It stands as one of the more unusual turning points of the Cold War, thanks mostly to the surprise appearance of several naked middle-aged women. Taking The Cure: How a group of British Columbian anarchists inspired democracy in Russia.
posted on May 13, 2008 - View this thread

Art Deliverance - Alex Klochkov's gallery of abandonment from the Soviet Union. There's next to no explanation of the photos, unfortunately. Indirectly via Retrospectacle's post about the brain lab.
posted on Jan 27, 2008 - View this thread

It has been called the Last Battlefield of World War II in Europe.
posted on Dec 10, 2007 - View this thread

Owen Hatherley, has three blogs where he expounds on culture and architecture from an English Leftist perspective, sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy, The Measures Taken (which has longer essays than the previous blog) and the group film blog kino fist. To give you an idea of the range of subjects he covers, here's a sampling of his blogposts: Towards a Communist Couture? Sartorial Socialism from Huey P Newton to Honecker, Zuckendes Fleischer (on pre-WWII American cartoons), Industrial Island Machine - Vorticism and the absence of an English Avant-Garde, Hurrah for the Black Box Recorder (on songwriter Luke Haines and The Daily Mail), The Children’s Book as a Revolutionary Object (with a bunch of pictures from Soviet avant-garde children's books), Architectural Drawings of the 1960s, Art is a branch of Mathematics (Taylorism and Russian SF classic We), Brechtian Productivism in an age of Mechanical Stagnation and Notes towards an attempted refutation of the 'Associational Fallacy' (on architecture). All of the blogs are heavily adorned with pretty pictures, some not safe for work.
posted on Nov 13, 2007 - View this thread

In 1934, the FE Dzerzhinsky labor commune in Kharkiv began manufacturing a rangefinder camera that copied the German Leica. Though production has long ceased, FED rangefinders are still widely used and collected today. But the FED and its manufacturer have a tarnished history - some of which is due to a work force comprised of children and criminals, and some owed to its namesake: Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police (NSFW).
posted on Sep 27, 2007 - View this thread

Dead Road - Museum of Communism in the Open. "It was one of the most ambitious projects of the Stalin era, known as the 'railway of bones'. At least 10 people a day died during the four years of its construction [actually 1947-1953], but unlike most of Uncle Joe's grand designs it was never completed and now sits unfinished in the tundra, an icy road to nowhere." The transpolar railway was built by labour camps^ 501 and 503 and construction was stopped after the amnesty following Stalin's death in 1953; 800km, about half, was built. Some sections are currently in operation, but much is abandoned: depot and locomotives in Dolgoe, Dolgoe itself, labour camps, more spectacular decay. (Previously: Norilsk, which was supposed to see an extension of the line.)
posted on Aug 27, 2007 - View this thread

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip ends tonight, and Aaron Sorkin will be leaving television production for a while. His current project is Charlie Wilson's War, a movie starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, based on the late George Crile's excellent, funny nonfic book of the same name. The movie will trace "party animal" Congressman Charles "Good Time Charlie" Wilson's (D, TX) rise from a scandal (he was caught in "a hot tub tryst with two cocaine-sniffing showgirls in Las Vegas",) to his role in the 1980's covertly funding Afghanistan guerrillas so they could expand their war with the Soviet Union. Wilson's actions would eventually help collapse the Afghan PDPA government, a power vacuum which would be filled by the Taliban. Who would have thought ending the Cold War would be so easy?
posted on Jun 28, 2007 - View this thread

Giants of Soviet opera are little known in the West. But Victor Han has taken it upon himself to keep their memory alive....my personal favorite is Mark Reizen, a deeply nuanced bass, who was powerful enough to carry on singing into his ninth decade. If you'd care to follow along with some of the songs, you can use Emily Ezust's massive archive of lyrics, to which Victor contributes. Or, try listening in English first. Too much music? Here's some reading.
posted on May 13, 2007 - View this thread

Russia in photos: 1941-1945.
posted on May 11, 2007 - View this thread

Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007). Master cellist and renowned conductor, Rostropovich was one of the great artistic dissidents of the Soviet Union. He started his career as a star of the Moscow Conservatory and lived long enough to play his cello in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. More from the Associated Press and Wikipedia.
posted on Apr 27, 2007 - View this thread

Zvukovye Pis'ma: Musical letters from the Soviet Union during the 1950s, with images and audio. More information for those that can decipher it.
posted on Dec 31, 2006 - View this thread

Diary of a Collapsing Superpower - "Seventeen years ago, the Berlin Wall fell, and two years later the Soviet Union broke apart. More than 1,400 minutes published earlier this month in Russia from meetings that took place behind the closed doors of the Politburo in Moscow read like a thriller from the highest levels of the Kremlin. They reveal Mikhail Gorbachev as a party chief who had to fight bitterly for his reforms and ultimately lost his battle. But in doing so, he changed the course of history and helped bring an end to the Cold War."
posted on Nov 28, 2006 - View this thread

The Nedelin disaster remains the most fatal catastrophe in the history of rocketry. On October 26, 1960 an R-16 ICBM designed by Mikhail Yangel accidentally ignited killing over 100 within moments. The incident remained in strict secrecy for thirty years until it was unearthed by James Oberg. The true casualty rate remains a mystery and Kazakhstan still sees more than its fair share of rocket mishaps.
posted on Aug 31, 2006 - View this thread

The Afghan Elvis (with YouTube clip), the Soviet Elvis (played by Tom Hanks), the French Elvis (now seeking Belgian citizenship), the Mexican Elvis, the Swedish Elvis, the Filipino Elvis, the Chinese Elvis, the Sikh Elvis, the Japanese Elvis who became a Prime Minister, and other foreign Elvii.
posted on Aug 21, 2006 - View this thread

Printmaker. Painter. Adventurer. Advertiser. One of the most popular graphic artists of the 20th century, he created the Random House logo for his pals Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer and illustrated their first book. His illustrations for another, Moby Dick, are widely credited with resurrecting that novel for modern audiences. His own first book was favorably compared to Whitman's Leaves of Grass and for a time his bookplates were everywhere, but he "virtually vanished from the museum and gallery circuits by the late 1940s" due to his outspoken support for Stalinism. When the State Department refused to grant him a passport because of his political views, he took his case to the Supreme Court and won, establishing that the right to travel cannot be denied to American citizens. Happy birthday, Rockwell Kent.
posted on Jun 21, 2006 - View this thread

Perspectives of Russian Art Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 Americans had limited opportunities to view Russian art of the 20th century. The political pressures of the Cold War era resulted in the mutual cultural isolation of Russia from western Europe and the United States that also created an atmosphere of aesthetic mystery regarding Russian art . .
posted on Jan 24, 2006 - View this thread

Kanahakkliha! QT (mirror)
posted on Feb 11, 2005 - View this thread

Reprocessed images from the Soviet exploration of Venus.
posted on Feb 16, 2004 - View this thread

The work of Russian miniaturist Nikolai Syadristy is amazing - sculptures, watercolors, engravings, all mere millimeters in size. It's a shame, however, that the best online galleries for displaying his works are so limited. This Flash based virtual museum and this horrendous gallery were the most extensive collections available online. Still, his work is worth suffering through the bad user interface & limited English translation to enjoy, for those who wish to know just how many angeles truly can fit on the head of a pin.
posted on Jun 9, 2003 - View this thread

Three very different historical tributes, in, perhaps, descending order of seriousness: a nostalgic reprise of a Soviet-era car, a proposed monument to The Terminator in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian hometown, and the adventures of the Herbert Hoover action figure. (via The Situation Room)
posted on May 6, 2003 - View this thread

Shostakovichiana. Documents and articles about one of the twentieth century's greatest composers, some of them focusing on the problems he encountered working under a totalitarian system. Some highlights :- 'Do not judge me too harshly': anti-Communism in Shostakovich's letters; 'You must remember!': Shostakovich's alleged 1937 interrogation; About Shostakovich's 1948 downfall. More related material can be found at the Music under Soviet Rule page.
There are a number of interesting sites dealing with music expression and censorship generally. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has a site on the music of the concentration camps - 'While popular songs dating from before the war remained attractive as escapist fare, the ghetto, camp, and partisan settings also gave rise to a repertoire of new works. ' Here's a Guardian article on the Blue Notes, who 'fought apartheid in South Africa with searing jazz'. Here's a page about the Drapchi 14, Tibetan nuns who 'recorded independence songs and messages to their families on a tape recorder' (and were subsequently punished). Finally, a page on records which were banned from BBC radio during the 1991 Gulf War (example :- 'Walk Like an Egyptian').
posted on Mar 26, 2003 - View this thread

Stalin's Forgotten Zion. In 1934, the Soviet Union established the Jewish Autonomous Region in remote Birobidzhan as a permanent agricultural colony for all Soviet Jews. Substantial incentives from the Soviet government drew many new settlers. Today, only a few thousand Jews remain. A few more links: pictures from the BBC, a travel diary, a recent economic overview.
posted on Mar 17, 2003 - View this thread

Was Stalin assassinated to prevent him from launching a nuclear attack on the United States? "'The circumstantial evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of non-fortuitous death,' said Jonathan Brent, a professor of Russian history at Yale University. 'And to support this further, we now have solid evidence, non-circumstantial evidence, of a cover-up at the highest level.'"
posted on Mar 6, 2003 - View this thread

Cosmos Patrol: Star Trek for Communists In the late 60s, the Soviets copied the TV show Star Trek and used it as propaganda and entertainment. Set in the 23rd Century, the 400 galaxy-exploring crewmembers are led by a handsome Commander with a coldly logical First Officer. Ensign Chekhov assists as they encounter alien life forms and embrace them as brothers.
posted on Jan 12, 2002 - View this thread

On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made object ever sent into space... Sputnik: The Shock of the Century, a book by Paul Dickson released today, is a fascinating look into the historical, political, social and technological ramifications of the Russian sattellite that launched the Space Race, and changed the course of how information traveled. (Today is my birthday, as well—which should explain my interest in the subject.)
posted on Oct 4, 2001 - View this thread

A four part tale(1993) of deception, covert operations and secret revelations, which covers :
How The Blind Sheikh Came To USA
CIA's Friends Against Soviet Union
Was Mossad Behind WTC 1993
How The CIA Won It's Jehad

Search These Terms
"Mossad World Trade Center", CIA, Hekmatyar, Hekmatyar Heroine, The Blind Shiekh, ISI, The Village Voice, Robert I. Friedman, Victor Ostrovsky
posted on Sep 20, 2001 - View this thread

What America needs now is ... Rambo! Fighting off the Russians, shoulder to shoulder with the Mujahedeen in Afghanist...fighting the...against...oh hell.
posted on Sep 16, 2001 - View this thread

Overview of CIA Support of bin Laden during Russia-Afghan War “[T]he CIA, concerned about the factionalism of Afghanistan ... found that Arab zealots who flocked to aid the Afghans were easier to ‘read’ than the rivalry-ridden natives. While the Arab volunteers might well prove troublesome later, the agency reasoned, they at least were one-dimensionally anti-Soviet for now. So bin Laden, [and other] Islamic militants ... became the ‘reliable’ partners of the CIA in its war against Moscow.” Senator Orrin Hatch: “It was worth it ... Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.” Dated: Aug. 24, 1998
posted on Sep 11, 2001 - View this thread