Tag Archives: history

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The rewriting of WWII history continues by van der Leyen and Johnson

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In 2019 I published an article History being rewritten in front of our eyes… Today more such rewriting came about from the mouths of Boris Johnson, who posits that it is USA and UK together with Ukraine (!) who won WWII. It is needless to say that Ukraine did not exists back then, but was a Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic with the USSR, and it was USSR as a whole that took Berlin and ultimately ended WWII (through huge sacrifice), while the USA and UK provided some assistance.

Boris Johnson said that the Second World War was won by the West and Ukraine: The Anglo-American agreement was its achievement. And that is why the West won the Second World War with the Allies, incidentally, with Ukrainian help.

Hot on BoJo’s heels comes Ursula van der Leyen (henceforth known as van der Lie’en) basically stating that nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan by… the USSR. In reality it was the USA that did it to intimidate the USSR by this demonstration of power (at that time the USSR still did not have the nuclear technology in place), and as we now know: 204 A-Bombs Against 66 Cities: US Drew up First Plan to Nuke Russia Before WWII Was Even Over (RI repost)

Maria Zaharova had this to say to van der Leyen:

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

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Dividing the skin of a living bearA couple of months ago some Gunther Fehlinger, apparently a “Chair of European Committee for NATO Enlargement for Kosovo, Ukraine, Bosnia, Austria, Moldova, Ireland, Georgia, EU” (mostly concerning the places where trouble can be stirred) posted an X-Tweet with an image of a partitioned Russia, under a prettified title of “Why Russia must be Decolonised” and a link to a EuroMaidan article arguing that Russia is not a federation and it is thus an open season on dividing the skin of the not-yet-killed bear (as the Russian saying goes). It does not disconcert them that the exact same argument that they are making can be applied to the USA, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway and quite a number of other candidates for “decolonisation NATO-style”.

Napoleonida

Napoleon’s plan for the division of the territory of the Ukraine (as of 1954-2014):
Grey – Give to Poland
Red – The Duchy of Poltava
Green – The Duchy of Chernigov
Yellow – The State of Napoleonida
Beige – Didn’t partition

This is not something new. The “Drang nach oesten” has been the lead tune in the various invasions of Russia by the Western vultures. We can, for example, recall that before the 1812 invasion, Napoleon had already designated Crimea as a new French Riviera, while partitioning the rest of Russia between France and Poland. We can recall how Germany and its Axis were establishing Reichskommissariats for their “new” territorial possessions.

More can be read in my prior articles Is the West gearing up to invade Russia once again? and Will Russia have to fend off NATO invasion too..?

The 20th century was the most abundant in the attempts to partition Russia/USSR. The map below is from the an American magazine «Look», published in the March of 1939 after the Munich Conspiracy of 1938 (covered in The Great Unknown War. A must-see documentary about the WWII prelude. By Andrei Medvedev), coupled with the “allies'” reluctance to open the second front until it was absolutely clear that the USSR was winning, shows that area of interest from the American perspective.

Next European War - 14th of March 1939, American Magazine

American magazine «Look», 14th of March 1939

Invasion of the USSR by the USA - October 27, 1951, Collier's magazine

Invasion of the USSR by the USA – the 27th of October 1951, Collier’s magazine

And just as the War was over, the USA did not stop dreaming of that piece of land for their own use, as can be seen from the cover of the “Collier’s” magazine from 1951. “Preview of the war we do not want” reads the hypocritical title while talking about “Russia’s defeat and occupation”. As we now know, if the USSR did not get the nuclear arsenal by that time, this was very much the plan the USA were nuturing. We can also see it from the USA’s own plans for the use of nuclear weapons against the USSR, as I described in two articles in the previous years: 204 A-Bombs Against 66 Cities: US Drew up First Plan to Nuke Russia Before WWII Was Even Over (RI repost) and USA’s plans for the nuclear annihilation of USSR (Russia) and China disclosed. Another declassified document from that post-War era points towards the same desire. I covered it in The Plan to Destroy Russia. Conceived and Started in 1948. Concluded in 1993? Or Not…

In 1993 the USA actually got a total colonial control over Russia without engaging in a hot war, and during that time Russia was also almost partitioned administratively. Luckily, the Americans saw Russia as defeated, what with the “end of history” and other such ideas, and did not bother to fire the control shot in the back of the country’s head, as such cold-blooded killers usually do.

But the first time when the West came closest to realising that wet dream of partitioning Russia and laying its hands on the Russian resource happened in the wake of the 1917 Revolution when Russia was plunged into the Civil War, while it had been weakened by WWI. The article that I translate below illustrates one of the areas where such partitioning almost happened.

The map shows countries participating in the so-caleld “civil” war of 1918-1922. The total number of the interventionists counted over 1 million soldiers.

Reading the article below, think also of the historical parallels with today, of the ongoing civil war in Ukraine and how the Western intervention is prolonging the conflict, making it more bloody, than it was initially shaping up to be.

The link to the original article on the site of Russian Information Agency (RIA) may not work, as the West, in its pursuit of the the purity (of the “freedom”) of speech, blocks RIA. You can alternatively view the WebArchived version of the original article.

The American-style occupation. 100 Years Ago, the US Army Invaded Russia

Published: 08:00 15.08.2018 (Updated: 11:37 03.03.2020)

American troops during a parade in front of the headquarters of the Czechoslovak Legion in Vladivostok. 1918

American troops during a parade in front of the headquarters of the Czechoslovak Legion in Vladivostok. 1918

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Is it “Kazahs of Kazahstan” or “Kazaks (Cossacks) of Kazakstan (Cossackstan)”?

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Some time ago I took A short look at the short history of Kazahstan through the lens of a 1922 map. In the article now I want to translate another short look at its history, but from a linguistic perspective. What is the name of the people populating the steppe?

Before we proceed, a brief detour into the notation of two Cyrillic letters is in order. Russian letter “Х” is pronounced as “h” in “home”, “he”, hold”, but for some reason it is noted down as “kh” in the Latin notation – the name “Khrushev” has absolutely NO “K” sound in it! So, “Казахстан” is pronounced as “Kazahstan”, even though in the Western notation it will have an extra “k” (Kazakhstan). This brings us to the title of this article: “Казах” is a “Kazah” with the “h”-sound at the end; while a Cossack in Russian is “Казак” – “Kazak” with a trailing “k”.

So with this in mind, let me present a translation of an article that appeared on Cont on the 8th of January 2022.

Is it “Kazahs of Kazahstan” or “Kazaks (Cossacks) of Kazakstan (Cossackstan)”?

Good afternoon, dear readers, today I’m talking about Kazahstan. But we will not talk about what is happening in the republic, but about when and how such a state as KazaHstan appeared…

Quite a long time ago, back in September of last year, I published an article “What have the Russians done for Kazahstan? Just a tiny bit – they built all the cities of the country …” – under it there appeared such a comment that not everyone understood…

Baibek Baibekov
Alexander, It’s true, the Russians really invented the word Kazah, how nice it is to meet a knowledgeable adequate person among the rabid Nazi Fascists, because in fact we are Cossacks, since the middle of the 16th century, that was the name of my people.

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Donbass is the Heart of Russia

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Donbass is the Heart of Russia. It is not just a slogan, it is a reality that everyone was acutely aware of back in 1921, which is the year when the poster below was printed. Donbass is pumping live-giving industrial blood to all the major cities that you can recognise today – Moscow, Petrograd, Tver, Vilna (Vilnius – more on it in Lithuanian Blockade of Kaliningrad – the suicidal move by a limitrophe to please its master), Kiev, Minsk, Uralsk, Harkov…

At the dawn of the USSR, the Donetsk-Krivorozhie Republic was part of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic), but on the 17th of February 1919 Lenin issued a decree that the Donetsk republic should be transferred to the Ukrainian SSR with the following formulation: “To ask comrade Stalin through the Bureaux of the Central Committee to liquidate Kriv-Donbass.”

And yet, in 1921, the poster issued in Moscow still showed that “Donbass is the Heart of Russia”.

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The myth of the Holodomor. Reblog of a detailed research article

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Below is a complete re-blog of an excellent, thoroughly researched and objective article about how the myth of “Holodomor” of 1932-1933 was created and neutered in the West and then picked up by the nationalistic forces in Ukraine. The article is written by Olga of the Siberian Matrëshka Telegram channel.

There is only one additional comment that I want to make about the name “Holodomor”. The article mentioned why “H” was chosen as the first letter. The fact is, the Russian word “holod” means “cold”, while “famine” or “hunger” is “golod”; “mor” means “mass death”. So the official “Western” name actually means “death from freezing”, but as will be come apparent from the article, the choice of the leading “H” was intentional.

Read also an excellent article at The Revolution Report: “Holodomor Myth and Its Connection to Modern Neo-Nazi Propaganda in Ukraine”!

The myth of the Holodomor

Olga🪆July 21, 2023

The myth of the Holodomor is blatantly at odds with reality. Supporters of the Holodomor theory argue that the Soviet government and Stalin personally wanted to destroy the Ukrainian people. This statement is not supported by facts: the famine of 1932-1933 covered the territory of several Soviet republics, and in Ukraine it was not at all widespread. Well, did the Soviet government starve Ukrainians selectively, depending on the territory in which they lived?

The forces that are now planting their blatantly anti-historical “Ukrainianism” in Ukraine attach great importance to the theme of the “Holodomor”. I invite the reader to first get acquainted with how the myth of the “Holodomor” was created – a famine allegedly artificially organized by Stalin for the purposeful destruction of the Ukrainian people. And only then move on to historical realities.

The famine of 1932-1933 is a bitter page in our real history. But this famine, firstly, was far from the first in the history of Russia. And, secondly, it affected not only Ukraine, but also the Don, Kuban, Volga, Central Black Earth, Kazakhstan. However, the Ukrainizers immediately, in hot pursuit, tried to isolate the “Ukrainian” component from this tragic event, which affected many regions of the USSR, and make the theme of the famine of 1932-1933 an irrelevant one. in Ukraine as an instrument of struggle against the “communist regime”.

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Italy jumps on the bandwagon of the Golodomor myth. Maria Zaharova’s comment.

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The «Golodomor» myth (intentionally misspelled in the West as «Holodomor», more on that in a later post that dispels the myth) has gripped Europe, engulfed in the fervent russophobia. Italy is the latest to jump on the bandwagon of this hoax.

As it is asked in the expanded comment by Maria Zaharova of the Russian Foreign Ministry, what about those who were starving in those lean years in the Volga basin area. The term «golodajushie Povolzhja» – «the starting of the Volga basin» has become an idiomic part of the Russian language to describe someone in dire need for help.

And the famine of those years engulfed all of the Southern and Eastern Russia. In my own family, my grandmother’s grandmother died of hunger at that time. The catch: that branch of my family lived in the Altai Krai of Russia, that is, in Sibera.

Comment by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, M.V.Zaharova, in connection with the recognition by the Italian Senate of the “Holodomor” as a genocide of the Ukrainian people

On July 26, the Senate of the Italian Republic adopted a resolution recognizing the so-called Holodomor as a “genocide of the Ukrainian people.” Earlier, a similar document was approved by the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the start of a special military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

We regard this anti-Russian step as another evidence of the short-sighted policy of official Rome aimed at encouraging the most unbridled Russophobic manifestations actively promoted by the Kiev authorities and their patrons.

At the same time, Rome does not take into account the millions of people who became victims of the famine of 1932-1933 in the Russian Volga region. We invite Italian citizens to ask their government: is such disregard of facts caused by ignorance of world history or is there an undisguised segregation of people on a national basis?

It is quite obvious that the continuation of the line on the “Ukrainization” of the Italian political class and society, expressed, among other things, in the thoughtless execution of the increasingly brazen and unceremonious demands of the Nazi Kiev regime, may lead in the not so distant future to the adoption by the Italian Parliament of resolutions on perpetuating the memory of the anti-Semite S. Petliura or the Nazi collaborator S. Bandera.

Such decisions of the Italian legislators, who in this case did not show any depth of analysis of historical events, nor political foresight and wisdom, certainly make the prospects for normalization of Russian-Italian relations more distant.

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Stalin’s Address to the Nation on the 3rd of July 1941 – The manuscript published for the first time. The complete text of the speech is included.

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In the historical work “2 Years”, the Danish underground resistance publication in the German occupied Denmark that we recently published in this blog, we took a special note on page 6 of how rumours were spreading in the West, grounded in the silence from Stalin, and how they abruptly vanished once the historical speech was held on the 3rd of July 1941. There we reproduced a fragment of the speech. Now, thanks to the translated RIA Novosti publication (a news agency which is, incidentally censored in the freedom-of-speech-loving West), we can take a closer look at how that speech came to be.

The manuscript of Stalin’s appeal in connection with the beginning of the Second World War was published for the first time

03.07.2023 © RIA Novosti

The Presidential Library has published the manuscript of Stalin’s address in connection with the outbreak of the War

Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Archive photo

MOSCOW, July 3 – RIA Novosti. 82 years ago Joseph Stalin planned to begin the appeal to the Soviet people in connection with the Great Patriotic War strictly officially, confining himself to the word “comrades”, while the famous words “brothers and sisters”, “I am addressing you, my friends” did not sound according to the original handwritten text of the speech – this follows from its photocopy, published for the first time on the website of the Presidential Library.

According to historians, Stalin’s speech to the citizens of the USSR on the radio on the 3rd of July 1941 played an important role in the mobilization of the population in the initial period of the war. The text of the speech was prepared in an extremely short time span, and at a critical moment for the Soviet state: the situation at the front was catastrophic, on the 28th of June, Soviet troops left Minsk. On the 30th of June, at Stalin’s residence at the “Near Dacha” in Kuntsevo, a decision was made to create the State Defence Committee, which concentrated the full power in the country in its hands.

The text of the speech of the head of state with an appeal to the people in connection with the outbreak of war was compiled in the first days of July. The text, dictated by Stalin, was written down by his assistant Alexander Poskrebyshev using a simple pencil. Stalin also made edits and additions with just a pencil.

The radio broadcast was conducted directly from the Kremlin. At 6 a.m. on the 3rd of July 1941, the announcer of the All-Union Radio, Yuri Levitan, announced Stalin’s upcoming speech, after which he held the speech.

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Reblog: 80 Years Ago – The Battle of Kursk: Largest Tank Battle In History

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On the 22nd of June 2023 we published on these pages a commemorative re-issue of the Danish underground publication “2 Years”, marking the 80th anniversary of its initial publication in Denmark in that turbulent year of 1943. The events depicted in the book end just before the Battle of Kursk – or the “Kursk Arch”, as it is better known in Russia – unfurled and drove the final nail into the German-Nazi coffin.

It would have been interesting to be an observer as to how the German media presented the Kursk Battle – just like with the preceding 2 years, it is sure to have provided ample parallels to the current battle against Nazism in Ukraine.

Not having such a chance, let us simply commemorate the 80th anniversary of that monumental battle that lasted between the 5th of July and the 23rd of August 1943. Below is a partial re-blog of an article published at SouthFront on this occasion:

80 Years Ago – The Battle Of Kursk: Largest Tank Battle In History

Written by Dr. Leon Tressell

German Leopard tanks have been destroyed in Ukraine’s ongoing summer offensive in combat with Russia forces. There is a delicious sense of irony that this is happening on the 80th anniversary of the largest tank battle in history at Kursk in July 1943. Just as in 1943 these much hyped ‘wunderwaffe’ have failed to break Russian defences much to the chagrin of the collective West.

Following the calamitous defeat at Stalingrad in early February the German Wehrmacht faced a series of Red Army offensives which were designed to bring about the destruction of Army Group Centre and Army Group South as well as the lifting of the siege of Leningrad. These simultaneous assaults on all three German army groups, across a thousand mile front, envisaged the liberation of Ukraine the second largest republic in the USSR. These over ambitious attacks tore great holes in the German front lines as the Red Army advanced 150 miles westward. The German armies which had threatened Moscow during 1941-1942 had been driven westward removing the threat to the capital of the USSR. The offensives in the south led to the capture of major cities in Eastern Ukraine such as Kharkov, the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, in the north the southern shore of lake Ladoga was swept clean of German units and a land corridor was established between the starving inhabitants of Leningrad and the rest of the country.

As the Wehrmacht was being mauled all along the entire front Field Marshall Manstein, commander of Army Group South, observed how the Red Army had over extended itself with its over ambitious offensives and launched a series of counter attacks which led to the recapture of Kharkov. The Red Army’s attempt to liberate the Donbass and reach the Dneiper river had been frustrated. Once the spring thaw (Rasputitsa) had set in a large salient, about half the size of England, jutted into the German front. At the centre of this salient lay the city of Kursk.

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Russian Tzars Didn’t Even Think That They Were Founding Ukrainian Cities

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A photocopy of an article from “Komsomolskaja Pravda” dated 14.04.2014 caught my attention a few days ago. The short article was published just as the Nazi coup in Ukraine unseated the last legitimate government of the failed country, and Ukraine firmly set its course on becoming “not Russia”.

Russian Tzars Didn’t Even Think That They Were Founding Ukrainian Cities

Politicians, historians and bloggers on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border are arguing today, breaking microphones and keyboards, whose ancestral land is the South-Eastern Ukraine, or, as it was called earlier – Malorossiya (Rus Minor) and Novorossiya. Who worked it? And monuments to whom should stand here – to Bandera or, for example, to the Russian tzars?

Let us not get involved in this argument, but rather list those who founded the main cities here:

Harkov – founded in the 1630-s by the Russian Tzar Aleksei Mihailovich Romanov. Sailors who fleeing from the Poles from the right bank of Dniepr settled there.

Sumy – founded not later than 1655 by Tzar Aleksei Mihailovich Romanov. The tzar allowed
refugees-Malorossians, who were killed by the Poles, to settle here.

Kirovograd – founded in 1754 by the Russian Empress Elizabeth Petrovna under the name of Elisavetgrad as a fortress to protect the southern boundaries of Russia from Tatars.

Zaporozhie – founded in 1770 by the Russian Empress Catherine II undere the name of Alexandrovsk.

Krivoj Rog – founded in 1775 by the Catherine II.

Dnepropetrovsk – founded in 1776 by the Catherine II under the name of Ekaterinoslav.

Herson – founded in 1778 by Catherine II for the construction of the Russian fleet. The Russian Count Potemkin built the fleet and the city.

Mariupol – founded in 1778 by Catherine II. She allowed Greek immigrants from
Crimea to settle there.

Nikolaev – founded in 1789 by Catherine II. At that time Russian Count Potjomkin was building there the ship “St. Nicolas” (“St. Nikolai”).

Odessa – founded in 1794 by Catherine II at the site of a fortress previously built by the Russian Commander Suvorov.

Lugansk – founded in 1795 by Catherine II. People from central and north-western counties of the Empire came to work here at the iron foundries.

Donetsk – founded by the Russian Emperor Alexadner II in 1869 during the construction of the iron foundry in Yuzovka.

As for Crimea:

Sevastopol – founded in 1783 by the Russian Empress Catherine II at the site of a fortress previously built by the Russian Commander Suvorov. The Russian Count Potjomkin was building the city.

Simpferopol – founded in 1784 by Catherine II. Count Potjomkin was building it at a site of a military camp of the Russian Commander Suvorov.

Worker’s social benefits in Russia seen through a 1913 recruitment advertisement

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Today I came across a copy of a recruitment advertisement from 1913 Russia published by the Russo-American rubber company “Triangle”. The company was recruiting female workers and listed some pretty decent social benefits. They advertise themselves as a prosperous company, yet to stay competitive and within the legal framework of the country they had to offer such incentives. In a capitalist world, that Russia was entering at that time, a company, even a wealthy one, would have naturally tired to cut costs.

This reminded me of a series of articles that I translated in 2017 When Rouble Was Golden – Russia that we lost in the ashes of WWI and the coup d’etats of 1914-1917 and how well it illustrates that Russia was not some backward country before 1917, as is the common view in the West and in Russia alike.

Partnership “Triangle” in St. Petersburg.

The largest and wealthiest rubber factories in Russia.

Always needed healthy female workers aged 18-30.

8-10 working hours per day.

Until own accommodation is found – full accommodation free of charge in up to ___ weeks.

Our factories constantly employ 15000 people.
Our factories have:
 Free nursery for 500 children of the workers,
 Free school for 500 children of the workers,
 Free medical assistance to male and female workers,
 Own medical cabinet, doctors, nurses, midwives,
 Free apothecary,
 In the city hospitals there are reserved free beds for our male and female workers,
 After illness, in case health restitution is needed, there is free rest in our special colony in a healthy dry forest area.
 Support for the old age, accident insurance.
 Premiums for long-term employment.
 Several large houses with well-equipped apartments for workers with families.

The factories are located along the Ring Canal of St.Petersburg.

The Partnership of the Russo-American Rubber Manufacture under the trade mark of “Triangle”

22nd of June – Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. Remembering the 42 million perished Soviet people in the genocidal Second World War

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The memorial texts below are written by Olga on Putinger’s Cat Telegram cannel. The article sheds new light on the genocide comitted against the Soviet people – predominantly the residents of Belorussia, Ukraine and Western Russia – by the Nazi-German invaders. We remember. As a 2015 article by Georgy Zotov showed, the same was not the case in Germany, where they asked “So many? Really?” Germans do not know how many Russians were killed by their ancestors

In Russia, June 22 is the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. On this day, in 1941, the Great Patriotic War, which became the bloodiest and most destructive in the history of the country, began.

The Great Patriotic War had affected every family. More than 27 million people perished. Owing to the heroism of our soldiers and officers, the enemy was defeated, but Victory came at a high price.

Today, we pay tribute to the memory of all those who went through incredible hardship, those who died, but never gave up for a peaceful future for their descendants. We, the descendants, are full of deepest respect and gratitude for their sacrifice.

The declassified data below were presented at the State Duma hearing on the 14th of February 2017. Archived source is here.

By the beginning of the war, in June 1941, 196.7 million people lived on the territory of the USSR. According to declassified data of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the losses of the Soviet Union in World War II amount to 41 million 979 thousand, and not 27 million, as previously thought. The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 was more than 52 million 812 thousand people. Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of the factors of war – more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians.

The total demographic losses of the USSR as a result of the war amounted to 27 million people. Military losses were calculated at 11.4 million, including the war with Japan. From this number, it is necessary to subtract 1.8 million who returned from captivity and 0.9 million called up on the territory liberated from the occupation and sent to the troops from among the military personnel who were previously surrounded or missing.

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«2 Years» re-publishing // Переиздание книги «2 года»

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This introduction article is tri-lingual, in:
Denne introduktionsartikel er tresproget, i:
Эта вступительная статья – трёхязычная, на:

THE POLITICS
The 22nd of June 1941.
Leaflet No. 2:

The German-Russian War

In a proclamation signed by Reich Chancellor Hitler, the Germans march on Russia on a front of 2400 km., from Finland to the Black Sea.

To the north, German troops are advancing from Norway along with Finnish divisions, from the Carpathians German and Romanian forces.

Hitler declared that Bolshevism stood in mortal enmity with National Socialism. Russia had been threatening Germany for a long time and eventually there were 160 Russian divisions positioned on Germany’s eastern border. The Soviets had thus broken the Treaty of Friendship. The imminent struggle revolved around the civilized world.

Mines have been laid in the Arctic Ocean and in the Baltic Sea, among other places between Bornholm and Sweden and between Bornholm and the German Coast.

Read THE POLITICS tomorrow
– Copenhagen

80 years ago, in the summer of 1943, the underground Communist Party of Denmark illegally published the book “2 Years” with newspaper clippings from the major German-controlled Copenhagen newspapers. The book is 70 pages long and is a rare historical document of the occupation-era official press coverage of the first 2 years of the war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the outcome of which became decisive for the future of mankind.

To honour the Resistance fighters and strengthen the memory of the great Victory of the USSR and the Red Army over fascism, we are now launching a digital reissue of “2 Years”!

The book is photographed and can be studied page by page and read in graphically adapted versions in Russian and English, respectively, as well as in a linguistically edited version in modern Danish. An extensive historical notebook has been added as well as text-to-speech descriptions for the blind and visually impaired of the book’s many fine colour illustrations in silkscreen by artist and resistance fighter Viggo Rohde, with sharp political caricatures of the Nazi Menagerie and the course of the war.

We see our collective memory as an important weapon against the advanced means and methods of modern war propaganda to which we are daily exposed, and, that Dr. Goebbels could not even dream of.

Read, remember, and get historical perspective on your contemporary events!

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Polish insatiable pit. How much did the USSR spend on the restoration of Poland during and after the War

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Some time ago I published a post Reparations to Poland from Russia? And how much does Poland itself in fact owe Russia? that contained, among other points, some examples of what the USSR spent on Poland. Those examples were very superficial, so here is another article that taks a closer look at the financial aspect of the “fraternal love” of the USSR’ western neighbour.

As an additional reading, in 2015 I translated an article by Georgy Zotov The Sorrow of a Warsaw Woman.Why Poland is not happy to be liberated from fascism?. In the introduction we laid out some thoughts as to why Russia did not reminded the «brotherly nation» of the help that it had got. But every good reason has a limit to it, often hastened by impunity.

Polish insatiable pit. How much did the USSR spend on the restoration of Poland after the war


Polish peasants harvest on the land liberated from the Germans. 1944 / Georgy Zelma / RIA Novosti

It is difficult to calculate the exact amount that our country poured into the restoration of Poland after World War II, especially since the USSR began to provide assistance to Poland long before the victorious May 1945. Thus, the cost of maintaining the Polish Army, formed in the USSR, amounted by January 1945 to 723 million roubles. At the same time, 60 thousand tons of bread, 100 tons of sugar and 50 tons of dried fruits were sent to the liberated Warsaw as a gift. In addition, the USSR took upon itself 50% of the costs of the Warsaw reconstruction plan.

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Debunking the false claims about the Russian word “Slava” – “Glory”

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A few days ago I was made aware of a post in a German Telegram channel that seemed to liken praising “Glory to Russia” with a Nazi salute. This prompted me to write an analytical reply pointing out to the root of this malicious misconception, adding linguistic, historical and cultural references to support the debunking of this claim. But first, here is the post in question, followed by an automatic translation of it to English.

The Wagners and Russians would be outraged if they had to read this.
This is and remains a fascist salute.
The Russians have expelled the Heil-Hitler-Schreier from their country and will certainly not shout Heil Russia.
Anyone who brings such a saying has nothing, but also nothing, understood.
But you have already noticed here more than once as a provocateur.
There should be an @admin looking there!

It seems that the author thinks of the Russian words “slava” (слава) – “glory” as as some kind of Nazi salute. The root of this misconception lies in the association of the Russian «Glory to Russia» to the Ukrainian Nazi slogan “Glory to Ukraine”. However, anyone making such an extrapolation is not only demonstrating ignorance, but is also playing into the hands of those who are driving smear campaigns at Russia from all thinkable angles.

There is one fundamental, crucial difference: «Glory to Russia» was never used to greet the German Nazi invaders, it was never used as a slogan to which terrible atrocities were committed, as was the case in Ukraine under the Banderite rule.

Ukraine has a two-fold problem with their slogan: first OUN-UPA used it, basically binding the whole country in blood. They didn’t take «Glory to Bandera» as their slogan – even in Germany the slogan was limited to «Heil Hitler» and was not a «Heil Deutchland». And even then no one says that the German word «heil» should be removed from the German dictionary.

The second half of the problem came when Ukraine doubled down on the OUN-UPA legacy and continued to use that particular slogan in their modern neo-Nazi state-building policy.

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