisure (no overtime), maintenance in old age (Social Security), right to education, economic equality, right to form unions, right to privacy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press. Unfortunately, the constitution doesn't explain exactly how these freedoms are guaranteed. For instance, the US Constitution grants freedom of speech with the following paragraph:...

The defeat of communism 20 years ago was the most liberating moment in history. So why don't we talk about it more? On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country's militarized border with Austria. Some 13,000 East Germans, many of whom had been vacationing at nearby Lake Balaton, fled across the frontier to the free world. It was the largest breach of the Iron Curtain in a generation, and it kicked off a remarkable chain of events that ended 11 weeks later with the righteous citizen dismantling of the...

When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" in 1983, he was articulating in the boldest terms what had always been an American understanding. The Kremlin had long been fomenting communist revolution the world over, and we had long pursued our policy of "containment." Thus did we fight wars in Korea and Vietnam, facilitate coups d'état against people such as Salvador Allende and support anti-communist rebels such as the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Of course, plans didn't always come together. There was the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the covert Iran-Contra operation getting front-page exposure. The "police action" in...

Vlad "the poisoner" Putin isn't such a tough guy after all. He's a sucker for Russian power and glory. That is why he has just proclaimed that it's OK for Ahmadinejad and the Twelver Suicide Cult of Tehran to have nuclear weapons. Putin is a fool. Like all the Soviet leaders, he is going to end up harming his nation to pursue his own grandiosity. The Russian inferiority complex is a cliché of European history. It has always existed, but it is often dated back to Peter the Great, who tried desperately to bring Imperial Russia into the 17th century....

Just a little follow-up to Ed’s post earlier, tracking the progress of The One’s global disarmament efforts. Hey — the committee did say that Nobel was aspirational. In an interview published today in Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.” What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to...

MOSCOW (AP) - A top Russian security official says Moscow reserves the right to conduct pre-emptive nuclear strikes to safeguard the country against aggression on both a large and a local scale, according to a newspaper interview published Wednesday. Presidential Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev also singled out the U.S. and NATO, saying Moscow's Cold War foes still pose potential threats to Russia despite what he called a global trend toward local conflicts. The interview appeared in the daily Izvestia during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, as U.S. and Russian negotiators try to hammer out...

Russian court ruled against Josef Stalin's grandson Tuesday in a libel suit over a newspaper article that said the Soviet dictator sent thousands of people to their deaths. A judge at a Moscow district court rejected Yevgeny Dzhugashvili's claim that Novaya Gazeta damaged Stalin's honor and dignity in an April article that referred to him as a "bloodthirsty cannibal." The case essentially put Stalin on trial more than 50 years after his death. A ruling against the newspaper would have been seen as an exoneration one of the 20th century's most notorious autocrats.

AP) A Russian court ruled against Josef Stalin's grandson Tuesday in a libel suit over a newspaper article that said the Soviet dictator sent thousands of people to their deaths. A judge at a Moscow district court rejected Yevgeny Dzhugashvili's claim that Novaya Gazeta defamed Stalin in an April article referring to the strongman leader as a "bloodthirsty cannibal." A ruling against Novaya Gazeta would have been seen as an exoneration of Stalin more than 50 years after his death. It would have been a major setback to beleaguered Russian liberals who say the country must acknowledge the truth of...

Albert Axell, the American military writer, historian and author of Marshall Zhukov: The Man Who Beat Hitler, explains just how much the West has undervalued the Soviet Union’s contribution to victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Related Articles The Red Army saved Europe Dancing with Hitler at the abyss Hidden past inside the secret cities Do you believe people are still interested in WWII, which was over a fairly long time ago? My friend, a British professor, told me about a survey that revealed striking ignorance: 95pc of young people in the UK believe Germany was an...

Probably the biggest "X-factor" in the ongoing effort at reviving the global economy is China. China is seen by many as the world's emerging industrial powerhouse and its relationship with the United States is considered to be crucial for its own development, as well as for the strength of the world economy. With the U.S. in the role as the world's premier consumer and China considered to be the major industrial player, all eyes are on the respective economies of these two great nations. There are two dominant views regarding China's economic outlook and its prospects for total recovery from...

The Post & Email has received tonight a decclassified FBI report admitted in evidence in the case brought against W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller by President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Griffin B. Bell. This document was obtained by an American citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, via a FOIA request. Mr. W. Mark  Felt is none other than the informant who spoke with reporters from the Washington Post, exposing the Watergate Scandal:  who went by the name “Deep Throat” a fact that points to his political neutrality in American politics.What is not know about Mr. Felt...

Written in July, 1916 At last there has appeared in Germany, illegally, without any adaptation to the despicable Junker censorship, a Social-Democratic pamphlet dealing with questions of the war! The author, who evidently belongs to the “Left-radical” wing of the Party, signs himself Junius[3] (which in Latin means junior) and gave his pamphlet the title: The Crisis of Social-Democracy. Appended are the “Theses on the Tasks of International Social-Democracy,” which have already been submitted to the Berne I.S.C. (International Socialist Committee) and published in No. 3 of its Bulletin; the theses were drafted by the “International” group, which in the...

Written June of 1916 We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main...

That was how Sotsial-Demokrat posed the alternative with regard to the German Social-Democratic Party, back in its issue No. 35[1] , when it elaborated the fundamental ideas of the Manifesto on war issued by our Party’s Central Committee.[2] Notice how the facts bear out this conclusion. The German Social-Democratic Party is clearly disintegrating. Otto Ruhle, Karl Liebknecht’s closest associate, quite apart from the I.S.D. group (International Socialists of Germany),[3] which has been consistently fighting the hypocritical Kautskyites, has openly come out for a split. Vorwarts had no serious, honest answer. There are actually two workers’ parties in Germany. Even in...

Link only, due to Wired's copyright complaints. Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday MachineI'm posting this without any text, because I think it's important. The "Doomsday" machine is apparently real, and still operational. Read the article for more details.

Written in English before November 9 1915 Dear Comrades! We are extremely glad to get your leaflet. Your appeal to the members of the Socialist Party to struggle for a new International, for clear-cut revolutionary socialism as taught by Marx and Engels, and against the opportunism, especially against those who are in favor of working class participation in a war of defence, corresponds fully with the position our party (Social-Democratic Labor Party of Russia, Central Committee) has taken from the beginning of this war and has always taken during more than ten years. We send you our sincerest greetings &...

Pravdy No. 35, March 13, 1914. Capitalism cannot be at a standstill for a single moment. It must forever be moving forward. Competition, which is keenest in a period of crisis like the present, calls for the invention of an increasing number of new devices to reduce the cost of production. But the domination of capital converts all these devices into instruments for the further exploitation of the workers. The Taylor system is one of these devices. Advocates of this system recently used the following techniques in America. An electric lamp was attached to a worker’s arm, the worker’s movements...

Liberal Professor Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky is on the war path against socialism. This time he has approached the question, not from the political and economic angle, but from that of an abstract discussion on equality (perhaps the professor thought such an abstract discussion more suitable for the religious and philosophical gatherings which he has addressed?). "If we take socialism, not as an economic theory, but as a living ideal," Mr. Tugan declared, "then, undoubtedly, it is associated with the ideal of equality, but equality is a concept . . . that cannot be deduced from experience and reason." This is the...

Published: Proletarskaya Pravda No. 19, January 1, 1914 This is the battle-cry of the class-conscious American workers. They say: We have only one political question be fore us, and that is the question of the workers’ earnings and their working day. To Russian workers it may at first sight seem very strange and puzzling to have all social and political questions reduced to a single one. But in the United States of America, the most advanced country in the world, which has almost complete political liberty, where democratic institutions are most developed, and where tremendous progress has been made in...

From a speech in March of 1918(Lenin’s appearance was greeted with a prolonged standing ovation. The “Internationale” was sung.) In his speech Lenin, in a clear and popular form, explained the essential features and basic points of the Soviet Constitution. The Soviets were the highest form of democratic government by the people. The Soviets were not something invented out of one’s head, they were the product of living reality. They appeared and developed for the first time in history in our backward country, but objectively they should become the form of government by the working people all over the world....

First published in 1930 in the second and third editions of V. I. Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. XVI. Published according to the manuscript. Our Ministry of Public (forgive the expression) “Education” boasts inordinately of the particularly rapid growth of its expenditure. In the explanatory note to the 1913 budget by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance we find a summary of the estimates of the Ministry of Public (so-called) Education for the post-revolutionary years. These estimates have increased from 46,000,000 rubles in 1907 to 137,000,000 in 1913. A tremendous growth—almost trebled in something like six years! But our...

How and why the surviving heirs of the Soviet monster are alive and well.Twenty years ago, the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe began to fall one by one -- so quickly that the coming months will be very dense with 20th anniversaries of great historic events. That was the final battle of the Cold War, where the Iron Curtain was finally broken, and the monstrous Soviet Empire ruined. Freedom triumphed in Europe at last. Or so it seemed. For the next twenty years have shown that that victory was not as final as many hoped during that momentous autumn of...

On Sept. 1, while the international media focused on commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War in Poland, Russian children returned to their classrooms to begin a new school year. They found the world transformed. New state-approved textbooks have recast Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin into "one of the most successful leaders of the U.S.S.R." No longer is he regarded as a paranoid mass-murderer responsible for the deaths of nearly 20 million people. He has become a great, if flawed, national leader -- an "efficient manager" who defeated the Nazis, saved Europe and industrialized a...

Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, grandson of the former doctor of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, has filed a lawsuit demanding damages of $300,000 for what he termed “the slander of my late grandfather by Novaya Gazeta.” The newspaper, as have most historians, attributed millions of murders to the regime headed by Stalin from the mid 1920s to his death in 1953. It is Dzhugashvili’s contention that every single one of these homicides “was in self-defense, not only of my grandfather’s own person, but of the entire nation.” The absence of evidence for the claim of self defense “is due to my grandfather’s...

With due respect, I think Charles Krauthammer had it badly wrong on Van Jones when he said (see post below), "I'm not even disturbed that this guy is a communist. It is not the first time we had a communist in the U.S. government. And anyway, with the death of communism, it is a kind of a pathetic intellectual anachronism to remain a communist." It should be apparent by now that Communism never died. The Soviet Union died. Being a Communist, or a neocommunist, is not an intellectual anachronism at all — it is quite the fashion in the academy...

In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble.In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness. Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures. The government-assigned salary of the proletariat (blue-collar worker) was 30%-50% higher...

A secret agreement made between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, which divided Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and led to its invasion continues to divide historians, journalists, and political leaders as well. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign ministers of the two countries, is seen as the preamble to World War II. Polish President Lech Kaczynski attends ceremonies in Gdanskmarking the 70th anniversary of the beginning of WW II, 1 Sept 2009 The controversy has to do with how the pact was interpreted and to what degree the Soviet Union was implicated in creating conditions that...

In the midst of public outcry over the decision by Scottish authorities to free Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, convicted in 1991 for his involvement in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, the anniversary of an older case of state-sponsored terrorism, the shooting down by KAL 007 by Soviet jet fighters in 1983, is almost forgotten by the media and public. When a bomb planted by Libyan terrorists tore Pan Am flight 103 from the sky on December 21, 1988, 270 people — 259 of them on the plane and 11 more on the ground — were killed....

Shortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarification. The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins). The document is a May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his boss, the odious Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, designated with the highest classification. It concerns a...

Some would go farther and say that the memorandum from Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB that was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR, outlining a secret proposal made by Senator Ted Kennedy to the Soviets to help them "understand Reagan" in return for their help in making him president, constitutes treason. It's not a word to throw around lightly and the reason I refrain from using it is because I am unsure Kennedy's actions meet the definition. Kennedy was not in direct contact with Andropov, using his good friend John Tunney, former...

The Soviet Union was never comfortable living in the same world with the Vatican. The most recent disclosures document that the Kremlin was prepared to go to any lengths to counter the Catholic Church’s strong anti-Communism. In March 2006 an Italian parliamentary commission concluded “beyond any reasonable doubt that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the pope Karol Wojtyla,” in retaliation for his support to the dissident Solidarity movement in Poland. In January 2007, when documents disclosed that the newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, had collaborated with Poland’s Communist-era political police, he admitted...

Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum. Composed in 1983 by Victor Chebrikov, the top man at the KGB, the memorandum was addressed to Yuri Andropov, the top man in the entire USSR. The subject: Sen. Edward Kennedy. "On 9-10 May of this year," the May 14 memorandum explained, "Sen. Edward Kennedy's close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow." (Tunney was Kennedy's law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) "The senator charged...

MOSCOW, August 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia rejects all attempts to hold it responsible for the tragedies of World War II, the head of a presidential commission said on Friday. In mid-May, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the establishment of a special commission to counter attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests. The commission is comprised of 28 officials from the presidential administration, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the State Duma, the Public Chamber, the state archives and science agencies, as well as the foreign, regional development, justice, and culture ministries. Presidential...

Sweetness and Light is forbidden, where they have the complete text of the letter, so, here's a repost from 2006. Text of KGB Letter on Senator Ted Kennedy Special Importance Committee on State Security of the USSR 14.05.1983 No. 1029 Ch/OV Moscow Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Comrade Y.V. Andropov Comrade Y.V. Andropov On 9-10 May of this year, Senator Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant J. Tunney was in Moscow. The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of...

Web Posted: 08/25/2009 2:31 CDT Crowd calls for `Mikhail the Bloody' to quit Associated Press - Originally published on Dec. 10, 1990. MOSCOW -- Religious chants echoed off the walls of KGB headquarters Sunday as thousands of human rights demonstrators prayed and wept at a nearby monument to the victims of Soviet repression.Led by three Russian Orthodox priests bearing icons, marchers carried wreaths, placards denouncing President Mikhail Gorbachev, and photographs of human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, who died one year ago this week. The 3,000 to 4,000 protesters came from near Red Square where they had rallied to mark today's...

MOSCOW – Sergei Mikhalkov, who wrote the lyrics to the Soviet and Russian national anthems, persecuted dissident writers and fathered two noted film directors, has died at age 96. Mikhalkov died in Moscow on Thursday, said Denis Baglai, a spokesman for director Nikita Mikhalkov. He said he did not immediately have further details. In 1943, Sergei Mikhalkov, a young author whose poems were favored by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, was commissioned to write lyrics for the new Soviet anthem designed to inspire Red Army soldiers in the midst of World War II. Mikhalkov's lyrics, co-written with journalist El Registan and...

The Minister of Finance, in his explanatory note on the Budget, and all the government parties assure themselves and others that our Budget is firmly based. They refer, among other things, to the “achievements” of industry, which indubitably has been on the upgrade in the last few years. Our industry, as well as our entire national economy, has been developing along capitalist lines. That is indisputable, and needs no proof. But anyone who limits himself to data on “development” and to the smugly boastful statement that “there is an increase of so-and-so many per cent” shuts his eyes to Russia’s...