The Soviet Union

[blindpig]

October Revolution - historical balance of achievements



Lenin May 1, 1920

In March 1919, V.I. Lenin published a short note on the occasion of the creation of the Communist International. There he says: “The only thing lasting in a revolution is what is won by the masses of the proletariat. It’s worth writing down only what has really been firmly won” [1] . Among such lasting gains, he noted the dictatorship of the proletariat. Today, a hundred years after the revolution, one can rightfully raise the question, which of its achievements turned out to be durable, were not only conquered and recorded for time, but also stood the test of time?

A hundred years after the revolution, the world is still as far from a global republic of Soviets as it was before the overthrow of the autocracy in Russia. The struggle for socialism at the end of the twentieth century suffered a serious historical defeat, therefore, with a superficial look at the history of October, it seems that it did not leave any lasting achievements, and therefore the revolution is something accidental and meaningless in the history of Russia. But that's not true.

Thinking about the intermediate results, Lenin already in November 1921 drew attention to the dual nature of the revolution in Russia. He published an article in Pravda “On the Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution.”

“The immediate and immediate task of the revolution in Russia was a bourgeois-democratic task: to overthrow the remnants of the Middle Ages, to demolish them completely, to cleanse Russia of this barbarity, of this shame, of this greatest brake on all culture and all progress in our country.” “The bourgeois-democratic content of the revolution means the cleansing of the social relations (orders, institutions) of the country from the Middle Ages, from serfdom, from feudalism,” he further clarifies. From the bourgeois-democratic component, the communists are moving towards the socialist revolution itself, however, “only the struggle will decide how much we will be able to (in the final analysis) move forward, what part of the immensely lofty task we will complete, what part of our victories we will secure for ourselves. Let's wait and see" [2] .
Among the bourgeois-democratic tasks of the Russian revolution, Lenin notes the elimination of the monarchy and class system, feudal land tenure, a change in the social position of religion, the elimination of national oppression and the degraded position of women. In all these questions it is revealed that the achievements of the revolution were largely unshakable and survived the Soviet Union.

The October Revolution consolidated the republican form of government in Russia and gave the first functioning republican constitution in Russian history, adopted in 1918. Both the USSR and all the states that arose after its collapse were and are republics. Although in some post-Soviet states the popularity of monarchical ideas has increased somewhat in recent decades, the republican form of government remains unshakable. Thus, Russia and other former Soviet republics are keeping pace with global trends.

The lack of civil equality and the presence of class privileges created serious problems in the development of civil law in pre-revolutionary Russia, in particular in defining the concept of person. It contradicted the general trends of the era towards equalizing the legal status of citizens. The October Revolution abolished the estates and consistently introduced the principle of civil equality into legislation. Today, even extreme reactionaries do not dare to openly deny the principle of equality of citizens before the law. Another question is, to what extent is this principle observed in practice? But other capitalist countries of the modern world also face this problem. Here Russia and the former Soviet republics do not represent anything qualitatively special. In them, as elsewhere in the world, the principle of equality triumphed in the content of legislation. And this is also the merit of October.

The issue of women's civil rights is closely related to class inequality. The Soviet government legislated the line outlined by the Provisional Government. She introduced the principle of equal rights between women and men through all legislative acts and took a number of practical steps to eliminate actual inequality. Women began to actively participate in public life and received full and equal access to education, which allowed them to enter on an equal footing into areas of activity previously reserved exclusively for men. A woman engineer, a woman prosecutor, a woman scientist became quite commonplace phenomena, while in tsarist Russia nothing like this could be imagined. Finally, the liberation of a woman was closely related to the change in her status in the family. The new family legislation of the Soviet government laid the legal basis for the destruction of the patriarchal family and the release of women from the eternal guardianship of men. This was primarily achieved through the introduction of the right to divorce. Of course, the emancipation of women is a historically long process, as it is associated with a slow change in a whole complex of sociocultural norms, but it was the October Revolution that created adequate legal forms for this process and thereby contributed to the synchronous movement of Russia with the rest of the world. Even now, when conservatism has intensified at the everyday level and the popularity of Domostroev’s ideas has increased, no one dares to publicly challenge the basic principles of women’s position in society.

The issue of religion is closely related to the women's issue, since church marriage did not allow divorce. The status of religion in society was radically changed. Religion was separated from the state and became a private matter for citizens. Thus, Russia followed the same path taken by Western European capitalist states. To this day, the principle of separation of religion and state remains in force, although due to the growing clericalization of society, it is violated in practice in many of the former Soviet republics. For Russia, which has many religions, the principle of separating religion from the state is especially important. Ignoring it could jeopardize the unity of the country.

One of the most pressing problems in Tsarist Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. - oppression of national minorities. It was closely intertwined with religious oppression under the conditions of the state religion. The Soviet government solved this problem by giving all the peoples of Russia the opportunity to independently develop their culture and create any forms of national statehood, based on their desires. As a result, some of the peoples of Russia separated from it, and some formed their own national states within Russia. So Russia became a federal state. Along with the republican structure, federalism is one of the two fundamental principles of Russian statehood, which has withstood all the political cataclysms of the 20th century. Thus, the October Revolution established a form of state unity that is still reflected in the official name of the Russian state. On January 12, 2018, we will celebrate the centenary of federalization. Of course, in respect of the rights of national minorities, there were serious deviations from the principles of the revolution; it is enough to recall the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and other peoples. However, in general, the principle of national equality triumphed.

In the field of land relations, it is necessary to consider separately both negative and positive aspects of change (the terms are used not in an ethical, but in a philosophical sense). The new forms of agrarian relations that arose after the revolution have not survived into modern times, except for certain rudiments like the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land, which is still in effect in Ukraine. However, the negative side of revolutionary changes turned out to be surprisingly stable. The destroyed feudal latifundia are a thing of the past forever, and there can be no talk of their restoration.

Less obvious, but no less lasting, are other socio-economic changes of the revolutionary era: the idea and practice of state regulation of the economy, restrictions on the free market and private property for the sake of the interests of society, the development of a public consumption fund, the principle of worker participation in enterprise management, the idea of ​​planning. Of course, since then the forms and purposes of using all these ideas have changed repeatedly, but the very admissibility and possibility of their use was put on the agenda precisely by the revolution. Not all of these ideas have survived to this day in the former Soviet republics, but many of them were adopted and applied abroad, where they are used to this day. For example, works councils in Germany, which trace their origins back to the factory councils of 1919, created under the direct influence of the experience of Russian factory committees.

The influence of the revolution on social science is adjacent to this group of consequences. She firmly introduced the idea of ​​​​the possibility of purposeful influence on the development of society using scientific theories.

Finally, the revolution gave a powerful impetus to the development of labor law, the social insurance and welfare system. She introduced vacations, sick leave, collective labor agreements, pensions and many other benefits of labor legislation, for the first time extending them to all hired workers in Russia. In close connection with the development of labor law and workers' control, the trade union movement flourished. We all see the fruits of this blossoming around us with our own eyes: it was during the years of the revolution that the Higher School of Trade Unions was created, in the branch of which we have gathered now [3] .

The achievements of the revolution that have survived the last century are so numerous that it is not possible to give an exhaustive list of them in one message. In their light, the question of so-called reconciliation, which the Russian Military Historical Society has recently been pushing, looks completely different. This reconciliation is usually presented as a veiled call for the Reds to admit the futility of what they were doing. But the Reds' efforts are by no means fruitless; many of their results are of fundamental importance. Are the advocates of reconciliation willing to acknowledge this fact? If they agree, then, apparently, dialogue is possible, but if they deny this, then we are simply faced with an attempt by reactionaries to erase the historical achievements of Russian society, made possible thanks to the revolution.

We need to end the conversation about the deeds of the revolutionaries a hundred years ago with the question: what could they not do? And here I immediately remember Hegel, who spoke about the irony of history. Its essence is that historical figures do not get the results that they strived for in their activities and that they counted on. Lenin again gives us the opportunity to subtly feel this problem. In the already mentioned article for the fourth anniversary of the October Revolution, he writes that the Bolsheviks

“we resolved the issues of the bourgeois-democratic revolution casually, in passing, as a “by-product” of our main and real, proletarian-revolutionary, socialist work.” “Bourgeois-democratic transformations,” we said and we proved with deeds, “are a by-product of the proletarian, that is, socialist revolution” [4] .
As it is easy to notice now, this by-product for the Bolsheviks turned out to be the main historical achievement of the revolution. But what was essential for the Bolsheviks, that revolution could neither conquer nor record for centuries. This is the ideal of a society without exploitation, classes and the state, where the alienation of market and political institutions has been removed, where the brotherhood of people and genuine social self-government reigns, where creative work is the main content of human activity, a source of happiness and joy. The struggle for this ideal is the work of future revolutionaries.

Notes
1. Lenin V.I. Conquered and recorded // PSS. T. 37. P. 513.
2. Lenin V.I. To the four-year anniversary of the October Revolution // PSS. T. 44. pp. 144, 145.
3. The message was made at the conference “Economics, State and Law in the Great Russian Revolution of 1917”, which took place on October 28, 2017 at the Institute of Economics and Law (branch of ATiSO, Sevastopol).
4. Lenin V.I. To the four-year anniversary of the October Revolution // PSS. T. 44. P. 147.

https://kritikaprava.org/library/287/ok ... ostizhenij

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[blindpig]

WW2: The 70th anniversary of the victory over fascism
What transformed WW2 from an interimperialist war into an anti-fascist one? Who really beat the Nazis and liberated Europe?
Harpal Brar

Monday 22 July 2019



Comrade Harpal Brar, former chairman of the CPGB-ML, speaks on the significance of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet victory over fascism.

Much is written and spoken about World War 1 and World War 2, yet it is truly staggering how few people – and particularly how few British workers – really understand the causes and significance of this latter titanic struggle, in which 60 million workers lost their lives.

The imperialists of Britain, France, the USA, Germany and Japan) fought, and many millions died, to preserve and enforce the wage and colonial slavery of the capitalist class. They fought for slaves and booty, and nothing more.

And yet, by their masterful leadership, bold strategy and heroic courage and self-sacrifice, the Soviet Union and the international communist movement won world-historic victories that not only preserved the hard-won socialist nation, but brought into being a swath of socialist democracies across Europe and Asia, invigorated the anti-colonial struggle, and decisively shifted the balance of power in favour of working people on a global scale.

The victories won by the Soviet Union changed and shaped our world, and all workers should not only know this episode in our history, but should be truly proud of these earth-shattering achievements of our class, which herald the bright new world we are capable of bringing into being.

“The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing of history. It is a part of its being, of its condition for existence, to falsify all goods; it falsified the writing of history. And the best-paid historiography is that which is falsified for the purposes of the bourgeoisie.” (Friedrich Engels, Material for the History of Ireland, 1870)

This shrewd observation of Engels’ should be kept in mind when judging:

1. the causes of the second world war;

2. the events leading up to it;

3. the role in it of the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the imperialist camp, on the other hand; and

4. the results of the war.

The second world war (as indeed the first) is inseparable from imperialism, whose product it was. Tens of millions of people were slaughtered to decide which set of bandits – the Anglo-American-French or the German-Italian-Japanese – was to get what share of the colonial loot.

The only way out of the morass of imperialist wars is socialism. Therefore, the struggle against war must be inseparably connected with the struggle for the overthrow of imperialism and the establishment of socialism.

The ruling classes of the ‘democratic’ imperialist countries were complicit in the rise and strengthening of fascism. It was the crowning achievement of the Soviet people to have defeated nazism – this monstrous product of imperialism in crisis.

The Soviet victory in the second world war was a disaster for imperialism. If the first world war brought into existence the great and glorious Soviet Union, the end of the second world war led to the creation of a mighty socialist bloc, stretching from the Soviet Union through eastern and central Europe to China and southeast Asia.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the bourgeoisie has gone on the rampage not only to belittle the role of the Soviet Union in defeating fascism, but also to malign the record of socialism itself.

This is particularly true of the Baltic states, Poland and, especially, Ukraine. In the last-named country, Stefan Bandera, the notorious Nazi stooge, is now honoured with statues and street names as a great fighter for national liberation – having fought not against the Nazis but against the Soviet Union!

The economic crisis of 1929 made another interimperialist war a certainty. The law of uneven development of capitalism saw to it that some countries, notably Germany, Japan and Italy, had spurted ahead in their development, but their share in terms of markets, natural resources, and avenues for investment was dis-proportionately small compared with the share that went to countries such as Britain and France.

This presentation should be compulsory viewing for every British citizen, and every worker worldwide: help spread the word!

https://thecommunists.org/2019/07/22/tv ... perialism/

[blindpig]

Fan of Mannerheim
colonelcassad
May 30, 14:32



In the context of the current heated discussion about the personality and views of the fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin, it would be very productive to take a separate historical episode and see what this person wrote on this issue. Then evaluate his position from the point of view of both the accuracy of his forecasts (he is considered a “great thinker”!), and from the point of view of patriotic values. Even without using the methods of class analysis...

I chose the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-40 as such an episode. What did Professor Ilyin write about her?

Firstly, even before the start of the conflict, this man confidently stated that the USSR would not succeed and the country would not be able to field a massive army. Because:

“Trained” millions are not trained; they are only listed on paper. And mistrust, spy mania, poor quality engineering and a general desire for radical change reign everywhere. It would be downright fatal for communists to put weapons in the hands of the masses...” (c) I. A. Ilyin. Hitler and Stalin. / 07/11/1939. / Luzerner Landbote.

Let's just state that although the Red Army had many problems, nothing like this happened. In both 1939 and 1941, the communists did not hesitate to put weapons into the hands of the masses. And the masses justified their trust.

Alas, gentlemen, even this episode clearly shows that the prophet from your Ilyin is like a bullet from a well-known substance...

Secondly, in his publications dedicated to the Soviet-Finnish war, Ivan Ilyin many times calls our country an aggressor: “It acted as an aggressor” , or “in the long, tedious struggle for world power, which began in 1917, the Bolshevik aggressor discovered a huge gap...”

In an article he wrote after the conclusion of the peace treaty, the “great Russian thinker” states:

“The Soviet state began this war as typical "aggressor". There was no talk of any claims or hostility on the part of Finland, which until the last moment demonstrated balance, correctness and even greater readiness to accommodate. It was about Stalin’s desire not to negotiate with Finland, but to defeat a small country with a swift revolutionary onslaught.”

We simply state that the “Russian patriot” Ivan Ilyin completely repeats the theses of Finnish nationalist propaganda. Although he would be ashamed not to know that objectively the roots of this armed conflict go deep into history, to 1811, when Emperor Alexander I, after annexing the Grand Duchy of Finland to the Russian Empire, for some reason transferred the entire Vyborg province to it. A territory with a mixed population, which by that time had been directly part of Russia for a hundred years.

Further, as I already wrote in the publication ABOUT THE REASONS OF THE FINNISH WAR, the following picture emerges: there is objectively a territorial problem between the two countries. But instead of establishing good neighborly relations, Finland, or rather a significant part of its ruling class after 1917:

- Demands fantastic territorial concessions from Russia;

- Organizes several armed incursions into Russian territory;

- Gives the opportunity to world powers, first Germany, then England, to station troops on their territory that can or even attack our country;

- And as a “cherry on the cake”: it encourages large-scale terrorist activities on the territory of a neighboring country;

Moreover, all this is based on the thesis put forward by the President of Finland P. E. Svinhuvud: “Any enemy of Russia must always be a friend of Finland.”

But for Ivan Ilyin it all comes down to “revolutionary onslaught” and “Soviet aggression”! This “statist” simply does not understand, or does not want to understand, that we are talking about the security of the second capital of our state, the largest industrial and cultural center.

Here his level corresponds to the most primitive anti-Soviet propaganda, above which the “deep thinker” and former resident of St. Petersburg-Petrograd, as it turns out, is simply not able to rise!

Moreover, he does not know, or pretends not to know, about the aggressive plans to create a “Greater Finland” with the inclusion of the territory of Karelia and the Kola Peninsula.

Yes, the refined liberal Pavel Milyukov, who uttered the phrase “I feel sorry for the Finns, but I am for the Vyborg province,” is a much greater patriot than Ivan Ilyin!

But our “patriot” many times admires both the bloody executioner Karl Mannerheim and the Finnish nationalists: “The living spirit of Finnish patriots wins.” Or “a real strategist spoke out against this communist “horde strategy,” stoically defending himself on the Karelian Isthmus and maneuvering with shock force on the eastern and northern borders.”


From Ilyin's articles. From open sources

By the way, praising Mannerheim, under whose leadership Finland lost two wars (More details about the paradoxes of perception of the results of the Finnish war can be read here), did the “Russian patriot” Ivan Ilyin know about the “Vyborg massacre” https://dzen.ru/a /ZEuBXSg_tHJZVNkQ , during which many Russian people died? As a resident of Petrograd in 1918, he could not help but know this. Nevertheless...

And vice versa, here is what Ivan Ilyin writes about our army:

“So, in the Russian army, the “free soldier’s initiative”, once demanded by the old man Suvorov, is deprived of all spiritual consciousness, then instilled with fear, forcibly introduced to the dominant ideology and drowned in uncomplaining, slavish drill. Conscience and honor - the concepts of the old school - are abolished, they are replaced by hypocritical “revolutionary pathos”.

“As a result, the soldier lost the feeling of being a defender of his homeland. For neither the expropriated slave of the state, nor the internationally trained Marxist has a homeland.”

“A person who is not free and collectivized is not a warrior. Taken individually, he is a slave. In a collective, he is a horde. No machine can save where the spirit and heart fail.”

This is from the issue of “Neue Zércher Nachrichten” dated January 27, 1940.

If anyone doesn’t understand, the “great Russian philosopher” calls our ancestors slaves, a horde, people with abolished conscience and honor.
If this is not Russophobia, then what is it???

Moreover, Ilyin does not have a single drop of sympathy for our soldiers, only anger! And our deep “thinker,” when describing the course of the military conflict, trustingly repeats the myths of enemy propaganda:


From Ilyin’s articles. From open sources

Do we need to prove to anyone that in this passage our “deep thinker” is retelling complete nonsense. Despite the fact that the battle of Suomussalmi became a tragedy for the Red Army, out of 14 thousand soldiers and commanders of the 44th division, according to various estimates, 1-1.5 thousand died, 2.2 thousand were missing, 1.5 thousand were wounded. According to their data, about one and a half thousand people were captured by the Finns.

That is, the majority of the soldiers of the 44th division fought even in the most difficult conditions. Here Ilyin is simply slandering! And on top of that, he gloats over the failure of his country!

Well, he couldn't know all the details of those events. But our thinker also demonstrates a complete lack of critical thinking!

What happens - the Finns sent the captured prisoners back to Russia... The Finnish command are complete idiots who do not understand that these soldiers will quickly be brought to their senses and sent back into battle? Does military analyst Ilyin, sitting in a warm office, even understand what he is writing about? After all, such nonsense puts him on a par with such a famous thinker of our time as Yulia Latynina!

As you know, in March 1940, the Finnish leadership still had to admit defeat and peace was concluded. But Ilyin got away with it too! Like, this is still a victory, because otherwise the Finns would all be sent to Siberia. Apparently to remove snow:

“If he had won, the fate of the brave people would have been sealed. There were rumors about plans to resettle Finns to Siberia, and they could not be considered “incredible”... But you can be sure that the heroic Finns would have suffered a cruel fate if they were defeated. And now these plans have been thwarted.”

Again, the most ridiculous lie, based at least on the fact of the creation of the Finnish government of Kuusinen, the Finnish People's Army, and then the Karelo-Finnish SSR. However, Ivan Ilyin hates our country so much that he is ready to repeat any absurdities.

Let's summarize. Citizens admirers of Ivan Ilyin, using real facts I tried to show that your idol in 1939-40:

- He put forward some fantastic forecasts, which, naturally, did not come true;

- He did not understand at all both the objective reasons for the Soviet-Finnish conflict and the national interests of our country;

- He called our country an aggressor and wished it defeat;

- He sympathized with Finnish nationalists and Russophobes, who then dreamed of seizing part of Russian territory;

- He called our soldiers slaves, without conscience and honor, without a sense of defender of the Motherland;

- He repeated all the tales of enemy propaganda, approaching it completely uncritically.

And the reason for everything was the anger and hatred inherent in Ilyin. In general, reading his works, one immediately notices that this man had absolutely no sense of humor, irony, not to mention the ability for self-irony. Just an angry, sad graphomaniac.

By the way, Ilyin’s articles often resemble modern Russophobic journalism of current relocants. Yes Yes exactly! And do you really think that this person can be called a “deep thinker” and a “Russian patriot”???

(c) A. Stepanov

https://dzen.ru/a/ZlXpeKUM9QEPpiuu - zinc

Having failed to praise the fascist Mannerheim in Russia, they took up advertising for the fascist henchman Ilyin, who praised Mannerheim. The result will be the same.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9177648.html

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[blindpig]

The D-Day of the Eastern Front
June 6, 2024

While Western Allies invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, John Wight recalls the coordinated operation by the Red Army to break German resistance in Europe.


Soviet soldiers in Polozk, Belarus, July 4, 1944; propaganda poster on right celebrates the reconquest of the city and urges the liberation of the Baltic from Nazi German occupation. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

By John Wight

Operation Bagration, unleashed by the Red Army on 22 June 1944, was the D-Day of the Eastern Front. In scope, size, scale and impact, it was a feat of arms unmatched in World War II.

Crucially, Overlord (D-Day) — which the Western Allies mounted on 6 June 1944 — and Bagration were planned and undertaken as part of a coordinated effort on the part of the Grand Alliance to break the back of German resistance in Europe. This with a determination that was equally held by the Soviets, British and Americans to force the unconditional surrender of Hitler’s Germany.

In his magisterial book Stalin’s Wars Geoffrey Roberts reveals that

“Soviet plans for Operation Bagration were closely co-ordinated with Anglo-American preparations for the launch of the long-awaited Second Front in France. The Soviets were informed of the approximate date of D-Day in early April and, on 18 April, Stalin cabled Roosevelt and Churchill to inform them that ‘as agreed in Tehran, the Red Army will launch a new offensive at the same time so as to give maximum support to the Anglo-American operation.’”

Though both operations were of immense military and strategic importance, Bagration dwarfed Overlord in scale and impact. Launched three weeks after D-Day on the third anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, it began with air attacks on enemy artillery positions and concentrations, guided by partisan units operating behind German lines. The main offensive began on 23 June along a 500-mile front, involving close to 2 million troops.

Operation Bagration was designed to effect the complete liberation of the Soviet territory from the Nazis and destroy the Wehrmacht as a serious fighting force in the East. It achieved all three of those objectives and more.

As British historian and author David Reynolds points out:

“In five weeks the Red Army advanced 450 miles, driving through Minsk to the outskirts of Warsaw and tearing the guts out of Hitler’s Army Group Centre. Nearly 20 German divisions were totally destroyed and another 50 severely mauled — an even worse disaster than Stalingrad.”

He goes on:

“This stunning Soviet success occurred while Overlord was still stuck in the hedges and lanes of Normandy.”


Photo of Vasily Grossman published in the journal Ogonyok in 1941. (Wikipedia Commons, Public domain)

Famed Soviet journalist and author, Vasily Grossman, described with customary force and power the human toll of the Soviet offensive:

“Corpses, hundreds and thousands of them, pave the road, lie in ditches, under the pines, in the green barley. In some places, vehicles have to drive over the corpses, so densely they lie upon the ground.”

Despite the coordination of Operation Bagration with D-Day, and despite the former’s ineffable military and strategic importance, not one mention was made of it during the 75th D-Day anniversary commemorations in Northern France in 2019. Such a glaring and unconscionable omission stands as just one of many shameful examples of historical amnesia on the part of Western governments and ideologues in recent years — people more concerned with politicising history than they are with respecting it.

The valour and courage of the 156,000 troops who landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944 is not in question, nor is that of the thousands of sailors, airmen, and airborne troops who also took part in the landings. Indeed, Operation Overlord was and will likely remain the largest amphibious military assault ever mounted, and also the most successful.

In terms of its ambition, planning and the coordination of the combined military forces of the multiple nations involved, it truly deserves the place in military history that it commands. None other than Soviet leader Joseph Stalin understood the importance and achievement of Overlord, which he set out in a congratulatory telegram to Roosevelt and Churchill at the time:

“As is evident, the landing, conceived on a grandiose scale, has succeeded completely. My colleagues and I cannot but admit that the history of warfare knows no other like undertaking from the point of view of its scale, its vast conception, and its masterly execution.”


From left: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill on the portico of the Soviet embassy during the Tehran Conference in November 1943. (Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)

Wind things forward and over seven decades on the parlous quality of statesmanship in the West, with the open violation of the spirit of the Grand Alliance between East and West enshrined in Stalin’s telegram, has never been more lamentable.

The notion that the men who gave their lives on D-Day, and thereafter across Europe on the way to war’s end in 1945, did so in order to give birth to a continent dependent on Washington and in fear of Moscow, is preposterous. The devastation that Russia suffered in the war, the magnitude of the losses the country incurred, demands the respect and reverence of everyone interested in drawing the right lessons from this epic struggle of world-historical importance.

A Europe liberated from fascism but divided by a Cold War afterwards reminds us that, although so much was sacrificed and won by so many during the war, so much was thrown away and lost by so few after it.

Operation Bagration and Operation Overlord should never be spoken of separately. Both were mounted at the same stage in the war by a Grand Alliance that contained within it the seeds of a future that, if had come to pass, would have justified the scale of the sacrifice needed to emerge victorious.

The last word goes to Vasily Grossman:

“Nearly everyone believed that good would triumph, that honest men, who hadn’t hesitated to sacrifice their lives, would be able to build a good and just life.”

Amen to that.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/06/t ... ern-front/

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Ukrainian nationalist and Soviet film actress: two women of Admiral Kolchak
June 6, 21:05



Ukrainian nationalist and Soviet film actress: two women of Admiral Kolchak

Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who proclaimed himself the supreme ruler of Russia, is certainly the most prominent figure of the white movement. For a long time they tried to make him a hero, a knight of the “white idea” (which, it should be noted, he, a pragmatist and careerist, turned to quite late). The film “Admiral,” which was sensational in its time and contained many factual errors, tried to present Alexander Vasilyevich not only as a military and statesman, but also as a very loving person. A significant part of the film is occupied by Kolchak’s relationship with his legal wife, Sofia, and the legal wife of his comrade, Anna Timireva. However, the most interesting, as often happens, remained behind the scenes.

Alexander Kolchak married Sofya Fedorovna Omirova in 1904. She was a native of Kamenets-Podolsk, a noblewoman and a “Smolyanka” (a student of the noble “bride factory”, the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg). In 1916, Kolchak was transferred from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, where he took command of the Black Sea Fleet. Contrary to various myths, Kolchak perceived the February Revolution in a restrained and positive manner, and for a long time observed the required revolutionary ritual. Sometimes he was “ahead of the locomotive” or, if you like, “ahead of the destroyer” and tried to be “redder” than the soldiers’ and sailors’ committees. For example, the ceremonial reburial of the participants in the uprising on the battleship Potemkin took place thanks to the personal initiative of Alexander Vasilyevich. In general, Kolchak, on the one hand, showing “loyal feelings” both to the Provisional Government and to the committees, carefully watched who he would approach. While his future rival and heir, General Denikin, uses artillery to shoot recalcitrant regiments at the front, Alexander Vasilyevich maintains a wait-and-see attitude.



And his wife, Sofya Fedorovna, becomes, as they would say now, an “activist” in the movement for the “Ukrainization” of the Black Sea Fleet. Let me remind readers that the “Ukrainization” movement, which peaked in the spring-summer of 1917, essentially consisted of the creation of purely Ukrainian units in the army and navy. Everything was sewn with white thread: Ukrainian nationalists of different colors created “military organizations” to create an army to seize power. Let me emphasize: at that time, almost all parties and movements acted in the same way: there were “military troops” of Cadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Muslims. By the fall of 1917, the most famous and most powerful “military unit” was, of course, the Bolsheviks.

So, Sofya Feodorovna is actively involved in propaganda work on the “Ukrainization” of the fleet. Some researchers believe that this revealed a certain rebellious, rebellious spirit of Kolchak’s wife. I tend to think differently. The correspondence between Sophia and Alexandra (both in 1917 and later) shows that Kolchak always tried to guide his wife, tell her what to do in a given situation. Most likely, Kolchak, through his wife, sought to strengthen his authority among Ukrainian nationalists (in the spring of 1917, they still modestly called themselves “autonomists”). On the basis of the Ukrainian cultural circle “Kobzar”, a whole school of propagandists was launched, in which Sofya Fedorovna took an active part.

For example, she, dressed in Ukrainian folk costume, took part in a theatrical demonstration for the Ukrainization of the Black Sea Fleet, as Yakim Khristich testifies. The supporters of Ukrainization had a reliable ally, the “supreme-persuader” Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky, who, by supporting the creation of “Ukrainian regiments,” essentially began the collapse of the country. Thus, Sophia Kolchak at that time was a Ukrainian “autonomist,” that is, a nationalist. Later, in connection with her husband’s “white” career, Sofya Fedorovna will try to forget this stage of her biography. She would live a long life and die in 1956 in France.

Kolchak’s mistress Anna Timireva, as you know, began an affair with a brilliant naval officer even before the February Revolution. In 1918, when Kolchak’s wife carried out representative assignments of the Supreme Ruler of Russia in the Entente countries, Anna Timireva worked as a translator and secretary of Kolchak in Omsk. Kolchak, who became the sole dictator, launched an attack on European Russia without solving the problem of the rear. His economic and military policies led to the appearance of an entire army of partisans in Siberia. Their activities, as well as the counter-offensive of the Red Army, led to the defeat of Kolchak’s army. In the end, he was betrayed by his own benefactors and sponsors from the Entente, essentially handing him over to the Bolsheviks. We must pay tribute to Anna Timireva: she did not run away and accompanied Kolchak until his arrest. From this moment her life begins in Soviet Russia. This is not to say that she was calm. She was arrested five times (1920, 1921, 1935, 1938, 1949) and sent into exile. True, everywhere she, as an educated and well-read person, gets a job in clubs, libraries, and theaters.



And then a very interesting story happens. Anna Timireva, who had no special merits to Soviet culture or art, suddenly in 1960 received an apartment in the center of Moscow on Plyushchikha, in the same place where her son was once registered. Further more: a collective letter was drawn up with a petition to allocate her a personal pension of 500 rubles. They say the old lady was in poverty. Just a second: the old lady then received a pension of 50 rubles. For comparison: the minimum pension for workers and employees then was 30 rubles, the maximum pension for collective farmers according to the law of 1956 was 120 rubles. Who asked for Kolchak’s secretary and mistress? According to unverified data, Andropov began the aid campaign. And the letter itself was signed, without any irony, by such great people as Sveshnikov, Gnesina, Shostakovich, Oistrakh, Khachaturian and Shostakovich. Not only that: the old lady was provided with a part-time job by being hired as a consultant at Mosfilm. So what? - you say. After all, she, being a noblewoman and an expert in pre-revolutionary etiquette, could greatly help directors. But this argument is rather weak, since many other consultants still lived in Moscow and the USSR. For example, my great-great-great-aunt, who then worked in Minsk, could have advised the same Bondarchuk no worse, because at one time she shone at balls in Kiev and Yekaterinoslav no worse than Timireva. I believe that someone needed a pretty old woman to tell the leaders of the “Thaw” that not everything is so simple in the history of Kolchak and the White movement. In general, it has been since the 1960s. in Soviet cinema, the process of ennobling the White Guards begins and what role a modest old woman with an immodest pension played in this is a topic for additional research.

Yes, it should also be said that Anna Timireva is actively acting in films, albeit in supporting roles. But where! We see her in the role of a lady who returned with Semyon Semenovich Gorbunkov from the famous cruise from the film “The Diamond Arm”, in the role of an elderly lady at Natasha Rostova’s first ball in the film “War and Peace” by Sergei Bondarchuk. She received a more serious role in the now little-known film “Can You Live” by Alexander Muratov.



Anna Timireva died in early 1975 and was buried at the “elite” Vagankovskoye cemetery. These are the fates of the two beloved women of the failed Supreme Ruler of Russia, dictator Alexander Kolchak.

Gleb Targonsky

In the illustrations:

1. Sofia Kolchak
2. Anna Timireva (photography of the 1920s)
3. Anna Timireva (lady in black glasses) in “The Diamond Arm”
4. Anna Timireva (center) in the film “War and Peace” »

(c) Gleb Targonskiy

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