Category: USSR
Where Would Africa and the World Have Gone Without the October Revolution of 1917?
| March 9, 2018 | 8:00 pm | Africa, Analysis, USSR | Comments closed

Without the success of the October Revolution of 1917, a century ago this week, there would have been no USSR to provide sanctuary, training, and arms to anticolonial activists, liberation movements and postcolonial African governments. The dismantling of apartheid would have been far costlier and bloodier.
Africa and the world owe an historic debt to the USSR and the emancipatory dream upon which it was founded, the first national government founded on such vision since the Haitian revolution a century earlier.

Number of Russians who regret collapse of USSR hits 10-year high
| December 26, 2017 | 8:10 pm | Russia, USSR | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/politics/414254-share-of-russians-who-regret/

Number of Russians who regret collapse of USSR hits 10-year high

Number of Russians who regret collapse of USSR hits 10-year high
The number of Russians who regret the collapse of the Soviet Union has reached its highest level since 2009, with almost an equal share saying the event could have been avoided.

A public opinion poll conducted by the independent Levada Center in late November this year found that 58 percent of Russians now regret the collapse of the USSR. Twenty-five percent said they felt no regret about this, while 16 percent could not describe their feelings in one word.

When researchers asked those who regret the end of the USSR what the primary reasons were behind their sentiments, 54 percent said that they missed a single economic system, 36 percent said they had lost the feeling of belonging to a real superpower, 34 percent complained about the decrease of mutual trust among ordinary people, and 26 percent said that the collapse had destroyed the ties between friends and relatives.

The same research showed that 52 percent of Russians think that the collapse of the USSR could have been avoided, 29 percent said that the event was absolutely inevitable, and 19 percent did not have a fixed opinion on the matter.

The share of those who regret the demise of the Soviet Union has risen continuously over the past decade, but in 2009 it was even higher than today – at 60 percent. The all-time high 75 percent was recorded in 2000.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly addressed the issue of the collapse of the USSR in his speeches. In an address to the Russian parliament in 2005 he called the event the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century and a cause of major disruption for the Russian people. In September 2016, Putin said that the Communist Party should have transformed the Soviet Union into a democratic state rather than see it break into separate nations.

At the same time, Putin has always emphasized that he and other Russian officials have no plans to revive the USSR, and has expressed anger that people cannot accept this. He has also accused Western governments of deliberately confusing modern Russia with the USSR and harming the interests of ordinary people on the pretense of preventing an imaginary threat.

‘Akin to barbarity’: Moscow furious over demolition of monument to Red Army soldiers in Poland
| September 10, 2017 | 8:48 pm | Discrimination against communists, Poland, USSR | Comments closed

https://www.rt.com/news/402658-poland-demolishes-read-army-memorial/

‘Akin to barbarity’: Moscow furious over demolition of monument to Red Army soldiers in Poland

‘Akin to barbarity’: Moscow furious over demolition of monument to Red Army soldiers in Poland
Russia has expressed its outrage at the bulldozing of a mausoleum housing the remains of dozens of Soviet soldiers who fell battling to free Poland from Nazi German occupation, calling the move an act of vandalism that violates bilateral agreements.

It took less than 20 minutes for the Polish authorities to raze the monument, built by the Red Army in 1945 in the Polish town of Trzcianka in memory of 56 Soviet soldiers who gave their lives on the battlefield.

Video of the demolition posted by Adam Bogrycewicz shows heavy machinery being used to demolish the war memorial.

Responding to what it described as a sacrilegious “act of vandalism,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that the demolition is “unacceptable in terms of existing inter-state and inter-governmental documents” relating to the preservation of the memory and burial sites of victims of war and repression, adding that the Polish government “was fully aware” of Moscow’s staunch objection to the removal.

“We consider this outrageous incident an illustration and direct consequence of the Polish government’s anti-Russian policy in the memorial field among others,” the ministry said in a statement on Saturday, adding that lack of respect to “the memory of the war and its heroes” displayed by Poland is “akin to barbarity.”

Poland has twice applied to the Russian embassy in Poland over the issue of the removal, but was unable to provide evidence that there were no remains of Russian soldiers in the mass grave, according to Aleksey Fomichev, Head of the Russian Defense Ministry military commemorative mission in Poland.

“Pursuant to all documents there are remains [in the mass grave]; there are no papers on exhumation or reburial,” Fomichev said, as cited by TASS.

READ MORE: Germany rejects Polish threat to demand WWII reparations

Fomichev revealed that the Russian delegation and the Polish local authorities had discussed the possibility of including the memorial in a list of historic monuments guarded by the law on cultural heritage three weeks before the demolition, of which the Russian embassy was notified once it was underway.

The Russian Defense Ministry joined the chorus of condemnation, saying that it is “outraged” by the trampling on the memory of those “who liberated the world from the brown plague, fascism.”

The destruction of the monument, which bore a hammer and sickle motif on its roof, follows a recent decision by the Sejm (Polish Parliament) to adopt a package of legislative amendments opposing both communist propaganda and that of other totalitarian regimes. The amendments envisioned the removal of Soviet era monuments, including those dedicated to Red Army soldiers. As the law was passed unilaterally, it was denounced by Russia’ Foreign Ministry as “an appalling decision” damaging the legacy of the fight against fascism.

The anti-Russian line taken by the incumbent government of Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (PiS) party has recently resulted in barring Russia from taking part in multi-national project to create a new memorial at the site of infamous Nazi Sobibor death camp, despite Moscow having pledged a significant financial contribution.

“The intention not to let Russia join the project’s participants is part of Warsaw’s Russophobia, which it has been openly showing recently. The Poles also aim to impose their own version of history by belittling the USSR’s and the Red Army’s role as liberators in World War II,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said at the time.

As well as going on a crusade against historic memory, Poland is demanding millions in reparations from Russia under the Treaty of Riga, which ended the Polish-Soviet War in 1921.

‘Russia is the enemy Polish government needs’

Bruno Drweski, professor at the National Institute of Languages and Eastern Civilizations, believes the anti-Russian narrative in Poland is fuelled by the authorities, who want to portray Russia as an external foe for political gain.

“They need an enemy in Poland. German nationalism and Ukrainian nationalism are very unpopular so they push against Russia because they cannot criticize Ukraine or Germany, and that’s the real point,” Drweski told RT.

At the same time, he argued, ordinary Poles do not support the efforts of the Polish government to rewrite history by erasing any mention of Red Army’s contribution to the defeat of fascism as embodied in Soviet war-time monuments.

“It is pure demagoguery; if you ask people on the street in Poland they say it is pure vandalism, but that’s the way the Polish media and government are working,” Drweski said, adding that many Poles know and respect the Soviet army’s role but the government is working zealously to obliterate that memory.

“All the propaganda is concentrated on the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and they don’t take into the account the interests of the Soviet Union at that time. They don’t talk about the Soviet role in the liberation of Poland,” he said.

Most at risk are the Polish youth, who are susceptible to this rhetoric, he argued.

“The problem is with the new generation, which was brought up in schools where they teach the [version of] history I told you.”

Joseph V. Stalin- Address to the people on May 9th 1945 (Victory Speech)
| May 8, 2017 | 6:50 pm | Fascist terrorism, J. Stalin, political struggle, USSR | Comments closed

Monday, May 8, 2017

Joseph V. Stalin- Address to the people on May 9th 1945 (Victory Speech)

https://communismgr.blogspot.com/2017/05/joseph-v-stalin-address-to-people-on.html
Speech by the Marshal of the Soviet Union

Joseph V. Stalin.

May 9, 1945.
Comrades! Fellow countrymen and countrywomen!
The great day of victory over Germany has arrived. Fascist Germany, forced to her knees by the Red Army and the troops of our Allies, has admitted defeat and has announced her unconditional surrender.

On May 7 a preliminary act of surrender was signed in Rheims. On May 8, in Berlin, representatives of the German High Command, in the presence of representatives of the Supreme Command of the Allied troops and of the Supreme Command of the Soviet troops, signed the final act of surrender, which came into effect at 24 hours on May 8.
Knowing the wolfish habits of the German rulers who regard treaties and agreements as scraps of paper, we have no grounds for accepting their word. Nevertheless, this morning, the German troops, in conformity with the act of surrender, began en masse to lay down their arms and surrender to our troops. This is not a scrap of paper. It is the actual capitulation of the armed forces of Germany. True, one group of German troops in the region of Czechoslovakia still refuses to surrender, but I hope the Red Army will succeed in bringing it to its senses.
We now have full grounds for saying that the historic
day of the final defeat of Germany, the day of our people’s great victory over German imperialism, has arrived.
The great sacrifices we have made for the freedom and independence of our country, the incalculable privation and suffering our people have endured during the war, our intense labours in the rear and at the front, laid at the altar of our motherland, have not been in vain; they have been crowned by complete victory over the enemy. The ago-long struggle of the Slavonic peoples for their existence and independence has ended in victory over the German aggressors and German tyranny.
Henceforth, the great banner of the freedom of the peoples and peace between the peoples will fly over Europe.
Three years ago Hitler publicly stated that his task included the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the severance from it of the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Baltic and other regions. He definitely said: “We shall destroy Russia so that she shall never be able to rise again.” This was three years ago. But Hitler’s insane ideas were fated to remain unrealized — the course of the war scattered them to the winds like dust. Actually, the very opposite of what the Hitlerites dreamed of in their delirium occurred. Germany is utterly defeated. The German troops are surrendering. The Soviet Union is triumphant, although it has no intention of either dismembering or destroying Germany.

Comrades! Our Great Patriotic War has terminated in our complete victory. The period of war in Europe has closed. A period of peaceful development has been ushered in.

Congratulations on our victory, my dear fellow countrymen and countrywomen!

Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our country and achieved victory over the enemy! 
 

Glory to our great people, the victor people! 

Eternal glory to the heroes who fell fighting the enemy and who gave their lives for the freedom and happiness of our people!
 
 
СССР 1953 год похороны Сталина ☭ Великое прощание ☆ Документальная хроника ☭ Советский Союз.
| March 11, 2017 | 8:03 pm | J. Stalin, Russia, USSR | Comments closed

Road to Berlin
| February 15, 2017 | 7:52 pm | Fascist terrorism, Russia, USSR | Comments closed

Падение Берлина. Серия 2 / The Fall of Berlin film 2
| February 15, 2017 | 7:47 pm | Fascist terrorism, political struggle, Russia, USSR | Comments closed