The flight of a Soviet MiG over Israel that prevented a nuclear war in 1973

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In the previous article we showed how the USSR played a key role in the creation of Israel. However, any hopes that the USSR had, showed to be misplaced and on the 10th of June 1967 the USSR broke the diplomatic relations with the Israel over its unleashing of the 6-day War, and the diplomatic relation were first restores eight days before the disintegration of the USSR, on the 26th of December 1991.

MiG 25 R / Bezhevets Alexander Savvich

During that time the USSR criticized and warned against the Zionism on par with the Ukrainian nationalism as the children of the same bourgeois imperialism. We have shown several caricature from that time on our Beorn and The Shieldmaiden Telegram channel. Here is one of them:

The caricature «The Family Portrait — Blood Brothers» is from a 1981 edition of the Ukrainian satitical magazine «Perec», and was drawn by S.Gerasimchuk.

The text over the caricature reads in Ukrainian:

«Imperialism, together with the father of the same crooked sons as Zionism and Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.»

The Ukrainian nationalism holds the microphone of the «Radio Svoboda» («Radio Freedom»), while Zionism has a scroll with the «Plans of aggression» tucked under the arm.

The USSR was also forced to take some very specific military steps to contain the Israeli Zionism, as will become apparent from the following article.

How did the MiG’s flight over an Israeli city prevent a nuclear war? The risky mission of the Soviet pilot

15th of June 2022

We have heard a lot about the Cold War and the Caribbean Crisis, but not everyone knows that apart from the confrontation in Cuba, the world once more stood on the brink of nuclear war in 1973. Open information is still contradictory, so there are several versions of events. But the fact remains the same – it was the flight of the Soviet MiG that led to the calming of a conflict, which could have ended with an exchange of nuclear strikes.

In early October 1973, a military clash began between a coalition of th Arab States led by Syria and Egypt, and Israel. Coalition forces successfully crossed the Suez Canal and inflicted a tangible defeat on Israel in the Golan Heights area.

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The History of Creation of Israel – The Soviet Side of Story

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The political sensibilities of a historic period may lead to decisions that result in unforeseen and undesired consequences down the historical road. The approval of the creation of Israel by the Soviet leader Iosif Stalin is one such event. True, shortly after wards the USSR would break the diplomatic relations with Israel, once its real natur became apparent. The USSR would even have to perform a little-known military operation against Israel to “dissuade” it from using nuclear weapons on its neighbours.

How did the USSR and Stalin personally create Israel, and why did the Jews betray the Soviet Union after that

6th of February 2021

In 1948, US President Truman was the first to recognize the State of Israel. And the Israelis do not get tired of reminding us about this till this day. Schools, libraries and hospitals in Israel are named after the 33rd President of the United States. For this reason, many mistakenly believe that the United States created the state of Israel.

But few people know that the key role in the creation of Israel was actually played by the Soviet Union and personally by Iosif Stalin. But how and why did the Soviet leader create Israel?

In January 1946, with a difference of only 2 days, Stalin received two letters. One was on behalf of the Jewish National Liberation Committee. The other came on behalf of the Arab committee. The authors of the first epistle asked Iosif Vissarionovich to help in the creation of a Jewish state on the territory of Palestine. The authors of the second one – to not let this happen. A year and a half later the whole world would learn of the decision that Stalin had made.

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Myths about Stalin. Where do legs grow from? Reblog of a detailed research article

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Black myths have always been attached to the Russian leaders who looked after the interests of the country and did not fall under the spell of the outside influences. Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin is one such leader, whose memory was defamed and desecrated both by the internal political rivals, like Hrushov, and by the external enemies. I plan to publish several articles that take aim at debunking these black myths surrounding the historical figure of Stalin. As always, when looking at history, one must remain dispassionate and look at the events not through the prism of modern sensibilities, but as a contemporary to the events, with all the challenges that the leadership of the USSR faced at that time.

Today, on the 145th anniversary of Iosif Stalin’s birth, I want to start with a reblog of an excellent article by Olga of the Siberian Matrëshka Telegram channel, which I can warmly recommend.

Myths about Stalin. Where do legs grow from?

Olga🪆July 21, 2023

First of all, there was no Communism in the USSR. The USSR had a communist state ideology and a socialist system.

One of the most terrible and destructive myths about the Soviet Union is the lie about the “bloody regime” of Stalin, who allegedly destroyed tens of millions of innocent people. Few people know that this myth was created back in Nazi Germany, and only later it was used by the United States in the information war against Soviet civilization.

Despite a number of fundamental studies based on the factual material of the archives, which showed the inconsistency of Joseph Stalin’s accusations of mass repressions and terror, the false myth supported by slanderers like Solzhenitsyn, Radzinsky, Suvorov-Rezun continues to dominate the information field of Russia and the world community. The dirty work of denigrating Russian and Soviet history continues, within the framework of the global historical and informational confrontation between Russian civilization (Rus) and the West. Citizens of Russia (especially young people), not to mention Ukraine and other post-Soviet republics, continue to be stuffed with horror stories about death and murder in labour camps of the GULAG (Main Directorate of Camps and Places of Detention), stories about millions of people who died of starvation and were deliberately destroyed in the USSR, about the alleged premeditation of the Holodomor in Ukraine, about the inhuman cruelty of the Soviet punitive system, “the bloodiest in the world”. The repressions against the kulaks and the “fifth column” take on an absolutely fantastic character in these stories, and Stalin becomes a villain of a literally galactic scale. All this is superimposed on the image of the USSR-Russia in the world – as an “evil empire” and “Russian Mordor”, where there live “fierce” Muscovites, scoops-padded coats, ready at the first opportunity to drown in the blood of all dissidents in Russia itself, as well as to drive to their “concentration camp” and the surrounding peoples.

The myth of the “bloody Stalinist regime” was created back in Nazi Germany. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, they used information and psycho-technologies to properly indoctrinate the population. The Minister of Propaganda was Joseph Goebbels, who propagated dreams of a racially pure people living in Greater Germany, an empire with vast living space. This living space included the territory to the east of Germany, the Russian lands, including Little Russia-Ukraine. The conquest of living space meant a big war, a war with the USSR. Therefore, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, headed by Goebbels, launched an information campaign around the alleged genocide organized by the Communists in Ukraine, the terrible famine (Holodomor) organized personally by Stalin. The purpose of the Nazi propaganda was to prepare the world community for the “liberation” of Ukraine by German troops from the “bloody Bolshevik yoke”. Later, the Ukrainian Nazis (Bandera) used the same lie about an artificial famine to sit on the neck of the people of Little Russia-Ukraine.

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The Netherlands Plundered the Crimean Museums. The Scythian Gold Was Transferred to Ukraine.

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On the pages of this blog I previously followed the long-drawn saga with the Crimean Scything gold that the Netherlands refused to return to the museums that owned the artefacts. These articles are from 2016 and 2019 and can be found, following the Scythian Gold tag. The collections that were lent out to Holland, technically belong each to its legal entity (therein, the 4 Crimean museums).

Holland now sent the valuables to Kiev, and with the current kleptocratic neo-Nazi regime in power there, the chances to this heritage of mankind staying there is very slim. Ironically, if Holland was hell-bent on not returning the items to the proper owners in Crimea, it would have been better for the collection to stay in Holland until the end of the SMO and the de-Nazification of Ukraine, but that is, apparently, not in the interests of the overseas managers of Holland.

Below are two articles from “Argumenty i Fakty”. The first one is with the breaking news from yesterday regarding the delivery of the invaluable cargo to Kiev, while the second is from last year, that looks into the troubled legal canvas that surrounded the case. The articles overlap somewhat in the historical section, complementing each other.

The Netherlands Plundered the Crimean Museums. The Scythian Gold Was Transferred to Ukraine.

by Konstantin Mikhalchevsky, RIA Novosti, 27.11.2023

Collection of Scythian gold, Central Museum of Taurida, Simferopol, Crimea, Russia.

The collection of Scythian gold from Crimean museums has been handed over to the Kiev regime. Representatives of the authorities announced the arrival of a truck with the valuable cargo in the Ukrainian capital.

A truck with valuables

The Ukrainian portal “Strana”, with reference to the customs, reports that a truck with 2694kg of cultural valuables arrived on the territory of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. It is planned to perform the identification and registration of the cargo with the subsequent transfer of the valuables to the treasury of the museum.

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In memory of the start of Operation «Uran» at Stalingrad on the 19th of November 1942

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Stalingrad Counter Offensive

(UPDATE: 28.11.2023 – additional Telegram posts)

On 19th of November 1942, The Red Army launched the legendary counter offensive at Stalingrad.

In a series of Telegram posts we will commemorate the glorious feat of the breakthrough that led to the decisive victory over the Nazi-german 6th Army on February 2nd 1943.

As we know, the victory at Stalingrad marked the great turning point of the Great Patriotic War, and marked decisively the geopolitical reality that defined the strength ratio of WWII and gave hope and encouragement to antifascists and resistance fighters in all occupied counties. 

Read on either on our Telegram channel Beorn and The Shieldmaiden or through the embedded messages below. Additional posts will be appended to this blog post as we publish more materials on our Telegram channel.

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Myths and Truth about Pogroms in the Russian Empire

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The West is busy re-writing history and miring the name of Russia in the process. It’s been like this since the time of Ivan the Formidable, and nothing has changed to this day.

A NAFO tweet from “Terror Alarm” decided to ascribe the Holocaust to the Russians! That’s a new level of impunity in history rewriting, seeing as it was the Red Army that liberated all the German Nazi concentration camps east of the river Elbe, where millions of people, – among them, Jews – were held and killed.

It was only a matter of time before Russia would be again blamed for “pogroms”, so I started translating the article below, addressing this historical half-truth. And in the process, a certain other NAFO twitter channel, Visegrad24, did not fail to deliver an expected accusation, though in such a way, that it debunks itself, and ties in nicely with the fourtt myth, discussed of the article below. I will thus include the screenshot of it after the translation. UPDATE: Later on the same day, after the West-instigated events in Dagestan, a Swedish newspaper DN came out with an atricle that opens with a direct use of the third myth; this will also be addressed after the translation.

Before we proceed to the article, there is one thing to bear in mind. The Russian word “pogrom” means “destruction of property”, “looting”. It does not immediately imply murder, let alone on ethnic grounds, but the clashes that did happen, sadly resulted in a certain number of deaths.

The article was published on Dzen on the 26th of January 2021.

Myths and Truth about Pogroms in the Russian Empire

Pogrom of 1881

The Kiev pogrom of 1881. Drawing of a contemporary

The so-called Jewish pogroms swept through many cities of the Russian Empire in 1905-1906. Some of such cases have occurred before, for example, in 1881, in 1903 (pogroms in Chisinau and Gomel). But as a mass phenomenon, they unfolded during the 1905 revolution. Most of them occurred in the second half of October (old style), but some outbreaks were noted in 1906.

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For the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Northern Norway, the WWII History Is Being Rewritten There

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(Updated 28.10.2022 – added an afterword)

On the 25th of October 2019, the Norwegian state TV channel NRK 2 aired a 3 hour 20 minute long TV marathon, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of liberation of Finnmark, Northern Norway, by the Soviet troops. The documentary went under the title “Saved by the Russians”.

Save by the Russians

It featured a wide range of materials – interviews with the surviving witnesses, official ceremonies, both Norwegian and Russian documentaries, the efforts to locate the unburied remains of the fallen Soviet soldiers, interviews with the politicians and historians, a cultural part, where we could even see the choir of the Russian Northern Fleet sailors performing the Norwegian anthem.

Here are the chapter titles to give an idea of the scope of the documentary: Russians are coming; The King is giving his thanks; Russian liberation; The last days of the war; The battle of Neiden; Mothers and children in a war; War-zone Murmansk; Russian captives; The partisan Trygve Eriksen; The history of the partisans; The choir of the Northern Fleet; Forced evacuation on the North; The liberation anniversary in Kirkenes; The Prime Minister is giving a commentary; The battles on the Litsa front; The big losses of the Litsa dale; Dead soldiers in Litsa dale; The year under Russian governorship; Nidviser speaks about the local population; The children of war; The Swedish children; Child-soldier Alf Rafaelsen; Still finding the remains from the war; The culture of memory; The cooperation across borders; The choir of the Northern Fleet.

At a time when the rest of Europe was descending into a historical amnesia when it came to the events of World War II, with the history being actively re-written, this Norwegian program was a bastion of steadfast remembrance of history.

Norway will never forget the Soviet army’s heroic efforts.

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Israeli Zionists follow in the footsteps of the German Nazis. Genocide and Holocaust of the Palestinians. Destruction of World Heritage

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Over the past weeks, the civilised world was watching in horror and condemning the atrocities committed by the Israeli Zionists against the Palestinian population. Everything that we are witnessing has been done before by the German Nazis against the Slavic and Jewish people, and against the Communists of Europe during WWII. At the same time USA, Ukraine, NATO and EU were egging the Israeli Zionists on to commit more crimes, which is fully expected – the Bidens, Stoltenbergs, Netanyahus, von der Leyens and Zelenskys of today are following in the footsteps of Hitlers, Banderas, Quislings and Mussolinis of the past.

Israel iS Starting to turn the
Gaza Strip
into a
Gas Chamber
for the
Holocaust of the Palestinians

After the number and the scale of atrocities committed by the Israeli Zionists, it is, by now, fully justified to start calling them “Zionazis“!

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Russia Running Out of Weapons 2.0 – A Documentary

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It was very surreal listening last year to Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech, standing there in a brown suite, giving a OUN/UPA Nazi collaborator greeting, and then proclaiming that Russia was taking chips out of dishwashers. So much so, that it prompted us, while working on the translation of “2 Years” – A Danish Underground Publication from 1943, to create a historical parallel caricature. At the same time, media was in a frenzy about how Russia, any second now will run out of missiles, or had actually already done so. It was also presenting a portent analogy to the media frenzy in the German-affiliated press in 1941, just as Nazi Germany invaded the USSR. I was saving the links to those publications back then, for a better time, which happened to be now…

Bizarre delusions of grandeur to go with self-seductive propaganda narratives seem to be inherent as Western imperialism once a century launches project “defeat and conquer Russia”.

German Nazism once displayed it big time, and EU and NATO now parrot their predecessor while openly aligning politically with Fascism.

Since the start of the SMO western MSM have consistently reported “Russia out of missiles”. A mantra that didn’t age very well and the humour is lost on no-one, when the articles are viewed in one take. We added some 1940s deja-vu, plus a little something for the full-spectrum experience.

Earplugs!

The video is also published on the “Beorn and The Shieldmaiden” Telegram channel.

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“The Yanks Gave the Order: Fire!” – Witness Testimony of Iona Andronov, a Defender of the “White house”

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In my article from November 2015 The ”Wild ’90s” in Russia, as reflected in people’s memory I mentioned in passing a testimony from Deputy Iona Andronov, describing the American involvement in Yeltsin’s coup of 1993. In yesterday’s publication Newspaper “Pravda” commemorating the 30th anniversary of the “Black October” of 1993, the author of the final article made a reference to the same testimony by Andronov.

In fact, this testimony has such significance, that I think it must be translated in full as a separate article. The original document can be found here on the subdomain of the Narod.ru site, dedicated to the events of October of 1993.

Iona Andronov – a historian-orientalist, journalist, writer, the Deputy of the Supreme Soviet in 1993 – also has a homepage on Narod.ru and a blog on Cont. I want to draw attention to a large 110-page long exposing publication in Russian that he has posted on his homepage in memory of the 30th anniversary of Yeltsin’s coup: The Counter-revolution of 1993. Epilog. 30 Years Later. (A chapter from the “Parting Memoirs of a Soviet Journalist”) – also available as a PDF, which expands on the testimony you are about to read, and also adds the descriptions of the actions of the Westward-looking “liberals” and “dissidents” of that time.

The Yanks Gave the Order: Fire!

The 3rd of October 2003
– A version for the press

The plan to storm the Supreme Soviet was developed by Boris Yeltsin’s entourage under the directions of the CIA and the inner circle of US President Clinton. This was told to the correspondent of “EG” by Iona ANDRONOV, a former defender of the “White House”, a deputy of the dispersed Supreme Council, at that time, chairman of the Committee on International Affairs. He is the one who negotiated with the representatives of the American embassy on the night before the carnage, trying to prevent the massacre of the Parliament.

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Newspaper “Pravda” commemorating the 30th anniversary of the “Black October” of 1993

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In this post I am continuing with the remembrance of the events of September — October 1993 resulting in Yeltsin’s unconstitutional power grab. After Yeltsin’s coup, the newspaper “Pravda” was forbidden, which was highly symbolic, as “Pravda” means “Truth” in Russian, and so after October of 1993 and for a long time The Truth was forbidden. The previous posts in the series are: Autumn of 1991 as a Prelude to the “Black October” of 1993 and the “Wild ’90s” in Russia and The Bloody October of 1993. Retrospect. The Last Interview with Ruslan Hasbulatov.

The newspaper published a series of Telegram posts and articles, commemorating that turn to the worse in Russian history. Below, I will translate three materials from Telegram, finishing with a longer article by Doctor of Political Sciences Sergej Obuhov, who asks several highly-relevant questions about those times and how the events echo in today’s Russia.

All the images can be clicked on for higher resolution.

Telegram post 1:

“The Black October”: 30 years

A barricade leaflet.

Today, after exactly 30 years, our editorial office publishes the historical Moscow edition of the newspaper “Pravda”, published on the 1st of October 1993 under the general headline “Politics is over. The dictatorship has begun”. It truly became a barricade leaflet, a “battle leaflet” that contained both a chronicle of what was happening, an analysis of the situation, and the thoughts and experiences of the participants in the events. Even now one can see in it the intensity of those events, the nerve of that time of troubles. For the edification of future generations.

In just two days there will be a bloody suppression of the popular uprising in the worst traditions of Pinochet, and “Pravda” became banned for a long time.

Here’s what the deputy editor-in-chief of Pravda, Viktor Linnik, wrote: “…It is absolutely not necessary to admire Hasbulatov and Rutskoy in order to be outraged by Yeltsin’s utterly cynical actions. Although it is precisely today that both Rutskoy, Hasbulatov, and every defender of the “White House” deserve the gratitude of the Russians for daring to throw the gauntlet in the face of tyranny.

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A brief history of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabah

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The conflict over Nagoro-Karabah (“Mountain-top Karabah”) has been going on for a little over a century. In the later years Russia tried to be a mediator and bring a resolution that would satisfy both Armenia and Azerbaijan, in accordance with the Russian saying of “both the wolves are fed and the sheep are whole”. However, the West’s darking Pashinyan did everything in his power to sabotage and discredit Russian efforts, to flirt with USA and France, and to actually lose Nagorn-Karabah to Azerbaijan.

After that, Russia could only try to save the Armenians living there and ensure their safe passage to Armenia poper:

Incidentally, at the moment there are more Armenians living in Russia, than in Armenia itself, but even bigger – or, more influential – Armenian diasporas can be found in France and the USA, which explains the political pull those two countries exert on Armenia.

USSR 1922In this article I want to present a translation of a publication from Dzen that recaps the history of the contested land.

For reference, see the map that I posted in relation to Kazahstan in the article A short look at the short history of Kazahstan through the lens of a 1922 map (inset in the lower left corner).


Nagorno-Karabah: Why Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting over it for 100 years

Before the revolution of 1917, there were practically no monolithic ethnic groups anywhere in Transcaucasia, the peoples lived mixed. At the same time, the territory of the future Nagorno-Karabah Autonomous Region was populated overwhelmingly by the Armenians.

In 1918, the newly independent states – Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia – began to divide Transcaucasia among themselves. At the same time, ethnic deportations began in the region.

The situation was complicated by the foreign intervention. Both the German-Turkish, and the British occupiers who replaced them, supported Azerbaijan’s claims to Nagorno-Karabah. The ethnic sympathies of the Turks are obvious, while for the British, the desire to gain control of the Baku oil fields by supporting Azerbaijan was probably crucial.

Although an Armenian National Council was established in Karabah, the attempt to annex the region to Armenia ended in failure. Karabah remained under Azerbaijani military control.

In 1920, the Sovietization of both republics took place. However, the dispute over Karabah has now continued between the Communists of both sides. It is noteworthy that the Russian Bolsheviks also supported Azerbaijan.

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The Bloody October of 1993. Retrospect. The Last Interview with Ruslan Hasbulatov

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Motherland Remembers Decree 1400, 21st of September 1993

On this day, exactly 30 years ago, Yeltsin, with the direct blessing from the USA, gave order for the tanks to open fire on the Parliament building in Moscow, that also was known as “The White House”. This ended the confrontation between the defenders of the Russian Constitution and Yeltsin, who was unconstitutionally concentrating more power in own hands, a confrontation that started with Order 66 Decree 1400 that unconstitutionally dispersed the Parliament (also known as the Supreme Council or Supreme Soviet), and the Parliament responding with a preparation for the impeachment of Yeltsin.

30 years is a long enough stretch to time to be able to look at the events of that Autumn with a critical eye, yet short enough for many of the contemporaries and direct participants of the evens to be around to remember what was happening on both sides of the barricades. In a few weeks I will finish translating a documentary that does just that. But first, a short look at the political spread in 1993 both internally and coming from the USA. And this publication will be concluded with a fragment of the last interview with one of the main participants of the stand-off, who defended the Parliament – Ruslan Hasbulatov, who passed away on the 3rd of January 2023.

In the previous post, Autumn of 1991 as a Prelude to the “Black October” of 1993 and the “Wild ’90s” in Russia, I described in short the turmoil of the Autumn of 1991. Back then Yeltsin played a major role in the breakup of the USSR, and it was he who, in a feat of projection, accused the SCSE – which tried to save the country – of being the coup-makers. At that time Yeltsin became an important asset in the US State Department’s arsenal, one that the USA would have been loath to lose. In 1993 Yeltsin had the complete backing of the USA, but his ability to give external control to Russia was severely limited by the Parliament. This lead to passing of the unconstitutional Decree 1400. At the same time the experience of 1991 was again used, with the Parliament being presented as coup makers, and not as defenders, in the public view. The liberal crowd began an assault on the Constitution, basically saying who needs a Constitution like this (meaning, where Yeltsin cannot do anything he wants).

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Autumn of 1991 as a Prelude to the “Black October” of 1993 and the “Wild ’90s” in Russia

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This autumn marks a sombre anniversary – 30 years since the bloody events of autumn 1993, which cemented Russia’s fate for the next 7 years and set the stage for the “Wild ’90s” and the “Desolation of Yeltsin” that almost destroyed Russia. I had several posts on the pages of this blog about the “Wild ’90s”, which are easiest accessed through the corresponding tag. Some of these posts are:

This is the first in a series of three articles I have planned for this autumn to remember the events of 1993. In this material I want to start by looking at August of 1991 through a series of short video materials – a time when the USSR was still around, and when it all really began.

First, let’s watch one aspect of the president of the USA G.W.Bush visit to the USSR – his speech before the congress of deputies of the Ukrainian SSR. Pay attention to the wording that Bush used in his speech, what emotions it played on.


(Original publication on Putinger’s Cat Telegram channel)

Three weeks after Bush’s visit, the USSR was engulfed in a coup d’etat, the so-called SCSE – The State Committee on the State of Emergency, or GKChP as it is known in Russian. I remember it as a highly-chaotic time, trying to tune in on some radio stations in Moscow and the “enemy voices” – Voice of America and Radio Svoboda, trying to make sense of what is happening. The information was very conflicting, and it was presented as if SCSE grabbed the power in the USSR, trying to depose Gorbachev.

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The purchase deed of Kiev by the Russian Kingdom from Poland is valid still

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As an addendum to the post “An Honest Deal. How Peter I Bought the Baltic Territories from Sweden. With a bonus about an earlier purchase of Kiev.”, I mentioned the purchase of Kiev by the Russian Kingdom, a deed that is still legally binding to this day.

Here is an expanded article, which is a blend of a translation of a WebArchived copy of a Dzen post and the previous publication, mentioned above.

Russia forever bought Kiev from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the purchase deed is valid till this day

In 1686 Russia acquired Kiev for 146 thousand roubles, concluding an agreement with the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth on “Eternal Peace” – this peace treaty regulated the division of the Getmanate. The de jure agreement is still in effect, by analogy with the sale of Russian Alaska to the United States.

The parties began long negotiations on the price that Moscow would pay to Warsaw “out of brotherly friendship and love” — this is how the diplomats officially formulated the purpose of the payment in 1686. The bargaining for Kiev went on for several months. Although the Polish Sejm ratified the document only in 1764, seven tonnes of silver were paid immediately by the Russians, and the deal was concluded.

Converted at today’s exchange rate, the cost of Kiev at the end of the XVII century amounted to slightly more than 397 million roubles, and if we count using the price of silver, to 133 million roubles. Anyway, at that time it corresponded to about 10% of the annual budget of Russia.

The Tzar (Ivan V Alekseevich, co-ruling with Peter I) feared that Poland would use the proceeds to modernize and expand the army, but the money were divided among the patrimonial nobility of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and did not contribute to the militarization of the neighbouring state. At the same time, Ukraine became known on European maps as “Okraina” (“Borderland”).

Formally, the purchase deed for Kiev within the framework of the “Eternal Peace” is still valid. Two centuries later, in 1867, Alexander II sold Alaska to the United States for 7.2 million gold dollars.

As a postscript: After the dissolution of the USSR, the borders between Russian Federation (the legal heir of the USSR, the Russian Empire and the Russian Kingdom) and Ukraine (first appeared on the map as a state in 1992) never underwent the procedure of demarcation. As such, it has large legal repercussions for the international relations. The following article gives a good introduction into the matter, also touching on the demarcation of borders between RF and China: Demarcation of borders is … The problem of demarcation. Ukraine did not and did not properly register in the UN the demarcation of its borders as a state