“Blooming Youth” – the All-Union Sports parades on the Red Square in 1938 and 1939

Reading time: 4 minutes

We present the All-Union Sports parades held on the Red Square in 1938 and 1939, with our translation of the 1938 event. The materials were initially published at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Blooming Youth (1938)

A newsreel depicting the All-Union Sports parade on the Red Square, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Lenin-Stalin Communist Union of Youth (Komsomol), which took place on July 24, 1938. It showed readiness to defend the Motherland. Many iconic marches and songs were performed, including “If Tomorrow Comes War” (see below).

Columns of athletes from Belarus, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, athletes from Voluntary sports societies pass in front of the audience.

On the podium of the Lenin Mausoleum, I. V. Stalin, K. E. Voroshilov, V. M. Molotov, S. M. Budyonny, M. I. Kalinin, A. A. Andreev, A. I. Mikoyan, L. M. Kaganovich, N. A. Bulganin, Hero of the Soviet Union pilot M. M. Gromov. This is one of the first Soviet colour films.


Backup at Rumble.

Trivia:

The film, directed by Nikolai Solovyov, is originally in colour. According to the information on the Internet, the film was shot using the three-colour method. However, according to Wikipedia, the first film shot with a three-film camera “CKS-1” of domestic make, was “Blooming Youth” created in 1939, presented below. That is a different film with a similar title, also about the Red Square parade, but held a year later, it has been preserved in decent quality.

The method of shooting the 1938 film “Blooming Youth” requires further clarification.

This film was shown in the 90s on the “Kultura” TV channel. An incomplete recording was wide-spread on the Internet, ending at the 20th minute. Thanks to the newly digitised VHS recording, which was made at the same time, it was possible to restore the full version of the film. Source.


If Tomorrow Comes War

This is the theme song from the 1938 film of the same title. The film celebrates Soviet military power and shows the Soviet people what the war will be like when the imperialists attack the USSR – fast, victorious, almost bloodless. The film is based on documentary footage shot during real manoeuvrers of the Red Army, and play episodes with actors.
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German POW convoy through Moscow (July 17, 1944)

Reading time: 3 minutes

The 10-minute-long 1944 documentary went under the title «The convoy of the German POWs through Moscow» and show both the preparatory part and the actual passage of the «Parade of the Vanquished», which took place on July 17, 1944. 57,600 German soldiers and officers captured during Operation Bagration marched along the Garden Ring and other streets of the Russian capital. Among the prisoners were 19 generals, leading the column in uniforms adorned with medals. Watering vehicles followed the procession, symbolically cleansing the ‘dirt’ from the roads.

The event, showcasing the Soviet Union’s strength in WWII, left a lasting impact on the citizens of Moscow and international observers.


Backup at Rumble.

👉 At 6:41 one can see the entrance to the exhibition “Trophies of the Great Battles” at Gorky Park, a documentary about which we translated earlier.

The material is also available at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”


One can read a detailed account of the event in an article “Parade of the Vanquished” at TopWar:

Hitler’s generals on Gorky Street, escorted by NKVD soldiers.

17 July 1944, Moscow residents were shocked by the appearance of a column of Nazis in the city. “Operation Big Waltz” – this code, apparently, the unofficial name of this indicative action in the NKVD.

Its participants are generals, officers and soldiers of the German fascist army group Center, utterly defeated in the summer of 1944, in the Belarusian strategic offensive operation Bagration. The losses of the enemy turned out to be much higher than in the “Stalingrad catastrophe”. However, the allied press expressed great doubt in such an impressive defeat of the Nazis. The information war has already gained momentum …

It was then that in the leadership of the USSR the idea was ripe to demonstrate to the world the successes of the Red Army and to carry a huge mass of German prisoners led by their beaten generals through the streets of Moscow.

“Show them to the whole world.”

In the epic “Liberation: the direction of the main attack” there is a short but apparently historical episode: Stalin, after hearing the report of the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Army General Alexei Antonov (“MIC”, No. 17, 2017) about the defeat of the German fascist troops in Belarus, in its characteristic manner, says quietly: “You take prisoners, and neither enemies nor allies believe you. Do not hide your prisoners, show them, let everyone see. ”

Why was the operation called the Great Waltz? Maybe because the main element of this ballroom dance is spinning in a circle? After all, the movement of the column of prisoners of the Nazis was also planned in a large circle – along the Garden Ring …

👉 Continue reading at TopWar

Victory Parade in Moscow on June 24, 1945. With English subtitles and in colour

Reading time: 16 minutes

On June 24, 1945, the first parade dedicated to the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War was held in Moscow on the Red Square. The combined regiments of the fronts, the combined regiment of the people’s Commissariat of defence, the combined regiment of the Navy, military academies, military schools, and the troops of the Moscow garrison were brought to the Victory Parade. The parade was commanded by Marshal of the Soviet Union K. K. Rokossovsky, and the parade was taken by Marshal of the Soviet Union G. K. Zhukov. From the podium of the Lenin Mausoleum, Stalin watched the parade, as well as Molotov, Kalinin, Voroshilov, Budyonny and other members of the Politburo.

We celebrated the 80th anniversary of the Victory Parade at our Telegram channel “Beorn And the Shieldmaiden”, starting at this post.


From the Telegram post of the Russian Foreign Ministry:

During the preparations for the Parade 12 regiments were created and trained, representing all the Red Army Fronts that took part in the fighting against the Nazi invaders. Each regiment included over 1,000 distinguished & honoured Red Army soldiers and officers, Heroes of the Soviet Union and cavaliers of the Order of Glory.

The ceremony involved in total 298 infantry platoons, 13 cavalry squadrons, and 350 artillery batteries, including 386 guns and 613 armoured vehicles. Commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel General Pavel Artemyev, was in charge of organising and overseeing the Parade.

The Victory Parade began at 10 am and lasted for two hours. Soviet Union Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky commanded the units, while Marshal Georgy Zhukov reviewed the parade teams. The Parade was in many aspects highly symbolic, even as regards the breeds and colours of the horses rode by the two great Soviet Marshals — Zhukov rode a light grey Tersk horse as a symbol of glory and victory, while Rokossovsky rode a black horse symbolising honour and grace.

After the Marshals reviewed the units and greeted the participants, a military orchestra with 1,400 musicians marched into the centre of Red Square to perform “Glory,” a patriotic song composed by Mikhail Glinka. Georgy Zhukov then ascended the podium on the Lenin Mausoleum to deliver his famous address:

“Mankind has been liberated from German Nazism — humanity’s deadliest enemy.

For three years, the Red Army had to fight against Germany and its satellites on its own. Throughout the entire war, the Nazi army had to keep its main forces on the Soviet-German front — this is where the Reich’s war machine was crushed, and this is where the victorious ending of the war in Europe came from.”

When Marshal Zhukov concluded his remarks, the state orchestra performed the national anthem, and 50 rounds of fireworks were fired from the Kremlin walls. This is when the Red Army columns — over 40’000 soldiers and officers and 1,850 units of armour vehicles and military equipment.

At the end of the celebrations, to the sound of 80 drums beating, a column of Soviet soldiers threw 200 banners of the defeated Nazi Wehrmacht onto the ground near the Mausoleum. These banners had been selected by a special commission from among 900 trophy banners brought from Germany.

The Parade ended at noon to the tune of the Moscow Garrison’s composite brass orchestra. Overall, 24 marshals, 249 generals, 2,536 officers, and 31,116 non-commissioned officers and soldiers took part in the procession. The celebrations culminated with an image of the Order of Victory floating in the sky.


After the June 24, 1945, the Victory Day parades were held in the USSR 3 more times – at the anniversary dates on the May 9, 1965, 1985 and 1990. Next time it was conducted in already Russia on the 9th of May 1995, and then annually after that date. In the USSR military parades were customarily held annually on the 7th of November, commemorating the October Revolution.

While translating Zhukov’s speech, based on the Russian transcript here, we found a disconcerting detail: the B/W documentary was edited to remove any reference to Stalin’s contribution and guidance! It seems the editing was done during the time, when Hrushev waged his personal vendetta against Stalin’s memory. The colour version, though it does not include Zhukov’s speech, has Stalin “rehabilitated” and properly referenced.

‼️ It was only on the 75th anniversary of the Victory, that Georgy Zhukov’s speech could be heard for the first time without redactions — in the two and a half reconstructed video of the Day of the Victory Parade, presented in a separate article.


Backup at Rumble. An older version on YouTube

This film was the first colour film in the USSR, shot on single tape (previously, a three-colour method was used for colour films). The Victory parade on June 24, 1945 was filmed on German trophy film from the warehouse of “Agfa”. After the film was shot, it turned out that most of the tape had colour defects. As the colour films were not made in the USSR, there was not enough experience in working on colour correction. Therefore, the entire film was transferred to B/W film, and a 19-minute film was edited from the material that was of suitable quality. And many years later, in 2004, the Central State Archive of Film and Photo Documents restored the colour version of the film. The film was restored, removing all mechanical damage to the film, restoring the colour and transferring the image to modern colour film.



Backup at Rumble. An older version on YouTube

👉 Source of the B/W is the USSR State Television and Radio Fund via the Russian MFA.

The article was originally published on May 9, 2020 with video uploaded to YouTube Back then, in order to re-upload the film the subtitles, the footage of the B/W film was downloaded from the Classics of the Soviet Cinema YouTube channel. There was one quote in a viewer comment there, which was especially poignant (note that 9 million is the number of combatant losses according to the early estimates after the war, the total number of the Soviet citizens who lost their lives during the Great Patriotic War is 27 million people):

Once my father expressed a piercing and terrible thought: “Ten thousand soldiers and officers of the armies and fronts participated at the principal Parade in honour of the Victory Day on June 24, 1945. The passage of the parade “boxes” of troops lasted thirty minutes. And you know what I thought? During the four years of the war, the losses of our army amounted to almost nine million dead. And each one of them, who gave the most precious thing to Victory – their lives! – is worthy to walk in that parade on the Red Square. So, if all the dead were put in parade formation, then these “boxes” would go through Red Square for nineteen days… ” and I suddenly, as if in reality, imagined this parade. Parade “boxes” of twenty by ten. One hundred and twenty steps a minute. In windings and boots, overcoats, and jackets, in caps, earflaps, “budenovki”, helmets, caps. And for nineteen days and nights this continuous stream of fallen battalions, regiments, and divisions would have passed through the Red Square. Parade of the heroes, parade of the winners. Think about it! Nineteen days!
— V. Shurygin

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World War II. Lies of the West — an RT documentary in 2 parts

Reading time: 2 minutes

In part 1


Backup at Rumble.

‘World War II: Lies of the West’ is a project by the Immortal Regiment of Russia. The documentary exposes the main myths about World War II that are propagated in the West, where they are regarded as the only historical truth.

Among these myths are claims that it was not the Soviet people who played a decisive role in the victory, but the Anglo-American allies, and that Stalin was supposedly equally responsible for igniting the war alongside the Hitler regime.

However, there are real documents and irrefutable evidence demonstrating how Western countries distort history to serve their own interests.

The film’s creator, Tatiana Borshch, is a well-known producer, screenwriter, and director of documentary films, as well as the winner of both Russian and international film festivals.

In part 2


Backup at Rumble.

Military experts and historians continue to debunk Western myths about World War II – the claim that the USSR was just as responsible as Germany for starting the war, for example.

In reality, the situation was quite different. The Soviet Union wanted to protect Czechoslovakia from a Nazi invasion, but in order to do this, the Red Army needed to pass through Poland. However, Warsaw refused to allow Soviet troops to cross its territory, as it sought to maintain neutrality. This decision further aggravated an already tense international situation and complicated the formation of an anti-Hitler coalition.

Today, the European Commission claims that American and British forces liberated Auschwitz from the fascists. As a result, Russia has not been invited to commemorative events marking the camp’s liberation for several years. In reality, it was Soviet soldiers who freed the surviving prisoners.

Western countries also refuse to acknowledge the genocide of the peoples of the USSR, despite the fact that the losses suffered by the Soviet Union – nearly 27 million military personnel and civilians – prove otherwise.

♦️♦️♦️

👉 At our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, We have re-encoded both videos to a mobile-friendly format.

Genocide: Justice Will Prevail – RT Documentary. Thoughts by Zotov on “Generalplan Ost”

Reading time: 5 minutes

The Third Reich war against USSR was never just about territory or resources.


Video at Rumble.

It was a campaign to clear ‘living space’. Under the Hunger Plan, grain would be stripped from southern Soviet lands, condemning 30 million people to starvation.

Mass killings of civilians was a part of Nazi strategy. Under the guise of ‘anti-partisan operations’, the Nazis wiped entire villages off the map across Soviet lands. They set up brutal death camps for POWs. Over 380,000 people were murdered in Rostov Region, while in Pskov Region, more than 600,000 civilians were exterminated.

One of the most horrifying episodes in this genocide was the siege of Leningrad. For 872 days, citizens endured unimaginable hunger, cold, and suffering. Recent estimates place the death toll at over 1,093,000 people.

Our film brings together historians, search teams, prosecutors, and forensic experts to reveal the scale of Nazi atrocities across the country: mass executions at a brick factory in Salsk, the murder of 54 children in a sanatorium in Teberda… These are just a few chapters in one vast, systematic crime called ‘genocide’.

The word ‘genocide’ didn’t even enter international law until 1948, after the main Nuremberg trials had already ended. At Nuremberg, Nazi crimes against civilians were recognised as crimes against humanity, and the guilt of the accused was firmly established.

But today, 80 years later, there are efforts in the West to rewrite that history and deny the scale of suffering inflicted on the Soviet people. That’s why it’s become necessary to formally and legally establish the full extent of Nazi crimes.

Over the past 5 years, Russian courts have reviewed archival records, examined new evidence, conducted modern forensic investigations, and gathered testimony from witnesses. Based on the total body of evidence, the courts have concluded: the Nazis’ actions constituted genocide.

🎦 Watch the new film by Vitaly (https://rtdoc.tv/author/70-vitaly-buzuev) Buzuev and Ekaterina (https://en.rtdoc.tv/author/205-ekaterina-kitaitseva) Kitaytseva ‘Genocide: Justice Will Prevail’.

Source: MTdocumentary

‼️ Read also our newly-translated article The European Genocide of the Russian People


Following is a Telegram post by Georgy Zotov, translated by “Siberian Matrëshka”:

Once upon a time, Germany developed a master plan called “Ost” (“East”)

It was initiated in 1940 by Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler. At first, Jews and Poles were taken into account, but after June 22, 1941, the main focus became the fate of the Soviet Union and the Slavic nationalities inhabiting it.
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Victory Parade. Moscow. 09.05.2010. Joint parade fragment

Reading time: < 1 minute


Backup at Rumble.

One has to be invited to march across the Red Square, and not so long ago, on the 65th anniversary of the Victory, many military formations of the Soviet republics (including Ukraine), as well as American, British and French ones participated in the Victory parade.

From our telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

“Once you know this, every PsyOp becomes obvious” – Chase Hughes’ video-analysis, with transcript

Reading time: 12 minutes

This is a free masterclass by Chase Hughes.

Are you being manipulated without even realising it? Manipulation Playbook — a detailed guide to recognising the 20 indicators of reality control used by media, corporations, and even governments to shape what you think, feel, and do.

From fear tactics and emotional scripts to the overuse of authority and timing tricks, this video breaks down how these strategies work and how you can spot them in real-time. Using the F.A.T.E. Model.

Resist manipulation, think critically, and stay in control of your perspective.

This isn’t just about uncovering the lies, it’s about empowering yourself with tools to stay grounded in a world full of noise and hidden agendas.

Thanks to Russian BaZa for bringing it up!


Machine-generated transcript of the video

Bonus: Download our exclusive PSYOP Detection Tool in the description to rate manipulation tactics on a 1-100 scale.

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“Black Pain”, a Chernobyl documentary by Alexander Igishev

Reading time: 3 minutes

“Balck Pain” – the title in Russian plays on the word “Chernobyl”, which means “Black stem”.

The short film by the Soviet director, documentarist, Chernobyl liquidator, and a real Human, Alexander Igishev.


Backup at Rumble.

Black Pain was filmed in 1987 in Pripyat at his own initiative. It was only after the reel got international approval that Odessa film studio, where he worked as a director at the time, started listing the film as its own. The film combines documentary footage from Pripyat with scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”, that was created 8 years before the disaster.

📖 At the end of the film, one can hear recital of the New Testament, Book of Revelations (6 : 12-17). The word “Chernobyl”, in addition to the literal meaning of “black stem”, is also the name of a grass – wormwood. The “Star of Wormwood” is an image from Revelations (8 : 11), referring to a star that shall fall upon the Earth and make the drinking water bitter, poison it.

Alexander Igishev’s works include films for children: “To Be a Human Being”, “I Am Hortitsa”, “The Fate of the Drummer”, and many other.

👉 Video source: From the YouTube channel of the grandson of the cameraman, Evgeny Kozinsky. YouTube deleted the source, so Evgeny re-uploaded it to HD Rezka (this hosting is “freedom-of-speeched” in the West, though). We also uploaded the untranslated source to Odysee and Rumble.

From our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”


The Chernobyl accident was a nuclear accident that occurred on Saturday, April 26, 1986, at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, 2.7 km from the city of Pripyat, 18 km from Chernobyl, and 17 km from the border with Belarus. It is considered the worst nuclear accident in history, and, along with the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, the most serious on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

🔻 Some facts about the Chernobyl tragedy:
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Soviet film about a Nazi-German false flag operation – A fragment of a 1985 film “Confrontation”

Reading time: 2 minutes

You are about to watch a fragment of the 1985 film Confrontation, based on the novel by Julian Semyonov of the same name, written in 1979.

The film is a drama-documentary, intertwining documentary footage with a dramatised plot of the novel.


Backup at Rumble.

Julian Semoynov is known for the usage of archival materials in the research for his novels, and the episode you are about to watch could very well have a real-life prototype.

The antagonist of the story, Krotov, defects to the Germans in 1941 and serves them. In 1945, through murder, he manages to assume a different identity, and only another murder that he commits in the 1970s leads the investigators onto his trail.

The German false flag operation, detailed in the episode, is situated subsequent to the liberation of Krasnodar from the fascists, which happened on 13th of February 1943, resulting in the order by Hitler, issued the next day, on the evacuation and the driving westwards of the population.

The operation must have taken place within a time frame from Hitler’s order until the first time Soviet troops crossed into Eastern Prussia on the 17th of August 1944.

The parallell between the film episode and the events in Bucha was so striking that the following was posted by us on the 5th of April 2022 in the article Bucha massacre – the script from the German Nazi false flags of 1945; Killing of the Russian POWs by UkroNazis

The UkroNazis are nowhere as thorough as their German Nazi “colleagues” were, so today we see a lot of plot holes in the UkroReich narrative. Back in 1945, the Germans used converted, now collaborating, Russian POWs, dressed in Soviet uniforms to do the killing (promising those POWs freedom), but then executing them on the spot to make a picture of a battle, where the Soviets would have seemingly killed the civilians, only to be killed by the Germans. And then the “indignant civilised West” in the face of the Red Cross observers would be invited to witness and document the false flag, thinking it was for real.

“How falsification of history works in our reality”, a lecture by Yegor Yakovlev

Reading time: 7 minutes

History can be rewritten. But it will remind you of itself with a new trouble, rooted in the forgotten past!

The quote of from our previous article The Hungarian “Revolt” of 1956 – a detailed historical look at the events, carrying an idea that we wish to explore more. In this article, we start with a lecture by Yegor Yakovlev on the topic of history rewriting, followed by several re-posts from Russian MFA, and from a friendly Telegram channel Baza.


How falsification of history works in our reality

🎙 Yegor Yakovlev, a prominent Russian historian and creator of Russia’s largest scientific and educational historical project, “Digital History,” explains in his lecture how history is often being manipulated becoming a powerful tool that serves one’s political agenda and goals. This is particularly evident in the West, with certain academicians and media pushing and shaping anti-historical and anti-factual narratives that serve the Western neoliberal elites’ agenda.


Backup at Rumble.

Yakovlev highlights several common techniques of historical falsification:

🔻 Distorting facts to fit a particular narrative;
🔻 Selective omission of inconvenient events;
🔻 Unjustly equating historical events;
🔻 Manipulating timelines to downplay certain events.

Through concrete examples Yegor Yakovlev challenges widespread fakes about Russia’s and Soviet Union’s history, including:

• The Kiev regime and Western ridiculous ahistorical attempts to label the 1932-1933 famine in the USSR as a genocide against the Ukrainian people by Soviet leadership;

• The selective focus on the Non-Aggression Treaty between the Soviet Union and Germany while ignoring the Munich Betrayal, which in fact boosted Nazi Germany’s expansionist policies, as well as constant Soviet attempts at creating an anti-Hitlerite coalition throughout the 1930s;

• The heinous false narrative that equates the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as equal aggressors in the outbreak of WWII, which distorts historical reality;

• Attempts to deny the Siege of Leningrad being a genocide, manipulating the timeline, facts & context of the events.

👉 Watch, learn & educate oneself to avoid being misled by Western and Neo-Nazi propaganda and fabrications that distort historical truth.


THE FALSIFIERS OF HISTORY WILL NOT WIN

The lies we are told about the history of Communism, so numerous, pervasive and conniving in their manufacture by ruling class agencies, will be easily dispelled in America the minute that history is concretely linked up with the struggles of today’s working class.
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World War Zero, or the so-called “Crimean” War. A documentary.

Reading time: 2 minutes

There was a question from one of the subscribers at a friendly channel if there exist an honest English-language documentary about the Crimean war.

As a matter of fact, there is one 4-part Russian documentary with English subtitles, from Star Media, called “World War Zero”

All 4 episodes can be accessed though this YouTube playlist. Make sure to turn on subtitles and select your language.

Here are the introductory lines of the first film:

The Battle of Sinop, 1853
These four hours of the battled passed quickly, like one minute.
The tension reached its utmost point, when the enemy broke down and opened fire.
In the blink of an eye the sky, the water, and the land were became red as flame and blood. That was a magnificent victory of the imperial fleet.
The entire world witnessed again the decisiveness and courage of the Russian warriors. It seemed that the Black Sea would be safe forever.
It only remained to wait till the sea becomes calm, the smoke from the fires disperses, and it would be safe again to approach the home coast, the bay of Sevastopol.
Only one person, the winner, a famous admiral, Nakhimov, standing on the deck of Empress Maria, understood: this was only the beginning of a terrible and merciless world war.
This war is most often called the Crimean War.
But the Crimean battles, including the famous defence of Sevastopol, are only a part of a greater war.
The warfare embraced vast territories, from the Baltic Sea and Arctic to the Caucasus and the Pacific Ocean.
The war was waged on the lands that were remote from each other, its players were pursuing global goals.
With every new step the ideological struggle was growing more intense.
These factors are signs of a world war.
That was namely the reason why the Crimean War of the mid-19th century was called the Zero World War.
It became a kind of a rehearsal for the upcoming First and Second world wars.

While we are on the subject, we have earlier written a short overview article on the topic: The “Crimean” War misnomer – A bigger picture

100 Year Anniversary of the Great Naturalist Gerald Durrell

Reading time: 8 minutes

We marked the 100th anniversary of Gerald Durrell with many publications and photographs at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, staring from this post. Let us also celebrate it here at Beorn’s Beehive!

100 Year Anniversary of Gerald Durrell

A great British naturalist, writer and one of the pioneers in animal conservation, Gerald Durrell, was born on January 7, 1924.

From a very young age he developed a fascination with and a love for the animal kingdom. This love and humility of our place in this world shone in his books. This love lead to the search for ways to save the animals that are on the brink of extinction, often-times because of human ignorance and activities. Durrell envisioned zoos not as places for the amusement for the visitors, but as tiny safehavens for the endangered species, where they could be bread and re-introduced back into the wild. This was a revolutionary vision at the time when he, against all odds, managed to establish such a zoo on the island of Jersey.

And the books that Gerald Durrell has written throughout his life shine with that boyish fascination and enthralling narrative. They inspire both children and grown-ups to see the world around them differently.

Durrell’s book were translated to Russian and were readily available in the libraries in the USSR, and many a kid, including yours truly, immersed themselves in every book by Durrell that they could get their hands on, travelling with him, laughing at his witty humour and pondering his insights!

In 1984 -1985, Gerald Durrell visited the USSR to film the series “Durrell in Russia”. In fact, his film crew was the first Western film crew to be allowed to film in the USSR, and to travel across the whole Union — such was the respect and trust extended to this remarkable man.

🦧 The legacy of Gerald Durrell’s work lives on, in the Jersey Zoo (https://www.durrell.org/), in many education and species reintroduction projects across the world. And thanks to support and donations from people with kind hearts, who do not remain indifferent, like Gerald Durrell himself.


The Jersey Zoo

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Exhibition of Samples of Trophy Weapons (1943-1948). An article and a documentary.

Reading time: 12 minutes

The article you are about to read is dedicated to the exhibition of the weaponry from Germany and their accomplices, trophied after their invasion of the USSR on the 22nd of June 1941.

On the 22nd of June 1943, exactly two years after the Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, the central park of Moscow, bearing the name of Maxim Gorky, opened its gates to an extensive exhibition over the trophied armaments of Nazi-Germany and its accomplices. The exhibition lasted until 1948.

The article consists of three parts: first comes the cinematographic essay, filmed in 1943 to give an overview of the exhibition, then a short note with the documents from Moscow City Archive, and finally, a portion of a historiographic work, dedicated to the exhibition.

Only one thought to add – the tradition that started during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 has now seen a rebirth during the present-day Patriotic War, with the exhibition of the weaponry of the Nazi Germany’s successor being displayed on the Poklonnaya Mountain in Moscow from the 1st of May 2024.

We publish about the trophy exhibition, past and present, at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, for example in this and this post.

Let’s go!


Trophies of the Great Battles

A short cinematographic essay, filmed in colour, presented the visible testimony over the ongoing victories on the battlefield over the invading horde.

The essay is full of jabs and snide remarks, mixed with facts and figures – just the way we like to watch the parallel present-day events unfold now, 80 years later.


Backup at Rumble.


Visible evidence of our victories: The Moscow Main Archive tells about the exhibition of captured German weapons

23.04.2020

The Main Archive of the capital contains documents documenting the creation of an exhibition of samples of weapons and military equipment trophied by the Red Army in battles with Nazi troops and their allies. The exposition was opened on June 22, 1943 and operated until 1948.

The decision to create an exhibition pavilion “Trophies of War” on the territory of Gorky Park was made back in December 1941, when the successful counteroffensive of Soviet troops near Moscow provided residents of the capital with exhibits of the most diverse kind. In 1942, the exhibition pavilion began to operate. However, it was located deep inside the territory of the park, near the border with the Neskuchny Garden, and did not attract mass attention. A more impressive demonstration of our combat achievements was needed.
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Russia Running Out of Weapons 2.0 – A Documentary

Reading time: 3 minutes

The musical documentary was initially published on our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, making it the inaugurating post there!

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!


Backup at Rumble.

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“The Murder of Yugoslavia. The Shadow of Dayton.” A Documentary by Aleksei Denisov with English subtitles.

Reading time: 24 minutes

In 2015 the Russian news agency VGTRK released documentary film “The Murder of Yugoslavia. The Shadow of Dayton”. Back then I wrote about it in Two Documentaries: “Murder of Yugoslavia” and “Democracy of Mass Destruction”, and also translated the summary, but did not undertake the translation of the documentary itself. With the parallels in today’s Ukrainian conflict and NATO’s role in it, this documentary has become even more current than in 2015. In addition, with YouTube blocking the VGTRK channel in lieu of the West’s crack-down on the freedom of speech and democracy, the original untranslated documentary became impossible to watch even in Russian.

But before we proceed to the documentary, there is another material that provides additional context and outlines many parallels with the civil war in Ukraine.

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