“Unconquered” by Valerij Kipelov. Russian Heavy Metal Group’s Tribute to Blockaded Leningrad

Reading time: 3 minutes

This song by the famous Russian heavy-metal group “Kipelov”, written 5 years ago to the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War deeply touched me. The powerful words, the strong voice of Kipelov and the documentary footage from the blockaded Leningrad, all merged into a whirlweend of emotions and memory.

The title of the song is “Непокорённый” – “Nepokorjonnyj”, which means both “Unconquered”, abut also “Defiant”, “Unbowed”. And this word takes all these meanings in the song.
Lyrics translation is mine.

Небо Балтики давит свинцом, город держит за горло блокада;
Медный всадник и ангел с крестом батальонам подвозят снаряды.
Львы из камня срываются с мест, чтоб с бойцами подняться в атаку –
Непокорных жестокая месть. Наступление. Крушение мрака!

Припев:
Непокорённый, прошедший сквозь ад;
Непокорённый, герой – Ленинград!
Непокорённый, на все времена;
Непокорённый, город Петра!

Пишет Жизнь слабой детской рукой даты смерти на саване снега.
Что тогда бы случилось с тобой; смог остаться бы ты человеком;
Не сдаваться и в голос не выть, убивая за хлебные крошки;
Свет надежды сумел бы хранить под раскаты немецкой бомбежки?

Припев:
Непокорённый, прошедший сквозь ад;
Непокорённый, герой – Ленинград!
Непокорённый, на все времена;
Непокорённый, город Петра!

Чернота. Хрупкий Ладожский лёд, уходящие дети под воду.
Метроном отобьет скорбный счет всех погибших в блокадные годы.
Нервы города – к сердцу земли, силы взять, и к весне возродиться,
Медный всадник к победе летит, неподвластной забвению птицей.

Припев:
Непокорённый, прошедший сквозь ад;
Непокорённый, герой – Ленинград!
Непокорённый, на все времена;
Непокорённый, город Петра!

Город Петра!

Непокорённый!

The Baltic sky is laden with lead, the city is held by the throat by blockade;
Bronze Horseman and Angel with Cross bring shells to the forces forth.
Lions of stone break from their plinths to rise with fighters in charge –
The unconquereds’ brutal revenge. Offensive. Darkness will fall!

Chorus:
Unconquered, having passed through Hell;
Unconquered, the Leningrad-hero!
Unconquered, for all time;
Unconquered, the city of Peter!

Life writes with a weak child’s hand the dates of death on a shroud of snow.
What would have happened to you back then; could you have kept yourself human;
Not to give up and howl out loud, killing for crumbs of bread;
Would you be able to hold onto the light of hope under the thunder of German shelling?

Chorus:
Unconquered, having passed through Hell;
Unconquered, the Leningrad-hero!
Unconquered, for all time;
Unconquered, the city of Peter!

Blackness. The fragile Ladoga ice, and children going under.
The metronome will mournfully beat the count of those, died in blockade.
Nerves of the city reach to Earth’s heart, strength to take, and be reborn by the spring,
The Bronze Horseman flies to Victory, a bird that’s beyond the oblivion.

Chorus:
Unconquered, having passed through Hell;
Unconquered, the Leningrad-hero!
Unconquered, for all time;
Unconquered, the city of Peter!

The cty of Peter!

Unconquered!

The Salvation of Prague in May 1945 by the Soviet Troops

Reading time: 15 minutes

The liberation of Prague from the Nazi German occupation was brought about 75 years ago by the Soviet troops under the command of Marshal Ivan Konev. Seeing as the Czechs have recently decided to erase that particular page of their history, we must do all in our power to counterbalance the destruction of memory, by remembering the events of 5th through 12th of May 1945 in all the unaltered detail.

For those seeking to learn even more, I would highly recommend to also read Lada Ray’s in-depth article 75 Years Later, Nazism Won in Europe? Czechia Demolishes Monument to Russian Marshal Konev, Liberator of Auschwitz & Prague! (LADA RAY REPORT).

And now, let me present translations of two materials that shed light on the events, unfolding in Prague as the War was drawing to an end…

Liberation of Prague in May 1945 – The History Without Retouching

Written by Klim Podkova, 08.05.2018

Burning Prague

Who doesn’t know the history of the liberation of Prague? On May 5, 1945, Prague rose in revolt, Soviet troops came to the aid of the rebels, and on May 9, Prague was liberated.

But it happened not quite like that, or rather, it wasn’t like that at all. In May, parts of the German garrison were really conducting bloody battles in Prague. Only their main opponents were not the rebelling Czechs, but the fighters of the 1st division of the RLA (“Russian Liberation Army”, or Vlasovtsy [Translator note: The name Vlasov is synonymous to that of Quisling in Norway]).

Czech Republic – the reliable industrial rear of the Third Reich

Czechoslovakia as an independent state disappeared from the political map of Europe before the Second World War. First, in April 1938, under pressure from Britain, France and Italy, Czechoslovakia abandoned the Sudetenland in favour of Germany (the so-called Munich Conspiracy).

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Prague’s Shame – Petty-minded Prague-6 mayor Ondřej Kolář erases the memory of Prague’s saviour, Marshal Ivan Konev

Reading time: 9 minutes

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of the Victory over the German Fascists, where Soviet Union played the decisive and definitive role in sealing that Victory. This role of USSR is like a thorn in the eye of the modern day revisionists and neo-Fascists, who over the past decades have been ferociously rewriting history and smearing Russia as the heir to the USSR. The history is remembered as long as there are physical manifestations of said history left in the world.

As such, the especially vicious battle has been wielded against the monuments commemorating the Soviet (and by that meaning all nationalities, not just Russian) soldiers and commanders on the post-Soviet space. Poland, Czech Republic, Romania and others started the trend as soon as the CIA assets took power in those countries. After 2014, once the neo-Fascits took hold of power in Ukraine with the help of the USA and EU, the demolition of the WWII memorials was put on the assembly line rate level, at the same tempo as the destruction of the Ukrainian economy that it inherited after the USSR.

Now, that the date of the 75th Anniversary is drawing ever nearer, the newest salvo in the war on the historical monuments was heard from Prague, Czech Republic, where the memorial to Marshal Ivan Konev – the saviour of Prague – was torn down. If not for Konev’s army and his decisive, yet careful actions, Prague would be looking like Dresden now. Albeit, not because of the American firebombing, but because of the demolition charges that the retreating German forces put all around the city. It is the remembrance of the salvation of such cities as Prague and Krakow – at great self-sacrificial cost on the part of the Soviet troops – that the CIA assets are eager to destroy.

Addendum Lada Ray published a very forceful article about the desecration of the memorial to Prague’s saviour on Patreon: 75 Years Later, Nazism Won in Europe? Czechia Demolishes Monument to Russian Marshal Konev, Liberator of Auschwitz & Prague! (LADA RAY REPORT)
Please read it, as it contains a much deeper historical perspective around the liberation of Prague, as wellanalysis of the situation with the war on monuments in particular and the state of the Western world in general.

Related article translation that I published 5 years ago, the the 70th Anniversary: Prague Winter. What is the Czechs’ attitude towards the coming 70th anniversary of the Victory?

Below is my speed-translation of an article from “Argumenty i Facty” from 09.04.2020, showing the shame of Prague district 6 in all its ignominious glory.


“Let’s return Marshal home!” Will the memorial to Ivan Konev come to Moscow from Prague?

Descendants of the Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev began collecting signatures for the transfer to Russia of the monument to the commander that was dismantled in Prague. The daughter of the Marshal, Natalia Koneva, hopes that the monument will be installed in Moscow.

“We have Marshal Konev street. And it will be natural if the monument would stand on it.”

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History being rewritten in front of our eyes…

Reading time: 3 minutes

When I published the translation of a 6-year-old article “So many? Really?” Germans do not know how many Russians were killed by their ancestors, I got some vehement response, and even more vehement responses came to Lada’s repost of my translation at FuturistTrendcast.

What scares me is how the history is being rewritten right in front of our very eyes, while a few of the contemporaries of WWII are still alive, and while their ancestors still remember their stories, like I remember the story of my grand-uncle. The most scary part is the passive acceptance of the twisted half-truths and lies, peddled by the media, by the general populace. What can we say about the events of 1812 and before (like when the Dutch have forgotten the Russian help in restoration of their state), what can we say about the changes done to our history, when the history is being so thoroughly rewritten right now?!

Three articles on RT caught my eye today, vividly illustrating this.

Lesson to learn from GoT: Stories are powerful, be careful which ones you believe

There is one very poignant part in this article:

Orwell’s dystopia takes to its logical extreme the old adage that “history is written by the victors,” but it’s not too far off. Much of Western history about WWII, for example, came from the pen of Winston Churchill, who naturally made sure he was the hero by scrubbing out inconvenient facts like the 1943 Bengal famine or the betrayal of Yugoslavia, for instance.

These narratives were then taken up and amplified by Hollywood, which has from its very beginning manufactured institutional memory for most Americans. As a result of blockbusters like ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ and ‘Band of Brothers’ (another HBO show), the US contribution to defeating Hitler has become grossly inflated in the public mind, not just at home, but abroad as well. Meanwhile, the massive Soviet role in the war has been minimised or erased entirely.

This narrative violation of history made it possible for US President Donald Trump to argue that America single-handedly defeated Nazism and Communism, without a peep from his critics and legions of fact-checkers normally eager to seise every opportunity.

To paraphrase Varys, power is all about perception management.

And right on cue, case in point:

Soviet Union oddly missing from US-made coin ‘saluting’ WWII Allies

After fierce resistance and four years of bloody battles, the Red Army repelled the invasion and liberated Eastern Europe from the Nazi occupation.

In 1945, Soviet soldiers captured Berlin. After the warfare in Europe was over, Moscow agreed to US requests to enter the war against Japan, defeating its forces in Manchuria.

More than 26.6 million Soviet citizens died in the war, with 8.7 million killed in combat.

And yet…

A US-made collectable coin lists Britain and France among the honored US allies in WWII, but, strangely, the Soviet Union, whose Red Army delivered a crushing blow to the Nazis in Europe and fought Japan, is omitted.

I want to round these musings with a news from Sweden, where they are mulling to forbid… Nordic runes:

Swedes up in arms as govt mulls potential ban on ancient ‘Nazi’ runes

First the Rus runes were pushed into oblivion, and now it’s the turn of the Norse runes, and with them even more of our history will be forgotten. Nazis seem to be an awfully convenient excuse to achieve such goals of first maligning and then outright banning the old and venerated symbols, as it’s already been done with the symbol of the “wheel of time” – “kolovrat”.

“So many? Really?” Germans do not know how many Russians were killed by their ancestors

Reading time: 9 minutes

In 2015 I translated Georgy Zotov’s article Repentance of Berlin. After 70 years, the Germans have an unambiguous attitude towards the Soviet victory.

This year it elicited the following comment:

LaRock on March 6, 2019 at 19:50 said:
The war is over stop punishing Germany

To which I replied:

Stanislav on March 12, 2019 at 20:02 said:
This comment should be addressed to the USA, who are still occupying and punishing Germany. If you read the article, you’d see that it’s about remembrance and reconciliation.

However, a better reply would have been a translation of an even earlier article by Zotov, one from 2013. I am translating it below, followed by a translation of two reader comments from AiF and my thoughts on them and what Zotov wrote in one particular paragraph.

Today, with racism and calls to war and genocide being the norm on the pages of the Western MSM (“racism” is a common-root synonym of “russophobia”) and the number of the Western troops and war hardware right on the Russian border being the highest since the June of 1941, it is time to remember. For while the West is collectively shrugging off 1941-1945 as “just another invasion of Russia” and preparing for a new one, Russia remembers, watches closely and prepares to defend its land once more.

In this today’s context remembrance is the key to preventing another invasion of Russia by the West, and prevent this time hundreds of millions people being killed – both defenders, attackers and bystanders…

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204 A-Bombs Against 66 Cities: US Drew up First Plan to Nuke Russia Before WWII Was Even Over – Reblog

Reading time: 8 minutes

We’ve written about it before, how USA was planning to annihilate USSR (read – Russia) just as WWII was drawing to a close. You can read that first article USA declassifies its plans to nuke 1/3 of planet Earth.

But it’s never too seldom to repeat this, and today’s publication in Russia Insider 204 A-Bombs Against 66 Cities: US Drew up First Plan to Nuke Russia Before WWII Was Even Over does just that.

UPDATE May 2, 2025: the original of the RI article disappeared, so the link is updated with the version stored at the WebArchive. We also update this post to include the complete copy of the article, with all the image. The article at Russia Insider was in turn re-published from South Front, here at the new address.

Our reader, JMF, found two more articles of interest on this topic: From 1945-49 the US and UK planned to bomb Russia into the Stone Age and The First Atomic Stockpile Requirements (September 1945).


“Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”: Planned US Nuclear Attack against USSR

This video from South Front is based on the research of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Below is the full text of Professor Chossudovsky’ article published by Global Research

According to a secret document dated September 15, 1945, “the Pentagon had envisaged blowing up the Soviet Union with a coordinated nuclear attack directed against major urban areas.

All major cities of the Soviet Union were included in the list of 66 “strategic” targets. The tables below categorize each city in terms of area in square miles and the corresponding number of atomic bombs required to annihilate and kill the inhabitants of selected urban areas.

Six atomic bombs were to be used to destroy each of the larger cities including Moscow, Leningrad, Tashkent, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa.

The Pentagon estimated that a total of 204 bombs would be required to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”. The targets for a nuclear attack consisted of sixty-six major cities.
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Will Russia have to fend off NATO invasion too..?

Reading time: 4 minutes

The image below speaks volumes, without words. It speaks of Russia’s history past, and of the precarious future. The Russian Bear sitting on his land of old, looking with suspicion at the ever growing tentacles of the US/NATO, already consuming neighbouring lands in blood – Yugoslavia, former Ukraine – Malorossia and Novorossia, Middle-East. And besides The Bear is a compost heap of history, where one can see the the tentacles of the past that dared to choke Russia and got pruned. Will Russia again be forced to end another war that someone starts in the hopes of eliminating Russia, freedom, history, from the face of the world?

For those, not so well-versed in history, here is what the dates in the compost heap of history signify. I added a few more – on average Russia got invaded once every 50 years, and this time is not different, though the method of warfare changed.

  • 1242 – The Germanic Teutonic invasion and the Ice Battle on the Ladoga lake.
  • 1612 – Polish invasion into Russia and occupation of Moscow. Beaten by the people’s militia of Minin and Pozharskij, the memorial to whom you will find on the Beautiful Square in Moscow.
  • 1709 – Karl XII of Sweden said that “Russia is a dwarf, whom I shall put on its knees” and attacked. After that Sweden lost its status of a superpower.
  • 1759 – (not on the image). Freidrich I moved against Russia with the words “I shall conquer the backward Russia” and in 1759 Russian army entered Berlin.
  • 1812 – Napoleon is famous for his saying that “Russia is a giant on clay feet”. This giant made the Napoleonic army turn in 1812 after the battle of Borodino and a tactical surrender of Moscow, and in 1814 Russian army was marching down the streets of Paris. By the way, Russian Don Cossacks also had to restore some of Europe, for which they were promptly forgotten.
  • 1854-1855 – (not on the image) French, Brits and Turks attacked Crimea, and Russia held the defence of Sevastopol. Russia won that war, which in reality lasted between 1853 and 1856, and was the first really world war. Brits presented the history otherwise, claiming victory in the “Crimean War”, which was really only one of many battles. But if they won, how come Crimea remained Russian?
  • 1914-1918 – First World War, or the “War of 4 Cousins”, Russia had nothing to win in that war and got mixed in it responding to a provocation (much the same as what the West hoped to achieve in Ukraine, yet it didn’t work this time). Though Russia was on the winning side, the country got destroyed in the process.
  • 1918-1920 – The Civil War. Still Russia managed to hold its own against the subsequent foreign intervention and even chased the Poles (who tried to repeat their failure of 1612) from Moscow suburbs to Warsar. At that very time when time the Republican senator from the State of Washington, Miles Poindexter, was saying that: “Russia has become just a geographical concept, and it will never be anything more than this. Her power of rallying, organizing, and rebuilding is gone forever. The nation does not exist…”
  • 1941-1945 – Hitler proclaimed that he’d conquer USSR by the end of 1941. In 1945 Russian troops entered Berlin (again, as in 1759 – they never learn).
  • 2014 NATO – Obama famously said a few years back that “Russia is only a regional power, and US will destroy its economy”. When will the pruning begin, and have the streets of Washington been prepared for the welcoming of the liberating army..?

As I wrote earlier, Russia Means Peace, Russia loves peace, but knowing it’s own history of defence, it is always prepared to end wars.

For those suffering from historic amnesia, here is a song of revelations from Artjom Grishanov – Russian Soldier Saved the World (with English subtitles of the news items showcasing history rewriting, and of the lyrics):

In his article Washington’s Benevolent Mask Is Disintegrating Paul Craig Roberts writes:

By orchestrating Russophobia in the West, Washington has put all of humanity at risk. The Russians have watched Washington’s false accusations against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Yeman, Pakistan, Iran and against Russia herself—“invasion of Ukraine.” False accusations have in the 21st century always been Washington’s set-up of the target country for invasion or bombing.

These provocations issued daily by the idiot Western press, the idiot Western governments, and the idiot commentators have prepared the groundwork for a misunderstanding that can result in thermo-nuclear war and the end of life on earth.

When you read the New York Times, the Washington Post, or listen to CNN, NPR, or MSNBC or the British, Canadian, German, French, and Australian media, you are being indoctrinated with war with Russia (and China) and, thus, you are being prepared for your funeral.

Hopefully it will not come to this, for Russia will do its utmost to preserve this good Earth.

And as an after word, the picture below is well-known by now (with the correction, that Kazahstan never had a NATO base, though some of the neighbouring republics did have advisors):

The Plan to Destroy Russia. Conceived and Started in 1948. Concluded in 1993? Or Not…

Reading time: 67 minutes

After the hot war phase on Russia(USSR) between 22nd of April 1941 and the 9th of May 1945, executed through Germans, but lavishly funded by US (for example grandfather of the Bush presidential clan), USA did not view 1945 as a year of defeat. Along with preparation for a carpet nuking of the key cities in USSR, USA also devised a plan to politically change and destroy USSR/Russia from within. In the document below, Russia and USSR are referred interchangeably.

The document – U.S. OBJECTIVES WITH RESPECT TO RUSSIA – presented in full below my analysis, is copied from this resource, with an option to download the raw scanned pages of the text.

It demonstrates well the strategy of “divide and conquer” that that US were going to employ, as well as their understanding that the only way to destroy Russia, is from within – something that the “liberal” 5th column is doing in Russia of today. Remember that USSR, is never the stated final objective in the document below – Russia is. On the other hand, they do not understand many aspects of the Russian World, illustrated well by this fallacious statement “Before the revolution of 1918, Russian nationalism was solely Russian.”, as Russian Empire of pre 1917 was also a multi-national and multi-confessional state.

Let me extract the key-points of the doctrine first, and then I’ll let you read through the whole text, leaving to you to decide if there is even a gram of good in the outlined intents…

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The Upside-down World of the Western Main Stream Media (MSM)

Reading time: 9 minutes


MSM – only the truthful information

I’ve been meaning to post the above caricature for quite some time, but as it is usual with many of my posts, it’s been sitting in draft until I felt it “matured” enough. Now, I saw a convergence of two seemingly insignificant events, that made it feel like a good time to post this image.

It is not a secret that anything published in the Western main-stream media about Russia (as well as China, or Syria, or any other state that the Western elites feel is in need of some “democratic bombings”), is presented through a certain prism, where either partial truths or outright lies are given to the audience to form an image of an enemy.

This can be seen in the materials, published both…

… in Peace …

Seemingly such an innocent thing, a report by one of the many Russian TV channels on a vegetable shortage in Europe… But look how it got blown out of proportions both by the 5th column inside and the agents of influence outside of Russia.

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The Singing Weapon – The Alexandrov Ensemble (Documentary with EngSubs)

Reading time: 22 minutes

On the 25th of December 2016, 1/3 of the world-renowned Alexandrov Ensemble perished in a single plane crash, en-route from Sochy, Russia to Syria. This is tragic loss and a strong blow against Russia, against the singing ambassadors of Russia abroad and a bright symbol within.

As a tribute, I translated the following 2008 documentary, titled “The Singing Weapon”, which is how Winston Churchill referred to it after listening to its performance during the 1945 Yalta Conference in Crimea. If it is a weapon, then this ensemble is a “weapon” of peace unity and accord, which it brings with song and dance to all peoples.

The formatted subtitle file in ASS format can be downloaded separately. Full text of the script is below the video frame.

EDIT 11.05.2022

In the recent bout of censorship against all things Russian, YouTube also blocked the VGTRK channel, where the untranslatable original version of the film resided. I’ve now reviewed my translation, fixing a few things, and uploaded the video both to Odysee and to Rumble. The original you-Tube-related text is moved to the bottom of this post, past the transcript, for historic reference.

Back in 2017, when my translated version was taken down on third-party copyright claims, I relayed this development in a comment at Lada Ray’s Futurist Trendcast, and she nailed the overall problem in her reply:

Unfortunately, these silly indiscriminate western capitalist practices have penetrated Russia. Very sad. Those who do it are just like robots. They aren’t paid to think, just to block everything. Those at the helm don’t get it that you are actually helping promote their material by exposing it to wider western audience.

Alas, with this model Russian companies allow Western companies to control and censor what materials are available to the Western audience!



The complete song “Sacred War” (or “Holy War”) with my English translation of the lyrics:

Plus, an older translation in the comments on YouTube:

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Behind the EuroVision politics – the Truth about Tatar Deportation of 1944

Reading time: 7 minutes

This is a re-blog of Lada Ray’s article Eurovision’s Dirty Secrets: Another Instrument in anti-Russia Proxy War and Crimean Tartar Card, which shows how highly politicised and rotten the EuroVision become. But we all knew that…

More importantly, it covers the context and history behind deportation of Tatars from Crime in 1944. Below is a fragment in question from the article:

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The Road to Victory – My Grand-Uncle’s Path from Moscow to Berlin

Reading time: 12 minutes


This article, first published on the 22nd of June 2015 at 04:00 in the morning, is a living, often-updated, tribute to my grand-uncle, who fought that war from the very first days and until the victorious end. Moreover, it’s a tribute to all 27 million Soviet citizens, who perished in that war, and tens of millions more, who suffered hardships and losses to bring about the Victory. It is therefore, when the Western “leaders” refused to attend the Victory parade in Moscow on the 9th of May 2015, they effectively did a dance of glee on the bones of those 27 million perished people, and were perceived by all Russians (and here I use “Russian” in a broad sense, encompassing all 200+ nationalities that live in the Russian Federation, all the normal people of the former USSR, and all the foreigners, who sympathise with Russia) as modern-time Western heirs to Nazism. I previously translated an article, written by the President of the RF, V.V.Putin, describing his family’s struggle in the blockaded Leningrad. In this article here, I will touch upon my own family’s history.

In Memory of Georgy
In 2015 the Russian Ministry of Defence launched a new web-site, consolidating, digitalising and geo-tagging all the newly-declassified information about those Soviet citizens, who fought (and died) in WWII, in the Great Patriotic War. The site is aptly called People’s Memory. A good English language article about it can be found at Russia Beyond the Headlines:

The new People’s Memory website, launched by the Russian Defence Ministry, is the largest of its kind in the world. The site, dedicated to those who served on the Eastern Front in World War II, allows users to locate the resting places of soldiers whose burial sites have remained unknown to their relatives until now, as well as acquire knowledge about their military careers.

Knowing my grand-uncle’s name, family name and patronymic, as well as his year of birth, I managed to locate him, and what I learnt, confirmed those disjointed memories I had of him from my childhood. I vaguely remember his face, and more his blazer, covered in orders and medals. He used to visit us in Moscow between 23rd of February and the 10th of May, celebrating Victory Day and meeting with the ever-thinning numbers of his brothers-in-arms. From the stories, re-told by my mother, I knew that he fought in the War as part of a tank division. That he was at one point surrounded, cut off from the main force for several months. That for some time he was presumed dead, until their company managed to reunite with the main force. That at another point he received a heavy concussion, but returned into the ranks. And that he finished the War in Berlin. But not much more. People’s Memory allowed me to go deeper and see his path and the deeds that lead to the awards.

There is memorial public initiative in Russia, The Immortal Legion, where people add photos and what information they remember of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, lest it is forgotten. I have enlisted Grand-Uncle Georji into the legion, publishing what I found here at the authentic Immortal Legion’s official site.

Moiseev Georgy Mihajlovich, born on November 11th, 1920 in Altai Krai in Siberia. At the age of 18, he was conscripted to the regular service as a tank mechanic in October of 1939. The regular service lasted at that time for 2 years, and in 1941 he would have been demobilised. But so came the War. He first became demobilised from the active army 23.11.1946. This date, over a year after the end of WWII in the European direction, makes me think if grand-uncle Georgy might have been deployed to China to liberate it from the Japanese occupation. However, I do not have any documentary evidence for that, besides this strangely late date.
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Victory Day – 70 Years’ Anniversary of the defeat of Nazism in Germany.

Reading time: 2 minutes


No one’s Forgotten
Nothing’s Forgotten

Today marks the 70th Anniversary of the Victory in WWII and Great Patriotic War.
Much can be said commemorating the sacrifice of the 27 million Soviet citizens, who lost their lives on the way to victory. But the best tribute to it is in the words and the imagery of the following immortal song of Lev Leshenko – Victory Day – performed by Iosif Kobzon (who is, incidentally, under the EU and US sanctions for his courageous and outspoken defence democracy, human rights and the right of peoples for self-determination).


Victory Day!

Victory Day how far away it was from us,
As a smouldering piece of coal in an extinguished fire.
There were miles, burnt and dusty, –
We hastened this day however we could.

This Victory Day
Has become permeated with the smell of gunpowder,
It is a celebration
With greying hair on one’s temples.
It is a joy
With the tears in one’s eyes.
Victory Day!
Victory Day!
Victory Day!

Days and nights in front of the hearth furnaces
Our Motherland didn’t shut her eyes.
Days and nights conducting a difficult battle –
We hastened this day however we could.

This Victory Day
Has become permeated with the smell of gunpowder,
It is a celebration
With greying hair on one’s temples.
It is a joy
With the tears in one’s eyes.
Victory Day!
Victory Day!
Victory Day!

Hello, mama, not all of us returned…
Would be nice to run barefoot on dew!
Half of Europe have we walked, half the Earth –
We hastened this day however we could.

This Victory Day
Has become permeated with the smell of gunpowder,
It is a celebration
With greying hair on one’s temples.
It is a joy
With the tears in one’s eyes.
Victory Day!
Victory Day!
Victory Day!


It is a slap in the face of those 27 million perished Soviet citizens, that some of the Western “leaders” decided to boycott the memorial parade in Moscow on May the 9th 2015. This especially shames Angela Merkel of Germany. This denial to commemorate the defeat of Nazism unpleasantly signals that the ugly head of Nazism is again rearing over Europe and USA. I just hope that this attitude is not representative for the people that those “leaders” are representing.

“Life is such a simple, yet cruel thing” – recollection of the Great Patriotic War written by the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin

Reading time: 9 minutes

This recollection of the War was written by the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and published in Russian Pioneer on the 30th of April 2015. Soviet Union lost 27 million people in that War, and almost every single family has a recollection of losses and hardships connected with it. And the family of the President of RF is no exception. Read on my unofficial translation from Russian below…


Frankly, father did not like even to touch the subject. Rather, it was like this: when adults were talking to each other and remembering something, I was just around. All the information about the war, about what happened with my family, came to me from those conversations between the adults. But sometimes they addressed me directly.

Father served in Sevastopol, in the detachment of submarines – he was a sailor. He was drafted in 1939. And then, after returning from service, he just worked at a factory, and they lived with my mother in Peterhof. I think they even built some house there.

He was working at a military enterprise when the war started, giving the so-called “reservation” that exempts one from conscription. But he wrote an application to join the party, and then another application – that he wants to go to the front. He was dispatched to the subversive detachment of the NKVD. It was a small detachment. He said that there were 28 people in it, and they were deployed into the near rear for carrying out acts of sabotage. The undermining of bridges, railway tracks… But they were almost immediately ambushed. Someone betrayed them. They came to a village, and then went out, and when after a while they returned, the Nazis were already waiting for them there. They were chased through the woods, and he survived, because he climbed into a swamp, and spent a few hours in that swamp, breathing through a reed. This I remember already from his own story. And he said that, while sitting in the swamp and breathing through the reed, he heard how the German soldiers were passing nearby, just a few steps away from him, how the dogs were yapping…

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Ungrateful Europe.
What would have happened should we push Hitler back just to our borders

Reading time: 7 minutes

This is a translation from Russian of two historical articles, published in Argumenty i Fakty on the 3rd of April 2015.
The main article was written by Georgy Zotov. A subsequent expert opinion is presented by historian Rudolph Pihoj.


Soviet soldiers distribute bread to the residents of the city of Breslau during the Great Patriotic War.

On the eve of the 70th anniversary of Victory “AiF” tried to imagine: what would the map of Europe look like, had USSR not given thousands of kilometres of territories as present to those countries that now call us occupiers. And if they would give up these lands now.

Wroclaw – one of the most touristic cities of Poland. Crowds with cameras are everywhere, there’s not a spare spot in the expensive restaurants, taxi drivers ask for ungodly prices. At the entrance to the marketplace there waves a banner saying “Wroclaw – a real Polish charm!”. All seems fine, but as early as in May 1945 Wroclaw was called Breslau and had not belonged to Poland for 600 consecutive(!) years before that. The Victory Day, now referred by Warsaw as “the beginning of the communist tyranny,” added to Poland the German Silesia, Pomerania, as well as 80% of East Prussia. No one mentions this now: in other words that was a tyranny, but we’d still grab that land. “AiF” observer decided to understand, what would the map of Europe look like now, if our former brothers in the East were left without the help of the “occupiers”?

Whole cities as gifts

– In 1945 Poland received the cities of Breslau, Gdansk, Zielona Gora, Legnica, Szczecin, – says Maciej Wisniewski, a Polish freelance journalist. – USSR also gave the territory of Bialystok; with the mediation of Stalin, we acquired a disputed with Czechoslovakia city Kłodzko. Nevertheless, they believe here: the partitioning of Poland by the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact, when the Soviet Union took the Western Belarus and Western Ukraine, was unfair, but the transfer by Stalin to Poland of Silesia and Pomerania is absolutely fair, you can not dispute this. It is fashionable to say now that Russians did not liberate, but conquered. However, it turns into an interesting kind of occupation, when Poland got for free a quarter of Germany: and on top of it, hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers shed their blood for this land. Even the GDR resisted, not wanting to give Szczecin to the Poles – the dispute over the city was finally solved only in 1956, under pressure from the USSR.

Apart from the Poles, the Baltic States express a strong indignation by the “occupation”. Well, it’s worth remembering: the current capital – Vilnius – was also presented to Lithuania by the USSR; by the way, the Lithuanian population of Vilnius was then… barely 1%, with Polish being the majority. USSR returned to the Republic the city of Klaipeda – Prussian Memel, owned by Lithuanians in the 1923-1939, and annexed by the Third Reich. Already back in 1991 the Lithuanian leadership condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but no one returned neither Vilnius to Poland, nor Klaipeda to Germany.
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