From Dailyhistory.org: How and when did Joseph Stalin come to power? Stalin is remembered as one of the bloodiest tyrants in the history of the world. He was the absolute ruler of the Soviet Union and later of the Communist… Read More ›
Russian History
What do we really know about Joseph Stalin?
From the JSTOR Daily by Matthew Willis: Joseph Stalin died sixty-five years ago this month. But it wasn’t until Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s, and then the breakup of the USSR, that the state archives were opened and the full… Read More ›
Berlin Airlift
From Dailyhistory.org: At the end of the Second World War, the United States, British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. The United States, United Kingdom,… Read More ›
The failure of the 1945 Potsdam Conference
From Dailyhistory.org: The last meeting of the “Big Three” occurred at Potsdam in July 1945, where the tension that would erupt into the cold war was evident. Despite the end of the war in Europe and the revelation of the… Read More ›
How did Medieval Kiev Develop?
The city of Kiev, which is now the capital of the modern nation-state of Ukraine, was the most important of all the Rus’/Russ cities in the Middle Ages. Located on the Dnieper River about halfway between Constantinople and Scandinavia, Kiev… Read More ›
Why did they build the Berlin Wall?
From Dailyhistory.org: On November 10, 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech in which he demanded that the Western powers of the United States, Great Britain, and France pull their forces out of West Berlin within six months. This… Read More ›
Did the Volga German Colonies Vanish?
Germany and Russia have had a long relationship going back to the Medieval Period. During the thirteenth century, the Teutonic Knights conquered much of the Baltic region in order to Christianize the pagans but stayed for centuries well into the… Read More ›
The “Big Three” Conferences and World War II
The first involvement of the United States in the wartime conferences between the Allied nations opposing the Axis powers actually occurred before the nation formally entered World War II. In August 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston… Read More ›
The Gary Francis Powers Incident
On May 1, 1960, the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying through Soviet airspace. The fallout over the incident resulted in the cancellation of the Paris Summit scheduled to discuss the ongoing situation in… Read More ›
The Kennedy Administration and the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. The crisis was unique… Read More ›
Top Ten Booklist on Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin was one of bloodiest dictators in world history and one of the most significant people of the 20th Century. He was the absolute ruler of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc of Eastern Europe. He killed millions… Read More ›
How did Joseph Stalin react to the German invasion during WWII?
Joseph Stalin reacted extremely slowly to the invasion of his country by German forces in 1940. Indeed, not only did he react slowly, but he also ignored warnings that the Germans planned to attack his country. Stalin’s response to the… Read More ›
Why was Nikita Khrushchev deposed as the leader of the USSR?
Nikita Khrushchev assumed leadership of the Soviet Union during the period following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953. Khrushchev served as a General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as a… Read More ›
If not for Vasili Arkhipov – 100s of millions of people could have died
From History New Network by Douglas Gilbert author of The Last Saturday of October: The Declassified Secrets of Black Saturday: “Vasili Arkhipov is arguably the most important person in modern history, thanks to whom October 27, 2017 isn’t the 55th… Read More ›
The Sad, Sad Story of Laika, the Space Dog, and Her One-Way Trip into Orbit
From Smithsonian.com by Alice George: With a pounding heart and rapid breath, Laika rode a rocket into Earth orbit, 2,000 miles above Moscow streets she knew. Overheated, cramped, frightened, and probably hungry, the space dog gave her life for her… Read More ›
Millions of Russians and eastern Europeans now believe that they were better off under communism. What does this mean?
From Aeon by Kristen R. Ghodsee author of Red Hangover: Legacies of 20th Century-Communism and Scott Sehon author of Free Will and Action Explanation: A Non-Causal, Compatibilist Account: The public memory of 20th-century communism is a battleground. Two ideological armies stare at each… Read More ›
5 of the most dangerous spy plane missions in US history
From Business Insider by Brad Howard: Since the United States entered World War II, the Department of Defense has engaged in the systematic surveillance of other nations by air to glean valuable intelligence on weapons capabilities and military movements. These… Read More ›
Re-discovering Igor Stravinsky’s Chant funèbre after its disappearance over 100 years ago
From The American Scholar by Sudip Bose: In July 1914, just before the First World War began, Igor Stravinsky took a hasty trip to his estate in the village of Ustyluh, very near the Polish border in western Ukraine. This… Read More ›
Here’s what St. Petersburg really thinks of Putin on Election Day
From the DailyBeast by Anna Nemtsova: The draft beer taps danced in the bartenders’ hands at Manneken Pis, a Belgian café on the Petrogradskaya Side, one of the oldest and most sophisticated neighborhoods of St. Petersburg. On the eve of… Read More ›
NATO Expansion: What Yeltsin Heard
From National Security Archive: Declassified documents from U.S. and Russian archives show that U.S. officials led Russian President Boris Yeltsin to believe in 1993 that the Partnership for Peace was the alternative to NATO expansion, rather than a precursor to… Read More ›