Tag Archives: history

April 1 — The Day of Price Reductions in Stalin’s Time

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Stalingrad Pravda, April 1, 1953
“On the new reduction of the state retail prices for food and industrial goods”

Today at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden” we mark the true power of April the First – the day we were asked to forget!


Backup at Rumble.

On this day, every year, under Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, there was yet another price reduction for all basic types of food and industrial goods. The regular post-war Stalinist reduction of prices for products and industrial goods was carried out from 1947 to April 1, 1954.

And after Iosif Stalin passed away, the other government gradually curtailed the annual price drop, advertising April 1 as a Fool’s day.

Video source

But that is not all!

The CIA feared that the USSR would… reduce the working day

The Soviet Union proposed this measure and doubled the standard of living to solve the problems it was facing at the time, such as the lack of wage control, insufficient economic efficiency, and a shortage of urban labour. Why did it work? And why did it worry the U.S. so much?

In 1956, the USSR implemented a wage increase that, within a decade, increased from 250 rubles per month to 500 and 600 for rural and urban workers respectively. It also reduced the working week from 48 hours to 41 over four years, with a view to further reducing it to 35 by 1968.

At first, the CIA was not concerned because it believed that reducing working hours would limit Soviet production and productivity, but by 1961, it was deeply concerned (remember, we are in the midst of the Cold War) that not only had these conditions not been affected, but they had actually improved in most cases.

With the reduction in working hours, hourly output increased by 10.5% in three years and by 10% in four. Employees performed better because they arrived more rested, given their more free time. Unemployment decreased, as more labour had to be hired to fill the vacant hours.

The reduction of the workday also enabled Soviet innovation. Since managers could no longer rely on long hours, they were forced to find advanced methods and develop new and improved technology to shorten working hours. This boosted both light and heavy industry.

Material from elOJOen, with the source at the CIA

The anniversary of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, and an unexpected turn in the “Wild ’90s”

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We shall start with the contents of the post from our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, where we marked the creation of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic, and proceed to the translation of an article from “Argumenty i fakty” from July 23, 2019, which takes a deeper historical dive into the topic, as well as uncovers an unexpected twist from the “Wild ’90s”. The article also adds more touches to the portrait of the late Genndy Burbulis.

On March 31, 1940, at the sixth session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in Moscow, the law on the transformation of the Karelian ASSR into the Union Karelo-Finnish SSR was adopted.

Most of the territories acquired by the USSR under the Moscow Peace Treaty, which ended the Soviet-Finnish “winter” War (1939 – 1940), were transferred to the KFSSR.

At that time, the Karelo-Finnish SSR became the 12th Union Republic of the USSR, in connection with which amendments were made to the Constitution of the USSR. Petrozavodsk remained the capital of the KFSSR.

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In 1954 – 1955, relations between Finland, headed by President J. K. Paasikivi, and the USSR, headed by N. S. Hrushyov, began to improve. In early 1956, Paasikivi refused to run for a new term, and Urho Kekkonen was elected president in March.

On January 1, 1956, the USSR prematurely returned the territory of Porkkala to Finland, which it had received under the peace treaty, approved Finland’s neutrality and did not prevent its entry into the UN.

On July 16, 1956, the KFSSR was officially downgraded to the ASSR and returned to the RSFSR. At the same time, the word “Finnish” (Karelian ASSR) was removed from its name. The transformation of the KFSSR into the Karelian ASSR was supposed to show that the USSR had no aggressive goals regarding Finnish independence, and at the same time put an end to attempts by Finnish politicians to re-raise the issue of redefining the borders and annexing the western regions of Karelia (the Karelian question).

Source

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In retrospect, if such a change had not happened in 1956, Vyborg and Petrozavodsk would now be outside of Russia, while Murmansk would be in the position of Kaliningrad.

The price list of Burbulis. Was Russia going to sell Karelia to Finland?

In the early 1990s, Russia could lose Karelia. There was no talk of secession of the Russian region on the initiative of local authorities: the federal government was thinking of selling Karelia to neighbouring Finland.

15 billion for the “problem territory”

“The idea of selling Karelia back to Finland was an emergency decision by Russia due to lack of money in 1991,” writes Finland’s largest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, referring to the words of former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Fedorov.

According to Fedorov, in the summer of 1991, in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy, a working group was formed, which included Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Fedorov himself, as well as Boris Yeltsin’s adviser Gennady Burbulis. The group was engaged in compiling a list of regions with a high risk of the growth of nationalist sentiments and the strengthening of extremist movements, advocating their own autonomy. Karelia was also included in the number of high-risk zones, referring primarily to the territories annexed following the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940.

As Fedorov told Finnish journalists, Moscow was seriously considering selling the troubled territories for $15 billion, thereby replenishing the Russian treasury.
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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview for the No Statute of Limitations: The Front without a Frontline project, Moscow, March 30, 2025

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A reblog of the interview, published on the site of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Question: Mr Lavrov, could you please explain why there are attempts today to downplay or even completely deny the role of the Red Army and the Soviet people in the victory over Nazism?

Sergey Lavrov: It is a traditional position of the West to seek to weaken its competitors. Europeans dominated for about 500 years, primarily because they sought to conquer as much land as possible and enslave as many people as possible. Essentially, all of humanity’s tragedies that occurred before 1939, including World War II, were triggered by Europeans. From colonialism, slavery, and the Turkish wars, to the First and Second World Wars, these were all attempts by various powers in Europe to suppress their competitors.

In fact, there is nothing new about competition. People and states have always competed with each other. But the methods used by Europe to suppress its competitors were horrendous. These instincts are deeply ingrained in today’s European society, particularly in the elites currently in power in most EU and NATO countries. Although there is growing opposition against such actions, these policies still persist.

The instincts of the ruling class in Europe are clearly evident in what is happening in Ukraine – the war that the West has unleashed against the Russian Federation, using the Kiev regime as its proxy and paving the way for its juggernaut with the bodies of Ukrainians. Just like Napoleon mobilised almost all of Europe during the Patriotic War of 1812, and Hitler, after conquering most of Europe, put the French, Spaniards, and a large part of the continent’s countries under arms, this is also happening now. The French conducted punitive operations, and the Spanish participated in the blockade of Leningrad. This is a well-known fact.

Therefore, we can see even today that almost all of Western Europe has been mobilised to try to prolong the existence of the Nazi Zelensky regime. Just like during Hitler’s era, this is being done under Nazi flags, with SS Totenkopf chevrons, etc, and so on.

If we were to honestly describe the West’s contribution to the development of humanity, we would get an unseemly picture. That is why they are attempting to whitewash their actions and the actions of their predecessors. It’s no coincidence that the rehabilitation of Nazism is becoming one of the cornerstones of the West’s position in international discussions. At least, they vote against the resolution that the Russian Federation, along with its allies, submits annually to the UN General Assembly. This resolution calls for preventing the glorification of Nazism and similar racist practices.

They cynically try to insert amendments into this resolution, equating Russia’s actions – liberating people from Nazi oppression during the special military operation – with Nazism. But these attempts have not been successful, and I am confident that they will not succeed.
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“How falsification of history works in our reality”, a lecture by Yegor Yakovlev

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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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The Hungarian “Revolt” of 1956 – a detailed historical look at the events

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Declassified documents on the assassination of President Kennedy show, in particular, that the uprising in Hungary in 1956 was supervised and sponsored by the CIA.

The recent declassification of the JFK files had a welcome side-effect – it showed that a lot of what the Soviet Union was saying regarding the Western meddling was not some “conspiracy theory”, but solid conspiracy facts. One such fact, is the Western meddling the in bloody 1956 colour revolution attempt in Hungary. The other fact is that the “revolt” was in fact a fascist revanchist attempt.

In the presented materials it becomes clear how the pardon and release by Hrushyov in 1955 of hundreds of Hungarian nazi-criminals convicted of war crimes and atrocities committed during the Great patriotic War proved crucial to the organisation and conduct of the fascist counter-revolution attempt in October 1956.

In this article we present five materials, both from the English-language publications, and translated from Russian. Pay attention to their publication dates.

We shall start with 3 shorter publications, then moving to a longer illustrated article, which takes a broader historical perspective into account. Finally, there is a long article which references several contemporary Soviet notes and evaluations of the months and days before the attempted coup.

Read also the article “Hungary: bloody autumn 56” at TopWar!

Burn after reading: Operation Focus and the fictional Nemzeti Ellenzéki Mozgalom in the lead-up to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising

This article is only available as an abstract. It was published on December 8, 2022 as part of the book “Cold War History”.

ABSTRACT

From 1954 to 1956, the Free Europe Press, sister organisation to Radio Free Europe, engaged in a covert propaganda campaign known as Operation Focus. Writing under the alias of the fictional Hungarian partisan group Nemzeti Ellenzéki Mozgalom, the campaign encouraged widespread passive resistance against the communist regime through a coordinated print and radio campaign facilitated via specially-designed weather balloons and RFE broadcasts, respectively. Under pressure from the Hungarian and US governments, the campaign came to end just days before the outbreak of the 1956 Hungarian Rising.

MI6 trained rebels to fight Soviets in Hungarian revolt

– This article was published by “Independent” on October 22, 1996

Some of the rebels who took on the Soviet Union in the Hungarian uprising, 40 years ago this week, were trained by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) – popularly known as MI6 – according to the author of a new book on the history of the organisation.

Last night, the Foreign Office said it would not comment on “operational intelligence matters”. However, Michael Smith, the author of New Cloak, Old Dagger, to be published by Gollancz on 7 November, said: “The officers I spoke to said there was an intention to cause an uprising in Hungary.” But he added: “There is no evidence that this was specifically sparked by MI6 because there was another series of events”.

An estimated 15,000 mainly young, working-class Hungarians took up arms in the 1956 uprising, defying the might of the Soviet military for almost two weeks. An estimated 3,000-4,000 Hungarians died in the revolt, which represented the most serious challenge to Soviet rule in Eastern Europe since it was imposed following the Second World War.

In 1955 the reformist Hungarian prime minister, Imre Nagy, was forced to resign, and in 1956 the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced Stalin and his legacy. The clamour for reform began to grow. The revolt broke out on 23 October after more than 100,000 students took to the streets to call for free elections, the withdrawal of Soviet forces and the reinstatement of Mr Nagy. Small bands of fighters established pockets of resistance and demobilised scores of Soviet tanks.

Some of the weapons used were American, and others almost certainly British. Mr Smith says MI6 and the CIA had buried arms caches in the woods around Prague and Budapest for use by “stay-behind” parties or fifth columnists in case of war.

The mid-1950s were regarded by the British and the United States as the last chance to challenge Soviet dominion over eastern Europe. The Eisenhower administration had been elected on a platform of “liberating” the Soviet satellite states, but in the 10 years since the Allied victory in Europe, the Soviet Union had strengthened its hold over the central and eastern part of the continent.

The name of Mr Smith’s main contact – a military officer working for MI6 – has been withheld under a D-notice. However, he recalled “picking up agents on the Hungarian border” to take them across in to the British-occupied zone of Austria in 1954. “We were taking them up into the mountains and giving them a sort of … crash course. I would be told to pick somebody up from a street corner at a certain time of night in the pouring rain. Graz was our staging point. Then, after we’d trained them – explosives, weapons training – I used to take them back … We were training the agents for the uprising.”

In return, the British received information. Paul Gorka was one of a group of students recruited in the early 1950s to gather intelligence on Soviet activity in Hungary. “In due course we received coded messages from Vienna asking us for information about Russian troop movements … We replied with information written in invisible ink in innocuous letters to special addresses.”

Unfortunately the Budapest students met in a coffee bar to discuss their activities and were swiftly rounded up. Mr Gorka was interrogated for several weeks, strung up from a beam and immersed in icy water. Under torture, he confessed, and was sent to prison for 15 years.

Laszlo Regeczy-Nagy, the President of the Committee for Historical Justice, representing the interests of the veterans, said: “There were thousands of Hungarians living in Austria at the time and some were undoubtedly organised and trained by the British.” He believes that foreign intervention played a modest role, and “the vast majority of those taking part [in the revolt] were locally trained and led”. He added: “Even without training, they pretty quickly learned how to fire machine guns and hurl Molotov cocktails.”

The Liquidation or The Bloody Autumn of 1956

– Historian Nikolai Starikov published this blog post on April 29, 2017:

In my new book “War. With someone else’s hands,” I analyse in detail the causes, course and essence of the so-called “uprising” in Hungary in 1956. In fact, it was a rebellion heavily based on purely “colour technologies”. The United States and Great Britain stood behind it. What for and why did our “partners” need the Budapest uprising can be found in my book, which will appear in early June 2017.

This article was published a year and a half ago in one of the mass media of Kazakhstan. We are interested in it as a living historical document, as an eyewitness account. One that is telling the truth.

And the truth looks as follows:
1. There was a fascist uprising in Hungary in 1956. On the streets of Budapest and other cities, Hungarian fascists killed Hungarian communists.
2. The technology of organising an insurrection is tricky and simple at the same time: it is a cross between the Maidan in Kiev and Gorbachev. That is, “colour” technologies multiplied by the betrayal of the Hungarian elite led by Imre Nagy.
3. The USSR did absolutely the right thing by suppressing this rebellion. The Hungarian Communists did this alongside our soldiers.
4. The fault of the USSR leadership lies in that, by his actions at the beginning of “de-Stalinization”, Hrushyov created a pretext and a backdrop for rebellion and an attempt to split the Soviet bloc. There are only a few months between the Twentieth Congress and the uprising in Hungary…
5. During the rebellion, the “rebels” committed heinous crimes: murders, burning people alive, torture, robberies, rapes.
6. The West was not going to support the rebels at all, it needed the shooting in Budapest for completely different purposes. (the details are in my new book “War. By someone else’s hands”)
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The not so peaceful “Peaceful Germans”

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Exactly 80 years ago, the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil” had a special drawing by I.Semyonov in issue №9 from March 24, 1945.

On one page we observe “Peaceful Germans”: a doctor, a typist, two clerks getting their money… and a text at the bottom:

“We forcefully recommend to look at them against the light.”

🤔 What can that be?

On the reverse side of the page we are met with several mirror-image amendments!

The video simulates how that caricature would look once you shone the torchlight of truth at the deceptive images! Watch it in full screen.


Backup at Rumble.

The peaceful doctor is not so peaceful any more, the peaceful typist turns into a radio operator with a “code book”, the peaceful clerks are now seen getting money “for sabotage” and “for murder”!

‼️ There is a bit of context one has to keep in mind, when looking at the caricature. In the final months of the war, culminating in May 1945. the West started to present Germans as poor victims of the big bad Russian bear, with Goebbelsian propaganda myth about the misconduct of the Soviet troop, finding fertile ground in the Anglo-sphere. This caricature, as well as a number of others that we will present in time, aim to highlight this, puzzling to the USSR, change in attitude.

Here is a combined image, showing both the components and the combined result.

The materials are from our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, where the individual images can be downloaded in the comments section.

“Political Chernobyl has blown up.” How Burbulis justified the collapse of the USSR

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Despite the majority of the Soviet citizens speaking out in favour of the preservation of the Soviet Union, their will was completely disregarded. In this article, which was published by “Argumenty i Fakty” on June 20,2022, Gennady Burbulis is giving his justification for the process. We shall make a note of when he is referencing a Western-sponsored myth about the USSR as part of his justification. Make sure you have read first the article The referendum on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991: how Kravchuk deceived Sevastopol and Crimea, which uncovers the motivations for Kravchuk’s actions, which may seem as coming out of the blue in Burbulis’ story.

“Political Chernobyl has blown up.” How Burbulis justified the collapse of the USSR
– by Vitaly Tseplyaev

President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin and Secretary of State under the President of the Russian Federation Gennady Burbulis

Gennady Burbulis, one of the closest associates of the first President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin, died on June 19 (2022) at the age of 77. In December 1991, he held the position of Secretary of State of Russia, which was specially created for him, and played a crucial role in signing the Belovezha Agreements, which ended the existence of the Soviet Union. In a recent interview with AiF, Burbulis explained why he considered the collapse of the USSR to be an “optimistic tragedy” and did not regret what he had done.

— In December 1991, the Soviet Union practically did not exist. Moreover, a new Union Treaty had been prepared, and its signing was scheduled for December 9th. We chose this date specifically in order to wait for the results of the presidential elections in Kazakhstan and the referendum in Ukraine, which took place on December 1.

On Gorbachev’s initiative, on September 5, Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed to the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR to dissolve itself and create transitional governing bodies of the Union. And such a decision was made. There was no mention of the USSR in the text of the Treaty on the creation of the Union of Sovereign States (note the “Union” in the formula here! See: On March 17th 1991, the referendum on the preservation of the USSR was held) as a confederate democratic voluntary association, which was finally agreed upon in Novo-Ogaryovo on November 28-29.

Even before August, Gorbachev defended the erroneous formula of the 9+1 treaty, where 9 are republics and 1 is the Kremlin, the Union center. But by December, everything had changed. By that time, not a single organ of the union government was functioning normally. The country was on the verge of the most dangerous anarchy, and Gorbachev himself knew this best of all. Therefore, our decision (to sign an agreement on the establishment of the CIS in Belovezhskaya Pushcha on December 8. — Ed.) was vital and necessary. We had no choice.

“We spent the whole day trying to convince Kravchuk”

Vitaly Tseplyaev, aif.ru: — Why didn’t you wait for December 9th? Did you want to disrupt the signing of a new union treaty?

Gennady Burbulis: — Leonid Kravchuk said from the very first minute of our meeting in Belovezhskaya Pushcha that the mandate of the Ukrainian people, which he received in the elections and in the referendum, forbids him to discuss any options for a new Union Treaty: Ukraine declared itself a sovereign independent state. Such a categorical position came as a surprise to us. For a whole day we tried to convince Kravchuk that the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus cannot just leave for nowhere. It was unthinkable at the time. And after difficult conversations, reflections, and the realisation that a unique empire filled with nuclear weapons was disintegrating, in my opinion, it was Kravchuk who proposed this compromise form: the Commonwealth of Independent States. Here one can glean more than just a good analogy with the British Commonwealth.
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World War Zero, or the so-called “Crimean” War. A documentary.

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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

Oscar-winning film lies about the Red Army. A re-blog of MFA statement

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The re-writing of history is happening in two planes – the erasure of the actual history through the destruction of the monuments, and the implanting of a “new” narrative in the minds of the people. We told about the destruction of the monuments through a video clip from the film “Warsaw ’21” in the article “Warsaw ‘21” – a political thriller with a fragment on the essence of the Polish destruction of the Soviet memorials, while the alteration of the history with the “new narrative” is happening though the films, like the one criticised below.

For an additional story about the liberation of Poland, and how that event gets malformed in the minds of the Poles, see our 2015 article The Sorrow of a Warsaw Woman. Why Poland is not happy to be liberated from fascism?

Soviet and Polish soldiers plant the victory banner. Warsaw, January 1945. The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

Oscar-winning film lies about the Red Army

Nikolai LAKHONIN, Chief Counselor, Foreign Ministry Information and Press Department
March 17, 2025

The annual Oscars Academy Award ceremony attracts attention of the whole world. Recently, another such show took place. We would like to talk not about the American film Anora (rated R) with Russian actors (we congratulate them on their great success), but about the drama A Real Pain (rated R) directed by Jesse Eisenberg.

It is also an American film, made by Americans primarily for Americans and about Americans. This is important. The picture is about historical memory in the perception of American descendants who survived the Holocaust. The genre is a road film: the main characters travel to memorial sites, get acquainted with monuments in the Polish capital and go to the Majdanek concentration camp museum. The picture has already been seen by millions, and after it received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, even more people will see it. The screenwriters of such films lay down powerful narratives. And since they contain a distorted view of the most important events related to our country, we cannot remain silent.

The myth of the Red Army

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The referendum on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991: how Kravchuk deceived Sevastopol and Crimea

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This in-depth research and chronology article by Lyubov Ulyanova was published in the Sevastopol publication “ForPost” on November 30, 2022.

Without understanding the events and manipulations happening in the Ukrainian SSR in 1991, it is impossible to understand the mechanics behind the collapse of the USSR.

On March 17, 1991 the majority of the Soviet citizens voted for the preservation of the Union. But this vote was disregarded. Moreover, Ukraine held a referendum on independence, first denouncing the Union treaty of 1922, while Crimea was falsely assured that Ukrainian SSR has no intention of leaving the Union. This largely made the referendum on the secession of Crimea from Ukraine inevitable at some point in time, and that finally happened on March 16, 2014, after USA, dissatisfied with their already significant control of Ukraine, decided to push the country even further away from Russia though a Nazi-powered coup d’etat.

The article, while being long, is very much worth every minute that you will spend reading it, as it clears up many questions. One can summarise the key takeaways:

  • The “granite” colour revolution of October 1990, when protesters were taken with busses from Western Ukraine to Kiev.
  • Ukraine denounced the 1922 treaty, which means that Ukraine reverts to it’s pre-USSR state of not existing at all.
  • Ukraine expected to keep the borders as they were within the Union (i.e., following the 1922 Treaty and its amendments)
  • Ukraine used the “right to self-determination” to hold a referendum on independence
  • Ukraine denied Crime to have the UN-enshrined right to self-determination to hold its own referendum on independence
  • Ukraine promised that it will not leave the Union
  • Ukraine left the Union
  • Ukraine regarded USSR as “former”, non-existent
  • Ukraine deferred Crimea to the head of the USSR (Gorbachev) to repeal the 1954 decree of transfer of Crimea, thus recognising USSR as existing.
  • The process was closely guided from Canada and the USA
  • Crimea could appeal to the leadership of the USSR to repeal the 1954 decree, with a logical legal implication that as Russia is the legal heir of the USSR, Russia can repeal that decree on behalf of the USSR.

Watch also the following video, where Kravchuk speaks about the break-up of the USSR:

The referendum on the independence of Ukraine on December 1, 1991: how Kravchuk deceived Sevastopol and Crimea

Ukraine ratified a completely different text of the Belovezha Agreements compared to Russia and Belarus, and this calls into question the legal force of the Agreement as a whole.

Kravchuk distracted and deceived Sevastopol and Crimea in 1991.
The caption reads: “One must decide today that what can be decided today”. Date: 26.10.1991

Lapshin M.I. (Stupinsky territorial electoral district, Moscow region)… I have a question about the denunciation of the 1922 Union Treaty… Just look at the map of the USSR in 1922, and we will see that the states that have denounced the treaty today were located within completely different borders. Does the denunciation mean a return to the old days, when Russia was without the Far Eastern Republic, Kazahstan and Central Asia were part of the RSFSR, the border of Belarus was just west of the Minsk region, and Ukraine, to put it mildly, could show for itself quite different territory from what it currently has (most likely, it was, first of all, a hint at Crimea and Sevastopol – author note). Are we not creating the basis for huge territorial claims against each other by denouncing the Union Treaty?”

USSR 1922

This question, asked on December 12, 1991 by one of the deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR during the discussion in the Russian Supreme Council of the Agreement on the creation of the CIS, a few days after the “Belovezha”, was basically ignored by other participants in that discussion.

However, today, more than 30 years later, it cannot be said that this question was completely meaningless.
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On March 17th 1991, the referendum on the preservation of the USSR was held

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On March 17th 1991, the referendum on the preservation of the USSR was held. we are commemorating the event with a series of posts at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, as well as publications here and at our Odysee and Rumble channels.

The question at the referendum was formulated as follows:

“Do you consider it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of people of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?”

113.5 million people voted in favour of preserving the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, that is, almost 78% of those who voted.

In accordance with Art. 29 of the USSR Law “On National Voting” of December 27th 1990 No. 1869-I, a decision made through a referendum of the USSR is final and can be cancelled or changed only through a new expression of the will of the peoples of the USSR.

“The fate of the peoples of the country is inseparable; only through joint efforts can they successfully resolve issues of economic, social and cultural development”, stated the official commentary of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

On November 6th 1991, Yeltsin banned the Communist Party throughout Soviet Russia.

On December 8th, the will of citizens to live in a single multinational state was cynically and brazenly trampled on, when in Belovezhskaya Pushcha Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich, without any legal authority to do so, with the criminal inaction of Gorbachev, secretly signed an agreement from the people that “The USSR as a subject of international law and as a geopolitical reality ceases to exist”.

On December 25th Yeltsin officially dissolved the Soviet Union. Next day, USSR to longer existed.

Word to the Rector — on the disappearance of the CIS documents


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Russia is the legal successor of the USSR on the territory of all the Union republics.
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A posthumous sentence. How the French legalised Petlyura’s murder

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The extrajudicial execution of the Ukrainian Nazi Demyan Ganul yesterday bears a certain resemblance to the extrajudicial execution of the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and mass-murderer, Simon Petlyura, 99 years ago. Demyan Ganul was, among other, one of the people behind the Odessa massacre of May 2, 2014, for which a few days ago, the European Court of Human Rights has found Ukraine to be responsible.

Read on and compare. The article is from “Argumenty i Fakty”, published on October 26, 2014.

A posthumous sentence. How the French legalised Petliura’s murder

A bust of Simon Petlyura in Rovno, Ukraine.

Three shots fired at a Paris shop window

On May 25, 1926, a stranger approached a man who was looking at a street window at the corner of Paris Boulevard Saint-Michel and Rue Racine. After asking the man a question in Ukrainian and receiving an answer that satisfied him, the stranger took out a revolver and shot the man three times.

The shooter did not try to escape, but remained at the scene until the police arrived. After handing over the weapon to the police, he stated that he had shot a murderer.

The victim of the attack was taken to a nearby hospital on Jacob Street, where the man died fifteen minutes later.

The killer’s name was Samuel Yakovlevich Schwarzburd. His victim was Simon Petlyura, the former head of the Directory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, one of the most well-known figures of the time of the Civil War.

Both the killer and his victim were, as they say, “products of the era”.
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Macron’s belligerent talk, Russian MFA’s sharp reply, and the lesson of the “civil” war from 1918

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Macron recently decided to play the role of one of the riders of Apocalypse and delivered a very belligerent speech, which drew a shap response from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which we reblog in full below.

But first, to the events of 1918, when another, similar crusade against Russia was started by the West. The same fratricidal “civil war” as we see now in Ukraine, where Russians are killing Russians.

The material is from our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

On March 6, 1918, an English landing force landed in the port of Murmansk from the cruiser “Glory”. The open military intervention by the Entente of Russia began.

On March 14, the British cruiser “Cochrane” arrived in Murmansk with a new detachment of interventionists.

March 18 – French cruiser “Admiral Ob”.

The Americans joined later: on May 27, the American cruiser “Olympia” entered the Murmansk port, from which a detachment of American infantry soon disembarked.

The topic of foreign intervention against Soviet Russia in 1918-21 has been completely cast out of sight, completely “blurred”, and sometimes even disputed. There is practically no mention of it in the modern media.

This intentionally or unintentionally creates the myth of the Civil War as a war exclusively between “Whites” and “Reds.” Which is obviously a manipulation.

So, shall we remember who supported the “Whites” against the “Reds” with their manpower and equipment?

1. 🇬🇧 England. 28,000 soldiers – Arkhangelsk (1918), Murmansk (1918), the Baltic (1918), Revel (1919), Narva (1919), the Black Sea (1920), Sevastopol (1920), the Caspian Sea (1920), Transcaucasia (1918), Vladivostok (1918).
2. 🇺🇸 USA. 15,000 soldiers. – Arkhangelsk (1918), Murmansk (1918), Trans-Siberian Railway
3. 🇫🇷 France – Arkhangelsk (1918), Murmansk (1918), Odessa (1918), Kherson (1918), Sevastopol (1918), Siberia.
4. 🇦🇺 Australia – 4,000 soldiers. Arkhangelsk (1918), Murmansk (1918).
5. 🇨🇦 Canada – Arkhangelsk (1918). Murmansk (1918).
6. 🇮🇹 Italy – Murmansk, Far East.
7. 🇬🇷 Greece – 2,000 soldiers. Odessa, the Black Sea.
8. 🇷🇴 Romania – Bessarabia.
9. 🇵🇱 Poland – The North of Russia, the South, Siberia.
10. 🇯🇵 Japan. 28,000 soldiers – Far East (Vladivostok, Sakhalin)
11. 🇨🇳 China – Arkhangelsk (1918), Murmansk (1918).
12. 🇷🇸 Serbia – “Serbian Battalion”. The North of Russia.
13. 🇫🇮 Finland – Karelia. The Karelian and Murmansk legions, created by the 🇬🇧 British.
14. 🇩🇪 Germany. Ukraine, the Baltic States, part of European Russia
15. 🇦🇹🇭🇺 Austria-Hungary. (Germany’s ally)
16. 🇹🇷 Turkey (the Ottoman Empire). Transcaucasia.

🇨🇿 We can also recall the Czechoslovak Corps, which became the trigger of the Civil War.

In total, more than 20 countries took up arms directly or indirectly against the young Soviet Republic. Do not forget that the “Whites” were also fully funded by the Entente.

It was no accident that Stalin was saying, “The so-called Civil War”.

⚡️⚡️⚡️

👉 Read also Occupation of Russia by the USA in 1918-1920. The “international intervention” during the post-revolutionary unrest.

What do English, French, coming with war against us, want?

— A “Civil war” flyer by the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, 1918.

THEY SEIZED the road to Murmansk, the entire coast of the White Sea, Onega Lake, Arkhangelsk.
THERE WERE TRAITORS who helped them.
The peaceful population was shelled with GUNS from the cruisers — for what, what have we done to them?
ASK THE WORKERS OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE: WORKERS-BROTHERS, WHAT DO YOU WANT?
They will say WE WANT PEACE, WE hate WAR, but we still don’t have the strength to overthrow those who send us to the slaughter!
And what do you want, king, president, lords and dukes, merchants, bankers, landowners of America, England, France, Japan?
— Ha ha ha! What do we want? WE WANT TO DEVOUR YOU, we want to take over your forests in the north, as well as harbours, your roads.
WE WANT flax and hemp, forest and bread, everything your country is rich in, copper and iron, lead, silver, platinum, gold — WE WANT to capture IT ALL.
WHAT DO WE WANT? — these gentlemen will say, we want to capture both the North, the Volga, the Urals, and Caucases. We need your oil sources, your mines, your fishing grounds, we’ll take everything!
WHAT DO WE WANT? — they will say WE WANT TO PUT ON YOUR NECK THE TSAR, because in our country, King George is a relative of Romanov, because our bourgeoisie is relatives of yours, and our landlords are relatives of yours.
You have overthrown the NOBILITY, and WE WILL AGAIN PUT THEM ON YOUR NECK.
You overthrew the landowner, and we’ll put him on your neck again.
Do you want to live a free independent life? And we’re thrusting you back into slavery.
— That’s what these people want.
— CHASE THEM AWAY!

Foreign Ministry Statement regarding French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech

In the run-up to the EU summit dedicated to Ukraine crisis and confrontation with Russia, and clearly trying to set the tone for the upcoming gathering, French President Macron made an extremely aggressive anti-Russia speech calling our country, as he did on multiple previous occasions, a “threat to France and Europe.” Without providing any evidence, as he usually does, he accused our country of all the deadly sins from cyber attacks and interference in elections to our alleged plans to attack other countries in Europe.

We have heard him come up with similar fabrications and provocative claims before as well. Perhaps, this was the first time he laid them out in such an intense and irreconcilable manner which made them sound like a catechism for the Russophobic action programme.

Notably, the French leader has repeatedly made public his plans to call President Putin on the telephone to discuss ways to achieve peaceful settlement in Ukraine and to ensure security in Europe. The Russian side has always been open to discuss these matters. However, Macron, this time again, confined himself to clamorous public rhetoric.

The French President is trying hard to convince the French citizens of an “existential threat” coming from Russia. In fact, Russia has never threatened France, but, instead, helped it defend its independence and sovereignty in two world wars. However, Macron’s statements, in fact, pose a threat to Russia.
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The history of repressions devoid of emotion. Viktor Zemskov’s arguments and facts

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We present translations of two article in the newspaper “Argumenty i Fakty”:

– “The history of repressions devoid of emotion. Viktor Zemskov’s arguments and facts” from July 25, 2015, dispelling one of the myths surrounding Stalin – that of “tens of millions of repressed”, replacing it instead with impartial historical research.

– This is followed by a translation of an earlier article from 1989, “‘The Gulag Archipelago’: through the eyes of a writer and a statistician”, where Zemskov counters the misinformation in Solzhenicin’s work.

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

Victor Nikolaevich Zemskov

The man who believed the facts

The official website of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences reported that on July 21, 2015, Viktor Nikolaevich Zemskov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Scientific Secretary of the Center for Military History of Russia, died suddenly at the age of 70.

“Viktor Nikolaevich’s whole life was inextricably linked with the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he worked for more than 50 years,” the report says. — Viktor Nikolaevich became especially famous for his archival research. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was the discoverer of archival funds on the history of political repression in the USSR that had previously been closed to scientists.

Viktor Zemskov’s name won’t say much to a wide audience. His books were not published in millions of copies, they were not decorated with catchy titles. He preferred painstaking work with historical documents, rather than a pursuit of high-profile sensations.

In 1989, at the peak of “perestroika”, Zemskov joined the commission for determining population losses at the Department of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by Corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Yuri Polyakov. The Commission gained access to the statistical reports of the OGPU-NKVD-MVD-MGB, stored in the Central State Archive of the October Revolution.

These previously classified documents contained all the factual information about the real history of political repression during the Soviet period.

As already mentioned, Viktor Zemskov did not chase after sensations, but the research materials he published overturned ideas about the scale of political repression in the USSR.

The secret that has become disclosed

The historian, who had never hidden his negative attitude towards the Stalinist repressions, came to the conclusion that the data on tens and hundreds of millions of repressed people, which appeared in foreign studies and in media materials from the time of “perestroika”, do not reflect the reality.

Having thoroughly studied all the materials, Zemskov established that in the period from 1921 to 1953 in the USSR, 4,060,306 people were convicted of “counterrevolutionary and other particularly dangerous state crimes”, of which 799,455 people were sentenced to capital punishment.

Zemskov also refuted the popular statement about “a country where every second person went through prison camps”. According to the results of the study, it was found that the maximum total number of prisoners in camps in the entire Soviet history was recorded as of January 1, 1950 — 2,760,095 people, while the average number of prisoners ranged from 1.5 to 2.5 million people. At the same time, we are talking about both political prisoners and those convicted of criminal offences.

For comparison, the number of prisoners in the United States reached 2.2 million in 2013.
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Snipers on Maidan – New testimonies from Ukraine

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From the Telegram channel of Eva Karene Bartlett, Reality Theories

This is additional proof to the material provided Snipers on Maidan – A German newsreel from 2014, which we translated last year.


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Bombshell: Maidan activist stated that he saw sniper in pendulum floor window of Hotel Ukraina shooting numerous Maidan activists. It matches open window in video in which protesters wondered that snipers from hotel were shooting Maidan activists. A Svoboda leader lived in this room during massacre, according to Prosecutor General Office investigation. He said that he was in this hotel room at that time & was filming massacre from it. Wikipedia editor was killed at that time & place when he & other Maidan activists were looking at Hotel Ukraina. Verdict confirmed my studies findings that he was killed from Maidan-controlled area and not by police.

But Prosecutor General Office investigation & USAID funded Ukrainian media denied that there were any snipers in this hotel, even when this Maidan activist testified what he saw and BBC & ICTV filmed snipers there. Verdict stated that the Maidan sniper shot at BBC journalists from neighboring room of Hotel Ukraina which was “activist controlled.”

Prosecutor General Investigation revelated another far-right Svoboda leader leaved in neighboring hotel room that was filmed by BBC and ITCV. The same Maidan activist also posted on X that he also saw gunshots from another Hotel Ukraina room & identified this room on 13th floor.

This activist also noted that brother of killed Maidan activist considered that he was shot dead from the upper floors of the hotel based on his steep wound direction on his left side and his position in the video with Hotel Ukraina on his left. But investigation attributed the killing of his brother to the commander of the special Berkut company based on the falsified forensic examination of the bullet because Berkut police was on the ground on his right during his killing.

This is all consistent with findings of my academic studies of the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. But official government investigation, media with some exceptions, Wikipedia & various self-proclaimed experts continue to deny that there were snipers in Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina.”
– Source