Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers did not take Berlin because they died in battle against the Germans, but a large if yet unknown number failed to do so because they were shot by Soviet security agencies before they could make a...
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...
No one should be confused by the calendar, Crimean Tatar commentator Ayder Muzhdabayev says. The coming year will be a reprise of the horrors of 1939 because Vladimir Putin will move to absorb Belarus, expand his war against Ukraine, and...
This 1941 photo documents a pile of ruins in the very center of Kyiv, which is now Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), on the corner of Institute and Khreshchatyk streets. The big ruined house is the “Ginzburg...
Historically, Ukraine is not exceptional, but it is “hyper typical” of major trends in the last 100 years, states Snyder. He points out three moments of the 20th century and reveals how they are connected to Ukrainian history:...
Sometimes the driest of statistics throw a harsher light on reality than any longer discussion. According to official statistics, during World War II, Soviet tribunals convicted more than 2.5 million Soviet citizens, condemned 472,000 for...
In the French village of Oradour (June 1944), Nazis murdered 642 inhabitants; in the Czech village of Lidice (June, 1943) – 320, in the Belarusian village of Khatyn (March 1943) – 149 (according to contemporary German data...
Instead, the Ukrainian independence struggle looks set to be airbrushed out of the Bolshevik spectacular, much as it has been for the past hundred years. Ukrainian history will remain the great unknown of the European narrative. This is...
For Moscow, the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols which divided Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin remains far more important than many believe because it was the first time a major power recognized that the USSR...
There are many Stalinist crimes Russian writers either pass over in silence or minimize, but one that is especially rarely discussed is the fate of those Russians who fought on the side of the Germans against the Soviet Union and of White...
When Ukrainian prosecutors released audio intercepts that appeared to show the direct involvement of Kremlin top advisor Sergey Glazyev in Russia’s takeover of Crimea and pro-separatist rallies in eastern Ukraine in August 2016, they...
