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

Reading time: 50 minutes

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”

Reading time: 2 minutes

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

Reading time: 8 minutes

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

Reading time: 7 minutes

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

Reading time: 37 minutes

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

Reading time: 5 minutes

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


Backup at Rumble.

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

Reading time: 10 minutes

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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The history of repressions devoid of emotion. Viktor Zemskov’s arguments and facts

Reading time: 11 minutes

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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Iosif Stalin, A Leader and A Poet

Reading time: 2 minutes

It is a little-known fact that Iosif Dzhugashvili, future Stalin, had a passion for writing poetry in his student years, between 1893 and 1896. In the painting above, a young seminarist Iosif Dzhugashvili is depicted with a volume of Lenin’s work “What Is To Be Done?”

Only six poems by Stalin, published in 1895-96, in his native Georgian, survived until present day. Here is one of the poems, translated, preserving rhyme and rhythm, by Putinger’s Cat, from a Russian translation, providing us with a glimpse of who Stalin was as a young man.

The Russian translation from Georgian, used as the basis of the English translation, is provided below the English version.

💢💢💢

From a home to a home, he went,
Knocking on other folks’ doors,
With him, his oaken string instrument
And his unpretentious old song.

And in his song, and in his song,
As pure as sunlight’s shining gleam,
A profound truth was resounding,
A transcendental daydream.

Hearts that had turned into rock
He managed to make beat again;
Numerous minds he awoke
That, in deep darkness, had napped.

But people who’d forgotten God,
Their hearts holding darkness within,
A poison cup, filled to the top,
Offered him for a drink.

They said to him, “You, the cursed,
Here, bottoms up, empty this!
To us, that song of yours is foreign,
And we don’t want that truth of yours!”

💢💢💢

Ходил он от дома к дому,
Стучась у чужих дверей,
Со старым дубовым пандури,
С нехитрою песней своей.

А в песне его, а в песне –
Как солнечный блеск чиста,
Звучала великая правда,
Возвышенная мечта.

Сердца, превращённые в камень,
Заставить биться сумел,
У многих будил он разум,
Дремавший в глубокой тьме.

Но люди, забывшие Бога,
Хранящие в сердце тьму,
Полную чашу отравы
Преподнесли ему.

Сказали ему: „Проклятый,
Пей, осуши до дна…
И песня твоя чужда нам,
И правда твоя не нужна!»

💢💢💢

Credits for finding this poem and inspiring this translation go to Beorn and the Shieldmaiden.

Poem source.

CIA Against Detente

Reading time: 8 minutes

The article appears in the “Historian” magazine, written by Alexander Kolpakidi. We added an illustration to better drive home the point about MSM collusion.


US President Dwight Eisenhower was quite far-sighted, but America in his time was not yet mature enough to understand the changed balance of power in the world.

The first timid steps of this president towards “détente” were resolutely opposed by the majority of the American elite, and the CIA twice became an insurmountable obstacle to the president’s path, thwarting his plans.
The first time this happened was due to the myth that America was lagging behind in the number of bombers.

It all started when the experts from the Rand Corporation began to study the vulnerability of the bases of the Strategic Aviation Command. Although the United States had superiority over the USSR in both nuclear weapons and bombers at that time, experts painted a terrifying picture of how a Soviet strike would destroy American strategic aviation on the ground and the United States would remain helpless before the “terrible Russians.”

The CIA was tasked with assessing the power of the Soviet air force. This task was performed in an absolutely amazing way. Intelligence agents had to… estimate the total production area of the aviation plant in Fili and, based on this estimate, calculate the production rate of strategic bombers. American military factories must be somewhat different from ours in terms of the rational use of the land allocated to them. Based on the CIA agents walking around the factory fence, which, in addition to the workshops, enclosed squares, garbage dumps and wastelands, it was concluded that the production of Soviet bombers was growing fantastically.

These “scientifically” based calculations were supported by even more “scientific” observations. On July 3, 1955, the Day of the Air Force, during the aviation parade in Moscow, the American intelligence officers diligently counted the bombers which took part in the celebration. The numbers turned out to be fantastic. The only thing the Americans didn’t realise was that they kept counting the same planes circling in the area of the air parade. This consideration was too primitive for the intelligence aces.

Based on these calculations and observations, the CIA estimated that the USSR would deploy 500 such aircraft by 1960. The terrible data got into the press, and the hysteria that broke out about the “bomber gap” significantly limited Eisenhower’s freedom of manoeuvrer for a while.

– The article continues after the illustration…

♦️♦️♦️

The “Soviet threat” (which nowadays morphed into the “Russian threat”) remained with the USA, constantly whipped into the frenzy among the general public by the “free press”.

Andrey Krylov drew this caricature for the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil”, published in issue №2 in 1983.

— Remind our readers that the USSR has a superiority in armaments.
— But we do not have facts, sir…
— On the other hand, we have freedom of press.

♦️♦️♦️
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The pre-War sabotage of the Soviet peace efforts by Britain and France, seen through the memoirs of Georgy Zhukov and the modern British press

Reading time: 22 minutes

In a comment to a recent post, our reader JMF made us aware of an article by the British newspaper “The Telegraph”, under the title of “Stalin ‘planned to send a million troops to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed pact'”. We shell re-blog that article in full at the end of this publication, but first….

Reading the very first paragraphs caused raised eyebrows with The Shieldmaiden, who has studied the memoirs of Marshal Georgy Zhukov in great detail.

Papers which were kept secret for almost 70 years show that the Soviet Union proposed sending a powerful military force in an effort to entice Britain and France into an anti-Nazi alliance.

Such an agreement could have changed the course of 20th century history, preventing Hitler’s pact with Stalin which gave him free rein to go to war with Germany’s other neighbours.

The offer of a military force to help contain Hitler was made by a senior Soviet military delegation at a Kremlin meeting with senior British and French officers, two weeks before war broke out in 1939.

Secret?!!

It often happens, by the way, that most important documents are ignored by our historical researchers. Sometimes the thoughts and judgements on prewar years obtained from indirect sources and through supplementary research sound as a revelation, while the same thoughts and even facts are contained in books easily available in libraries.

Historians and writers of memoirs are fond of asking: “What would have happened if…?” Indeed, if the governments of Britain and France had agreed to join hands with the Soviet Union against the aggressor in 1939, as we suggested, the destiny of Europe would have been different.

— Georgy Zhukov, 1962

In his memoirs published in 1962, Zhukov talks about those negotiations and the British/French unwillingness to commit. This is not at all surprising – as we wrote earlier, at approximately that time Britain and France were themselves preparing to pounce on the USSR: England and France were preparing an attack on the USSR in the summer of 1940: Operation Pike.

We are going to reproduce the relevant passages from Zhukov’s memoirs, using the English translation of his “Recollections and Reflection”, volume 1, found at WebArchive. Volume 2 is also available there.


But first, there is another paragraph in “The Telegraph” that raised our hackles.

But the British and French side – briefed by their governments to talk, but not authorised to commit to binding deals – did not respond to the Soviet offer, made on August 15, 1939. Instead, Stalin turned to Germany, signing the notorious non-aggression treaty with Hitler barely a week later.

Notorious treaty?!!

Shouldn’t the British press rather call the Munich conspiracy of 1938 for “notorious”. While the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty was the last such treaty to be concluded. From our Telegram post “All European countries signed pacts with Hitler!”

  • Declaration on the Non-Use of Force between Germany and Poland, signed in 1934;
  • The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, which gave Hitler the opportunity to have a navy, which was prohibited as a result of the First World War;
  • The Anglo-German Declaration of Chamberlain and Hitler, signed on September 30, 1938;
  • The Franco-German Declaration of December 6, 1938, signed in Paris by the French and German Foreign Ministers Bonn and Ribbentrop;
  • The Treaty between the Republic of Lithuania and the German Reich of March 22, 1939, signed in Berlin, which dealt with the reunification of the Klaipeda Region with the German Reich;
  • The Non-Aggression Pact between the German Reich and Latvia of June 7, 1939;
  • These are only a part of the treaties concluded in pre-war Europe with Nazi Germany.

We also wrote in the post “Failed Union Against Fascism”

In 1934, the USSR invited European countries to jointly resist fascist aggression.
Their refusal made a new world war inevitable.

Doctor of Historical Sciences Mikhail Meltyukhov reflected on this in an interview with the magazine “Historian”:

The main reason for the failure of the “collective security” policy is that Great Britain and France were more inclined to agree with Germany and Italy rather than with the Soviet Union.

Thus, during contacts with the German leadership on November 19, 1937, the Lord Chairman of the Royal Privy Council of Great Britain Edward Halifax, and a little later, on December 2, the British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden notified Berlin that London was not against the revision of borders in Eastern Europe, but considered an indispensable condition is the prevention of war.

France supported this position during the Anglo-French negotiations, which took place in the British capital on November 28–30, 1937.

The parties agreed on further non-interference in international disputes [read: no support for the anti-fascist struggle against Franco in Spain] and clashes in Eastern Europe.


And now, to memoirs by Marshal of the Soviet Union, Georgy Zhukov, first published in 1962, English translation from 1985.

From chapter 8, “In Command of Kiev Special Military District”, pages 211 – 216 of volume 1

In reporting to the Party’s 18th Congress about the work of the Central Committee, J. V. Stalin commented on the threat of the new imperialist war. He said that our country, which constantly followed a policy of peace, was doing its utmost to enhance the fighting capacity of the Red Army and Navy. That was really so.

It often happens, by the way, that most important documents are ignored by our historical researchers. Sometimes the thoughts and judgements on prewar years obtained from indirect sources and through supplementary research sound as a revelation, while the same thoughts and even facts are contained in books easily available in libraries.
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The Chain of Historic Continuity

Reading time: 2 minutes

From our Telegram post at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

The Soviet animated film “We’ve Beaten, Are Beating, And Shall Be Beating Them” from 1941 shows the historic links between 1242, 1918 and 1941 – driving away the invaders from the West.


Backup at Rumble.

The historic chain of western invaders and their defeats can now be added yet another link named NATO.
And with the same unbreakable certainty will the outcome of this new attempt to conquer and plunder Russia be the same: Victory over the unwelcome “guests”.

The peoples of Russia will prevail!

At “The Museum of the Broken Ones”, the foreseeing exhibition planners of the USSR even left a pedestal open for NATO when the time came..

Caricature by the Soviet art collective “Kukryniksy”, 1952

In the Museum of The Beaten and Broken Ones, an exquisite collection of historic relics of grand conquerors of Russia are on display. The foreseeing curators have left a pedestal open for the next invader.

Plaques on the pedestals read, left to right:
🪧 Teutonic Knights
🪧 Karl VII of Sweden
🪧 Napoleon
🪧 Hitler
🪧 Samurai
🪧 …. [empty pedestal, no plaque yet]

The text is the famous quote by Alexander Nevsky:

«Who comes to us with a sword, will die by the sword.»

We’ll see, perhaps the crutched 75-year-old will run completely out of steam and munitions before they manage to get their bearings straight.

How Soviet People Built Tanks and Planes on Own Savings

Reading time: 2 minutes

From the publications at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”

Mariya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya (16 August 1905 – 15 March 1944) was a Soviet tank driver and mechanic who fought on the Eastern Front against Nazi Germany during World War II. After her husband was killed fighting in 1941, Oktyabrskaya sold her possessions to donate a tank for the war effort, and requested that she be allowed to drive it. She received and was trained to drive and fix a T-34 medium tank, which she named “Fighting Girlfriend” (“Боевая подруга”). Oktyabrskaya proved her ability and bravery in battle, and was promoted to the rank of sergeant. After she died of wounds from battle in 1944, she was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union’s highest honour for bravery during combat. She was the first female tank driver to be awarded the title.

The story of Mariya Oktyabrskaya, who bought and piloted a tank during WWII is not unique. While relatively uncommon in that she became the tank driver of her own tank, buying weapons for the army using own savings was a mass phenomenon.

According to the large Soviet encyclopedia, in total, 2,500 combat aircraft, thousands of tanks, 16 boats and 8 submarines were built on the donations the Soviet people. According to historians’ calculations, the citizens of the USSR fully paid a year’s worth of the army upkeep during the war.

The mini-documentary from NTV tells of some of these people and their donated machines.


Backup at Rumble.


A Fact, and Not an Advertisement

The the mass nature of donations to the Red Army by the Soviet people found reflection in this drawing by B.Fridkin, published in “Krokodil” issue №5 from 1943.

— Is the tank fine?
— In full working order! We are buying them ourselves for the army!

A People Without A Soul?!

Reading time: 6 minutes

From our Telegram post at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

During the Great Patriotic War, Soviet writer and war correspondent, Ilya Ehrenburg, wrote for newspapers and Red Army outlets. After the war some of his articles were published in the book “War”.

His words are among the strongest and most precise as to the description and exposure of the dehumanised mindset of the ‘Aryan master race’, and his articles bear testimony to the true nature of fascist versus socialist societies and people. In this article, the topic is Soul.

The article “The Soul of the People” was initially published in “Red Star” No. 92, April 19, 1942


The Soul of the People

– by Ilya Ehrenburg

The [Nazi German] newspaper “Angriff” (Attack) of April 2, [1942], published the thoughts of Oberleutnant Gotthagdt, entitled “A people without a soul”. The Oberleutnant spent several months in the captured regions of Russia, and he did not like our people. He writes:

“The fact that there is no laughter here can be explained by a disaster, but the absence of tears is terrifying. Everywhere and always we observe stubborn indifference even before death. People remain indifferent not only when their comrades die, but also when it comes to their own lives. One was sentenced to death. He indifferently smoked a cigarette..

Isn’t it terrible? Where do these people get the strength to stubbornly defend themselves, to constantly attack? It’s a mystery to me.”

With what pride we read the confessions of the German officer! Maybe he thought that our girls would smile at the Germans? They turn away. And the German looks for an explanation – why don’t the Russians laugh?

He answers himself: it is hard to laugh among the gallows. But here the girl is led to the gallows, and she does not cry, her eyes are dry and stern. The lieutenant thought that she would cry. He counted on the executioners enjoying her fear, her weakness, her tears.
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The Feat of Mikhail Devyatayev

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🌟 On February 8, 1945 — exactly 80 years ago — a group of ten Soviet prisoners of war led by Mikhail Devyatayev carried out one of the most daring escapes from Nazi captivity.

In July 1944, Devyatayev’s plane was shot down near Lvov, and he was captured unconscious. A month later, the senior lieutenant attempted to escape, but was caught and sent to the Sachsenhausen death camp.

The pilot managed to swap his death row inmate patch for a penal prisoner’s number, assuming a new identity. Under a false name he went to a different concentration camp on the Usedom Island, near the Peenemünde rocket centre in the Baltic Sea, where German scientists were testing V-2 rockets.

On February 8, Devyatayev and his comrades were taken out for repair works at a local airfield. The Germans were unaware that they had a highly experienced Soviet pilot among the prisoners. Before his capture, the fighter pilot had completed nearly 200 sorties, took part in dozens of aerial battles, and shot down multiple enemy aircraft.

✈️ Seizing the opportunity, Devyatayev and nine other Soviet prisoners stealthily killed a guard and hijacked a German Heinkel bomber. The Soviet pilot broke away from the pursuit and flew beyond enemy lines.

Upon returning to the Soviet Union, Devyatayev provided valuable intelligence on the location of missile installations, which were later destroyed in an airstrike. The Peenemünde testing site was captured by Soviet forces in March 1945.

🎖 On August 15, 1957, Mikhail Devyatayev was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Source: Russian MFA


This short documentary from NTV tells the story of Mihail Devyatayev, providing an added layer of detail to the commemorative post from the Russian Foreign Ministry.