Major changes in political strategy swept the USSR towards the end of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1937-1938, Stalin and his henchmen launched the Great Purge, a series of political repressions and persecution. It involved the purge of the...
A compelling argument can be made that the Soviet Union died when it did and not much later as its supporters hoped because Joseph Stalin violated his own understanding and annexed the Baltic countries, western Ukraine, western Belarus and...
Perhaps the only thing that outrages Russian defenders of Stalin more than the obvious parallels between his regime and Hitler’s is any reference to the alliance the two dictators formed in 1939 with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, one that...
Seventy-nine years ago, on December 14, 1939, the League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union from membership for its actions against Finland, an act of principle by an organization most people consider to have been incapable of that and...
Seventy-one years ago this week, Stalin deported tens of thousands of Ukrainians to Siberia and Kazakhstan, an action that is often ignored because of Khrushchev’s famous remark that Stalin wanted to deport the Ukrainians but didn’t...
Russian officials and pro-Kremlin commentators have reacted angrily to the decision of the US Senate to pass a resolution stating that the 1932-33 terror famine in Ukraine was “a planned action of Stalin’s totalitarian regime which was...
A “new GULAG” is emerging in Russia “right before our eyes,” opposition politician Gennady Gudkov says. For the moment it is “still small” but if will grow and metastasize if the Russian people do not speak out but assume that...
One of the most widely held misconceptions about the USSR was that borders among the various republics were both natural and fixed, neither of which was the case, and that as a result borders among the post-Soviet states are not only...
A core element of Vladimir Putin’s worldview is that the Russians are “a divided people,” German historian Wilfried Jilge says, a perspective that underlies his continuing aggression against Ukraine and that lays the groundwork for...
Many in the West following the decision of more than 20 countries to expel Russian diplomats to show solidarity with the British think that Vladimir Putin has been driven into an untenable position and soon will be forced to back down in...
But, did you know that for the first and last time, Ukraine celebrated Independence Day on July 16, 1991? The chosen date was based on the first anniversary of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, which enshrined political...
