Category: History, Soviet Union
Nuclear Near Miss: Remembering the ‘Man Who Saved the World’
(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – RM Staff – September 21, 2018 – russiamatters.org/blog/nuclear-near-miss-remembering-man-who-saved-world) Next week marks 35 years since America and Russia narrowly avoided fighting a nuclear war—the kind that “cannot be won and must never be fought,” in the words of Ronald Reagan. It wasn’t the first time the two nations lived through such a close call, and stories […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Memorial Service for Professor Richard Pipes” – Harvard University, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Friday, September 21, 2018 – 3:00pm to 5:00pm Memorial Church, Harvard Yard Please join us for a memorial service celebrating the life of Professor Richard E. Pipes (1923-2018). RSVPs to daviscenter@fas.harvard.edu or 617-495-4037 are welcome. Co-sponsored by the Pipes family, the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and the Harvard University Department of History. For more information, please call […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Grave Robbers, Nazi Collaborators and Official Apathy: How Ukraine Is Erasing the Holocaust” – Haaretz/Shmuel Herzfeld
“At Janovska, the Auschwitz of Ukraine, I saw skulls, hypodermic needles and tons of trash. Looters desecrate mass graves of Jews, searching for gold; the sites’ histories are ‘revised’, overwritten by Christian and nationalist symbolism. This is why we should still care”
» Read moreIs Russia Really “Fascist”? A Comment on Timothy Snyder
(PONARS Eurasia – PONARS Policy Memo – Marlene Laruelle – September 5, 2018 – ponarseurasia.org/memo/russia-really-fascist-reply-timothy-snyder) Marlene Laruelle is Research Professor, Associate Director of IERES, Director of the Central Asia Program, and Co-Director of PONARS Eurasia at The George Washington University. Over the past decade, and even more overtly since the annexation of Crimea, there has been a growing tendency to […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Kissinger on Russia: Insights and Recommendations” – Russia Matters
Originally published March 8, 2017. Periodically updated. Latest additions marked accordingly. This evolving compilation of observations and policy ideas about Russia by eminent U.S. statesman Henry Kissinger was the first in Russia Matters’ “Competing Views” series, where we share prominent American thinkers’ alternative takes on U.S.-Russian relations, Russia itself and America’s policies toward the country. Mr. Kissinger served as assistant […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Putin says he had no presidential ambitions during early years” – Interfax
SOCHI. Sept 1 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has admitted that as a child he never dreamt of becoming a head of state. “Of course, I did, I slept and saw,” Putin said with a laugh at a meeting with the winners of the 2017-2018 school Olympiads and their teachers, when asked about his school years and whether he […]
» Read more“Sara’s Century” Podcast
Subject: “Sara’s Century” podcast Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2018 16:43:23 +0000 From: BARBARA T NORTON <btnorton@widener.edu> I wanted bring to your attention a fascinating new podcast serial, “Sara’s Century,” by a colleague at Rutgers U-Camden. The description below is from the website http://sarascentury.blogs.rutgers.edu/: “Sara’s Century” is a 12-episode podcast serial about Sara Mebel, a nearly 100-year-old Jewish woman who left […]
» Read morePutin’s ‘A Solid Man’: Declassified Memos Offer Window Into Yeltsin-Clinton Relationship
(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Mike Eckel – WASHINGTON – August 30, 2018 – text with links and graphics: rferl.org/a/putin-s-a-solid-man-declassified-memos-offer-window-into-yeltsin-clinton-relationship/29462317.html) On September 8, 1999, just a few weeks after promoting the head of the country’s top intelligence agency to the post of prime minister, Russian President Boris Yeltsin took a phone call from a […]
» Read moreJRL NEWSWATCH: “Bill and Boris: A Window Into a Most Important Post-Cold War Relationship” [Excerpt] – Texas National Security Review/James Goldgeier
[Full text: tnsr.org/2018/08/bill-and-boris-a-window-into-a-most-important-post-cold-war-relationship/] “Against the backdrop of an enormous power differential between their two countries, Clinton and Yeltsin established a close personal rapport. … to interact effectively even when … frank in their disagreements, the most serious of which were over NATO enlargement … and the Kosovo War … As many were decrying the lack of any formal record […]
» Read moreJRL NEWSWATCH: “The right way to sanction Putin’s Russia” – Reuters/William Courtney
“The United States and … allies are increasingly frustrated over malign activities by Russia. Moscow wages war in Ukraine, abets brutality in Syria, interferes in elections, and poisons opponents. … Washington has imposed sanctions and closed Russian consulates … and vacation estates in Maryland and New York, all believed to be used by … Putin’s government for intelligence purposes. This […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Russians Get a Revisionist View of Soviet Union’s End; A new narrative paints from a former vice president paints Yeltsin as a tool of the U.S. in thwarting 1991 coup by hardliners” – Bloomberg/Leonid Bershidsky
“Only 27 years after the failure of a coup meant to keep the Soviet Union alive, some of the people who helped crush the revolt are doing their best to blacken their own victory. It’s been many years since Russia celebrated an anniversary of those three days, Aug. 19-21, 1991. Resolute action by Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, and by […]
» Read moreMore than Half of Russians Say Neither Side in August 1991 Putsch was in the Right
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 14, 2018) Fifty-three percent of Russians say that neither those who launched the August 1991 putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev nor those who defended the legitimate government were in the right, a figure that has remained more or less constant over the last 12 years, the Levada Center reported today. The polling […]
» Read moreJRL NEWSWATCH: “This is not a hoax, and things are not okay” – Washington Post/Joe Scarborough
“… Imagine that U.S. military leaders spent most of 1941 warning President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Democratic Party of a coming Pearl Harbor attack. Then imagine history’s harsh judgment against FDR’s party had it ignored those concerns, voted against efforts to fortify the Pacific fleet and plotted the firing of generals who were working to expose the looming Japanese […]
» Read more“Russia, My History” — History as an Ideological Tool
(PONARS Eurasia – Ivan Kurilla, Sergey Ivanov, Adrian Selin – August 5, 2018 – ponarseurasia.org/point-counter/russia-my-history-as-ideological-tool) The emergence of permanent history parks in Russia can be compared to the advent of “Institutes of National Memory” that operate in a number of former Soviet and Central European states. The vision of history they present is highly politically engaged. History as an Ideological […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Russia to memorialize 20 Holocaust execution sites” – Interfax
MOSCOW. Aug 6 (Interfax) – Twenty sites in Russia where Jews were executed and buried during the war will be memorialized as part of the next stage of the Return Dignity program this year. Monuments to Holocaust victims will be built in cities and villages in the Bryansk, Volgograd, Oryol, Ryazan, Smolensk, and Tula regions, the Stavropol Territory and the […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Amazon Getting Ready to Launch ‘The Romanoffs’; The series breaks usual practices, formats, and genres” – Moscow Times
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – HOLLYWOOD – July 30, 2018) Amazon Studios’ much-anticipated original anthology series “The Romanoffs” will hit the world stage on Oct. 12, initially available in 200 countries simultaneously. Departing from the traditional television format, “The Romanoffs” will be presented in the Amazon Prime platform both in English and foreign languages, announced Matthew Weiner, its creator, writer, […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK TRANSCRIPT: “[Putin at] 1030th anniversary of Baptism of Rus celebrations” – KremlinRu
(Kremlin.ru – July 28, 2018) Vladimir Putin attended events to mark the 1030th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus. A Patriarchal Liturgy was held for the first time in the open air on the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square. As the service was coming to a close, the President joined the religious procession and walked with the believers to the monument to […]
» Read moreJRL NEWSWATCH: “Does Vladimir Putin Speak for the Russian People?” – New York Times Book Review/Daniel Beer
“… Putin turned directly to McFaul and berated him for trying to ruin United States-Russia relations. * * * … McFaul concluded that [Putin] was ‘paranoid,’ a man of ‘fixed and flawed views’ who ‘saw us as the enemy,’ … that so long as he ruled Russia, ‘strategic partnership was impossible.’ … [But McFaul’s] relentless focus on Putin’s individual role […]
» Read moreJRL NEWSWATCH: “Why the World Cup is bigger than Putin; ‘I can write about the genius of French forward Kylian Mbappé, knowing the FT is also covering Russian elite corruption'” – Financial Times/Simon Kuper
“… the Russian World Cup isn’t Berlin all over again. First, Putin isn’t as evil and ambitious as Hitler. Second, he’s a much better-known quantity than Nazism was in 1936. Hitler at that point had said disturbing things but few foreigners took him either literally or seriously. He hadn’t lifted a finger against other countries. Many Jews were still living […]
» Read moreRUSSIALINK: “Russian Ministry: Gulag Prison Records Digitized, Not Destroyed” – Moscow Times
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – June 14, 2018) Russia’s Interior Ministry has denied reports that records of Soviet-era gulag labor camp survivors are being destroyed, saying instead that the files are being digitized. The Gulag Museum in Moscow alleged last week that cards with the personal information of former inmates and their release dates were being permanently destroyed under secret […]
» Read moreFrancis A. Boyle: “Solzhenitsyn at Harvard (JRL #105 item 31)”
Subject: Solzhenitsyn at Harvard (JRL #105 item 31) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2018 From: Boyle, Francis A <fboyle@illinois.edu> Forty years ago, I went there just to hear him speak. Originally I was not going to bother to attend Harvard’s Commencement in June of 1978 just to pick up my Master’s Degree in Political Science from the Harvard Graduate School of […]
» Read moreGilbert Doctorow: “From a chance meeting in Widener to today [re: Richard Pipes]”
Subject: Fw: from a chance meeting in Widener to today (re Richard Pipes) Date: Sat, 19 May 2018 From: Gilbert Doctorow <gdoctorow@yahoo.com> Since you carried the obits of Richard Pipes yesterday, my exchange with Francis Boyle may be of interest to you. No one, NO ONE has raised the issues about Pipes as an historian of Russia that flagged. They […]
» Read moreIra Straus: “Richard Pipes RIP”
Subject: Richard Pipes RIP Date: Fri, 18 May 2018 From: Ira Straus <irastraus@aol.com> Richard Pipes, who passed Thursday May 17, was a great scholar and thinker who served America well. He was a prophet whom we should honor today, the more so as he was not honored for it when it counted by the America he served. In his two […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Richard Pipes, Historian of Russia and Reagan Aide, Dies at 94” – New York Times/William Grimes
“Richard Pipes, the author of a monumental, sharply polemical series of historical works on Russia, the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik regime, and a top adviser to the Reagan administration on Soviet and Eastern European policy, died on Thursday at a nursing home near his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 94. …”
» Read moreSean Guillory: “Comment on Keith Gessen’s ‘The Quiet Americans Behind the U.S.-Russia Imbroglio'”
Subject: Comment on Keith Gessen’s “The Quiet Americans Behind the U.S.-Russia Imbroglio” Date: Wed, 16 May 2018 From: Sean Guillory <seansrussiablog@gmail.com> Sean Guillory, host of the SRB Podcast (http://seansrussiablog.org/), a weekly podcast on Eurasian politics, culture and history and Digital Scholarship Curator at the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. I read Keith Gessen’s […]
» Read moreJerry Hough: “re Gessen’s article [‘The Quiet Americans Behind the U.S.-Russia Imbroglio’]”
Subject: re Gessen’s article Date: Thu, 10 May 2018 From: Jerry Hough <jhough1935@gmail.com> [Jerry Hough is James B. Duke Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Author of How the Soviet Union is Governed; Soviet Leadership in Transition; The Struggle for the Third World; Soviet Debate and American Options; Democratization and Revolution in the USSR 1985-1991; and The Logic of […]
» Read moreRussia’s Strange Obsession with Sobibór
(Kennan Institute – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – Izabella Tabarovsky, Senior Associate, Manager for Regional Engagement at The Kennan Institute – May 9, 2018) [Text with links kennan-russiafile.org/2018/05/09/russias-strange-obsession-with-sobibor/] A new Russian movie, Sobibór, is making its way into Russian theaters and European capitals. The big-budget, highly promoted film tells the story of a prisoner escape from the Nazi death camp Sobibór in October […]
» Read morePutin Hits Out At U.S. In Red Square Parade Speech
(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – May 9, 2018 – also appeared at rferl.org/a/russia-marks-end-of-world-war-ii-with-military-parade-on-red-square/29216745.html) Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued veiled criticism of the United States in a speech before a Red Square parade marking the anniversary of Germany’s defeat in World War II, listing “pretentions to exceptionalism” as a factor that drove Nazi aggression and […]
» Read moreLike Soviet one, Putin system can’t be reformed, only destroyed and replaced, Inozemtsev says
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – April 27, 2018) One of the many debates that riled Western studies of the Soviet Union concerned whether that system could ever be reformed or would have to be destroyed and then replaced with something else. Some political analysts insisted that of course it could be reformed, while those who came out of […]
» Read moreThe Anti-Russia Surge in U.S. Politics: Finding Context
(PONARS Eurasia – Ivan Kurilla – April 2018 – ponarseurasia.org/memo/anti-russia-surge-us-politics-finding-context) Ivan Kurilla is Professor at the European University at St. Petersburg. (PONARS Policy Memo) Donald Trump’s triumph in the 2016 presidential election discharged an unprecedented political and media movement linking his victory to Russian interference in the U.S. political system. The president’s defenders called this a “witch hunt” but they […]
» Read moreNEWSWATCH: “The Soviet roots of invoking fears about World War III” – Brookings/James Kirchick
“Editor’s Note: Dire predictions about foreign intervention leading to ‘World War III’ aren’t merely the most predictable and laziest form of anti-interventionist ‘logic,’ argues Jamie Kirchick. They’re also an insidious echo of Soviet propaganda, routinely deployed to undercut the West’s defense of democracy and important international norms. …” Click here for: “The Soviet roots of invoking fears about World War […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “In Memoriam: Karen Dawisha” – Miami University, Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies
“Karen Dawisha, the former Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science and director of Miami University’s Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, died Wednesday, April 11, after a long illness. She was 68. Dawisha joined the Miami faculty in 2000, becoming the first Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science and the founding director of the Havighurst Center for […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “Putin says he wishes the Soviet Union had not collapsed. Many Russians agree.” – Washington Post/Adam Taylor
“A day after unveiling dramatic new weapons – including a nuclear-powered cruise missile – that sparked talk of a return to Cold War tensions … Putin suggested that he’d reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union if he could. Putin’s comments on the 1991 fall of the U.S.S.R. – which bound Russia and many of its neighbors while exerting influence […]
» Read moreNEWSWATCH VIDEO: “The Long Hangover – Putin’s Russia and the Ghosts of the Past” – NYU Jordan Center/Ben Dalton
“In late 1999, as … Putin began his long rule over Russia, the new president faced a slew of economic and political problems, but also an existential one. While post-Soviet countries like Belarus and Estonia had apparently settled into new national narratives (continuity with the past for Belarus, rupture and independence for Estonia and the other Baltic states), Russia remained […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “BOOK REVIEW: THE LONG HANGOVER” – Irrussianality/Paul Robinson
“Shaun Walker, the Moscow correspondent on The Guardian, has a new book out, entitled The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past. It advances the thesis that … and this is where I run into a problem because he never explicitly says what his thesis is. But it’s sort of something like this: in an effort […]
» Read moreNEWSWATCH: “Putin Supporters’ Election Pitch: Remember Stalingrad; Video made at memorial to WWII victory is part of patriotic wave ahead of Russia’s March election” – Wall Street Journal/James Marson
“… the video has also been chided for taking things too far, including on state television, underscoring the tension around the Kremlin’s efforts to drum up support despite a stagnant economy and a fall in living standards in recent years. * * * Putin has made commemoration of the World War II [Stalingrad] victory a centerpiece of his rule, portraying […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “STALIN, PADDINGTON, AND THE PRESS” – irrussianality/Paul Robinson
“What do Josef Stalin and Paddington Bear have in common? Answer: The Russian Ministry of Culture has tried to ‘ban’ films about them – or at least that what recent headlines would have you believe. The truth is a bit more complex. …”
» Read moreRussian Reformers Failed to Take into Consideration Russian Nationalism and Orthodoxy, Chubais Says
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, January 19, 2018) Anatoly Chubais, one of the main architects of Russia’s radical economic reforms in the 1990s, says that he now considers that one of the main errors he and his like-minded reformers may was “to a significant degree” their failure to take into consideration “the special features of Russian culture.” […]
» Read moreRussia ‘No Longer an Empire but Not Yet a Nation,’ Emil Pain Says
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, January 17, 2018) Russian historian Aleksey Miller recently observed that “Russian never was, is not and never will be a nation state” (republic.ru/posts/88426), Emil Pain reports, to which ethnographer Valery Tishkov “angrily” responded that it is if it calls itself that (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1483888388397177&id=100003280900276&pnref=story). Of course, if one follows Tishkov’s logic, Moscow’s leading specialist […]
» Read moreRussian Workers an ‘Invisible Class’ Since Collapse of Soviet Union, New Study Concludes
(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, January 11, 2018) Russians employed in factories have become “an invisible group” in society since 1991; and as a result, the identity even now is based largely on memories of the Soviet past as exacerbated by their sense of growing social inequality, according to a new study by the Higher School of […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “From Siberia to Crimea: The Revenge of History in U.S.-Russian Relations; One is tempted to conclude that the Washington foreign-policy establishment has learned little over the past century” – The National Interest/ Lyle J. Goldstein
“… What were more than 7,000 ‘doughboys’ doing in Siberia at the end of the First World War? To make a long and complex story-explored in detail by such luminaries as George Kennan-a bit shorter, the intervention by a large group of allied powers was not simply anti-Bolshevik, but was premised at the outset as a wartime operation to prevent […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “The KGB Playbook for Infiltrating the Middle East; In 1988, the Soviet intelligence service, the KGB, looked at its mistakes in the Middle East, where the CIA often had the upper hand. Putin has worked to change that” – Daily Beast/ Michael Weiss
“This is the second article in a three-part series based on never-before-published training manuals for the KGB, the Soviet intelligence organization that Vladimir Putin served as an operative, and that shaped his view of the world.”
» Read moreArseny Roginsky: Giving Russia its history back; On 18 December, Arseny Roginsky, historian, dissident and one of the founders of Russia’s Memorial society, passed away. He will be sorely missed.
(opendemocracy.net – Mikhail Kaluzhsky – December 20, 2017) Mikhail Kaluzhsky is Lead Russian-Language Editor at oDR. “For me, the archive (and I mean, of course, only literary and historical archives) is the natural continuation of the library. And unpublished archival documents are in no way different from published documents, you can treat them as accidentally unpublished or as-yet-unpublished. I believe […]
» Read more‘Russian Lessons for Reagan’ Launch at Gorbachev Foundation Reunites Old Friends; Author Suzanne Massie meets with old friends and fellow optimists
(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Justin Lifflander – December 13, 2017) Tuesday’s event at the Gorbachev Foundation was supposed to be a typically mundane book launch. But the presentation of the Russian language version of Suzanne Massie’s “Trust But Verify: Russian Lessons for Reagan” turned out to be an unofficial meeting of the multi-generational club of peace-makers and optimists. Ronald […]
» Read moreNEWSLINK: “ORDER FROM CHAOS; U.S.-Russia arms control was possible once – is it possible still?” – Brookings/ Strobe Talbott
“Thirty years ago last week, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, resulting in the elimination of some 2,700 U.S. and Soviet ground-launched intermediate-range missiles. …”
» Read moreHow did 1917 change the west? Failed utopias lead to the death of idealism, and the likes of Putin and Trump are symbols of this process. As we watch Russia struggle with history, the U.S. and U.K. cannot afford to pretend that this history doesn’t affect us too.
(opendemocracy.net – Sam Greene – November 22, 2017) Samuel A. Greene is Reader in Russian Politics and Director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London Revolutions – and their centenaries – are best dealt with in the first person. That, of course, creates a certain awkwardness for an academic, whose stock in trade is meant to be distance from […]
» Read moreTalk of restoring monarchy in Russia premature – Maria Romanova
MOSCOW. Nov 16 (Interfax) – Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna Romanova, the head of the Russian Imperial Family, said she hopes to move to Russia soon and believes that it is “not yet the time” for the restoration of monarchy. “I really hope for that [move to Russia]. I am often asked [about the fact] that I live in Spain, but […]
» Read moreNEWSWATCH: “Russia Celebrates an Uncomfortable Centennial” – Stratfor.com
“The centennial anniversary of the launch of the Russian Revolution on Nov. 7 will serve as a haunting reminder for Russia’s current leaders that their power is finite. … a year after Russia observed the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, a similarly unsettling marker for the [Putin] government … facing opposition from within its own ranks and on […]
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