Tag Archives: Crimea

Who and How Transferred Crimea into Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1952-1954

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Below is my translation of a very informative article by Mihail Smirnov, published in Svobodnaja Mysl’ (Free Thought).

It is worth noting, that when the author points out the Russian roots in Crimea, he is most probably referring to the Scythians, who are just the same people as Rus, but going under a different name. See my summery of the documentary Yes, Scythians Are Us.

When reading the text below, note one historic peculiarity of USSR of that time. While 14 republics were almost always denoted by their national name – e.g Ukrainian SSR (Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) – there was one exception. In USSR no one spoke of Russia, to the extent that the existence of Russia as a republic was largely forgotten. Instead the acronym RSFSR was always in use (decoded as Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic).

At the end of this post, after the main article, I present my translation of the closing speech by K.E Voroshilov from the stenography of the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from the 19th of February 1954, which is an important historical evidence, setting the stage for the transfer of the peninsular and the expectations connected to the act.

It was not Hrushov, who made the decision on the transfer of Crimea, but his rabid anti-Stalinism and voluntarism became the propelling power behind this whole undertaking. There were no objective reasons for this decision.

In the history of the presence of the Crimea within modern Ukraine, which, as it is now widely known, began with the official transfer of the Crimean region of the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 and is associated with the name N.S.Hrushov, you can set apart the pre-history, that is the actually history of decision-making on behalf of the Crimea, from hatching of the idea to the party-bureaucratic mechanism for its implementation.

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Ukraine: Still Smouldering Tinderbox (I) [Re-blog with comments]

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Below is a re-blog of Michael Jabara CARLEY’s article Ukraine: Still Smouldering Tinderbox (I) published at the Strategic Culture Foundation site.

But before I present the text, I want to add a few comments of my own, which the reader can keep in mind while reading the article.

The city of Odessa was founded in 1794 by Russian Empress Catherine II and was the first free trade port in Russia.

The city of Nikolaev was founded in 1789 by Russian Count Potjomkin as a ship-building docks. It got its present name in commemoration of the victory by the Russian troops, when Turkish fortress Ochakov was taken in 1788 on the day of St.Nikolaj.

Regarding what the American handler of the Ukrainian puppet government, Proconsul Pyatt was saying, that Russia wants to “create Novorossia”. Russia has no need to create Novorossia. Novorossia is actually an old concept – it was an administrative region within Russia at the time, when the European emigrants were still stealing the land from the Native Americans. For an in-depth look at Novorossia, see my article Two Ukraines.

Ukraine is indeed a smouldering tinderbox. For a look at what is going on, I recommend watching the English-subtittled Donetsk Republic’s Ministry of Defence Briefing: Jan. 29, 2016 Ceasefire Violations by Kiev, published at Lada Ray’s blog.

And finally, I disagree with the author’s conclusion in the last paragraph. Putin is not intimidated, but is rather trying to resolved the conflict and free Ukraine from the American occupation diplomatically and not militarily. There was also no homogeneous resistance in Donbass, but rather several groups with varying interests, which were united by not wishing to cow-tow to the coup government. This cost Donbass the loss of momentum. The situation is all to close to what Russia (an by that I also mean Ukraine) experienced after the coup d’etat of 1917 and the subsequent civil war and Western interventionism…

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Yes, Scythians Are Us

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RTR Planet has recently aired a very thorough documentary, titled “Yes, Scythians Are Us”.

The documentary looks back through time, investigating who where Scythians, why they abruptly disappeared and Sarmatians turned in their stead, followed by Slavs. They come to the conclusion that both Scythians, Sarmatians (Samaritans?) and Slavs are one and the same people, called by different names at different periods in history.

I will at a later point write a complete translation of this documentary, but for now, here are some of the highlights of the arguments for this theory:

  • Greek and Western European chronicles list people from the same period interchangeably referring to the people living between Dnieper and Urals as both Scythians and Rus.
  • There are linguistic connection between the surviving Scythian names (in geographic name) and Old Russian.
  • Scythian burial customs are exactly the same as Slavic/Russian pre-Christian burial customs.
  • Scythians lead a semi-settle way of life, which allowed then to develop crafts like gold forging and iron forging of high quality. Scythians used the same types of weapons and armour as Rus vitjas (warrior).
  • “Scythians” seems to refer to a collection of tribes living between Dnieper and Urals, where each tribe was specialised in a certain craft and added to the value of the whole nation. This collection of tribes in their organisation seems to resemble a modern federation.
  • Depictions of Scythians on their own items of art, as well as the Greek artefacts, shows people with distinct Slavic facial features and body complexion, and nothing of the Asian look.
  • And the most significant argument comes from genetics. Scythians share the same Y-chromosome marker as majority of people living now on the territory of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine – the marker, which classifies them in the Slavic Rus group.

UPDATE: I have translated the film, and it can be viewed at Yes, Scythians Are Us! (Documentary with EngSubs).

And just as an off-topic reminder: Holland is still holding Scythian – Russian – gold from the Crimean museums hostage.

And what about the restoration of the territorial integrity of Russia..?

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A few days ago, after having been insultingly absent from the memorial Parade in Moscow commemorating the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazism, Frau Merkel again started saying something about restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

With this in mind, I want to address in this article a large pink trumpeting elephant in the room, that all but a few Western politicians are studiously ignoring:

What about the restoration of the territorial integrity of Russia?

Ron Paul noticed in one of his articles that whenever forces are set in motion to split off a bit of Russia, these forces are hailed as democratic (like it happened in the 90’s with NATO-armed Islamic terrorist insurgency in Chechen Republic), and conversely, whenever peoples try to join Russia, they get vilified and demonised. As it happened with 2.4 million Crimeans, who for their democratic choice were put under sanctions, disconnected from international payment systems, and Apple and Google closed accounts of those that have some on-line data or development.

Over the last century, Russia’s territorial integrity was violated both illegally and illegitimately on many occasions – in the North, West and South of Russia. In this article I touch upon only three cases pertaining the state, still known today as Ukraine.

In 1917 a violent coup d’etat happened in Russia. It carried many of the characteristics of what later became known as “colour revolutions” – a small minority group, financed largely from the West, carried out a “red” revolution. As the result of this coup Russia became fragmented, large chunks of it being split off. Some, like Finland and Latvia had only lose affinity to Russia (and yet, Finland chose a Russian navy flag from the time of Peter the Great as a template for their own national flag). Other, like Georgia, joined Russia of their own accord to protect themselves and enjoyed centuries of such protection, while remaining largely self-governed. And then there were integral parts of Russia, part of its heartland – Belorussia, Malorossia, Novorossia, Crimea.

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“Sophie” against Canaris.
She fought for USSR, but became Hero of Russia

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This is my translation of WWII documentary article, published in “Argumenty i Fakty” on the 27th of March 2014.

Last year, 70 years later, the title of Hero of Russia (posthumously) was awarded to a resident of Soviet intelligence in Crimea, Alime Abdenanova.


Alime Abdenanova was a simple Crimean girl.

I leaf through a copy of the personal dossier of the Soviet intelligence resident in the Crimea, “Sofie”. These 15 sheets of Soviet military intelligence were long guarded, and got declassifying only in January 2008. The chiefs did not make a mistake in selecting her call sign, “Sofie”, which, in translation from the Tatar, means “pure, faithful”… And so was a Crimean Tatar Alime.

The individual case contains dry, standard words: was born in a suburb of Kerch on January 4, 1924, Tatar, finished seven years. Here is her receipt of observance of military secrecy, Komsomol card, presentation to the Order of the Red Banner, it even mentions her civilian salary – 375 roubles.

It would seem that’s a common characteristic of one of the thousands of Soviet military intelligence agents, who became a cog in a vast mechanism of Victory. Only one detail: thousands of Red Army soldiers who fought for the liberation of Crimea owe their lives to her. In her radiograms the girl passed on information about the transfer of German and Romanian troops through the station Sem’ Kolodezjej (Seven Wells). It is by her intelligence that our pilots bombed in Kerch fascist trains with soldiers and equipment. She held out in the German rear for six months. All in all, the fate measured out to Alime 20 years and 3 months of life.

So whose was Crimea?

On the eve of the war, Nazi historians gave Hitler some food for thought, saying that in ancient times Crimea was first settled by Goth tribes. And the Führer decided to ascend the peninsula to Germany, turning it into the country of the Goths – Gotenland, and making Crimea, after the war’s end, a resort area for the tops of the Third Reich.

Our troops – the 4th Ukrainian Front and the Special Coastal Army – reached the peninsular on autumn of 1943. But they could not overcome the German defence. They went almost blindly: there was no intelligence about the number and disposition of the German troops, and only the single line of defence of Kerch stretches for 70 km.

The groups of Soviet intelligence sent to the Crimea disappeared one after another. They were opposed by powerful groups of Abwehr (military intelligence and counterintelligence. – Ed.) – more than 30 groups whose activities were supervised personally by the head of the Abwehr, Wilhelm Canaris.

The decision of the Soviet intelligence was unexpected – they decided to send to Crimea a female spy group from among the Crimean Tatar. But such candidates were not in reserves of the intelligence. Searches were conducted across the country. In the Krasnodar hospital there worked a nurse Alime – Crimean Tatar, Komsomol member, athlete, blue-eyed girl with brown hair, who came from those parts.

They told at the hospital that before she went to the front, the beauty went to a dance at the local club – to dance, as it turned out, the last waltz in her life…

For two weeks Alime participated in the special training program for intelligence: skydiving, studied ciphers, methods of agent recruitment. Natural courage and quick-wittedness helped Alima to become a commander of a scout group, consisting of two people – the second was a radio operator, a merry Larissa Gulyachenko with the call sign “Proud”. Command intelligence gave Larissa the following description: “Truthfully, not afraid of difficulties, resourceful, dreamy.” Who could have known that everything in fact would turn out to be the opposite.

In early October, a small “plywood” plane, punching Crimean rainy night, dropped the group in the steppe. On landing Alime injured her leg and, leaning on the radio operator, reached with difficulty her birth-village of Germai-Kachik.

Seeing her granddaughter, grandmother Revide just threw up her hands, while a younger sister Azife was happy. Grandmother, of course, guessed that Alime’s girlfriend Taisia ​​(the name that was given to the radio operator) appeared in the village not only in order to visit relatives. Later it will be recorded in the personal file of the resident, that she was able to organize an extensive intelligence network from her relatives and co-villagers, which promptly supplied the front with information on the nature and system of fortifications, deployment of troops, headquarters, clustering of manpower and equipment of the enemy. When the radio sessions were held, her little sister went out into the yard and upon noticing strangers, she would laugh loudly and sweep the streets so that the dust was raising as a pillar – a danger sign for the radio operators.

Radiograms to the Center went almost every day. Using data from only one such transmission, our bombers punched into the dust 42 cars with enemy manpower. Alime and her radio operator were awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

Betrayed by her own

They weren’t sitting idly in the Abwehr either. The Germans began to realize that Soviet intelligence is working under their noses. Team “Hercules” distinguished itself, the head of which soon proved to Canaris that a Russian “radio-mole” works in Kerch. A radio finder was summoned from Simferopol, and spotted a station near the village of Germai-Kachik. There were only a dozen of houses there, and it was easy to deduce in which one the radio operator was working. Together with the Germans, there came to grandmother Revide’s house… the radio operator “Proud.” That very same “Proud” Larissa Gulyachenko, who having seen how the partisans were tortured, betrayed the whole group.

Gulyachenko attacked the younger girl, demanding to be shown where she re-hid the station. Azife, protecting her sister, tried to keep quiet, but when the Germans threatened to shoot her grandmother and burn the house, she showed the hiding place in the barn.

Alime was taken to the town of Stary Krym, and thrown into solitary confinement. She was not allowed to sleep, starved, the nails were pulled from her fingers, her arms were broken. An underground fighter, Tamara Stroganova, inmate of the same prison, recalls: “I knew Alime well. My brother loved to dance with the lithe mobile girl. Large blue eyes. And then I hardly recognized her: in the bloody dress, with broken arms, bruised, once splendid hair were almost completely torn out. Seeing me, Alime put a finger to her lips as if to say: You do not know me… I’ve never seen her after that.”

According to some sources, spies were shot on the outskirts of Simferopol, in the vicinity of the farm “Krasnaja”. There the fascists threw about 300 Crimeans, including those still alive, into a concrete pit.

Alime’s niece Dzhevar Assanova tells:

– One of our elders told me that the soul Alime is flying over the village and can not find the rest. At first we did not believe, and then began to collect money for the monument to Alime. And we set it – near the road Kerch-Simferopol. Praised be Allah, the soul of Alime is in peace.


Money for the monument to Alime were collected by family and friends. Photo: From the family archive

Crimea.
The Path to the Homeland. A review of a documentary film.

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A definitive documentary on the reunification of Crimea with Russia is aired today. Here is a quick translation of the blurb as presented on Rossia TV site.

This full-length documentary was conceived to preserve the history of every major episode of events that took place in the Crimea in the spring of 2014. Filming lasted for 8 months and covered Foros, Sevastopol and Simferopol, and Kerch, Yalta and Bakhchisaray; Feodosia, Djankov, Alushta and a dozen settlements of the Crimea. A long conversation with Vladimir Putin was recorded while the events were fresh, and later, more than fifty interviews with participants and witnesses of the Crimean spring. How it all began? How Russia received an official request from the legitimate president of Ukraine to save his life?

It was an operation, the likes of which has not been seen in recent world history. Vladimir Putin himself reveals a year later all the details of how a few kilometers before the ambush with machine guns, Viktor Yanukovych had been secretly evacuated, and a detailed reconstruction is dedicated to it in this film.

“It was the night of 22 to 23 February, finished at about 7 am, and I let everyone go and went to sleep at 7 am. And, in parting, I will not deny, when parting, before everyone left, I told all my colleagues, there were four of them, I said that the situation in Ukraine turned out so that we have to start working on the return of the Crimea to Russia. Because we can not leave the area and the people who live there to fend for themselves, under the roller of the nationalists. And I put forth some tasks, said what and how we should do, but immediately said that we will do so only if we are absolutely convinced that this is what the people themselves who live in the Crimea want”, – said in an interview Vladimir Putin.

So the first order, which was given by the president, concerned not the security services and the Ministry of Defence, but his administration, which experts and sociologists conducted a closed survey in the Crimea. What questions answered Crimeans, when even the word “referendum” was not yet spoken?

“It turned out that of those wishing to join Russia, there 75% of the total population. You know, a closed survey was conducted, outside the context of a possible merger. For me, it became obvious that if we come to this, the level or the number of those who would like to this historic event to occur, would be much higher, “- said the Russian president.

Korsun pogrom. How many people were killed or missing after Ukrainian nationalists attacked the convoy of the Crimean people and burned their buses? How a militia of the Crimea was formed? Who was its leader?

How “polite people” first appeared in Crimea? Who were they, by whose orders were they sent to the peninsula? And how long did the special operation take the resulted of which on the night of February 27 was to take under control of all key government buildings?

“The ultimate goal was not to capture the Crimea and do some annexation. The ultimate goal was to give people the opportunity to express their opinion on how they want to live. I tell you quite frankly, honestly tell you. I thought for myself, if people want, then so be it. So if they will be there with greater autonomy, with some rights, but as a part of the Ukrainian state. So be it. But if they want a different way, we we can not leave them! We know the results of the referendum. And we did what was required to do!” – said the Russian leader.

How did they managed without bloodshed to disarm 193 military bases of Ukraine in the Crimea? What was the secret of the Black Sea Fleet, which invited Ukrainian colleagues to negotiate exclusively to Hersonissos? How did they manage to close in the bays Ukrainian Navy ships? But why did it not go without assault and shooting in Feodosia?

How Russia came into contact with NATO units in the Crimea, and at sea, with the naval forces of the Navy? About what did Vladimir Putin talk in those days with Barack Obama? And how did our coastal missile complexes “Bastion” come to the Crimea, suddenly changing the whole course of events? Two outspoken interviews with Vladimir Putin, and all the episodes of the Crimean spring, which determined the course of Russia’s recent history – see in the film “Crimea. The Path to the Homeland.”

In the meantime, Yatsnejuk, in his typical evil clown amplua, threatens to create a film, titled “Crimea. Crime and Punishment.” Sure. He should know how to commit crime against humanity and to create punisher Nazi battalions that slaughter the population of Donbass (a fate, that was also slated to Crimeans by the West-Ukrainian coup-makers).

If ever a film under his proposed title is created, its full title will be “Crimea. Hrushov’s Crime and the Punishment of Ukro-Nazis”.

Two Ukraines – with a Statistical and Historical View at Novorossia

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The original article “Two Ukraines” appeared as blog by colonelcassad in Decmber 2013 in Russian.

I present here a translation of the article into English, with the infographics legend explained whenever feasible; but first I want to give some historical backdrop to where Novorossia comes from.

In his article Cold War Renewed With A Vengeance While Washington Again Lies Paul Craig Roberts very astutely writes:

The EU, ordered by Washington, told Russia to suppress the opposition in southern and eastern Ukraine to Washington’s stooge government in Kiev. But, as every educated person knows, including the White House, 10 Downing Street, Merkel, and Holland, Russia is not responsible for the separatist unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine. These territories are former constituent parts of Russia that were added to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet Communist Party leaders when Ukraine and Russia were two parts of the same country.

The county of Novorossia was established by the Highest Decree of the Russian Empress Ekaterina II in 1764 and existed until 1802, when it was divided into three smaller counties: Nikolaevskaja, Ekaretinoslavskaja and Tavricheskaja counties. The reason for creation of Novorossia countie on the former territories of Slavjano-Serbia was to create a buffer zone against Osmano-Tatar aggression

Below is the maps of the Novorossia:
1800_Novoros_gov

And here is the Ekaterinoslavskaja county shown against the borders of Ukraine:
Gubernia_de_Ekaterinoslav_-_Imperio_ruso

Here is what Ukraine consited of until February (Crimea made a lucky escape and re-joined Russia):
Ukraina1653
Legend:
Light yellow – Zaprozhje – Ukraine before 1654
Orange – Presents of Russian monarchs between 1654 and 1917
Light-green – Novorossia – Lenin’s present in 1922
Medium-green (5+6) – Eastern Galicia – Stalin’s present of 1939-1940 (given to USSR according to Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement)
Dark-green – Crimea – Khrushjov’s present in 1954
Transcarpathia (9) – taken from Czechoslovakia in 1945
Northern Bukovina and Southern Southern (7+8) – captured by USSR in 1940

So bearing in mind that Ukraine is a collection of disparate lands, and remembering the Russian roots of the Cossacks living on the lands of Novorossia, the move performed by Lenin after the coup d’etat of 1917, in creating Ukraine and assigning to it the territories of Novorossia was a direct recipe for creating a problem for future generations.

The people of the East differ to much from their Polish-rooted Western cousins.

And now it’s time to introduce the translation of the blog post Two Ukraines.


(Legend: “Yukraina” to the left; “Yakraina” to the right, with percentage of people who voted for Yushenko or Yanukovich during the last legitimate presidential elections)

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Is the West gearing up to invade Russia once again?

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Starting in April 2014, I started a topic under the same name in the Politics & Society section of Bitcointalk forum. There were some telling signs of warmongering in the air. And those signs are only getting clearer and stronger. I present here a consolidated and expanded version of my posts in that thread.

But first, here are a few links on this topic that I came across – it’s not only me, who feels that the war is in the air:

A few days ago I watched a 2-year old Russian documentary, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812, about the information war, waged before and during the French invasion of Russia in 1812. The Film is called “The War of 1812. The First information War”.

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