The referendums set a dangerous precedent for the rulers of Western “democracies,” in addition to constituting a direct and serious non-military threat to the sustainability of their Ukrainian project.
Yes, that is the unanimous refrain of Western opinion makers following the referendums conducted in the four regions of Eastern Ukraine. That the overwhelming majority of the population there, braving deadly Ukrainian artillery barrages, expressed their preference to be part of Russia, and not of the discriminatory Ukrainian state (or whatever is ultimately left of it) makes no difference to these opinion shapers and policy makers.
The mechanical unanimity which prevails in the West concerning the major geopolitical shift that has just taken place in the East is a disturbing reminder of the single mindedness which, in roughly the same part of the world but under a different ideological guise, used to characterise political and media discourse about a generation ago.
To anyone with a superficial knowledge of the historical and political context, the epilogue of popular consultation in the four regions, as well as in the Crimea eight years ago, should be an open and shut case. (Doubters will be edified, while being entertained, here.) Invocations of international law, not to mention human rights, in these situations work entirely in Russia’s favor.
A fact-based and rational analysis, however, is unlikely to greatly impress the utterly ignorant and brain-washed Western public. The only version of events that they have heard is that Ukraine, allegedly a “sovereign” country, was invaded by a foreign aggressor and that sizable chunks of its territory are now being swallowed up by the invader.
The notion that Ukraine is a sovereign state is, of course, laughable. Ukraine is in fact a subservient political vassal of the collective West, all traces of autonomy having been voluntarily renounced by its own corrupt and traitorous political elite after “independence” in 1991.
It goes without saying that the Western public, with few exceptions, are blissfully unaware of the demographic, historical, and cultural realities of present day Ukraine. Political borders, however arbitrarily drawn, are in their minds the equivalent of ethnic frontiers which must be respected. That dimension of their ignorance was spectacularly illustrated, but on a much higher level, by the then U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher during an international conference held in the midst of the Bosnian war. To the shock of the better informed participants, he casually asked when did the Bosnian Serb population cross the Drina River to invade Bosnia, apparently unaware that in Bosnia they had been indigenous for at least the preceding thousand years. British foreign secretary (now prime minister, unfortunately) Liz Truss made a similarly embarrassing gaffe late last year at a meeting in Moscow, stunning her hosts when she expressed strong disapproval of Russian military manoeuvres on territory she thought was in the Ukraine, evidently unaware that it was part of the Russian Federation. The list could go on, but the point of it is that if high level political functionaries are ignorant of basic historical and geographical facts, how much can reasonably be expected from members of the zombified general public?
With regard to the allegedly egregious violation of international law committed by Russia by conducting a referendum to enable residents of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye to choose the country they wished to live in, a couple of hard data points are in order.
The first and most fundamental data point (probably beyond the knowledge of most citizens of Western counties) is the fact that prior to the 1920s there was a geographical concept associated with Ukraine, mainly in the form of several provincial subdivisions of the Russian Empire, but that as a self-sufficient political entity with defined borders before then it had never existed. To the question, what lands constituted Ukraine as an internationally recognized entity prior to its emergence within the USSR in the 1920s, there is no answer.
Just as the creation of Ukraine as a constituent republic of the USSR was an arbitrary political gesture, so was the determination of what fragments of the former Russian Empire it should eventually be made up of. Ukraine was fabricated by an act of revolutionary political will, for the ideological convenience of the USSR’s central authorities and certainly without any meaningful consultation with its inhabitants. As a decreed-from-on-high constituent republic of the USSR, the Ukrainian SSR was the precursor of the present-day Ukraine. Its separation from the USSR was similarly accomplished by agreement of three unelected and unauthorised Russian, Byelorussian, and Ukrainian functionaries. In terms of international law, and of the vaunted Western democratic values in particular, present-day Ukraine, and its borders, have therefore as much legitimacy as the entity created in the 1920s that it originated and evolved from.
The second hard data point has to do with precisely how the regions of Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk and others bordering on the Black Sea came to be incorporated into the newly constituted Ukrainian Soviet Republic. It was done to augment the substance of the new soviet republic by expanding it to include huge swathes of territory populated by Russian speakers who had no relation to the new Ukrainian identity that was being created out of thin air. There was no referendum or even a political climate in which inhabitants could freely manifest their preference. About a hundred years ago certain decisions about the geographical and ethnic composition of Ukraine were made at the top and then administratively implemented at lower levels. Options of dissent and appeal were excluded.
The third hard data point concerns the manner in which in 1954 the Crimea was incorporated into Ukraine. The method followed was exactly the same as described previously. The peninsula which during the preceding hundred fifty years, since before Ukraine had made its political appearance, was incontrovertibly a part of Russia populated by a Russian majority, suddenly, without explanation, and without consultation with its inhabitants, was transferred to Ukrainian control. The first opportunity that the people of Crimea had to manifest their will in regard to this was in 2014, just as the first such opportunity granted to the people of the four regions was a few days ago.
What is the principle of Western democratic governance that prohibits a review of decisions made behind the backs of those they impact? Why may such decisions not be tested for popular consent? If the inhabitants of former British colonies and Dominions have a legally recognised right to decide whether they still desire to be subject to the British monarchy, why should inhabitants of the four regions of Ukraine and Crimea be deprived of the inherent right to decide whether they wish to be subject to the government in Kiev? Especially since they became locked into the present-day Ukrainian state not by their own choice but by the imposition of arbitrarily drawn internal borders. Later, just as arbitrarily, those internal borders were declared to be international. What legal doctrine or moral principle obligates the inhabitants of those regions to treat as sacrosanct political decisions made at their expense by others, behind their backs and lacking their consent?
The hysterical uproar in the collective West over the referendums, one suspects, has less to do with the results – which were foreseeable based on expectations of normal behaviour of threatened and abused human beings – than with the fact that someone had the audacity to organise them at all. In the West unmanipulated expressions of popular sentiment have become a relic of the past. The referendums set a dangerous precedent for the rulers of Western “democracies,” in addition to constituting a direct and serious non-military threat to the sustainability of their Ukrainian project. That is why a vicious propaganda campaign was immediately unleashed to smear, disqualify, and misrepresent them at any cost.
This year, Russia and Belarus are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the reunification of our fraternal peoples. In Soviet historiography, this event is referred to as the First Partition of Poland in 1772 that took place against the background of incessant wars in Europe.
Count Nikita Panin and Vice Chancellor Prince Alexander Golitsyn conducted talks on Russia’s behalf. They reached an agreement with Prussian envoy Count Solms and Austrian envoy Prince Lobkowitz and signed the relevant conventions in St Petersburg on August 5, 1772. The agreement between the great European powers provided for a peaceful transition (without bloodshed) for the greater part of the Vitebsk and Mogilev regions in present-day Belarus (92,000 sq km and a population of 1.3 million) becoming part of the Russian state.
This epoch event determined the destiny for a common Russian and Belarusian homeland and the course of European history. These primordial Slavic lands returned to the Russian Empire. The populations of these regions had been subjected to artificial Polonising for centuries. I think it would be appropriate to recall that this year we marked 1,030 years since the advent of Orthodoxy to Belarusian lands. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia coordinated his visits to Polotsk and Minsk with this anniversary.
Due to reunification with Russia in 1772, Belarusians managed to preserve their national identity and language and create conditions for shaping their own statehood. Since then – for a quarter of a millennium now – the Russian and Belarusian people have lived in peace and friendship. They are proud of their great common past and common victories. Together – in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and now in the Union State, they have efficiently resolved and will continue to resolve their urgent tasks and problems. We look to the future with confidence and optimism.
Today, under the Union State’s programmes of coordinated foreign policy actions, Russia and Belarus hold identical positions on the key issues of our time. They support each other at international venues and closely cooperate at the UN and the OSCE.
Under conditions of unprecedented pressure from the collective West, our two countries are strengthening their integration union and are working to create a common socio-economic, migration and defence space. We have something to present to the Russian and Belarusian public. We have fulfilled 50 percent of our goals under 28 union programmes for 2021-2023. We are drafting new cooperation programmes for the next three years. We are implementing our upgraded Military Doctrine and the Union State’s Migration Policy Concept.
I’d like to repeat that Russia and Belarus are inseparably tied by their common culture and history. We are united by common and memorable dates. These include Day of the Baptism of Russia, Day of Slavic Writing and Culture, Day of Unity between the Peoples of Russia and Belarus, February 23, March 8, Easter, Christmas and, of course, Victory Day on May 9, the dearest and holiest holiday for all of us.
This year we will time a meeting of the foreign ministry collegiums of our countries in Minsk in November to another common date – the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Berezina and the victory in the 1812 Patriotic War. I’d like to emphasise that this was a victory not only over the French but actually over all of Europe that was united under Napoleon.
On September 22-23 of this year, our Belarusian friends will hold one more important event in cooperation with the Russian Military Historical Society – the international scientific conference “Partitions of Poland in the historical memory of the peoples of Belarus and Russia.” This work is aimed at ensuring the continuity of our common history and bringing the truth about centuries-old cultural, historical, spiritual, moral and family ties to our people. It deserves respect and support.
In conclusion, I would like to thank once again the organisers of this event, the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire, which prepared a thematic exhibition of original documents related to the partition of Poland. These originals have never left the archives. They are the Russian-Prussian and Russian-Austrian conventions on the first partition of Poland, the Warsaw extraordinary peace treaty on the accession of some Polish lands to Russia, and notes on Polish affairs by Alexander Bezborodko, member of the Collegium of Foreign Affairs, to Catherine the Great, which bear her handwritten resolution. We have prepared replicas of these unique documents and will present them to our Belarusian friends as a gift.
Filed under: Europe, Poland, Russia, USSR | Tagged: Belarus, Lavrov, Minsk Agreements, OSCE, Russian Empire | Comments Off on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s introductory remarks at the opening of the exhibition of archive records on the 250th anniversary of the reunification of the peoples of Russia and Belarus
The Russian Lands existed for well over a thousand years before 2022 and took on many highly significant political and geographical forms. These could be described at another time; here we do not have space. However, in the last 300 years, between 1721 and 24 February 2022, they had known only two incarnations: The Russian Empire (1721-1917), and the Soviet Union with the Post-Soviet Russian Federation (1917-2022). The USSR and its totalitarian faults are fairly well known in the West, but even here the West still refuses to believe in the many ‘Soviet’ social virtues, its free medicine, education and culture, which were all inherited from the Empire. The West has blinded itself with its own anti-Russian (disguised as anti-Communist) propaganda. The continuation of a weakened USSR in the Post-Soviet Federation was initially loved by the West, as it was its own creation. Indeed, in many respects the post-Soviet Federation appeared to have adopted the worst of the West and rejected the best of the Soviet Union. By reaction, some suggested that the Federation should return to the USSR. That was never on the agenda. That was an experiment that had failed. On the other hand, the idea that the Federation would become just another Western chimpanzee like Japan was never going to happen either. The Russian Lands have their own identity, their own civilisation.
On the other hand, the Russian Empire is virtually unknown in the West, as the West still believes its own ignorance and lies about it. After all it was the West which destroyed it, with the help of internal traitors and decadent aristocrats, who cruelly exploited the poor and so guaranteed the fall of the Empire. Unsurprisingly, many of these traitors soon afterwards emigrated to the West, given the disaster that they had created in Russia with Western backing. We will therefore spend some time below disillusioning those who still believe in the racist Western/Soviet propaganda stereotypes of ‘tyrannical Asiatic autocracy’, ‘backward obscurantism’, which kept its people in a state of poverty and ignorance. The condescending West said: ‘If only they had been like us clever Western people, all would have been well’. We will look at these realities (1) firstly because they are so little known and many still actually believe in the myths, and secondly because the positive aspects of the pre-Revolutionary Empire are at the heart of the USSR and will also be at the heart of today’s Third Incarnation (see further). Below we look at the real Russian Empire.
The Economy
In the 20 years before 1917 the population of the Empire increased by 62 million, some 50%. It was a time when industrialisation and modernisation accelerated very sharply. National income and productivity increased at a rate unrivalled anywhere else in the world and the budget increased threefold. Personal taxation in the Russian Empire was half the level of that in France and Germany and a quarter of that in Great Britain.
Average earnings were higher than those in any Western European country, less only than those in the USA. Prices were among the lowest in the world and inflation and unemployment were practically non-existent. Thanks to the monetary reform that the Tsar personally insisted on carrying out in 1897, the rouble was guaranteed by gold. The Empire had the largest gold reserves in the world and the Russian gold rouble remains one of the safest investments in the world.
Between 1890 and 1913 GNP increased fourfold. There was a fourfold increase in the extraction of coal and the production of cast iron, and a fivefold increase in that of copper. Between 1911 and 1914 investment in engineering increased by 80% and electrification had begun in many cities. In 1901 the USA extracted 9.9 million tons of oil, Russia 12.1 million tons. Between 1908 and 1913 productivity surpassed that of the USA, Great Britain and Germany. The Empire was the biggest exporter of textiles and one of the biggest of metals and engineering. Russia was on course to becoming the leading world economy by 1950, surpassing both Europe and the USA.
Infrastructure and Agriculture
The Trans-Siberian Railway was completed at the insistence of the last Tsar despite opposition. In 20 years the length of railways and telegraph networks doubled, indeed, the rate of railway construction was one of the highest in the world, the later Soviet rate being a mere fraction of it. Its locomotives were among the best in the world. This was why armoured trains appeared in Russia. The largest fleet of river ships in the world doubled in tonnage during that period. The plane industry was on a par with that of the American.
The car industry was in a similar situation to the German, Russian cars winning races at rallies in Monte Carlo and San Sebastian. Indeed, Mercedes and Daimler engines were invented by the Russian engineer Boris Lutskoy. Pre-Revolutionary Russia also invented: the wireless telegraph, the helicopter, the television, cine-news, the tramway, hydroelectric power stations, the electric plough, the submarine, the parachute, the radio, the electron microscope, the powder fire extinguisher, the astronomical clock, the seismograph, the electric omnibus, the flying boat, the icebreaker, the motorcycle, the airship and double-decker railway carriages.
Thanks to the Agrarian Reform, by 1914 100% of usable land in Asian Russia and 90% in European Russia belonged to the people. The Empire was the biggest exporter of cereals, flax, eggs, milk, butter, meat and sugar in the world. The wheat harvest was one third larger than that of the USA, Canada and Argentina combined. Cereal production doubled during the reign and the number of cattle increased by 60%. The Empire was also first in the world for the numbers of horses, cows, sheep and one of the biggest for the numbers of pigs and goats.
Social Justice, Health and Education
From June 1903 all employers in the Russian Empire were obliged to pay benefit and pension to all employees and their families who had suffered an accident. This amounted to between 50% and 66% of their salary. Trade Unions were formed in 1906 and from June 1912 compulsory health insurance at work was introduced to cover illness or accident. Social insurance legislation was introduced before other European countries and the USA. The US President William Taft declared that: ‘Your Emperor has created such perfect labour legislation which no democratic state can boast of’.
In 1898 the Empire introduced a universal medical welfare system that cost the tiny sum of one rouble per year. The Swiss hygienist Friedrich Erismann praised this system as ‘the greatest achievement in the world in the field of social medicine’. Russia was third in the world for the number of its doctors. The Tsar personally insisted on introducing economic reforms and measures against alcohol abuse, often in spite of the Duma. Alcohol consumption per head was one of the lowest in the world and the lowest in Europe outside Norway. In 1913 the number of mentally ill was 187 in every 100,000, compared to 5,598 per 100,000 in the Russian Federation in 2013. The number of suicides in the Empire was 4.4 per 100,000. In the Russian Federation in 2012 it was 19.5 and 12.1 in the USA.
Compulsory primary education was introduced in 1908, over a generation later than in the West. However, by 1916 literacy in the Empire had already reached 85%. By 1914 there were 150,000 students studying at university institutions. In terms of numbers of students the Russian Empire was joint third in the world with Great Britain. Another 300 million roubles was spent in 1913 on country schools, a budget up from 70 million in 1894. In less than 20 years the education budget rose by 628%. By 1913 there were 130,000 schools in the Empire with 6 million pupils. All education, primary, secondary and tertiary, was free.
The Internal Situation
The pogroms of the late nineteenth century and very early twentieth century, basically race riots, led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, about half of them Non-Jews and about half of them Jews. Similar to the Catholic-Protestant race riots in Northern Ireland in the late 20th century, some were started by one side, others by the other. There is no recorded instance of them being encouraged by the State, which built many large synagogues for the Jewish population. None of the pogroms occurred in Russia, but only in what are now Lithuania, Poland, the west of the Ukraine and Moldova. Many Jews lived there because they had been chased out of Western Europe by Anti-Semitism centuries earlier. Sadly, Western propaganda on this subject is still widely believed in the West. It is notable that where the race riots took place were the same places as where the Nazis received help from the local population when they invaded from 1941 onwards.
Another piece of Western/Soviet mythology is the ‘Bloody Sunday’ march in 1905. In this event it was revolutionaries who opened fire and troops defended themselves. There were 130 victims – not 5,000, as invented by Western propaganda. All victims were given immediate medical care. The Tsar was not even in the city at the time. When he learned of it, horrified, he sacked the officials who should have been in charge and at once gave each family that had suffered the enormous sum of 50,000 roubles from his personal money.
Crime was lower than in Western Europe and the USA. In 1908 56 people per 100,000 were imprisoned. In the Soviet Union in 1949 the figure was 1,537 per 100,000 and in the Russian Federation in 2011, 555, with 724 per 100,000 in the USA in the same year. There was a free press and freedom of speech, unlike in the West where strict ‘editorial policies’ (= censorship) were pursued. The Tsar never rejected a single petition for pardon. Fewer death penalties were carried out during his whole reign than in any single day in the Soviet Union until the death of Stalin.
International Relations
The Hague International Tribunal of Justice, suggested in 1898 to prevent wars, but derided by other European leaders, was the personal brainchild of Tsar Nicholas. If it had been implemented as he had wanted, there would never have been any First World War, let alone later wars. Thus, those who had derided it, notably the British and the Germans, signed their own death warrants.
When in February 1904 Japan, urged on, financed and armed to the teeth by the geopolitical imperialists of Great Britain and the USA, treacherously attacked the small and poorly-armed Russian Navy without first declaring war (as it later did at Pearl Harbour), it only took the non-militaristic Russian Empire eighteen months to recover. However, instead of continuing the war and crushing the by then bankrupt Japan militarily, Russia entered peace negotiations, but imposed such terms at the talks in the USA that Japan, forced to agree to them, went into mourning.
During the Great Patriotic War (as the First World War was then known) the Tsar constantly visited the Front. After less than a year, in 1915, given the incompetence of the former supreme commander, his arrogant and foul-mouthed uncle, he took on supreme command, against the advice of all, showing his strength of will. Russia began winning the greatest victories of the War, advancing huge distances and taking huge numbers of prisoners, for example the Tsar Nicholas Offensive, euphemistically known in the West as the ‘Brusilov Offensive’. This was undreamed of by the jealous Western Allies, who were bogged down in immobile and bloody trench warfare, where millions were dying. On the Russian Front, facing far more enemy troops, deaths amounted to fewer than 700,000.
The Armed Forces
In 1914 the Russian Empire was able to 2,000 engineers to help the USA at its request to set up a heavy armaments industry. The Russian Air Force, founded in 1910, was by 1917 the largest in the world, with 700 planes and by 1917 the Russian Navy, reformed and modernised after the dreadnought-armed Japan’s victories, was one of the strongest in the world. Had it not been for the treason of the Allies, of most of the aristocracy and many in the middle class, historians consider that Russia would have occupied Vienna and Berlin in 1917, thus ending the murderous war at least a year early and saving millions of lives. Over 95% of the 2,417,000 captured enemy soldiers returned home safely after the War.
Only 39% of males aged between 15-49 were mobilised in the Russian Empire, as against 81% in Germany, 79% in France, 74% in Austro-Hungary, 72% in Italy and 50% in Great Britain. Per 100,000 of its population, the Empire lost 11 people, as against 34 in France, 31 in Germany, 18 in Austria and 16 in Great Britain. (Reported very high Russian losses are propaganda myths of the anti-Russian West). The military reform was creating one of the strongest and best-equipped armies in the world, which would have been the best by 1917 if Germany had not started the First World War. It was the officers trained in the Imperial Army who in their forties and fifties won the Second World War.
Church Affairs and Culture
By 1913 the Russian Orthodox Church had 67,000 churches and 1,000 monasteries. It had great influence in the Holy Land, Asia and seventeen Russian churches had been built in Western Europe. The Tsar personally paid for the building of St Nicholas Cathedral in New York and ensured that the number of bishops in North America went from one to three. In 1916 there were plans to make sure that every Western capital would have a church and that the service-books of the Church would be translated into all the main Western languages.
Russian culture went through a period known as the Silver Age, with developments in science, philosophy, art, architecture, music and literature. The French writer Paul Valery stated that Russian culture at the beginning of the 20th century was ‘one of the wonders of the world’. Two of the five founders of Hollywood came from Russia. Chanel No 5 was invented by the Russian émigré Verigin.
The Third Incarnation
So much for the little-known past. Of course, there were many iniquities in the Russian Empire. Otherwise, it would not have fallen. The corruption of the parasitic aristocratic class (oligarchs) and the neglect of the working poor were too great. The gap was too large and the Tsar’s move to social justice did not go fast enough to keep pace with the challenges of rapid industrialisation. However, the positive aspects of the Empire and its huge advances and industrialisation, were retained by the Soviet Union. Despite the huge step backward wrought by the Civil War, Bolshevik persecution and artificial famines, by 1930 the USSR was back where Russia had been in 1916. Only in the last generation since the fall of the Soviet Union have those positive aspects been threatened. However, we will talk no more of the past, but of the future, of Russia’s Third Incarnation, of post-24 February 2022 Russia, the New Russia. This Incarnation has realised that it must keep the best of all previous Incarnations in order to survive and to move forward.
We are able to speak of this now only since the campaign of liberation of the Ukraine began on 24 February. Initially, this was launched to free only the Donbass and prevent the planned NATO-sponsored attack on it, set for early March 2022. This liberation campaign has been so successful that it has had to be extended. It seems certain now that all of Novorossiya (the east and south of the Ukraine) will be liberated, enabling Transdnestria to join the Russian Federation. However, given the continued aggression of the rest of the Ukraine and NATO threats from elsewhere, Russian military success may have to be extended.
Until the whole of the Ukraine is demilitarised, and it is continually being remilitarised by the West, the liberation cannot stop. Moreover, with potential threats from NATO-armed Poland and Lithuania towards Kaliningrad and from Romania towards Moldova, from arms shipments from Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Lands and the Baltic States, especially from the US puppet-government in Lithuania, with threats from Sweden and Finland to join NATO, where will it stop? The West has to be freed from Nazism/woke liberalism (it is the same thing. As they say: there is nothing so intolerant as liberalism). True, Germany, France and Italy, their economies crippled by US-imposed, anti-Russian sanctions, are showing reason. This is unlike the laughable bluster coming from the militarily feeble Johnson-regime in the UK, which may well be toppled by popular internal discontent and a wave of strikes.
The Global Implications of the Third Incarnation of Russia
However, it is the economic aspect, with its international dedollarisation, of the Third Incarnation of Russia which is truly world-changing. In the light of the speech of Vladimir Putin at the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum of June 2022, we can say that Russia is returning to its historic path. It wants to leave aside the errors of the past, become a sovereign nation again and no longer be a Western colony. This is unlike the EU, which is clearly just a US vassal, both economically and politically. The future world order will be formed only by strong sovereign states, independent of the dollar and the massive debts of Western countries. These have been caused by their inflationary printing of money that is not based on real commodities such as cereals, oil, gas, minerals, metals, rare earth elements, fertilisers, timber, manufactured goods and gold.
The break with the West and the ‘obsolete geopolitical illusions’ of its elite’s superiority complex, essentially a form of Nazism, is irreversible. Russia will invest in internal economic development in microeconomic and macroeconomic terms, ensuring ‘technological sovereignty’ (which means for instance that Russia already has unique hypersonic missiles), encouraging free enterprise against bureaucracy, improving infrastructure, but also ensuring social justice, fighting against poverty and supporting the family, encouraging far more ‘families to have two, three or more children’. The ideal of social conservatism together with social justice is what is intended. Russia will also help nations in Africa and the Middle East to avoid Western-imposed famine. True, this is an ambitious programme for the future, but this Third Incarnation of Russia is beginning now.
Note:
1. As the definitive statistical source, compiled by my friend A. A. Borisiuk, see The History of Russia Which They Ordered to be Forgotten, Veche, 2018. This for the first time conveniently collates all Pre-Revolutionary, Soviet and Emigré Statistics (in Russian).
واشنطن تتخبّط وتهرب من حفرة الى حفرة أعمق، في مواجهتها المحتدمة مع موسكو!
وطلب كلّ من فنلندا والسويد الانتماء لحلف الناتو ما هو في الواقع سوى مناورات أميركيّة بائسة سببها الهروب من الواقع المخزي لها في أوكرانيا ومستقبل الأطلسي القاتم هناك.
فالسويد وفنلندا يعتبران عملياً جزءاً من الناتو أصلاً سواء بنوع التسليح أو عبر قنوات التعاون المستمرة والمفتوحة بينهما وبين الناتو منذ سنوات، وهو الذي لديه مقرّان مهمان في كل من ستوكهولم وهلسنكي.
ثم أن الروس كانوا قد أعدّوا سلفاً لمثل هذا الاحتمال حتى قبل العملية الخاصة الجارية حالياً في أوكرانيا، عندما زرعوا مقاطعة كالينينغراد الروسية القريبة من البلطيق بمنظومة صواريخ اسكندر القادرة على ضرب أهداف خصمها على مدى ٥٠٠ كلم، ما يجعل البلدين وقواعد الناتو هناك هدفاً قابلاً للتدمير دون الدخول في عملية مباشرة .
ومع ذلك، فإنّ الروس لن يتقبّلوا مثل هذه الخطوة بسهولة، بل سيعتبرونها خطوة استفزازية إضافية في المواجهة الجارية بينهم وبين الأطلسي، باعتبارها خطوة تخلّ بقواعد التعامل المتفق عليها بين الغرب والشرق منذ عقود، تقوم واشنطن وحلفاؤها الأوروبيون الآن بالخروج عليها كما يلي:
أولا: فنلندا كانت حتى العام ١٩١٧ جزءاً من الإمبراطورية الروسية ولم تنفك عنها الا بعد انتهاء الحرب العالمية الأولى وانتصار الثورة البلشفية بقيادة لينين ما فتح بالمجال لإعلان فنلندا دولة مستقلة. وهو الأمر الذي ترتب عليه نوع من التوافق الثنائي بين البلدين تكرّس رسمياً في معاهدة باريس الدولية في العام ١٩٤٧ تعهدت فيها فنلندا بعدم الانضمام لأي تجمع او دولة معادية للاتحاد السوفياتي .
وهي الدولة التي لديها حدود بحرية وبرية طولها أكثر من ١٣٠٠ كم شمالاً وشمال غرب وهو أمر خطير أن تتحوّل فجأة الى معسكر للناتو في حضن روسيا تماماً.
ثانياً: للسويد تاريخ من الحروب مع روسيا عندما كانت مملكة قوية كانت آخرها قبل نحو ٢٠٠ عام، خسرتها المملكة السويدية لصالح روسيا، ما أفرز يومها عقد الصلح بينهما على أن تعلن اوسلو حيادها التام، وهو ما ظلت ملتزمة به منذ ذلك الحين بشكل رسمي…
فما عدا مما بدا حتى تقرّر اليوم الانقلاب على ذلك الاتفاق!؟
اذن هي واشنطن التي تبحث عن مسار تصعيديّ إعلاميّ ظناً منها أنها تستطيع استنزاف موسكو في البلطيق بعد أن خسرت الرهان في البحر الأسود، لعلها في ذلك تضعف جبهة المواجهة بين تحالف الشرق الاقتصادي الكبير بقيادة الصين وبين الغرب الأميركي المتصدّع والذي بدأ يئنّ من تداعيات العملية الروسية الاقتصادية في أوكرانيا، كما تفيد كلّ التقارير، بما فيها ما ورد على لسان الناطق باسم البيت الأبيض أخيراً عندما ألحّ على الكونغرس لعمل أي شيء لإنقاذ مشروع لصندوق الدعم القومي لأوكرانيا والذي لا يملك أكثر من ٢٠٠ مليون دولار من أصل الـ ٤٠ مليار التي وعد بها بايدن خادمه زيلينيسكي…
لكن موسكو رغم كل ما يُشاع عن خطورة الوضع المستجدّ بخصوص هذه الخطوة، قادرة على سحق كلّ الوجود الأطلسي في البلطيق سواء عبر بيلاروسيا المتحالفة معها او عبر التقدم التسليحي الهائل الذي تملكه هناك نذكر على سبيل المثال منها فقط كاسحات الثلوج النووية القادرة على فتح الطريق لأسطول الشمال الروسي باتجاه المحيطين الهادئ والأطلسي.
ايّ انّ موسكو تستطيع أن تردّ الصاع صاعين وربما تفاجئهم من حيث لا يحتسبون بأسلحة لم تعلن عنها بعد…
فالكرملين كما تقول المصادر المتابعة لديه العديد من الأوراق للردّ على المخطط الغربي لمحاصرة روسيا بخطوات حازمة قد تصدم الغرب من جديد..
وطبقاً للمعلومات الواردة من موسكو فإنّ مجلس الأمن الروسي برئاسة بوتين يبحث العواقب السلبيّة لانضمام فنلندا والسويد إلى الناتو على الأمن القومي بإقرار توصيات بوضع «بولندا في المرتبة التالية في مجال نزع النازية بعد أوكرانيا»، ما سيجعل الغرب يتلقى ضربة أقسى هذه المرة من أوكرانيا.
وهنا ربما يمكننا إدراك ما أخذ يردّده الروس كثيراً في الآونة الأخيرة حول خطر نشوب حرب عالمية أو نووية كارثية.
فهل تردّ موسكو في بولنداً رداً أقسى من أوكرانيا وتسكت مدافع الغرب مرة والى الأبدّ ام أننا مقبلون على اندلاع حرب عالميّة ثالثة فعلاً!؟
اليد العليا حتى الآن في المواجهة الروسية الأطلسية هي للروس، وهذا هو ما يدفع بايدن للتخبّط أكثر فأكثر، لكن ذلك لن يطول كثيراً بسبب الضعف البنيويّ لكلّ الآلة العسكرية الأميركية والأطلسية بالمقارنة مع الروسية المتقدمة عليها كثيراً جداً.
العالم يتحوّل نحو مزيد من انحسار القوة الأميركية وتصدّعها، لصالح غلبة تحالف شرقي صاعد.
There are only two powers in the world…the sword and the spirit. In the long term the sword is always defeated by the spirit – Napoleon Bonaparte
Introduction: You Are What You Believe
Like the Saker, I have White Russian connections. I know what the generation of my grandparents, adults before the so-called 1917 ‘Revolution’, told me. Then I read a lot about it. What I read only confirmed the living memories. Russia before 1917 was rotten from the inside, a house of cards. The whole ‘Revolution’ was a story of the treachery of the elite, the aristocrats, including many Romanovs, the politicians, the generals and the new bourgeoisie. Having lost their faith, they replaced all loyalty to the Faith, the Tsar and Home with pure greed. The same thing happened with the USSR. A generation after the people’s war won by those trained in the Tsar’s Army, the Soviet Union turned into a State in whose official Communist ideology nobody believed any more. The elite had lost faith in it and so the USSR also fell.
After 1991 the Russian Federation was handed over to the future oligarchs, the new aristocrats, just as before the Revolution the Russian Empire had been far too much in the hands of the past oligarchs, the old aristocrats. Whoever says oligarchs automatically says corruption. And when the rich have enough riches, they next want power and betray to get it. Like the rest of the world, the Russian Federation is a very unequal and corrupt society because of these oligarchs, who simply repeat the Western oligarch model. Have no illusions: Oligarchs rule the Western world. It is illusory to think otherwise. In France Pompidou was and Macron is a Rothschild banker (the ones who own The Economist and much of the rest of the media). French conglomerates stand beside them. In Germany banks and huge automobile and chemical industries put up their political candidates. In the UK all candidates are vetted by the financial sharks of the City. As for the USA, think of Trump or Hoover, and all is clear. Follow the money.
Myths on the Conflict in the Ukraine
Thus, the Western media, owned by the oligarchs, simply repeat what their owners want. That is what the mainstream media are for: the repetition of lies. The media affirm that the special operation in the Ukraine, which they call ‘a war’ or ‘an invasion’, was unprovoked. It was not: it was preceded by eight years of the Kiev regime genocide of Russians, a host of provocations of a purely Nazi nature and even a threat to go nuclear. The media claim that the operation is ‘horrific’ and that millions are dying. If you use the word ‘horrific’ and say that ‘millions are dying’, then you are describing the illegal US invasions of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, Western-sponsored terrorism in Syria, the Anglo-French bombing of Libya and the British-supplied Saudi massacres in the Yemen. In comparison, for the Ukrainian operation in general, however horrific individual cases, words like ‘sad’ or ‘conflict’ would be more appropriate. No, millions are not dying in the Ukraine, but, true, it must go into the tens of thousands.
The point is that for Russia, the Ukraine and the Ukrainians are not the enemy. They are brothers. The enemy is the Nazi mentality foisted on the Ukraine by the Western puppet junta in Kiev. The supply of NATO arms is ‘horrific’, as ‘horrific’ as the brutality of Nazi soldiers and their NATO trainers and supporting Western mercenaries. The aim of the Russian Federation is self-determination for the Ukraine. The south and east of present Kiev regime territory will probably go back to Russia after 100 years of captivity. Small parts of the far west, demilitarised, may go back to Poland, Romania, Hungary and maybe Slovakia, if they wish, to be decided by some international conference of those concerned. Do not forget the very clear Russian aims: To liberate the Russian areas, just as the Crimea was liberated eight years ago, avoiding civilian victims as far as possible, and to demilitarise and denazify the rest.
Demilitarisation would almost be complete by now, if it had not been for the greed of Western arms merchants and NATO’s attempts to smuggle in new arms and prolong the agony. Those arms now have to be destroyed, as most of them already have been, before ever they can be used. As for denazification, that will take decades. Not only the Ukraine, but even the Russian Federation and all its institutions without exception, have their infiltrators, CIA assets and plants. As President Putin stated at the Victory Day Parade in Moscow on 9 May 2022:
‘We remember how Russia’s enemies tried to use international terrorist gangs against us, how they tried to seed inter-ethnic and religious strife so as to weaken us from within and divide us’.
He was referring to the past. But in fact his words are also true of the present. And the President added these words about the ‘international terrorist gangs’: ‘They failed completely’.
May his words be prophetic. Expect more expulsions of these international terrorist Nazis. And expect also more patriots, rejected by error and treachery in the past, to be welcomed back.
But why will denazification take decades?
The Nazi Evil is Deep-Rooted
As we have said elsewhere, Nazism, understood as Western Supremacism, has deep historic roots. Note well that it is Western (not necessarily White or Anglo-Saxon) Supremacism. In times past the present Western Supremacism was termed ‘British race superiority’, the superiority of ‘the civilised world’ (which gave ‘the civilised world’ the right to murder 200 million, directly and indirectly, in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania), and then Anglo-American, Anglo-Saxon or now Anglo-Zionist supremacy. Whatever it is called, the bid for World Domination goes back much further.
The first real example of it was seen in the Carolingian heartland in the late eighth century, when Charlemagne massacred the Saxons in 782. It then spread out with its Norman (i.e. Viking) shock-troops to Greek Italy and Sicily, to Muslim and Jewish Spain, to the real Anglo-Saxon England in 1066, then the barbarian attacks on Jews, Muslims and Greeks, miscalled the Crusades. When technology advanced, Western Supremacism spread to southern Africa, Asia, and the New Worlds. (The latter were not ‘discovered’, people had been living there for thousands of years, some with an advanced civilisation). The Western Supremacists called themselves ‘conquistadors’ (from the word ‘Conquest’, as in William ‘the Conqueror’). For the victims they were not conquerors, but what we nowadays call Nazis.
Those who celebrate them, perhaps as ‘bearers of Western Civilisation’ are Nazi supporters. And there are plenty of those in the Ukraine, in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where on 9 May this year they sent in tractors and trailers to remove the fresh floral tributes to those who had liberated those countries from Fascism. But there are Nazis on the left and on the right, in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, let alone in Warsaw and Prague and among their hireling academics and journalists. Most of these people are like teenage rebels, who refusing to obey their parents, reject Russian righteousness, just for the sake of their rebellion. With another generation, they will grow up. And nowadays, with the swiftness of the clock of history, a generation is no longer25 years, but much less.
Conclusion: Towards the Future World
Thus, denazification means ending the myth of Europe. Europe is a construct. It is in fact just the extreme Western tip of one single Continent, Eurasia, which probably only means sunset/west (‘erebu’) and sunrise/east (‘asu’). It is time to stop the separatist tribal wars of Europe, the bloodiest of which it calls ‘World Wars’. Unity is needed not just between Moscow and Berlin and Paris, but also between them and Beijing and southwards to Teheran, Islamabad, Riyadh, Delhi and Jakarta. And then bring in Africa, from Cairo to the Cape, from Lagos to Zanzibar. The future is Afro-Eurasia with its 7 billion human-beings. All else, the small minority, is islands outside Afro-Eurasia, which are in some way or other dependent on it.
We will win in the struggle against Nazism. Whatever difficulties we may face in the short term, in the long term, there is no doubt as to our victory. As President Putin also said on 9 May:
‘We are a different country. Russia has a different character. We will never give up our love for our Motherland, our faith and traditional values, our ancestors’ customs and respect for all peoples and cultures. Meanwhile, the West seems to be set to cancel these millennia-old values. Such moral degradation underlies the cynical falsifications of World War II history, escalating Russophobia, praising traitors, mocking their victims’ memory and crossing out the courage of those who won the Victory through suffering’.
Western State propaganda mouthpieces like the BBC or CNN, their journalists abundantly supplied and rewarded by their spy services, love to talk about ‘the international community’. They substituted this new phrase for the old one of ‘the free world’ in the 1990s. Of course, both phrases are nonsense. What did/do they actually mean?
The Free World
The 1740 Imperialist anthem ‘Rule, Britannia’ has the words ‘Britons never will be slaves’. What it means is that the ruling class of the British Empire, which was founded on genocide, piracy and slave-trading (for instance, the slaver ancestors of former PM David Cameron), ‘never will be slaves’. As for the enslaved plebs of the rest of the world, including those of the nations of Great Britain and Ireland, they will be feudalised, robbed of their land by the Enclosures (= enforced collectivisation, only not run by the State, but by oligarchs) and sent to be exploited in the sadistic factories of Industrial Revolutionary Capitalists, or else forced to emigrate to populate the future Anglosphere. In the same way, this phrase ‘the Free World’ also meant the ruling class of the First World, that is, those who threatened the Second World (the Communist bloc) with nuclear extinction, all the while exploiting the Third World, assassinating anyone who opposed them (Patrice Lumumba, Dag Hammarskjold, John Kennedy etc etc).
The International Community
The International Community is an equally hypocritical phrase which designates the Zionist Anglosphere + Colonies. In other words, it means the Anglo-Zionist elite of the USA, Israel, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand + the EU, Japan and, arguably, South Korea. The latter non-English-speaking countries are simply US vassals, colonies or client-states, occupied by US troops and bases. This ‘International Community’ is dominated by a military wing called NATO (based almost next door to the EU headquarters in Brussels) and an economic wing called the G7, which is heavily influenced by Wall Street and the City of London. However, this ‘Community’ works together with vassal institutions, like the ‘World Bank’, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) or, to a considerable extent, the UN (United Nations), and think tanks and societies like the Trilateral and Bilderberg. It rewards its servants with awards like Nobel Prizes, generously funded by the CIA. However, whatever the acronym, it is all the same greedy clique.
The Collective West
This phrase is now used in Russia to designate all the enemies of the Russian Federation. These enemies are identical to ‘the international community’, i.e, that small but wealthy minority of the world, representing about 15% of the global population. There is nothing new in the reality of this collective enmity of hatred for and jealousy of Russia. For example, in the 13th century the invading hordes of Germanic terrorists, called the ‘Teutonic Knights’, were also a bunch of bandits from ‘the Collective West’. However, to illustrate our point more clearly still, let us look at the five much more recent invasions of the Russian Lands by the Collective West. These invasions have taken place in the last 210 years (exactly once every 42 years on average). They were and are the events of:
1812. The Russian Empire was invaded by the French Empire, the Austrian Empire, the Kingdoms of Italy, Naples, Saxony, Bavaria, Westphalia, Wuerttemburg, Prussia, Spain and Denmark, the Swiss Confederation, the Grand Duchies of Hesse, Berg and Baden and the Duchy of Warsaw. The result? Although the Collective Western forces reached Moscow, they had to retreat with hundreds of thousands of deaths and in 1814 Russian troops liberated Paris from the tyranny of Napoleon.
1853. The Russian Empire was invaded by France, Great Britain, Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire, supported by the Austrian Empire. This war, miscalled ‘The Crimean War’, included the invasion of the Russia through the Crimea, an attempted British invasion of Siberia from the Sea of Japan and the shelling by the British Navy of a Russian monastery from the White Sea. It lasted until 1856. The ending came when the British blew up the Russian dock installations of Sebastopol (Sevastopol), built ten years before by British engineers. For this ‘achievement’, 500,000 human-beings had died as a result of French and British Imperialism, mainly of disease. Another consequence – in 1867 Russia sold Alaska to the then friendly USA, and not to the enemy British Canada.
1914. The Russian Empire was invaded by Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and the German puppet kinglet of Bulgaria. After immense struggles, the enemy advanced only as far as Poland and Lithuania, never even entering Russian territory. The Russian Imperial Army, suffering fewer losses than the French and Germans on the Western Front even though facing twice as many enemy troops, was headed for total victory in summer 1917. However, in early 1917 the Russian Empire was overthrown by a British-orchestrated coup d’etat and implemented by a fifth column of treacherous Russian aristocrats (i.e. oligarchs, in modern language), generals, politicians, journalists and lawyers. We know what happened next.
1941. The Soviet Union was invaded by the troops of Fascist Germany, Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, but these were supported by detachments of Nazi troops from a great many Western countries, including France, Belgium and Norway. The result? Despite the slaughter of 27 million Soviet citizens by the genocidal Nazis who treated the Soviet peoples as wild animals to be massacred, in 1945 Soviet troops liberated Berlin, discovering the gruesome charred remains of the suicide Hitler.
2022. Ancient Russian Lands (recently become known as Eastern and Central Ukraine), occupied, attacked and threatened by Nazi forces, trained and equipped by NATO (the North American Terrorist Organisation), consisting of 30 states led by the USA, are being liberated. They are being freed by Russian forces fighting in what is not a Russian war against the Ukraine but a NATO proxy war against the Ukraine.
The Collective West? Nothing new in this concept.
Conclusion: A Word of Warning
27 million dead? Unless you are brain dead, please do not send Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, to intervene in the Russian special operation of liberation in the Ukraine. Her grandfather was a Nazi who as a volunteer became a staff sergeant in the Wehrmacht, led a unit on the Soviet front which hunted down resistance groups, participated in the capture of Ukraine’s capital Kiev and took part in the barbaric September 1941 Babi Yar massacre, in which more than 33,000 Jews were shot in cold blood.
And please do not send Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Vice-President, to intervene in the Russian special operation of liberation in the Ukraine. Her grandfather was a Ukrainian Nazi, Mykhailo Khomiak, after the war sought by the Polish authorities for his war crimes.
Our words of warning go out to all other Nazis and Fascists who seem to think that V.V. Putin is one of them. He is not. He is an anti-Fascist, whose grandfather, incidentally, was French. Like Tsar Nicholas II a century before him, V.V. Putin is for social justice against the Anglo-Zionist aristocrats/ oligarchs who run the Western world and have attempted to run the Russian world, from which the last oligarchs are currently being expelled.
In a recent episode of his YouTube political talk program ’60 minutes’, senior Lebanese political analyst Nasser Qandil argued that ‘the Ukraine war is part two of World War III’, after ‘part one in Syria had ended in a clear victory for Russia’.
Source: Nasser Qandil (YouTube)
Description: Date: March 7, 2022
( Please help us keep producing independent translations for you by contributing a small monthly amount here )
Transcript:
Nasser Qandil:
I wish to talk about a number of points regarding the Ukraine war, because we – as always –aim at deepening and consolidating the understanding, awareness, and perception of all those watching us, and helping them to receive the means (that raise their) awareness and not (imposing) our own outcome, meaning they can use the tools, premises, and introductions (we present) to reach different conclusions – and this is an achievement that’s way more important than (merely) dictating to them the outcome (of analyses) and saying (that’s the whole thing) and ‘full stop’ (i.e. you don’t need to think any further). Therefore, our mission in this program is to increase the knowledge (of viewers), and not only to use (the knowledge) we have or that which people have (in our discussions).
The first conclusion I wish to consolidate with you, my dear viewers, is that this war is the largest war after World War II. I personally tried to check through history before adopting this conclusion, (looking into) the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Invasion of Iraq, the Invasion of Afghanistan, the wars of Israel in our region (the Middle East) since 1967 including the October War we fought (against Israel) as Arabs, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; this whole outcome makes me confidently say, bearing responsibility for my words, that this is the world’s largest war after World War II, and I’ll explain why.
The first point is that the initiator of this war is Russia, while all the other wars had (another) common (factor). We haven’t witnessed a war – except for a limited number like the October War for example, like initiatives (by forces) opposing the American (hegemony) project and its extensions and alliances, the majority – 99% of the wars witnessed after World War II were wars of domination and control carried out by the US. Therefore, we are before a war, the first characteristic of which is the transfer of the military initiative in decision-making. This shift moved from a side that was the only one taking the initiative, and which has, for seventy years, taken the lead at the global level, which is the US, (that recently) withdrew from Afghanistan and (began) avoiding to take part in wars and (began) gathering its shreds and shrapnel from places it got involved in with the aim of incurring the least amount of (further) losses, and in an attempt to strike settlement (agreements), (while) on the other hand we have the rise of a side that has started – since more than 10 years within a limited (pace) – speaking about the South Ossetian war in 2008, the Crimean Peninsula war in 2014, the huge position (Russia took) in Syria in 2015, and (the part it took) in Kazakhstan in 2021. However, now (this war) is President Putin’s largest war – Russia’s largest war after this calm ascent (of Russia), and the parallel decline of American power.
Here, we can’t look at the war from the (aspect of) geography alone. Before going into the geographical (aspect), it’s a fundamental and essential issue yes. But (first) we’re talking about a descending arc of a state, which is the US arc (of power), and an ascending Russian arc – an arc that represents this rise of Asia as a whole, and can be seen in Eastern countries in different manifestations, even if there weren’t a precise and accurate coordination and approach between Russia, Iran, and China – because there are many who would try to dig up some cracks and holes within this presentation; we are not talking about congruence of approaches. Even in the Syrian war, China didn’t take the position that Iran took; Russia took time until it took (its) position (to support Syria,) but it eventually did and paid the price for it and reaped its fruits. Consequently, it’s not necessary to speak about congruence, yet there’s an Asian rise (of power) that no one can argue about, a rise that shakes American hegemony. No one can say that the rise of Iran is not evident, and that this rise (of power) didn’t lead to the erosion of America’s position and grip on the heart of Asia and especially in our region (the Middle East). (In addition,) China’s rise worries America and the entire West, and Russia’s rise is now evident in the military sphere and through this huge, massive qualitative step, which (helped) form this ascending Russian arc that expresses this rise of Asia, (a Russian arc) that is sometimes ahead of the (Asian arc) such that it enjoys a higher degree of courage in its decision-making, (all of this) while the descending American arc (lies on the other side)…here we talk about the second characteristic of this war, which makes it one of the world’s most important wars after World War II, which is that it’s taking place in Europe.
All other wars – in the view of the West that led the world, (the West being) the US and Europe – were on the peripheries and in third world countries. I mean, check (the history) of all the (previous) wars – it (will help) explain to us why this revival of racist thought is being seen in (the attitudes) of journalists and analysts through unintended slips of tongue sometimes, (because) maybe if they thought a little about it they’d be ashamed (of what they were saying). However, this war is actually in Europe, and not in a third world country.
Therefore, for the first time since World War II – although the Yugoslavian war was in Europe, it was a war carried out by the US and western Europe to destroy what’s left of the Soviet legacy, to pave the way for a tight grip on the entire geography, economy, and politics of Europe. Now, this is the first war to knock Europe’s door, meaning that Russia is fighting a war and it’s on the European door. This is the second factor.
The third factor – I want to draw attention to the necessity of investigation, to reread information about Ukraine. Here, I’ll provide the main points to help (the viewer) get (the idea of) what we’re talking about. There’s a chain called ‘The European Bridge’ of five major European states, historically speaking: Spain, France, Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. Ukraine, in terms of (geographical) area equals (the area of) France plus a bit, (and it equals) Germany + Holland + Belgium + Switzerland (all together) in (its geographical) area. Ukraine’s population equals the population of France and equals the population of both Poland and Romania added together. The rest of the Eastern European countries became fragments – after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia – the rest, such as Lithuania, Estonia and Hungary are actually micro-states compared to the size of Ukraine. We’re speaking about 45 million people, meaning twice the number of Iraq’s (population) back when the war started (there). We’re speaking about an area of (about) 600,000 km², which is Syria’s size multiplied by three times and a half, and Lebanon’s size multiplied by 60. We are speaking about the second (most important) state in the Soviet Union after Russia, in terms of size, population, army, technical qualifications of its (various) generations, its colleges, participation in food and technical production, its position in terms of nuclear weapons.
So, we’re not speaking about Iraq, the besieged, disintegrated, weak Iraq that suffers from internal crises, that is not supported by any (external) side, and which is this far (from Europe) – if (in) Iraq, the US army’s entrance to the capital, Baghdad, took 20 days while they were at their peak of advancement, and so even if it takes the Russian army 200 days to enter Kyiv, they will still be considered as making (good) progress – (this approach) allows us to read the situation correctly. Ukraine – this is Ukraine, of course in Ukrainian history there’s a connection between it and Russia; Ukraine is to a large extent (considered as a) mini-Russia. Originally, Russia initiated from Kyiv, the Russian Empire was founded in Kyiv and then moved to Moscow. Therefore, there are efforts for reaching parity, or emulation and competition (between them). Ukraine believes – those who know the traditional Soviet environment (can relate), when we used to visit the Soviet Union, none would introduce themselves by their original nationality and point out that they’re not Russian, except for the Ukrainians; they use to say ‘I’m not Russian’. And I’m speaking about communists, he’d be an official whose mission is to negotiate with us and talk about issues. So, (we can notice that) Ukraine has a sense of competition, with the European background, and a dimension that is related to the way Ukraine was formed – which is a group of (mixed) ethnicities, and if you look at its geography you can notice that parts of it didn’t belong to Ukraine and Stalin later joined many of them to Ukraine: a part of Moldova, a part of Poland, in addition to the Crimean Peninsula that was originally Russian.
Anyway, Lenin and Stalin had a bias for Ukraine and a special interest in satisfying this Ukrainian pride and reassuring them that (Ukraine) is of an important and special status. Therefore, it has always been – I use a metaphor sometimes, I’d say that Ukraine’s (relation) with Russia is like Queen Elizabeth and Lady Diana, in which Queen Elizabeth represents the throne, history (of England), etc., and Lady Diana is the sweet, lovely, popular, (lady) that (represents) elegance, youth, and beauty etc. Therefore, Ukraine, in the eyes of the Soviet Union and the West – Brzezinski said in the 80s or 1978 that ‘Russia without Ukraine is a great state, and a very great one, yet without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an Empire’.
So, we must know what we are speaking about, and why am I saying these words. It is to say that the conclusion is that Putin – this is his war, (the war) that he had been preparing for since at least 2014, because the 2014 war when he annexed the Crimean Peninsula and joined it to Russia, it was the first Ukrainian war for President Putin. (Furthermore,) since 2008, when he entered South Ossetia, he wasn’t aiming at Georgia; look at the (world) map, you’ll see Georgia’s size compared to Ukraine, it can’t even be compared to it! The fight is over Ukraine, the same way Syria was (of great importance) in the Middle East; the one who controls Syria will have control over the (whole Middle East) region and the world through it, (now,) the one who controls Ukraine will have control over Europe and the world through it.
Therefore, the first point we must break free from in our thinking and debate, is talking about the duration of the war; who said Putin wishes to end it in a short period of time? Why put a formula that says that one of the signs of success is the speed in which the achievement is done? It’s not a rule at all! This war might be (intentionally) designed to be a long one, so that a new world system could be built upon its ramifications, developments, and (resulting) frameworks.
It’s a war that cannot end without (reaching) a Russian-American-European settlement. Who’s Zelenskyy? What (kind of) position and power does he have (compared to Russia’s power)? What can he offer in any kind of negotiations? And what kind of decision does he get to make in negotiations? Therefore, it’s a Russian-American war. Europe became part of it. And if Europe had made the decision of not being a part of it, the whole thing would’ve ended through a Russian-European settlement. Therefore, the US used all its capabilities to make Europe a part of it, but that’s not a permanent condition. Today the fight is over Europe; to what extent can Europe remain part of this war?
Therefore, we are before part two of World War III. If Syria was the first episode, then Ukraine is the second episode. The first episode ended – if we are speaking internationally – it ended with a clear victory for Russia. Now we are before the second episode.
ألقى الرئيس فلاديمير بوتين الاثنين الماضي خطاباً يمكن القول إنه كان خطاباً استثنائياً بكلّ المعاني، وهو يذكر بالخطابات التي كانت تلقى في أيام قديمة كان للعقائد فيها اعتبار كبير. استعرض بوتين تاريخ روسيا والصراع العالمي منذ عهد القياصرة من آل رومانوف مروراً بالحقبة الشيوعية، مذكراً بأخطاء ومثالب القيادة السوفياتية ـ البلشفية، في اتفاقية 1922 المهينة مع الغرب والتي وقعتها القيادة البلشفية لتتفرّغ لحربها الداخلية مع معارضيها المناشفة ولو على حساب المصالح الروسية العليا، وهو بخطابه هذا وكأنه يعلن عدم اعترافه بنتائجها في ذكراها المئوية، ويرى أنّ تلك السياسة القاصرة في إدراك الأبعاد السياسية هي التي أسّست لانفصال أوكرانيا عن وطنها روسيا الأمّ.
هذا الخطاب سيشكل ولا شك ملمحاً من ملامح السياسة الروسية لفترة طويلة مقبلة، ويعطي فكرة عن مقدار جدية روسيا وحلفائها في المشاركة الفعّالة وضرورة الشراكة الكاملة في بناء نظام عالمي جديد وبشكل يحمي مصالحهم بقدر ما يحمي السلم العالمي، وتكراراً أن لا معنى للسلم العالمي إذا كان على حساب مصالحهم العليا وأمنهم القومي، وروسيا ومن معها يضعون العصا تلو العصا في دواليب القرار الأميركي الذي لا يزال يأمل بأن يرث بشكل أحادي القطب النظام السابق الثنائي القطبية، والذي ترى أوساط عديدة في واشنطن انه يمثل النظام الأمثل ونهاية التاريخ، حسب نظريات أكاديمية متهافتة.
خلص بوتين للقول إنّ مجموعة فاسدة وعميلة للغرب هي مَن يحكم أوكرانيا، وإنّ هذه المجموعة ليست عدوة لروسيا فحسب وإنما لروسيا وللشعب الأوكراني على حدّ سواء، فهؤلاء دمّروا البلد وباعوا اقتصاده وأمنه وصناعاته لحسابهم الخاص، وأودعوا الأموال في أرصدتهم في البنوك الغربية، هؤلاء جعلوا من أوكرانيا بلداً مستباحاً لا بل شبه محتلّ من الغرب والذي يسيطر على قرارات وعمل الحكومة، كما يسيطر على القضاء والجيش الذي يمكن إدارة قطاعاته العسكرية من غرف عمليات حلف شمال الأطلسي (ناتو). إنهم يريدون ابتزاز روسيا وهم يسرقون الغاز الروسي المار من أراضي أوكرانيا في طريقه إلى أوروبا، ويقدمون المعلومات الأمنية لأعداء روسيا وأعداء الشعب الأوكراني، ثم إنّ هؤلاء الأطلسيّين يمتلكون القدرة في حال تواجدوا على الأرض الأوكرانية على تهديد أمننا القومي، لذلك لن نسمح بتمدّد حلف شمال الأطلسي شرقاً، وهذا قرار حاسم مرتبط بعقيدة الأمن القومي الروسي، يؤكد بوتين أنّ روسيا تفضل وتعطي الأولوية للحلّ السياسي الهادئ وتفهم تعقيدات الحلول الأخرى ومخاطرها، والتي قد تلجأ لها في حال فشل الحلّ السياسي ورفضت مقترحاتها من أوكرانيا ومَن وراء أوكرانيا، وبوتين في نهاية خطابه لم ينس التأكيد على أنّ الغرب لا يزال حتى ما بعد انهيار الاتحاد السوفياتي وعقيدة الشيوعية، لم يتوقف عن اعتبار روسيا عدواً استراتيجياً.
إنها ولا شك أيام صعبة على العالم، وقد تشهد ارتفاعات جنونية في أسعار كثير من السلع، خاصة الغذائية منها والتي تأتي من أوكرانيا وعلى رأسها القمح والشعير والذرة، كذلك أسعار البترول والغاز خاصة في غرب أوروبا، وهي أوقات صعبة على روسيا وخياراتها التي قد تحمل مخاطر عالمية كالتي ذكرت أعلاه، ولكن روسيا سبق لها أن مرّت بأوقات صعبة تحتاج لأن تتذكرها اليوم، وذلك عندما كانت تحاول الخلاص من تركة بوريس يلتسن البائسة، ومحاولاتها استعادة دورها ومكانتها، ذلك في حين تمّ خذلانها من دول الكتلة الشرقية التي سارعت إلى الدخول في المجموعة الأوروبية، وحلف شمال الأطلسي، فيما عمل الغرب على إثارة الشيشان وغيرهم من الأقليات (وإن كانت أقليات كبيرة)، ثم حاول التسلل إلى جورجيا وروسيا البيضاء وأوكرانيا ليلعب في برزخ الأمن القومي الروسي، ولم تجد روسيا في ذلك الحين من صديق ونصير يساعدها في محنها المتعددة إلا سورية، التي منحتها إطلالتها الوحيدة على المياه الدافئة من خلال موانئها في شرق المتوسط، والتي لا تزال حتى الساعة نافذة روسيا الوحيدة، والتي تعيد الأزمة الحالية التأكيد على مدى الأهمية القصوى لسورية في الأمن القومي الروسي، وفي حين تنأى كثير من الدول الصديقة لروسيا عن التدخل لصالحها في هذه الأزمة، نرى أنّ وزير الخارجية السوري يزور موسكو ويعلن من هناك وقوف بلادة الحاسم مع موسكو ويعلن اعتراف سورية بجمهوريتي لوغانسك ودونيتسك، ولعلّ سورية كانت الدولة الأولى بعد روسيا في العالم بهذا الاعتراف.
تسير سياسات الدول وفق إشارات بوصلة المصالح الدقيقة، لذلك تركز الضغط السياسي والأمني وحتى الاقتصادي على سورية، لكي تتخلى عن روسيا وتفكك قواعدها وتمنع عنها إطلالتها البحرية على المياه الدافئة. وهذا ما رفضته دمشق، وكان رفضها هذا سبباً من أسباب الحرب الكونية في سورية وعليها. وهي حرب بالمعنى الاستراتيجي حرب على روسيا في الوقت ذاتها، وذلك بهدف طردها من شرق المتوسط، ولتمرير الغاز القطري عبر الأراضي السورية إلى أوروبا ليكون بديلاً عن الغاز الروسي، من هنا يمكن فهم أنّ التدخل الروسي في الأزمة السورية لم يكن باعتباره رداً للجميل. فلا أحد يفكر بهذه الطريقة وروسيا ليست استثناء، روسيا دخلت في عام 2015 للدفاع عن نفسها، للدفاع عن مصالحها الاستراتيجية المهدّدة والمذكورة آنفاً.
مساء أول أمس الثلاثاء ردّ الرئيس الأميركي جو بايدن على خطاب نظيرة الروسي، معلناً الدفعة الأولى من عقوباته، ومؤكداً أنّ العقوبات المقبلة ستكون أكثر صرامة وقسوة، فيما قال ناطق باسم الكرملين بلهجة متهكمة رداً على بايدن، بأنّ الرئيس الروسي لم يكن لديه الوقت لسماع خطاب الرئيس الأميركي، لذلك من الصعب التعليق عليه.
هكذا ردّت روسيا القوية التي ترى أنّ مصلحتها فوق كلّ مصلحة، ويرى بعض منا ـ وكاتب المقال منهم ـ أنّ مصلحتنا القومية تفوق أيّ مصلحة، فلا بدّ من العمل على صيغة بيننا وبين روسيا تكون مصالحنا المشتركة فوق مصالح غيرنا. القيادة الروسية التي لطالما تذرّعت بأنّ في (إسرائيل) ما يزيد عن مليون مستوطن من أصل روسيّ، نأمل أن تكون قد امتلكت الوقت في هذا الظرف الدقيق والحساس للاطلاع على تصريحات وزير الدفاع (الإسرائيلي) يائير لابيد، الذي أكد الثلاثاء الماضي انه إذا اندلعت الحرب بين روسيا وأوكرانيا فإنّ (إسرائيل) ستقف حيث تقف الولايات المتحدة، أي في مواجهة روسيا، غير آبه بأنّ لديها مصلحة بالحفاظ على علاقات جيدة مع موسكو، لقد جاء الوقت لتعميق هذا التحالف السوري ـ الروسي وحان الوقت ليدرك الحليف الروسي ضرورات حليفه، كما لمعرفة مَن هو عدوه…
*سياسيّ فلسطينيّ مقيم في الكفير ـ جنين ـ فلسطين المحتلة
In March, it will be eight years since the day Crimea returned to the Russian Federation. This ended its 60-year history as part of Ukraine, which began, not on February 19, 1954, but a little earlier.
What does Ukraine have to do with it?
The Crimean Peninsula became part of the Russian Empire after a series of Russian-Turkish wars. In 1771, Crimean Khan Sahib II Giray gained independence from the Ottoman Empire thanks to Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, who had defeated the Turkish troops on the peninsula. The Khan signed an agreement on alliance and mutual assistance with St. Petersburg. And in 1774, the Ottomans completely abrogated their claims to Crimea, conceding them to Russia, by signing the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca.
Nine years later, Giray’s reforms had angered the Crimean Tatars to the extent that he was forced to abdicate. In order to prevent a bloody power struggle, Russia was forced to send troops to the peninsula. The local nobility swore an oath to Empress Catherine II and received equal rights with the Russian nobility. They also took part in managing the newly created Taurida Region, which existed until the collapse of the Russian Empire. And in 1791, as the result of another defeat, the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Jassy, according to which Crimea belonged solely to Russia. Both the Jassy and Küçük Kaynarca agreements are internationally recognized and considered valid.
The revolutionary events of 1917 led to the collapse of the Russian Empire and the emergence of a number of pseudo-independent states on the territory of Ukraine: The Ukrainian People’s Republic centered in Kiev, the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets centered in Kharkov, the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic centered first in Kharkov and then in Lugansk, the Odessa Soviet Republic, and the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic in Crimea and the Northern Black Sea region. But after the Central Council of Ukraine signed a separate agreement with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kaiser of Germany, the entire territory of Ukraine and Crimea, which had never belonged to either Germanic country, was occupied by Austro-German troops.
Ukrainian nationalists compiled a number of maps related to this period of occupation, in which they claim the Crimean Peninsula, inhabited at that time mainly by Crimean Tatars, in addition to Russian lands up to Voronezh and the Caspian Sea, not to mention a huge swathe of Poland and a significant part of Moldova. In some of these maps, only the northern part of Crimea is depicted as ‘Ukrainian’, and on others, the entire peninsula.
After the Russian Civil War, the Crimean Peninsula became part of the RSFSR and was declared an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Crimean Tatars and Karaites were declared to be indigenous peoples of the region, and Crimean Tatar and Russian became its official languages. At the same time, the ethnic composition of the peninsula’s population (including Sevastopol) in 1897 and 1926 was as follows: Russians, respectively, 33.11% and 42.65%; Ukrainians, 11.84% and 10.95%; Crimean Tatars, 35.55% and 25.34%.
A ‘New Israel’?
The First World War brought tribulation to many peoples, but it also spawned organizations dedicated to helping people harmed by the hostilities. One of these organizations was the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), known in Russia as ‘Joint’.
How does this organization relate to Crimea and the Crimean issue? Directly so. In 1923, the leadership of Joint, which had already provided assistance to famine victims in the Volga region, Belarus, and Ukraine, came to the authorities of the RSFSR with a plan to turn the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in the USSR, who had suffered in WWI and the Civil War, into farmers. The Soviet government, which included a significant number of Jews, supported the plan and created the Agro-Joint corporation (American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation). The authorities also set up a ‘Committee for the Settlement of Working Jews on the Land’ (Kozmet), which distributed land in Ukraine and Crimea to the new farmers for free.
This project did not emerge out of thin air. Even before Agro-Joint’s activities in Crimea, four agricultural communes had appeared on the peninsula from 1922 to 1924. However, the bulk of the migrants (86%) supported by Agro-Joint went to Crimea in 1925-29, after the Jewish section of the CPSU (Yevsektsiya), the most influential contingent in the party, began to promote a plan to create a Jewish ethnic autonomous region, or even a republic, within the USSR’s Black Sea region, stretching from Odessa to Abkhazia, with its center in Crimea. According to some sources, a total of 500,000 to 700,000 Jewish peasants were to be relocated there. And, despite the fact that a Jewish Autonomous Region appeared in the Far East in 1934, the 14,000 Jewish peasant families living in Crimea continued to receive assistance until 1938, when the organization’s activities were banned.
Collapse of the resettlement program
There are many reasons for the failure of the program to create Jewish farms in Crimea and the ban on the activities of the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation. Yes, it spent $16 million supplying Jewish agricultural enterprises in Crimea and southern Ukraine with agricultural machinery, livestock, and equipment for infrastructure, not counting credit and loan funds. But it should be noted that a significant share of this assistance was not free. Many farms struggled to pay loans and interest during the crop failure of 1932, which led to famine.
In point of fact, the mass resettlement project had failed. Only 47,740 of the 500,000 Jewish migrants planned were resettled in Crimea before 1939. Of these, just 18,065 worked in the agricultural sector. The rest left for the large cities. In total, Crimea had 86 collective farms employing Jewish settlers, who cultivated only about 10% of the peninsula’s arable land.
The Soviet leadership was highly critical of the fact that the assistance was only being provided to one ethnic group in such a multiethnic region and country. The Crimean Tatar population resented the allocation of funds to create exclusively Jewish regions (Freidorf and Larindorf) on lands that they had previously owned. Consequently, the disenfranchised Tatars prevented trains carrying Jewish settlers from entering the peninsula and did everything possible to harm already existing Jewish farms.
Moreover, in addition to its legitimate activities, Agro-Joint was also engaged in one that directly violated Soviet laws. Namely, it supported underground organizations. On July 23, 1936, the director of Joint’s Russian branch, Joseph Rosen, reported from London to New York: “Our negotiations regarding emigration to the USSR are currently in limbo. The main reason is that a Jewish doctor from Germany whom we brought here has been accused of collaborating with the Gestapo.” This revelation became the reason for shutting down the corporation’s activities in the USSR.
The forcible transfer of their lands to Jewish settlers incited the Crimean Tartars to actively cooperate with the Nazis and take an active part in the Holocaust. As early as April 26, 1942, the Nazis declared Crimea “cleansed of Jews.” Most of those who hadn’t managed to evacuate perished, around 65% of Crimea’s Jewish population. After the peninsula was liberated by the Red Army, the Crimean Tatars themselves were exiled to Central Asia.
A royal gift
Some sources claim that the Crimean Tatars’ eviction in 1944 came as a result of a promise Stalin had made to Franklin D. Roosevelt to clear Crimea for Jewish immigrants. According to the memoirs of Milovan Djilas, the future vice president of Yugoslavia, this pledge was exacted by the US president as a condition for continuing the Lend-Lease supply program, and in exchange for opening a Second Front. Though we will not pass judgement on how true this might be, it’s interesting to note that, even before the peninsula was liberated from the Nazis, the leadership of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee sent Vyacheslav Molotov, the deputy chairman of the USSR’s Council of People’s Commissars, a ‘Memorandum on Crimea’ which contained a proposal for a similar initiative.
Participants in the 1945 Yalta Conference had the opportunity to personally see how Crimea had suffered in the war. The entire Soviet Union, including residents of the neighboring Ukrainian SSR, took part in its restoration. And it was then that Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Ukrainian and head of the Communist Party of Ukraine, came up with the idea to give the peninsula to Ukraine. According to the memoirs of one of Khrushchev’s staff members, in 1944, he noted: “I was in Moscow and said: ‘Ukraine is in ruin, and everyone is pulling out of it. But if you give it Crimea…’” Khrushchev’s proposal was not accepted at the time. He had to wait until he became the head of the Soviet Union before he could transfer Crimea to Ukraine, which was one of his first acts as premier.
The “difficult economic situation” on the peninsula is often cited among the reasons for the transfer. But, less than 10 years after being liberated from the Nazis, the Crimean economy as a whole had reached pre-war levels, and its industrial development had even surpassed it. At a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on February 19 , 1954, the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, Mikhail Tarasov, gave a justification for this step: “The transfer of the Crimean region to the Ukrainian Republic will strengthen the friendship of the peoples of the great Soviet Union, as well as the fraternal ties between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples, and also promote prosperity in Soviet Ukraine, whose development our party and government have always taken a great interest in.” The move was timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s voluntary accession to the Muscovite Kingdom.
Legal nihilism in the USSR and its consequences
The question of the legality of the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was raised even before the collapse of the USSR. The fact is that, according to the Soviet Constitution of 1937, neither the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, nor even the Supreme Soviet had the right to alter the borders of a republic. This was only constitutionally possible after holding a referendum to determine the opinion of the population living in the territory to be transferred. Of course, no referendum was ever held on the peninsula.
In November of 1990, the Crimean Regional Council of People’s Deputies decided to hold a referendum on whether to restore the peninsula’s status as an Autonomous Republic. Of those who took part, 93.26% voted in favor. Thus, Crimea became a participant in negotiating the terms of a new Union Treaty, which Mikhail Gorbachev was preparing at the time. Next, Crimean lawmakers planned to appeal to Gorbachev to cancel the illegal transfer of the peninsula to Ukraine, but the USSR collapsed before they had time to do so. Subsequently, the parliament of the Russian Federation voted on May 21, 1992, to confirm that the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of February 5, 1954, entitled ‘On the Transfer of the Crimean Region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR’, had no legal force, since its adoption was “in violation of the Constitution (Basic Law) of the RSFSR and legislative procedure.
Since the Constitution of the Soviet Union was still in force and there was still no Ukrainian Constitution including Crimean autonomy, the Supreme Council of Crimea adopted its own declaration of independence for a Republic of Crimea. A referendum to decide its fate was planned for August 2, 1992, but the Ukrainian central authorities would not allow the plebiscite to take place.
In 1994, Crimea, which had status as an Autonomous Republic within Ukraine, elected a president who supported reunification with Russia, as did most of the members of the republic’s parliament. In response, Ukraine’s leadership unilaterally abolished the Crimean Constitution, the ‘Act on State Sovereignty of Crimea’, and the post of Crimean president, while banning all the parties that had made up the majority in the Crimean parliament. Against the will of the population, Crimea became Ukrainian.
Odd concern for deportation victims
Crimean Tatars had begun to return to their historical homeland back in Soviet days. The current head of the Mejlis (a body that purports to represent Crimean Tatars), Refat Chubarov, returned to the peninsula with his parents in 1968 and studied and worked in Crimea in the 1970s. It was the same with many other Crimean Tatars (members of this ethnic group who had fought in the Red Army and their families were spared from deportation). But the main surge of returnees arrived in the years after formal recognition (in the late 1980s) that their deportation had been illegal.
After its creation, the Ukrainian state immediately declared itself the defender of the Crimean Tatars and allocated them land for housing construction. However, despite the fact that, according to the Republican Committee on Land Resources of Crimea, 147.7 plots of land were allocated to 100 Tatar families from 2001 to 2005 (as compared to 49.9 for the rest of the population), the majority of ordinary Crimean Tatars received none. Distribution of the land was handled by the Mejlis, which was unregistered in Ukraine and headed by ‘human rights activist’ Mustafa Dzhemilev. In 2013, Crimean Tatar entrepreneurs who run restaurants on the Ai-Petri plateau complained to the author that they had to transfer $12,000 to Dzhemilev’s entourage annually “to protect them from persecution by Ukrainian officials,” and then personally pay bribes to officials anyway.
Ukraine’s support for Crimean Tatars appears odd. Ukraine still refuses to recognize any language other than Ukrainian as official. However, immediately after Crimea rejoined Russia, Crimean Tatar and Ukrainian became state languages in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and Crimean Tatar also received official status throughout the Russian Federation (Ukrainian already had this status at that time). Similarly, after the peninsula’s reunification with Russia, Vladimir Putin personally proposed to the ‘Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People’ that it could continue its activities in Crimea by registering under Russian law, but its leadership refused.
***
The history of Crimean-Russian relations has seen many sharp turns, and it is impossible to analyze all of these complex circumstances in detail in this article. The last of these was the return of the peninsula to Russian jurisdiction in 2014. And although this homecoming rectified many of the past illegitimate decisions concerning the fate of the peninsula and its population, it also took place under very ambiguous circumstances. But this is a subject for a separate conversation.
By Olga Sukharevskaya, Ukrainian-born ex-diplomat, legist and author based in Moscow
Posted on January 21, 2022 by uprootedpalestinians
January 20, 2022
Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of history from West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic research focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He taught courses in Middle East history, the history of science and modern European intellectual history.
In mid-December 2021 the Russian government publicly announced that it would “seek legally formulated guarantees of security” from the United States and its allies that would end NATO military activity in eastern Europe as well as military support for the Ukraine.
U.S. media reporting on this event, characterized by the New York Times, framed it as a Russian attempt to “wind back the clock 30 years to just before the collapse of the Soviet Union,” and thus Russian demands were “echoes of the Cold War.” Little media credence has been given to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repeated insistence that his country is “threatened” by NATO activities close to its borders.
In the meantime, “NATO officials emphasized that NATO countries will not rule out future membership for any Eastern European countries, including those bordering the Russian Republic, such as Ukraine.” U.S. President Biden has responded Russian demands with contradictory policies. On the one hand, Washington insisted that what was necessary was a “context of de-escalation,” and on the other, declared that the American “flow of arms to Ukraine would continue.”
It would seem that while Washington and its allies, to say nothing of the media, heard the Russian demands, they displayed no evidence of understanding them within an accurate historical context—a history that goes back considerably further than the dissolution of the Soviet Union 30 years ago.
Part II—Historical Background
For those readers who are interested in understanding what historically motivates the Russian leadership to behave as they now do, and make their current demands, here is a rundown of relevant past events.
— In modern times, Russia was first invaded from Western Europe in 1812. In that year, Napoleon Bonaparte’s multinational Grande Armée attacked Russia. The invasion failed and ultimately helped lead to Napoleon’s fall from power. For the Russians this was not so much a victory as a national tragedy. An estimated 200,000 Russians died, and soon after Napoleon occupied Moscow, then the “spiritual capital” of the country, the Russians burned the city down around him.
— Between 1812 and 1914, Russia maintained one of Europe’s huge multiethnic empires alongside those of Austria-Hungary, Germany, France and Great Britain. On its European side, the Russian Empire held sway over Poles, Finns, Ukrainians, and various other Slavic and Baltic people—that is, Russia established a sphere of influence that encompassed a good part of eastern Europe. Operating as an absolute monarchy, it did not readily respond to the needs of its subject peoples. By the early twentieth century, the Russian Empire’s centralized government was growing weak and was roiled by challenges to its dictatorial ways.
— In 1914 World War I broke out with Russia, Britain, France and the United States on one side and Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire on the other. After a brief Russian incursion into East Prussia, the Germans went on the offensive and moved deep into western Russia, inflicting heavy casualties. This marked the second time Russia was invaded from the West. Successive defeats led to the collapse of Russia’s imperial government and eventually the founding of the Soviet state in 1917. Overall, Russia lost approximately two million soldiers and over a half million civilians in this war. Russia also lost most of its Eastern European lands.
— The next twenty years marked the so-called interwar period, the time between World War I and World War II. For our purposes, the most important consequence of this period was the creation of independent states such as Poland, Hungary, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and others out of what, until the end of World War I, had been the imperial territories of the German, Austrian and Russian empires. Unfortunately, the initial lifespan of this independent status was short.
— It was World War II that brought an end to this initial period of East European national revival. The war began on 1 September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. Nazi Germany soon conquered most of continental Europe. Then on 22 June 1941 Germany launched a massive invasion of Soviet Russia. This marked the third invasion of Russia from the West in a little over one hundred years. Initially, Germany occupied much of Soviet Russia west of the Ural Mountains. However, the situation changed in 1942, particularly after the German troops failed to capture the city of Stalingrad. After that failure the Soviet forces began a long slow process of pushing the Germans back—a long German retreat that would go on till the end of the war in 1945.
—Those new East European nations mentioned above were free of German control by early 1945. However, they never did regain full independence. German control was now exchanged for Soviet Russian control. The Western interpretation of Soviet post-war occupation was that it was the product of an inherent drive for world conquest by the communists. However, there are other explanations that flow more logically from the history given above.
— Communism as an ideology might predict the eventual victory of the working classes and the withering away of the state, but in every case where communists have come to power, they have eventually settled down and ruled as nationalists. It might have been different if Trotsky had gained power in Soviet Russia instead of Stalin, but we will never know for sure. Thus, it is highly unlikely that Stalin ordered the permanent occupation of Eastern Europe for communist ideological reasons. He had at least two nationalistic reasons motivating him. One was that Russia was traditionally a great imperial power and holding vast territory was the part of the definition of a great power. That was a status the Russians hoped to recapture. The second reason was perhaps more immediately important. Given that Russia had been repeatedly invaded from the West, what the Soviets wanted from their war-won occupied territories was the creation of a large and deep buffer zone. That is, a security zone between the historical sources of their pain—countries such as France and Germany—and the Russian border. Nonetheless, the Western leaders interpreted Soviet behavior as communist-inspired aggression and created NATO, a military alliance, to forestall further Russian advances. The Russians, in turn, interpreted NATO as yet one more reason why they needed a buffer zone. They may have been right.
— Soviet Russia’s buffer zone lasted as long as the Soviet Union lasted—that is, until 26 December 1991. After that, Russian troops were pulled back to the new Russian Republic. At that point, the Eastern European countries founded after World War I, and other non-Russian territories such as Ukraine, moved to assert their independence. The other side of this coin is that the collapse of Soviet Russia left millions of ethnic Russians who had migrated within the Soviet empire prior to 1991 stranded in new political entities, such as the Ukraine, with which they had no strong identification.
— The leaders of these new nations knew their history and assumed that Russia would someday seek to recreate its lost empire qua buffer zone. So they sought to protect themselves by sheltering under the NATO umbrella. NATO embraced most of them, and thus a military organization that was designed, ostensibly, to prevent Russia from expanding westward, now rapidly expanded eastward. Sooner or later Russia, motivated by its own history, was bound to react.
Part III—The Situation Today
NATO’s expansion eastward has set up the confrontation we witness today. The Russians had to accept NATO’s early move to the east because the new Russian Republic was initially in political and economic disarray. Nonetheless, as President Putin put it, “Russia feels threatened by an encroaching Nato.” Today, the disarray has passed, separatist movements within the Russian Republic, such as in Chechnya, have been brutally crushed, and the Russians have decided to draw a “red line” to forestall further NATO expansion into what remains of the non-Russian areas between themselves and a historically hostile West. That red line encompasses Ukraine. Thus, that country’s recent turn toward the West and its expressed desire to eventually join the NATO alliance has triggered historically embedded alarms in Moscow. To emphasize this point to the Ukrainian leadership, Russia has amassed troops on their mutual border in a manner that suggests the possibility of invasion. Russia has also increased aid to the separatist pro-Russian part of eastern Ukraine—the Donetsk People’s Republic.
A singular problem here is that none of the Western media coverage and very few of the Western politicians demonstrate an understanding of the situation within an appropriate historical background. Essentially, few of these otherwise influential people know any of the relevant history before 1991, and that is why you get this from the Los Angeles Times: “Thirty years ago this month, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Ukraine broke away from Moscow’s control. Russian President Vladimir Putin has never gotten over it.”
For a while now the United States and its NATO allies have had the Russian Republic surrounded with long- and intermediate-range missiles. There are plans to place these weapons in NATO’s Eastern European member states. These weapons are described as “defensive,” but most of them have offensive capabilities. For the Russian Republic this seems too much like a replay of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. If the Americans were alarmed by such missiles on their doorstep at that time, why should they now be surprised that Moscow is alarmed? The Biden administration, looking to switch subjects from the Russian demands for comprehensive security agreements to particular agreements on missile placement and the nature of NATO military exercises in Eastern Europe, has offered to enter negotiations on these specific topics. This is certainly a good first step, but it’s probably not sufficient.
The United States and its NATO allies may well have to swallow some of their pride and go further. They may have to give up any further eastern expansion of the Western military alliance. The Russian Republic, motivated by three tragic invasions and convinced of the need for a security buffer zone, seems very serious about their “red line.” I don’t think they are bluffing, and therefore the West should realize this is not just Putin playing from a “tough guy” script. History speaks here as well.
Throughout history, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia were intertwined with a set of solid cultural, political, and economic links, to the point that the division did not appear more than mere administrative under Soviet jurisdiction. But it all changed after the collapse of the Union.
Escalation between the West and Russia
Today, under Joe Biden’s neoconservative and ultra-globalist administration, relations between Russia and the United States are so strained that humanity is on the verge not of a Cold War (which has long been ongoing), but of a nuclear war, World War III. The main stumbling block is Ukraine. To foreign observers, the conflict between the two kindred Eastern Slavic Orthodox peoples, who have a common ancestry from Kievan Rus’, is something strange and incomprehensible. It suggests itself that a third force has a hand in this conflict – that is, the same Americans, who have tried to set the two brotherly peoples against each other, and by supporting one of the sides – Ukraine – to strike a blow to Russia, which is returning to history thanks to the patriotic reforms of President Putin.
There are several factors in the relationship between Russia and Ukraine that are not entirely obvious to the outside observer.
Ukraine never existed
The first misconception is to present the conflict as a confrontation between two states. The Western press and politicians present everything as if Ukraine is a separate country with its own long history, which Bolsheviks forcibly annexed to the USSR in the 1920s, and when the communist regime collapsed, Ukraine immediately regained its independence. This has nothing to do with reality at all.
Kievan Rus’ and fragmentation: the origins of the three branches of the Eastern Slavs
The Russian state emerged in the ninth century in the north of Russia – in Novgorod, but in a short time, its capital was transferred to Kiev. Hence the name Kievan Rus. Its population consisted mainly of eastern Slavs with a significant percentage of the Finno-Ugric population in the north and northeast and Turkic in the south and southeast.
Quite soon the uniform state was divided into some almost independent areas – Princedoms.
In the west main the principalities were Galicia and Volhyn’.
In the east Vladimir (later Moscow) began to gain power.
In the northwest, the Principality of Polotsk came under Lithuanian influence and became the basis of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Russian East and Russian West
Between the east and west of Russia in the Middle Ages, there was a tense opposition for a grand-ducal throne, which Vladimir’s princes finally managed to seize. Under Andrei Bogolyubsky (XII) the capital of all Rus’ was moved to Vladimir, and later the capital of the great princes became the residence of Moscow, located in the east of Rus’. Kiev was abandoned and almost forgotten living only in legend.
That’s when in the epoch of fragmentation in XII century the united people of Kievan Rus’ – east Slavs – split up into three branches – southwest, northwest and east. Later they were called, respectively, Malorossy (Little Russians or Ukrainians), Byelorussy (White Russians ) and Velikorossy(Great Russians, the east of Russia was called Velikorossia, Great Russia).
Their fates were different. During Mongol invasion, Velikorossy and Malorossy have entered under authority of Mongolian khans, but Velikorossy under the direction of the great Princes recognized by Horde, have conserved full scale Orthodox Christianity (with Metropolitan at the head of Church) and certain degree of sovereignty. The Little Russians (Malorossy), on the other hand, found themselves divided between Lithuania, Poland and Austro-Hungaria, and their religious identity was strongly influenced by Western Catholicism. The Belorussy (White Russians), on the other hand, became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was relatively independent from the Golden Horde.
Rise of Velikorossia (Great Russia)
As the centuries passed and after the fall of the Golden Horde, Moscow began to turn into a powerful regional power. Lithuania was united with Poland and came under the authority of the Catholics. And the Little Russians (aka Ukrainians) found themselves in the position of subordinate classes, partly under the Poles, partly as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The southern regions of the former Kievan Rus’ first came under the rule of the Crimean Tatars, and then have annexed together with Crimea by the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. Hence the name Ukraine, i.e., Okraina, what means “a peripheral territory” without any independence and divided between different states. At the same time the nucleus of Little Russians (Ukrainians) preserved Orthodoxy and the old East Slavic traditions.
As Moscow’s power grew, the Velikorossy (Great Russians) began to force the Poles and the Turks, seizing their possessions in the former Kievan Rus’ space and adding them to their growing Empire. First of all the lands of Novorossia (New Russia) from Kharkov to Odessa and finally Crimea were conquered from the Ottoman Empire. These territories were populated either by natives of Great Russia or by Moscow-friendly Cossacks, both of Little Russia (Ukraine) and those that had spread to the south of the Russian Empire itself. Novorossia (New Russia) became an integral part of the Russian Empire. Later, other regions of Ukraine, this time populated primarily by the Ukrainians themselves and the Malorussian Cossacks, were also recaptured from the Poles. The same happened in the northwest with Belorussia. These lands also became part of the Russian Tsarist Empire.
Breakup of the Empire
The breakup of the Russian Empire in 1917-1921 led to various nations declaring independence from Moscow. But the Bolsheviks gradually returned most of the territories – except Poland, Finland, and the three Baltic republics – to Moscow’s power (Baltic states were reintegrated later by Stalin after WWII) . Ukraine and Belorussia in a completely arbitrary and purely administrative boundaries became an integral part of the USSR. The USSR was created from above as a unitary state with a communist ideology. Prior to the Soviet Union, neither Ukraine nor Belorussia existed as separate States, unless you consider the medieval principality of Galicia-Volhynia and Polotsk.
Collapse of the Soviet Union
When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the ex Soviet Union Republics, and in fact all the same administrative provinces of the Russian Empire, called “republics” in the Soviet period, declared their independence from Moscow under the influence of corrupt elites and with the direct support of the capitalist West. Since the same kind of pro-Western reformers were in charge in Moscow starting with Yeltsin and in the 90’s, they easily recognized the new entities within the very – completely artificial – borders they had in the USSR. In the USSR, the borders themselves had no meaning and were drawn only for the convenience of administrative management (as districts of one and the same city).
So in place of the single State of the USSR, which emerged in place of another single State of the Russian Empire, that gathered all these lands and peoples together, there were 17 new – almost never existed – at least in such borders, and most of them did not exist at all – “States” (failed from the very birth). Some of them remained loyal to Moscow. Another fell under the influence of the West, and took a harshly anti-Russian line. Alas, Ukraine belongs to this second category.
Two Ukrainians (or more)
The territory of the new political entity “Ukraine,” which emerged in 1991, consists of completely heterogeneous territories and peoples.
Eastern Ukraine (from Odessa to Kharkov through the Donbass) or Novorossia is populated by virtually the same people as the southeast of modern Russia. These lands, as we have seen, were taken from the Turks by the Russian Empire (much of it under Catherine the Great) and repopulated by Russians (Great Russians, Velikorossy). The same applies to the Crimea.
The western regions of Ukraine — right-bank Ukraine, if you look at the map along the Dnieper River — had been under Catholic Polish and Austro-Hungarian rule for many centuries and had no statehood at all. Being Orthodox and predominantly peasants, they were considered by the Catholic nobility as inferior people. However, not all of them were happy to meet Great Russians as liberators. Part of Little Russians (Ukrainians) tried to assert their identity, of course, different from the culture of the Moscow Tsardom and the Great Russian Empire. It was from such dissenters that Ukrainian nationalism and even the Ukrainian language itself began to be formed under strong influence of Poles and the West in general – an artificial construct based on various dialects of South-Eastern dialects, imitating the structure of the Polish language. The first signs of such artificially constructed nationalism praising purely imaginary “Ukrainian identity” can be seen in the early twentieth century under the Russian Empire. During the Second World War, many Ukrainian nationalists (Bandera, Shukhevich, etc.) joined Hitler. They had particularly brutal massacres of Communists, Jews, Poles, and Great Russians to their credit. This part is known collectively as the zapadentsy (from “Zapad” – “West” in Russian and in Ukranian).
In the far West of Ukraine live the Ruthenians, another branch of the Eastern Slavs with a very different identity from the zapadentsy.
Nezalezhnost’ (independence) as a concept of the zapadentsy
The independence of Ukraine was the slogan of the zapadentsy, while the inhabitants of the East saw nothing wrong in maintaining close contact with Russia, as they represented the same people with Russians in general. By the way, the Russian (Velikorossky) language is spoken by the vast majority of Ukrainians. The artificial Ukrainian language was known to only a few people and was used in everyday speech by a few. Nevertheless, this zapadentsy’s line prevailed in Ukraine in the 1990s, and they occupied key positions in politics, economics, culture, and information. The West actively supported such zapadentsy’s nationalism, despite its Nazi history and racist ideology. U.S. and NATO strategists decided pragmatically to use these forces in Ukraine to tear the entire country away from Russia and put it under full Western control in the future.
Ukrainian East vs. Ukrainian West
Throughout the new Ukraine, two tendencies, the western and the eastern, have been battling each other. It can be seen in the electoral maps – the pro-Moscow east voted for some candidates and the pro-Western, Russophobic West always for alternatives. The presidents succeeded each other, and their course represented a swing between Moscow and Washington. Kravchuk was a moderate Westerner. Kuchma took a multi-vector stance. Yushchenko leaned unequivocally toward the West. Yanukovich – inconsistently and hesitantly – sought support from Moscow. But all the while, Western trends continued to grow in politics and culture, to the point of calling for the genocide of the population of Crimea and the Ukrainian East in general, which, according to the nationalists, was loyal to Moscow.
The Maidan, actively supported by the U.S. – the same Biden, Victoria Nuland, and the neocons – brought the most radical zapadentsy to power in the coup d’état that toppled Yanukovich. Half of Ukraine was under a real threat of mass terror. The junta that came to power declared its NATO orientation and demanded the withdrawal of Russian ships from Sevastopol.
Putin comes into play
It was at this point that Moscow – no longer the same as it was under Yeltsin, but a new sovereign and clearly aware of its geopolitical interests – Putin’s Moscow decided to intervene. The population of Crimea, which happened to be part of Ukraine by accident, immediately declared its unification with Russia. The regions of Donbass – Donetsk and Lugansk – made the same decision. Odessa, Kharkiv and Mykolaiv would have done the same, – perhaps Poltava and Sumy, – but the zapadentsy in Kiev turned to mass repressions (the murder of civilians in Odessa in the House of Trade Unions on May 2, 2014, etc.).
After several attempts to reclaim the Donbass, Kiev abandoned this strategy and began to prepare for a closer alliance with the West and NATO. At this point, Putin made a mistake: he recognized Ukraine’s new government in the hope of establishing peace with Kiev.
Minsk deadlock
This is the situation that we have at the moment. The Norman format and the Minsk agreements, in fact, are aimed only at de-escalation, but in the long term and even in the medium term do not solve anything.
There can only be one solution to this situation: the division of Ukraine into two parts, with recognition of the political sovereignty of both halves – Western Right-Bank Ukraine and Novorossiya, with a special status for Kyiv. Sooner or later this will happen. As sooner or later mainland China and Taiwan will be united within one state.
The U.S. is escalating
Since in the White House with the arrival of Biden, there was a group of extreme globalists, Atlanticists, neocons, and supporters of saving a unipolar world at any price, in fact, the same ones who provoked the Maidan in 2013-2014, a new round of escalation began. Russia is accused of preparing for an invasion of Ukraine, under this pretext in reality is going to accelerate the integration of Ukraine into NATO. Moscow has not the slightest intention of solving the situation by military means, but U.S. provocations leave Moscow no choice, as Putin, Lavrov, and other top Russian officials have repeatedly stated recently. Putin has declared Ukraine’s integration into NATO – along with the half of the population that generally considers itself one people with the Russians – a crossing of a “red line.” If the West fails to heed this warning, a military conflict cannot be ruled out.
It is necessary only to understand that it is not about an attack of one country on another, but about the processes of the big geopolitics. When Moscow was weak and ruled either by idiots or direct agents of Western influence, Russia has lost Ukraine, which fell into the hands of extremist nationalist politicians immediately picked up by the West. When Putin began to restore Russia’s sovereignty and power as a great power, Ukrainian issues came to the fore. Zbigniew Brzezinski was convinced that without Ukraine, Russia could not become the sovereign pole of a multipolar world. He would have been right. Russia today has set a firm course for becoming such a pole.
The attentive reader can draw the rest of the conclusions himself.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Ankara sees the American withdrawal from Afghanistan as its valuable opportunity to gain several footholds in this country neighboring the Central Asian republics of Turkish origin.
The following is the English translation from Arabic of the latest article by Turkish career journalistHusni Mahali he published in the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen news site Al-Mayadeen Net:
With the approach of the complete American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the competition intensified between Turkey and each of Russia, Iran, and other countries, with the aim of gaining more positions, not only in this country but through it in Central Asia in general as well. With the “Taliban” movement controlling more areas, and the Afghan forces fleeing en masse, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahman, and assured him of his country’s support for him in the face of possible developments in the Afghan crisis, after thousands of Afghan soldiers sought refuge in this neighboring country.
Last Tuesday, the Russian army announced the readiness of the S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems at the Russian base in Tajikistan, which in turn does not hide its concern about the possibility of an explosion in the security situation in Afghanistan, which may be exploited by the various jihadist groups, which some of them are present in Idlib and other areas of Syria, under the protection of Turkey, which prevents President Putin from any action that directly targets these groups.
President Putin also made a second phone call to his Uzbek counterpart Shaukat Mir Daif and discussed with him the details of coordination and joint cooperation to confront possible developments in Afghanistan.
In turn, Foreign Minister Lavrov said, “The main problem is the growing threat of terrorist attacks because the Taliban is behaving more aggressively. Also, the terrorist organization ISIS is strengthening its presence in the northern parts of Afghanistan near the border with Russia’s allies.”
And the Russian security announced the thwarting of many terrorist attacks planned by the militants of the Islamist “Tahrir Party”, which is mainly active in the autonomous republics within the borders of the Russian Federation, whose population is mostly Muslims, and their number exceeds 20 million.
Iran – which has a common border with Afghanistan with a length of 936 km, Pakistan with a length of 909 km, and Turkmenistan with a length of 992 km – are closely watching the Afghan developments, given the direct relationship of the matter to Iran’s national security. Last Tuesday, Tehran hosted a meeting between representatives of the “Taliban” and the Afghan government, in an attempt to achieve peaceful reconciliation between the two parties after the US withdrawal at the end of next month.
In turn, Ankara sees this withdrawal as its valuable opportunity to gain several footholds in this country neighboring the Central Asian republics of Turkish origin, namely Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Defense Minister Hulusi Akar visited Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan at the end of last month, in a new attempt by Ankara to develop military relations with these two countries, and later with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, all of which constitute the backyard of Russia, which President Erdogan has previously challenged in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Lithuania.
He also challenged it by lighting the green light for Atlantic maneuvers which included the British and Dutch provocations in the Black Sea, which Washington, with the support of Ankara, wants to turn into an Atlantic basin after the annexation of Georgia and Ukraine to the alliance. NATO membership mainly includes Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, which overlook the Black Sea, while Turkey controls the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, which connect the Black Sea to both the Sea of Marmara and the Aegean.
Ankara signed several military cooperation agreements with Bulgaria and Romania and then sold its drones to Lithuania, Ukraine, Albania, and Azerbaijan, which achieved quick victories in their war with the Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region thanks to Turkish support.
The information then spoke of Turkey’s efforts to establish several military bases in Azerbaijan, including a base near the Caspian Sea (also overlooked by Iran), which is rich in oil and gas. This may constitute a new and dangerous crisis between Ankara and Moscow, which previously expressed its dismay and rejection of Turkish bases in Azerbaijan in general, which President Erdogan will not care about, who did not care about Russian threats in Syria and Libya, and continued to implement what he had previously planned on the road back to the dreams of the Ottoman Empire.
This (Ottoman) empire had many reasons for entering into 16 fierce wars with the Russian Empire, of which it was defeated in 11. Many see President Putin as the heir of this empire, as Erdogan sees himself as the heir to the Ottoman Empire and its Islamist caliphate, which may make the possible Turkish dialogue, coordination, and cooperation with Kabul after the Taliban control it much easier, even if Turkey is the only Muslim country within NATO that has occupied Afghanistan under the leadership of the United States in 2001. After his meeting with President Biden, on the 14th of last month in Brussels, Erdogan announced that Turkey is ready to send additional forces to Afghanistan to protect the security of Kabul Airport and international facilities, which will be contributed by his ally, Sheikh Tamim, Emir of Qatar, who played and still is, an important role in the American reconciliation with the “Taliban”.
Al-Jazeera was the mouthpiece of the Taliban during its war with the “Great Satan” America, at a time when Osama bin Laden sent his tapes exclusively to the aforementioned channel before and after the American occupation and until his death in May 2011, that is, after the emergence of ISIS, and “Al-Nusra” in Syria and Iraq, which are the arenas for America and its new allies to settle scores with the resistance countries and for “Israel”.
All this explains the new US military position in Jordan, adjacent to Syria, Iraq, and “Israel”, after Washington transferred some of its forces from Qatar, where the Al-Udeid base is still located, which is the most important US base in the region. This base was and will remain, the headquarters of the Central Command of the US Air Force in the Middle East, and it houses 100 warplanes used by US forces against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
In all cases, and whatever the result of the Turkish moves in Afghanistan, through it in the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and all the countries that overlook them or close to them, it has become clear that the Turkish President was, and will remain, a source of concern for President Putin, especially if Ankara succeeds in its relationship with the Taliban. Everyone was surprised by its (Taliban) agreement with President Erdogan, who declared himself “the protector of Islam and Muslims.”
In turn, the Taliban leaders, with Qatari mediation, might consider cooperating with him, especially if he proves his authority in the Central Asian republics of Turkish origin, an authority that the late President Turgut Ozal sought after fall and disintegration of the Soviet Union. Erdogan sees himself as Ozal’s successor and before him Adnan Menderes, who made Turkey “a fish on American hook” for the period 1950-1960.
Erdogan and others did not ignore the strategic location of Afghanistan, which is rich in gold, iron, cobalt, copper, uranium, and rare minerals, including niobium and molybdenum, which are invested by Chinese companies that control the extraction and export of most of the world’s rare minerals everyone needs in sensitive industries, including warplanes and missiles.
In the end, the bet remains on the possible policies of the Taliban. If they remain on their approach as they were 20 years ago, history will repeat itself, and everyone will return to their interests in the extremist Islamist movements that have become more famous for their brutality after the so-called “Arab Spring,” especially in Syria. Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and the extension of these countries in Africa, the Middle East, Bahrain, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and the Gulf region.
Erdogan has proven that he has a long experience in all of them after he succeeded in establishing and developing distinguished relations with all Islamist movements, both political and armed, many of whose leaders had previously been present and fought in Afghanistan. These leaders had a relationship with “Al-Qaeda”, and later “Taliban”, which seems clear that, with its next actions, it will decide the fate and future of Afghanistan, and all its neighboring countries as well, most of which are within the borders of Russia’s backyard.
This may be the “hidden satanic” reason for Washington’s decision to withdraw, which wants Russia to afflict Afghanistan again as it afflicted it during the Soviet occupation, and Turkey was at the time on the neutral, but this time it will be a direct party, as is the case on many fronts, which it proved with the transfer of mercenaries from Syria to Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. Now, some expect it to transfer their likes to Afghanistan, which is what America might do by transferring what it has of ISIS detainees in Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan!
To help us continue please visit the Donate page to donate or learn how you can help us with no cost to you. Follow us on Telegram: http://t.me/syupdates link will open the Telegram app.
By Dmitry Orlov and posted with special permission
A terrible war is about to erupt on Russia’s border with the Ukraine—or not—but there is some likelihood of a significant number of people getting killed before project Ukraine is finally over. Given that around 13 thousand people have been killed over the past seven years—the civil war in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine has gone on for that long!—this is no laughing matter. But people get desensitized to the mostly low-level warfare. Just over the past couple of weeks a grandfather was shot by a Ukrainian sniper while feeding his chickens and a young boy was killed by a bomb precision-dropped on him from a Ukrainian drone.
But what’s about to happen now is forecasted to be on a different scale: the Ukrainians are moving heavy armor and troops up to the line of separation while the Russians are moving theirs up to their side of the Ukrainian border, a position from which they can blast any and all Ukrainian troops straight out of the gene pool without so much as setting foot on Ukrainian territory—should they wish to do so. The Russians can justify their military involvement by the need to defend their own citizens: over the past seven years half a million residents in eastern Ukraine have applied for and been granted Russian citizenship. But how exactly can Russia defend its citizens while they are stuck in the crossfire between Russian and Ukrainian forces?
The rationale of defending its citizens led to conflict in the briefly Georgian region of South Ossetia, which started on August 8, 2008 and lasted barely a week, leaving Georgia effectively demilitarized. Russia rolled in, Georgia’s troops ran off, Russia confiscated some of the more dangerous war toys and rolled out. Georgia’s paper warriors and their NATO consultants and Israeli trainers were left wiping each others’ tears. Any suggestion of arming and equipping the Georgians since then has been met with groaning and eye-rolling. Is the upcoming event in eastern Ukraine going to be similar to the swift and relatively painless defanging of Georgia in 2008? Given that the two situations are quite different, it seems foolish to think that the approach to resolving them would be the same.
Is it different this time and is World War III is about to erupt with eastern Ukraine being used as a trigger for this conflagration? Do the various statements made at various times by Vladimir Putin provide a solid enough basis for us to guess at what will happen next? Is there a third, typically, infuriatingly Russian approach to resolving this situation, where Russia wins, nobody dies and everyone in the West is left scratching their heads?
The Ukrainian military is much like everything else currently found in the Ukraine—the railway system, the power plants, the pipeline systems, the ports, the factories (the few that are left)—a patched-up hold-over from Soviet times. The troops are mostly unhappy, demoralized conscripts and reservists. Virtually all of the more capable young men have either left the country to work abroad or have bribed their way out of being drafted. The conscripts sit around getting drunk, doing drugs and periodically taking pot shots into and across the line of separation between Ukrainian-held and separatist-held territories. Most of the casualties they suffer are from drug and alcohol overdoses, weapons accidents, traffic accidents caused by driving drunk and self-harm from faulty weapons. The Ukrainian military is also working on winning a Darwin award for the most casualties caused by stepping on their own land mines. As for the other side, many of the casualties are civilians wounded and killed by constant shelling from the Ukrainian side of the front, which runs quite close to population centers.
The Ukrainian military has received some new weapons from the US and some NATO training, but as the experience in Georgia has shown, that won’t help them. Most of these weapons are obsolete, non-updated versions of Soviet armaments from former East Bloc but currently NATO nations such as Bulgaria. These really aren’t of much use against an almost fully rearmed Russian military. A lot of the Ukrainian artillery is worn out and, given that Ukrainian industry (what’s left of it) is no longer able to manufacture gun barrels, artillery shells or even mortar rounds, this makes the Ukrainian military quite literally the gang that can’t shoot straight. It’s a great day for them if they manage to hit a kindergarten or a maternity clinic and most of the time they are just cratering up the empty countryside and littering it up with charred, twisted metal.
In addition to the hapless conscripts and reservists there are also some volunteer battalions that consist of hardcore Ukrainian nationalists. Their minds have been carefully poisoned by nationalist propaganda crafted thanks to large infusions of foreign (mostly American) money. Some of them have been conditioned to think that it was the ancient Ukrs who built the Egyptian pyramids and dug the Black Sea (and piled the left-over dirt to build the Caucasus mountain range). These may or may not be more combat-capable than the rest (opinions vary) but, much more importantly, they are a political force that the government cannot ignore because they can quite literally hold it hostage. They have been known for stunts such as shelling the offices of a television channel whose editorial policies they found disagreeable and physically assaulting a busload of opposition activists.
It is these Ukro-Nazi zealots that stand directly in the way of any peaceful settlement of the situation in eastern Ukraine and an inevitable eventual rapprochement between the Ukrainians and Russia. There is a deep and abiding irony in that these über-antisemitic Ukro-Nazis are about to be ordered into battle against Russia by a Jewish comedian (Vladimir Zelensky, president) who got elected thanks to a Jewish oligarch (Igor “Benny” Kolomoisky). Are they going to be annihilated? Quite possibly, yes. Will their annihilation make Ukraine and the world a better place? You be the judge. To the Russians these Nazi battalions are just a bunch of terrorists and, as Putin famously put it, it is up to him to send terrorists to God and then it is up to God to decide what to do with them. But there is a more efficient strategy: let them remain somebody else’s problem. After all, these Nazi battalions have almost zero ability to threaten Russia. Eventually the Europeans will realize that the Ukraine must be denazified, at their own expense, of course, with Russia offering advice and moral support.
To understand where this Ukrainian nationalist menace came from without venturing too far down the memory hole, it is enough to appreciate the fact that at the end of World War II some number of Ukrainian war criminals who fought on the side of the Nazis and took part in acts of genocide against Ukrainian Jews and Poles found a welcoming home in the US and in Canada, where they were able to feather their nests and bring up the next several generations of Ukrainian Nazis. After the collapse of the USSR, they were reintroduced into the Ukraine and given political support in the hopes of thoroughly alienating the Ukraine from Russia. In the course of serial color revolutions and unending political upheaval and strife they were able to become prominent, then dominant, in Ukrainian political life, to a point that they can now hold the Ukrainian government hostage whenever it fails to be sufficiently belligerent toward Russia, to maintain strict anti-Russian censorship in the media and to physically threaten anyone who voices disagreement with them.
Russophobia and belligerence toward Russia are, in turn, all that is currently required of the Ukraine by its US and EU masters, who wish to portray the Ukraine as a bulwark against a supposedly aggressive Russia but in reality wish to use it as an anti-Russian irritant and to use it to contain (meaning to restrict and frustrate) Russia economically and geopolitically. To this end the Ukrainian school curriculum has been carefully redesigned to inculcate hatred of all things Russian. The Ukraine’s Western mentors think that they are constructing a pseudo-ethnic totalitarian cult that can be used as a battering ram against Russia, along the lines of Nazi Germany but with much tighter external political control, or, to use a more recent, updated CIA playbook, along the lines of Al Qaeda and its various offshoots in the Middle East.
The rationale that’s used to serve up all this is “countering Russian aggression.” But it is inaccurate to describe Russia as aggressive. It is much closer to the truth to describe it as, by turns, assimilative, protective and insouciant. It is assimilative in that you too can apply for a Russian citizenship based on a number of criteria, the most important of which is cultural: you need to speak Russian, and to do so convincingly you have to assimilate culturally. If an entire Russian-speaking region starts waving the Russian tricolor at rallies, singing the Russian anthem and then holds a referendum where a convincing majority votes to rejoin Russia (97% in Crimea in 2014), then Russia will annex that territory and defend it. And if lots of people in a Russian-speaking region individually apply for Russian citizenship, swear allegiance to Russia and are issued Russian passports, then Russia will try to defend them individually against attack.
All would be sweetness and light with this scheme of voluntary accession if certain Russian regions didn’t periodically start demanding independence or if the Russians themselves didn’t periodically shed their self-important and ungrateful dependents. As this has happened, Russia has granted them sovereignty, which, more often than not, they didn’t know what to do with. At various times, Russia has freely bestowed national sovereignty on a whole slew of countries: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, the Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Rumania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan… For some of them, it granted them sovereignty several times over (Poland seems to be the prize-winner in that category). The political elites of these countries, having become used to suckling at Mother Russia’s ample bosom, naturally look for someone new to invade and/or liberate them and then to feed them.
After the collapse of the USSR, their new masters naturally became the US and the EU. But as these newly sovereign nations soon found out, not as much milk has flowed in their direction from their new masters, and some of them have started casting furtive glances toward Russia again. The twentieth century was a confusing time for many of these countries, and many of them are puzzled to this day as to whether at any given time they were being occupied or liberated by Russia. Let us consider, as a mini case study, the three Baltic mini-nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. With the exception of the Lithuanians, who had their 15 minutes of fame during their brief late-medieval dalliance with Poland, these three ethnic groups never made good candidates for sovereign nations. They were first dominated by the Germans, then by the Swedes.
Then Peter the Great purchased their lands from the Swedes with silver coin, but after that they continued to toil as serfs for their German landlords. But then in mid-19th century the Russian Empire abolished serfdom, starting with Estonian and Latvian serfs as an experiment. It then introduced compulsory schooling, wrote down the local languages, and invited the more promising native sons to come and study at St. Petersburg. This started them on the way toward developing a national consciousness, and what a headache that turned out to be!
While the Russian Empire held together they remained under control, but after the Russian Revolution they gained independence and swiftly turned fascist. As World War II neared, the Soviet leadership became justifiably concerned over having little pro-Nazi fascist states right on their border and occupied/liberated them. But then as the Germans advanced and the Red Army retreated, they were re-occupied by the fascists/liberated from the communists. But then as the Germans retreated and the Red Army advanced, they were re-occupied/re-liberated again and became, for a time, exemplary Soviet Communists.
And so they remained, occupied/liberated, being stuffed full of Soviet-built schools, hospitals, factories, roads, bridges, ports, railways and other infrastructure—until the USSR collapsed. They were the first to demand independence, singing songs and holding hands across all three republics. Since then they have squandered all of their Soviet inheritance and have progressively shed population while serving as playgrounds for NATO troops who get a special thrill, I suppose, by training right on Russia’s border. Their political elites made a tidy little business of Russophobia, which pleased their new Western masters but gradually wrecked their economies. Having reached their peak during the late Soviet era, they are now hollow shells of their former selves.
And now, lo and behold, an embarrassingly large chunk of their populations is pining after the good old Soviet days and wants better relations with Russia (which, in the meantime, seems to have largely forgotten that these Baltic statelets even exist). Their political elites would want nothing more than for Russia to occupy/liberate them again, because then they could be rid of their noisome constituents and move to London or Geneva, there to head up a government in exile and work on plans for the next round of occupation/liberation.
To their horror, they are now realizing that Russia has no further use for them, while their new masters at the EU are sinking into a quagmire of their own problems, leaving them abandoned with no kind master to care for them and to feed them. They thought they had signed up to administer a vibrant new democracy using free money from the EU, but instead they are now stuck administering a depopulating, economically stagnant backwater peopled by ethnic relicts. In eras past, they would have only had to wait until the next wave of barbarian invasion from the east. The barbarians would slaughter all the men, rape and/or kidnap all the prettier women, and the naturally recurring process of ethnogenesis would start again. But now there are a dozen time zones of Russia to their east and no hope at all of any more barbarian invasions, so all they can do is drink a lot and, by turns, curse the Russians and the Europeans.
The situation is much the same throughout Eastern Europe, in a great arc of semi-sovereign, pseudo-sovereign and (in the case of the Ukraine) faux-sovereign nations from the Baltic to the Black Sea and on to the Caspian Sea and beyond. The many serial occupations/liberations have given their political elites a wonderful weathercock-like quality: one moment they are wearing Nazi insignia and heiling Hitler and the next moment they are good Soviet Communists reciting the 10 Commandments of the Builders of Communism. The Ukraine (getting back to it, finally) is no different in this respect but different in another: by no stretch of the imagination is it even a nation, or a combination, assemblage or grouping of nations; it is, strictly speaking, an accidental territorial agglomeration. As a failed attempt to create a monoethnic nation-state it is a chimera.
The following map, labeled “Dynamics of agglomeration of Ukrainian territories,” shows the process in detail. The toponym “Ukraine” (“Ukraina”) is most likely of Polish origin, meaning “border zone,” and it seems to have first become a thing in 1653 when the red-colored region below decided that it had had enough of Polish Catholic dominance and discrimination (its inhabitants being Orthodox Christians) and chose to rejoin Russia. The region became known as Malorossia, or Little Russia, and the yellow-colored districts were added to it over time. And then, after the Russian Revolution, came the big gift: Malorossia and neighboring districts were formed into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and to make it something more than just a rural backwater Lenin saw it fit to lump in with it a number of Russian regions shaded in blue. It was this mistake that paved the way to the current impasse in what is but by all rights should never have been eastern Ukraine.
Then, right before, and again right after World War II Stalin lumped in the green-shaded western districts, which were previously part of he Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its inhabitants were Austrian, Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian and most of the rest, though initially Russian, had spent five centuries under foreign rule and spoke a distinctive, archaic dialect that served as the basis for creating the synthetic language now known as Ukrainian, while the rest of what is now Ukraine spoke Russian, Yiddish and a wide assortment of village dialects. It was this alienated group that was used as leavening to fashion a synthetic Ukrainian nationalism. In turn, Ukrainian Bolshevik leaders used this faux-nationalism to fashion the Ukraine into a regional power center within the USSR.
And then came the final mistake when Nikita Khrushchev, very much a product of the Ukrainian regional power center, paid it back for helping to promote him to the top job by giving it Russian Crimea—a move that was illegal under the Soviet constitution which was in effect at that time and a prime example of late Bolshevik political corruption that was undone in 2014 with great jubilation.
There are those who think that the solution to the Ukrainian problem is to take the Ukraine apart the same way it was put together. Behold the following map. Moving east to west, we have the Russian tricolor over Crimea (the only factual bit so far), then the flag of Novorussia covering all those territories that were arbitrarily lumped into the newly created Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by Lenin in 1922. Further west we have the flag of the state of Ukraine. And to the west is the flag of the Right Sector, a nationalist party with distinct Nazi tendencies that is currently active in Ukrainian politics.
I believe that, with the exception of Crimea, this map may very well turn out to be complete and utter nonsense. It seems outlandish to think that the Ukrainian Humpty-Dumpty, which is in the process of being knocked off the wall most unceremoniously by just about everyone, including Russia, the EU and the US, is going to break apart into such tidy, historically justifiable pieces. For one thing, national borders don’t matter so much any more once you are east of the Russian border, all of Europe now being one big unhappy mess. With millions of Ukrainians trying to eke out a living by working in Russia, or Poland, or further West, the distinctions between the various bits of the Ukrainian territory they are from are just not that meaningful to anyone.
For another, all of the Ukraine is now owned by the same bunch of oligarchs whose fortunes are tightly integrated with those of transnational corporations and of Western financial institutions. None of them care at all about the people that once inhabited this region and their varied histories and linguistic preferences. They care about translating economic and financial control directly into political control with a minimum of diplomatic politesse. The Ukraine has been in the process of being stripped bare of anything valuable for 30 years now, up to and including its fertile soil, and once there is nothing left to loot it will be abandoned as a wild field, largely uninhabited.
But we are not quite there yet, and for now the only map that really matters is the following one, which shows the two separatist regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, collectively known as Donbass, short for Donetsk Basin, a prolific coal province that was mainly responsible for fueling the Ukraine’s former industrial might, which to this day continues to produce anthracite, a valuable, energy-rich coal that is now scarce in the world. It is that relatively tiny but densely populated sliver of land along the Russian border, less than 100km across in many places, that is the powder keg that some believe may set off World War III.
The Ukrainian military has been massing troops and armor along the line of separation while the Russian military has pulled up its forces to their side of the border. Shelling, sniper fire and other provocations from the Ukrainian side are intensifying, with the hope of provoking the Russians into moving forces onto Ukrainian territory, thus allowing the collective West to shout “Aha! Russian aggression!” Then they could put a stop to Nord Stream II pipeline, scoring a major geopolitical victory for Washington and follow that up with plenty of other belligerent moves designed to hurt Russia politically and economically.
For the Russians, there are no good choices that are obvious. Not responding to Ukrainian provocations and doing nothing while they shell and invade the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, killing Russian citizens who live there, would make Russia look weak, undermine the Russian government’s position domestically and cost it a great deal of geopolitical capital internationally. Responding to Ukrainian provocations with overwhelming military force and crushing the Ukrainian military as was done in Georgia in 2008 would be popular domestically but could potentially lead to a major escalation and possibly an all-out war with NATO. Even if militarily the conflict is contained and NATO forces sit it out, as they did in Georgia, the political ramifications would cause much damage to the Russian economy through tightened sanctions and disruptions to international trade.
Those being the obvious bad choices, what are the obvious good ones, if any? Here, we have to pay careful attention to the official pronouncements Putin has made over the years, and to take them as face value. First, he said that Russia does not need any more territory; it has all the land it could ever want. Second, he said that Russia will follow the path of maximum liberalization in granting citizenship to compatriots and that, in turn, the well-being of Russia’s citizens is a top priority. Third, he said that resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine through military means is unacceptable. Given these constraints, what courses of action remain open?
The answer, I believe, is obvious: evacuation. There are around 3.2 million residents in Donetsk People’s Republic and 1.4 million in Lugansk People’s Republic, for a total of some 4.6 million residents. This may seem like a huge number, but it’s moderate by the scale of World War II evacuations. Keep in mind that Russia has already absorbed over a million Ukrainian migrants and refugees without much of a problem. Also, Russia is currently experiencing a major labor shortage, and an infusion of able-bodied Russians would be most welcome.
Domestically, the evacuation would likely be quite popular: Russia is doing right by its own people by pulling them out of harm’s way. The patriotic base would be energized and the already very active Russian volunteer movement would swing into action to assist the Emergencies Ministry in helping move and resettle the evacuees. The elections that are to take place later this year would turn into a nationwide welcoming party for several million new voters. The Donbass evacuation could pave the way for other waves of repatriation that are likely to follow. There are some 20 million Russians scattered throughout the world, and as the world outside Russia plunges deeper and deeper into resource scarcity they too will want to come home. While they may presently be reluctant to do so, seeing the positive example of how the Donbass evacuees are treated could help change their minds.
The negative optics of surrendering territory can be countered by not surrendering any territory. As a guarantor of the Minsk Agreements, Russia must refuse to surrender the Donbass to the Ukrainian government until it fulfills the terms of these agreements, which it has shown no intention of doing for seven years now and which it has recently repudiated altogether. It is important to note that the Russian military can shoot straight across all of Donbass without setting foot on Ukrainian soil. Should the Ukrainian forces attempt to enter Donbass, they will be dealt with as shown in the following instructional video. Note that the maximum range of the Tornado-G system shown in the video is 120km.
And should the Ukrainians care to respond by attacking Russian territory, another one of Putin’s pronouncements helps us understand what would happen next: if attacked, Russia will respond not just against the attackers but also against the centers of decision-making responsible for the attack. The Ukrainian command in Kiev, as well as its NATO advisers, would probably keep this statement in mind when considering their steps.
The Donbass evacuation should resonate rather well internationally. It would be a typical Putin judo move knocking NATO and the US State Department off-balance. Since this would be a large humanitarian mission, it would be ridiculous to attempt to portray it as “Russian aggression.” On the other hand, Russia would be quite within its rights to issue stern warnings that any attempt to interfere with the evacuation or to launch provocations during the evacuation process would be dealt with very harshly, freeing Russia’s hands in dispatching to God the berserkers from the Ukraine’s Nazi battalions, some of whom don’t particularly like to follow orders.
The West would be left with the following status quo. The Donbass is empty of residents but off-limits to them or to the Ukrainians. The evacuation would in no sense change the standing or the negotiating position of the evacuees and their representatives vis-à-vis the Minsk agreements, locking this situation in place until Kiev undertakes constitutional reform, becomes a federation and grants full autonomy to Donbass, or until the Ukrainian state ceases to exist and is partitioned. The Ukraine would be unable to join NATO (a pipe dream which it has stupidly voted into its constitution) since this would violate the NATO charter, given that it does not control its own territory.
Further sanctions against Russia would become even more difficult to justify, since it would be untenable to accuse it of aggression for undertaking a humanitarian mission to protect its own citizens or for carrying out its responsibilities as a guarantor of the Minsk agreements. The Donbass would remain as a stalker zone roamed by Russian battlefield robots sniping Ukrainian marauders, with the odd busload of schoolchildren there on a field trip to lay flowers on the graves of their ancestors. Its ruined Soviet-era buildings, not made any newer by three decades of Ukrainian abuse and neglect, will bear silent witness to the perpetual ignominy of the failed Ukrainian state.
History is as often driven by accident as by logic, but since we cannot predict accidents, logic is the only tool we have in trying to guess the shape of the future. Rephrasing Voltaire, this, then, is the best that we can expect to happen in this the best of all possible worlds.
What ‘Q’ Would Never Tell You…The Shocking Truth Behind the Conspiracy Theories
Editor’s Note: The history of the Khazarians, specifically the Khazarian Mafia (KM), the World’s largest Organized Crime Syndicate that the Khazarian oligarchy morphed into by their deployment of Babylonian Money-Magick, has been nearly completely excised from the history books.
The present-day KM knows that it cannot operate or exist without abject secrecy, and therefore has spent a lot of money having its history excised from the history books in order to prevent citizens of the World from learning about its “Evil beyond imagination”, that empowers this World’s largest Organized Crime Cabal.
The authors of this article have done their best to resurrect this lost, secret history of the Khazarians and their large International Organized Crime Syndicate, best referred to as the Khazarian Mafia (KM) and make this history available to the World via the Internet, which is the new Gutenberg Press.
It has been exceedingly difficult to reconstruct this hidden secret history of the KM, so please excuse any minor inaccuracies or errors which are unintentional and are due to the difficulty in digging out the true history of Khazaria and its mafia. We have done the best we can to reconstruct it.
It was Mike Harris that connected the dots and made the actual discovery of the presence of the Khazarian Mafia’s secret history and blood oath to take revenge on Russia for helping Americans win the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and their blood oath of revenge against America and Americans for winning these wars and sustaining the Union.
At the Syrian Conference on Combating Terrorism and Religious Extremism December 1, 2014 — in his Keynote address, Veterans Today Senior Editor and Director Gordon Duff disclosed publicly for the first time ever that World Terrorism is actually due to a large International Organized Crime Syndicate associated with Israel. This disclosure sent shock-waves at the Conference and almost instantly around the world, as almost every world leader received reports of Gordon Duff’s historical disclosure that same day, some within minutes.
And the shock-waves from his historic speech in Damascus continue to reverberate around the world even to this very day. And now Gordon Duff has asked President Putin to release Russian Intel which will expose about 300 traitors in Congress for their serious serial felonies and statutory espionage on behalf of the Khazarian Mafia (KM) against America and many Middle East nations.
We now know that the Khazarian Mafia (KM) is waging a secret war against America and Americans by the use of False-flag Gladio-style terrorism, and via the illegal and Unconstitutional Federal Reserve System, the IRS, the FBI, FEMA, Homeland Security and the TSA. We know for certain that the KM was responsible for deploying an inside-job, Gladio-style False-flag attack on America on 9-11-01, as well as the Murrah Building Bombing on April 19, 1995.
The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia
100-800 AD – an incredibly Evil Society Emerges in Khazaria:
Khazarians develop into a nation ruled by an evil king, who had ancient Babylonian black arts, occult oligarchs serving as his court. During this time, Khazarians became known to surround countries as thieves, murderers, road bandits, and for assuming the identities of those travelers they murdered as a normal occupational practice and way of life.
800 AD – The Ultimatum is delivered by Russia and other surrounding nations:
The leaders of the surrounding nations, especially Russia, have had so many years of complaints by their citizens that, as a group, they deliver an ultimatum to the Khazarian king. They send a communique to the Khazarian king that he must choose one of the three Abrahamic religions for his people, and make it his official state religion and require all Khazarian citizens to practice it, and socialize all Khazarian children to practice that faith.
The Khazarian king was given a choice between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The Khazarian king chose Judaism and promised to stay within the requirements laid out by the surrounding confederacy of nations led by the Russian czar. Despite his agreement and promise, the Khazarian king and his inner circle of oligarchs kept practicing ancient Babylonian black-magic, also known as Secret Satanism. This Secret Satanism involved occult ceremonies featuring child sacrifice, after “bleeding them out”, drinking their blood and eating their hearts.
The deep dark secret of the occult ceremonies was that they were all based on ancient Baal Worship, also known as worship of the Owl. In order to fool the confederacy of nations led by Russia that were watching Khazaria, the Khazarian king melded these Luciferian black-magick practices with Judaism and created a secret Satanic-hybrid religion, known as Babylonian Talmudism. This was made the national religion of Khazaria and nurtured the same evil that Khazaria was known for before.
Sadly, the Khazarians continued their evil ways, robbing and murdering those from surrounding countries who traveled through Khazaria. Khazarian robbers often attempted to assume their identities after they murdered these visitors, and became masters of disguises and false identities — a practice they have continued even to this very day, along with their child-sacrifice occult ceremonies, which are actually ancient Baal Worship.
1,200 AD – Russia and the surrounding nations have had enough and take action:
About 1,200 AD, the Russians led a group of nations surrounding Khazaria and invaded it, in order to stop the Khazarian crimes against their people, which included the kidnapping of their young children and infants for their blood sacrifice ceremonies to Baal. The Khazarian king and his inner court of criminals and murderers came to be known as the Khazarian Mafia (KM) by neighboring countries.
The Khazarian leaders had a well-developed spy network through which they obtained prior warning and escaped from Khazaria to European nations to the west, taking their vast fortune with them in gold and silver. They laid low and regrouped while assuming new identities. In secret, they continued their Satanic child blood and sacrifice rituals and trusted Baal to give them the whole world and all its riches, as they claimed he had promised them, as long as they kept bleeding out and sacrificing children and infants for him.
The Khazarian king and his court Mafia plotted eternal revenge against the Russians and the surrounding nations that invaded Khazaria and drove them from power.
The Khazarian Mafia invades England after being expelled for hundreds of years:
To accomplish their invasion, they hired Oliver Cromwell to murder King Charles 1, and make England safe for banking again. This began the English Civil Wars which raged for nearly a decade, resulting in regicide of the royal family and hundreds of the genuine English nobility. This is how the City of London was set up as the banking capital of Europe and launched the beginning of the British Empire.
From David Icke’s website http://www.davidicke.com. David Icke was the first ever to courageously expose the Rothschilds publicly in front of hundreds. This, of course, makes him an international hero and we need more with his kind of courage to break open the coverup hiding the Khazarian Mafia and bring an end to their worldwide illegitimate power.[/caption]
The Khazarian Mafia (KM) decides to infiltrate and hijack all World Banking using Babylonian Black-Magick, also known as Babylonian Money-Magick or the secret art of making money from nothing also using the power of pernicious usury to accumulate interest:
The KM used their vast fortune to enter into a new system of banking, based on secret Babylonian black-magic money-magic that they claimed to have learned from the evil spirits of Baal, in return for their many child sacrifices to him.
This Babylonian money-magick involved the substitution of paper credit certificates for gold and silver deposits, which allowed travelers to travel with their money in a form that offered easy replacement should they lose the certificates or have them stolen.
Interesting how the very problem that was started by the Khazarians also had a solution provided by them. Eventually, the Khazarian king and his small surrounding court infiltrated Germany with a group that chose the name “the Bauers” of Germany to represent them and carry on their Baal-powered system of evil. The Bauers of the Red Shield, which represented their secret blood-based child sacrifices, changed their name to Rothschild (aka “child of the rock, Satan”).
The Rothschilds as the front Men for the Khazarian Mafia (KM) infiltrate and Hijack British Banking and then hijack the whole nation of England:
Bauer/Rothschild had five sons who infiltrated and took over European banking and the City of London Central Banking System through various crafty covert operations, including a false report of Napoleon winning against the British, when actually he lost. This allowed the Rothschilds to use fraud and deception to steal the wealth of the English nobility and the landed gentry, who had made business investments with the City of London Banking institutions.
The Rothschilds set up a private Fiat banking system that specialized in making counterfeit money from nothing — charging pernicious usury for the British people, using what should have been their own money.
This was the black art of Babylonian money-magick; they claimed to insiders that such technology and secret money power was provided to them by Baal, because of their frequent child bleeding-out and sacrifices rituals to Baal.
Once they had infiltrated and hijacked the British banking system, they interbred with the British Royals and infiltrated and completely hijacked all of England and all its major institutions. Some experts believe that the Rothschilds genocided the Royal Family members by staging secretly-managed illicit and adulterous breedings with their own Khazarian men in order to replace the Royals with their own pretenders to the throne.
The Khazarian Mafia (KM) wages an international effort to eradicate Kings who rule by the Divine Right of God Almighty:
Because the KM claims to have a personal partnership with Baal (aka the Devil, Lucifer, Satan) because of their sacrifices to him. They detest any kings who rule under the authority of God Almighty because most feel a responsibility to make sure their own people are protected from infiltrators and treasonous “Enemies within the Gates.”
In the 1600s, the KM murder the British Royals and substitute their own fakes. In the 1700s, they murder the French Royals. Right before WWI, they murder, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand to start WW1. In 1917 they assembled their KM army, the Bolsheviks, and infiltrate and hijack Russia, murder the Czar and his family in cold blood, bayonet his favorite daughter through the chest and steal all the Russian gold, silver and art treasures. Right before WW2, they murder the Austrian and German Royals. Then they get rid of the Chinese Royals and disempower the Japanese ruler.
The Khazarian Mafia’s intense hatred of anyone who professed faith in any God but their god Baal has motivated them to murder kings and royalty and make sure they can never rule. They have done the same with American presidents — running sophisticated covert operations to disempower them.
If that doesn’t work the KM assassinates them, as they did to McKinley, Lincoln, and JFK. The KM wants to eliminate any strong rulers or elected officials who dare to resist their Babylonian money-magick power or their covert power gained from the deployment of their human compromise network.
The Rothschilds create international narcotics trafficking on behalf of the KM:
The Rothschilds then covertly ran the British Empire and crafted an evil plan to recover the vast amounts of gold and silver the British had been paying to China for its high-quality silk and spices that were unavailable anywhere else.
The Rothschilds, through their international spy network, had heard of Turkish opium and its habit-forming characteristics. They deployed a covert operation to buy Turkish opium and sell it in China, infecting millions with a bad opium habit that brought back gold and silver into the Rothschild coffers, but not to the British People.
The opium addictions created by Rothschild opium sales to China harmed China so much that China went to war on two occasions to stop it. These wars were known as the Boxer Rebellions or the Opium Wars.
The money the Rothschilds gained from the sale of opium was so vast that they became even more addicted to the easy money than the opiate addicts were to the opium.
The Rothschilds were the funding source behind the establishment of the American Colonies, by incorporating the Hudson Bay Company and other trading companies to exploit the New World of the Americas. It was the Rothschild’s who ordered the mass extermination and genocide of the indigenous people of North America to allow for the exploitation of the vast natural resources of the continent.
The Rothschild’s also followed the same business template in the Caribbean and in the Asian sub-continent of India, resulting in the murder of millions of innocent people.The Rothschilds start the international slave trade, an enterprise that viewed these kidnapped humans as mere animals — a view that the Khazarians would impose on all the people of the world who were not part of their evil circle, which some called the “Old Black Nobility”:
The Rothschild’s next big project was to start the worldwide slave trade, buying slaves from crooked tribal chiefs in Africa who worked with them to kidnap members of competing tribes for sale as slaves.
The Rothschild slave traders then took these kidnapped slaves on their ships in cramped cells to America and the Caribbean where they were sold. Many died at sea due to bad conditions.
The Rothschild bankers learned early on that war was a great way to double their money in a short time by lending money to both warring sides. But in order to be guaranteed collections, they had to get taxation laws passed, which could be used to force payment.
The KM Rothschild private Fiat Counterfeit Banksters plot eternal revenge against the American Colonists and Russia who assisted them for losing the Revolutionary War:
When the Rothschilds lost the American Revolution, they blamed the Russian czar and the Russians for assisting the colonists by blockading British Ships.
They swore eternal revenge on the American colonists, just as they had when the Russians and their allies crushed Khazaria in 1,000 AD.
The Rothschilds and the English oligarchy that surrounded them plotted ways to retake America, and this became their main obsession.
Their favored plan is to set up an American central bank, featuring Babylonian money magic and secret counterfeiting.
The Rothschild KM attempts to retake America in 1812 on behalf of the Khazarian Mafia but fails, once again because of Russian interference:
This failure enraged the Rothschild KM, and they once again plot eternal revenge against both the Russians and the American colonists and plan to infiltrate and hijack both nations and asset strip, tyrannize and then mass-murder both nations and their populace.
The KM’s attempts to set up a private American central bank are blocked by President Andrew Jackson, who called them Satanic and vowed to route them out by the grace and power of Almighty God.
The Rothschild banksters regroup and continue their covert attempts to install their own Babylonian money-magick bank inside America.
Finally, in 1913, the Rothschild KM succeeds in establishing a major beachhead inside America — and an evil enemy of all American enter the gates of America:
In 1913, the Rothschild KM was able to establish a beachhead by bribing crooked, treasonous members of Congress to pass the illegal, Unconstitutional Federal Reserve Act on Christmas Eve without a required quorum. The Act was then signed by a crooked, bought-off President, who was a traitor to America, like the members of Congress who voted for it.
The Rothschild KM then create an illegal taxation System in America:
The KM put an illegal, Unconstitutional tax system in place, in order to make sure that Americans would have to pay for high-level USG spending, approved by a bought-off, crooked Congress and Presidential puppets, put in place by corrupt KM campaign finance.
It is easy for the KM to garner enough money to elect anyone they want because when you control a bank that is a secret major counterfeiter, you have all the money made for you that you desire. At about the same time that they created their illegal tax system in America, they also bribed members of Congress to approve the Internal Revenue Service, which is their private collection agency incorporated in Puerto Rico.
Soon afterward, they set up the Federal Bureau of Investigation to protect their banksters, to serve their cover-up needs and prevent them from ever being prosecuted for their child sacrifice rituals, pedophile networks; and to also serve as a covert Intel operation on their behalf.
Note that the FBI has no official charter, according to the Library of Congress, and has no right to exist or issue paychecks.
The Rothschild KM deployed the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia to extract incredibly savage, bloody revenge on innocent Russians, which they had plotted for many years, ever since Khazaria was destroyed:
The Rothschild KM pre-staged and engineered the Russian Revolution by using its central banks to pay for the Bolshevik infiltration of Russia and their Revolution on behalf of the Khazarian Mafia (KM).
The Bolsheviks were actually created and deployed by the Khazarian Mafia (KM) as the essential part of their long-planned revenge on the Russian Czar and the innocent Russian people for breaking up Khazaria in about 1,000 AD for its repeated robbery, murder and identity theft of travelers from countries surrounding Khazaria. This little-known fact explains the extreme violence taken out on Russia as long-standing revenge by the Rothschild-controlled Khazarian Mafia (KM).[/caption]
In a well-planned savage and inhuman bloodletting that stunned the world, the Bolsheviks were unleashed in full fury on behalf of the KM to gain revenge on the Russians. This had been planned since the destruction of Khazaria.
The Bolsheviks, at the direction of the Rothschild KM, raped, tortured and mass-murdered approximately 100 million Russians, including women, children, and infants. Some of the torture and bloodletting were so extreme, we are not going to mention it here in this article.
But readers who want to know can do some in-depth internet research on the “Red Terror” or the “Bolshevik Cheka” or watch the classic movie “The Checkist (1992)”.
The Rothschild Khazarian Mafia (KM) once again decided to sheep-dip themselves and infiltrated and hijacked all Judaism:
The Rothschild KM created a master plan to control all of Judaism and mind-kontrol Judaics. The Rothschild KM has hijacked Judaism, patterned it off of Babylonian Talmudism (Luciferianism or Satanism), and gained control over the banking and Wall Street professions in general, Congress, the major mass media; along with most wealth and economic means of success.
Thus, the Rothschild KM could pass out wealth and success to those Judaics who drank their Kool-aide and use them as cutouts, assets, and Sayanims. In this manner, the Rothschilds hijacked Judaism.
Their financing of the Israeli Knesset and construction of it using Freemason occult architecture displayed their commitment to the occult and Babylonian Talmudism and all the evil accompanying it, including child sacrifice to their secret god Baal. They set up a NWO system called World Zionism which taught and inculcated susceptible Judaics with a paranoid group delusion of racial superiority, which assumed that all Gentiles were intent on mass-murdering all Judaics.
Freemasonry architecture was used in the building of the Knesset and the Israeli Supreme Court viewed through windows.[/caption]
They called this racially-paranoid mass Judaic delusion of world conquest, “World Zionism”, which is really a form of covert Babylonian Talmudism or Luciferianism that had been unknown to mainstream Judaics. The system was designed to use Judaics as cover, but also to anoint them with Babylonian money-power, in order to use them as cutouts, and to later be sacrificed to Lucifer in two stages.
The first stage would be their planned WWII in Nazi work camps, cut off from supplies, resulting in the deaths of about 200,000 Judaics from starvation and disease, along with about 90,000 non-Judaic inmates from the same causes, according to respected Red Cross official figures. This number is 5% of what the Khazarian Mafia (aka the World Zionists) claim.
The second great sacrifice would be a final one, when their New World Order Luciferian King would be placed into power, and when all three Abrahamic religions would be eradicated — especially Judaism, which would be blamed for all the wars and destruction of the world.
By then, the Rothschilds would once again morph themselves into a complete new identity not associated with Judaism in any form, not even World Zionism.
It is important to realize that the Rothschild KM took Germany down to nothing after WWI, created a vacuum for Fascism, and then rebuilt it, creating Naziism and installing Hitler as a counter-force to their Russian Bolshevism.
Hitler became a problem for the KM when he broke free and begin acting in the interests of the German people and the free people of the world, and developed his own banking system free of the Rothschilds.
Hitler introduced a financial system that was free of usury and beneficial to the working class. This mandated the utter destruction of Germany and the German people because the Rothschilds and the Khazarians could never allow an economic system that did not depend upon usury to exist.
We see the same thing today with the Khazarian war against Islam because Islam forbids usury. That is why Israel is so vocal and aggressive about destroying the Islamic people of the world.
The KM expected this to be a large WWII and when they supported both sides, this could be used to industrialize the whole world and maximize their bankster money-power.
The Rothschild KM then bribed and induced Members of Congress to send American Soldiers to their pre-stage and engineered WWI:
As a continuance of their well-proven pattern of financing both sides in any war to maximize profits, the acquisition of more federal tax monies and increased international power, the Rothschild Khazarians once again bribed, blackmailed and induced members of Congress to declare war against Germany in 1917.
This was facilitated by a KM false-flag attack with the sinking of the Lusitania.
The Rothschild KM has since developed the usual pattern of covertly staging false-flag attacks as a standard operating procedure for inducing Americans to fight wars for the Khazarian Mafia.
After WWII was finished, the Rothschild KM deployed the Cold War and used this as an excuse to bring Nazi scientists and mind-kontrol experts to America under Operation Paperclip.
This allowed them to set up a worldwide spying and espionage system that far exceeded any of their prior efforts.
Under this new system, they continue to infiltrate and hijack all American institutions, including the various American church systems, Freemasonry (especially the Scottish Rite and York Rite), the US military, US Intel, and most private defense contractors, the Judiciary and most agencies of the USG, including most State governments, and both major political parties as well.
The Rothschild KM sets up Nazi Work Camps as a pretext to later manipulate the Allies into granting them their own private colony in Palestine, using land stolen from the Palestinians:
The Rothschild KM was able to use their self mislabeled, so-called “holocaust” to serve as a mind-kontrol trigger to thwart and resist any criticism of their Zionist ways.
The truth of the matter was that the Rothschild KM set up the Nazi work camps to make huge profits for their corporations that ran their work camps and supplied their Nazi war machine.
يذهب الكثيرون بعيداً في تصنيف القوة الروسيّة الصاعدة بأنها حليف استراتيجيّ لمحور المقاومة ولديهم الكثير مما يخدم تصنيفهم هذا.
فيما يذهب آخرون وهم ليسوا قلة، بتصنيف الروس بأنهم بقايا سياسة قيصريّة تبحث عن مصالح تاريخيّة في منطقتنا من المياه الدافئة، الى مصادر الطاقة الواعدة، وهؤلاء أيضاً لديهم الكثير مما قد يؤكد تصنيفهم هذا.
غير أنّ الجغرافيا السياسية وموازين القوى المتحركة على أرضنا والتحوّلات الدولية المحيطة ببلادنا العربية والإسلامية والتحوّلات الروسية الداخلية ما بعد الحرب الباردة قد تعزز تصنيفاً آخر، فلنرَ ماذا تقول تلك الوقائع:
أولاً: إنّ صعود فلاديمير بوتين لسدة الحكم في موسكو على أنقاض البيروسترويكا والحرب الباردة جعل روسيا الحديثة تظهر بمثابة خليط من القيصرية والسوفياتيّة، ذلك انّ حاكم روسيا الجديد قام ببناء سياسته الخارجية الجديدة على 3 أركان هي:
1
ـ إحياء القومية الروسية.
2
ـ إحياء الكنيسة الأرثوذكسية.
3
ـ إحياء سياسة الاتحاد السوفياتيّ الخارجية تجاه الحلفاء التقليديين (أو ما يسمّونها في موسكو بمحاسن الاتحاد السوفياتي).
وقد شكلت هذه في ما بات يُعرَف بعقيدة بوتين.
ثانياً: برز نجم بوتين ودور روسيا الجديد بالترافق مع تحوّلات دوليّة مهمّة يمكن تلخيصها بأنها نهاية «حرب عالمية» ضدّ الإرهاب كان بطلها محور المقاومة بقيادة الجمهورية الإسلامية ما جعل الحاكم الروسي الجديد الباحث عن إحياء دور بلاده السوفياتية القديمة بحاجة ماسة ليكون المظلة الحامية لهذا النصر التاريخيّ حتى يتمكّن من اقتطاف كلّ ثمار النصر هذا لصالح بلاده مرة واحدة.
ثالثاً: ولأنّ زعيم روسيا القومية الصاعدة يعرف تماماً أنّ بلاده «القارية» في جغرافيّتها السياسية ستكون بحاجة للخروج إلى أعالي البحار إذا ما أرادت أن تلعب دور المنافس الجديد للقوى البحرية الكبرى، لذلك رأى انّ تحقيق حلم استعادة الدور الروسي العالمي يتطلب منه أن يحيي السلوك القيصري التاريخي في التعامل مع كلّ اللاعبين الصغار كما الكبار على حدّ سواء، المنتصرين منهم كما المهزومين في الحرب على الإرهاب.
وهنا تماماً يمكن فهم سلوك موسكو البراغماتي والنفعي المحض تجاه تركيا وأخيراً السعودية والإمارات وقطر، ما جعلها (أيّ موسكو) تظهر على غير توافق مع قوى محور المقاومة وأحياناً على تضادّ، ولو في الشكل.
رابعاً: ثمة عامل رابع شديد التعقيد يدخل في تحديد السياسة الروسية البوتينية إذا جاز التعبير وهو:
علاقة الروس باليهود تاريخياً وحاضراً والتي يمكن تلخيصها كما يلي:
١– كانت روسيا القيصريّة أول مَن شنّت الحملة المناهضة لليهود في ثمانينيات القرن التاسع عشر، فيما عرف بسياسة «البوغروم» باعتبارهم المافيا أو القوة الخفية المسيطرة على المال والاقتصاد الروسي والتي اعتبرت بمثابة التهديد للأمن القومي الروسي القيصري آنذاك.
٢– كانت روسيا أول دولة أو من بين أولى الدول التي اعترفت بالكيان الصهيوني بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية مباشرة.
٣– لدى روسيا نحو مليون ونصف مليون مواطن روسي داخل الكيان يحملون الجنسيّة المزدوجة، يقضي الدستور الروسي بواجب الدفاع عن أمنهم كمواطنين مثلهم مثل المواطنين داخل الاتحاد الروسي.
ولما كان الرئيس فلاديمير بوتين قومياً وقيصرياً في عقله الباطني السياسي، فهو مرة كان مضطراً لمهاجمة المافيا الماليّة اليهودية الموجودة في تلابيب الاتحاد الروسي وقمعها بشدّة وهو في حال صعود وتعزيز موقع قيادته الجديد تحت عنوان الدفاع عن أمن الدولة، فيما هو الآن مضطر كثيراً وكثيراً جداً، لمداراة من تبقى من هذه المافيا التي لا تزال متحكّمة في كثير من دوائر الاقتصاد والإعلام الروسيّين، من أجل توظيف ذلك في سياسته الخارجية التي باتت تتطلب كسب جميع من في الداخل ومن في الخارج من قوى مؤثرة، في إطار مواجهة سياسة الحصار والبطش الأميركي ضدّه.
عقيدة بوتين المشار إليها آنفاً ومجموعة العوامل المؤثرة التي لعبت دوراً في تسلّمه مقاليد الاتحاد الروسي أولاً ومن ثم الجغرافيا السياسية المتغيرة التي رفعته من مجرد حاكم روسيّ قويّ الى لاعب دولي كبير، هي التي تفسّر اليوم وجهَي التناقض في الظاهرة البوتينية تجاه بلادنا العربية والإسلامية، بين مَن يعتبره مقاولاً شريفاً مدافعاً عن حقوقنا في المعركة المناهضة للإرهاب وللامبريالية، وبين من يضعه في صف المقاول المتعارضة مصالحه مع سياساتنا المقاومة ضدّ الامبريالية والصهيونية.
خلاصة القول، فإنه وفي ظلّ التحوّلات الاقليمية والدولية المتسارعة فإنّ موسكو بقيادة بوتين قوة صديقة لنا بقدر ما نحن أقوياء وثابتون ونعرف ماذا نريد وقادرين على توظيف قوّتها باتجاه ما نريد، تماماً كما فعلت ايران وسورية حتى الآن.
وفي غير ذلك فقد لا نستطيع الاستفادة منها، بل وربما خسرانها، في حال فكرنا بطريقة المقاول بدلاً من المقاوم.
There are some incidents in life which a person would continue to review time and again, knowing pretty well that, it would be just a futile exercise from which he/she won’t really draw serious lessons (those who believe in learning from past deeds/misdeeds seldom forget the proverbial statement of Marx: ‘History repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce’). Similarly there are some historical events which intelligent people re-evaluate and reappraise repeatedly even after centuries – needless to say that, such reappraisals don’t stop the historical figures from different societies and different times from committing similar mistakes. Leaving aside the question of why and how political actors might indulge in erroneous reiteration of policy implementation, let me indulge in a simple exercise of re-evaluating – arguably the most prominent political leaders of inter-war Europe – Lenin and Stalin. Safeguarding the core interests of Russia during the world wars – I and II – was the greatest ‘sin’ of both Lenin and Stalin. Quite expectedly, the Zionist-Capitalist Deep State elites, who coordinated the 20th century ‘world order’, had been castigating Lenin and Stalin for all sufferings that the world has been infected with, since the beginning of 20th century.
As I said, some historical events remain ‘evergreen’ in terms of importance and impact – no other historical event in the past millennium was more intriguing and had more significance than WW-I and WW-II. And, Lenin and Stalin were the towering figures who influenced most decisively the outcome of WW-I and WW-II with respect to Russia. Having educated under Anglo-dominated education system, and spent working life under the influence of Zionist-Capitalist world order, I’m amply exposed to the 24×7 propaganda on so-called ‘cruelty’ and ‘sins’ of both Lenin and Stalin. Now in the diamond jubilee of Victory Day (Nazi Germany’s surrender to Soviet Union) it is time to explore the greatest ‘sins’ of the greatest ‘sinners’. Let history speak for itself.
This article will be primarily a mapping of political and economic event-vs.-timeline in the Eurasian landmass, with minimum commentary, as and when required, from my side. It would be better if history speaks for itself.
2. Soviet Russia at the End of WW-I
It is interesting to note that neither Russian empire nor German empire were adversary to each other to a very high degree of enmity. Actually both the Russian emperor and his cousin, the German emperor were reluctant antagonists in the WW-I, events of which from the very beginning (assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to Austro-Hungarian Empire on 29th June, 1914, when he and his wife were on official trip in Sarajevo, Serbia that came under Austro-Hungarian rule after centuries of Ottoman Turk rule) to the very end (abolition of four empires in Europe and Asia i.e. Russian empire in 1917, Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, German Empire in 1918, Ottoman Turk Empire in 1922) were manipulated and managed by the Zionist-Capitalist Deep State consisting of the ruling elites of British, French, American (USA) empires (representing the interests of wealthy class of bankers-industrialists-landed aristocrats and other elites having substantial wealth and power).
2.1 Objectives of WW-I:
Even if the belligerents Nicholas II and Wilhelm II didn’t suspect in 1913 that a war was brewing, Polish leader Joseph Pilsudeski (most dedicated Zionist imperialist leader in 20th century east Europe ) had prior knowledge of the war plans and how it would end! Viktor Chernov, one of the founders of the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party, wrote in his memoirs about a lecture by Josef Pilsudski, Polish leader delivered in Paris in early 1914. Chernov wrote:
“… Pilsudski confidently predicted the Balkans sparking an Austrian-Russian war in the near future … Pilsudski then set the question squarely: how would the war go down and who would triumph? His response reads as follows: Russia will be defeated by Austria and Germany who will in turn fall to the English and French (or English, Americans and French) …”
The WW-I primarily served three key purposes:
2.1.1 Due to the expansion of German empire in Africa as well as their world-wide business in the last quarter of 19th century, the Deep State of major colonial empires British and French increasingly came under the perception that German empire would very soon develop into a formidable competitor to their business of colonial empire across the world. WW-I wrecked the German empire as well as demolished the German economy to the extent that Germany couldn’t become a competitor to other European empires in the 20th century. Due to that, the British, French, Dutch, Belgium, USA colonial empires got a fresh lease of life.
2.1.2 In the European and Mediterranean geopolitical arena the longstanding empires like Russian, Ottoman Turk, and Austro-Hungarian Empires were obstinate in resisting the manipulations by Anglo and French rulers. The Anglo and French oligarchy found it very difficult to bring the entire European region under the influence of politics of liberal democracy whereby the elites of the society would create political parties, hold elections, and run government that will create a façade of people’s involvement in the governance (at the same time, however, everywhere in Europe the government, the central bank, and the economy would be owned and operated by the Deep State of major colonial empires). Due to destruction of 4 empires, the stage was set for the so-called transformation of most of the European societies to democracy
2.1.3 The Jewish and Anglo bankers and businessmen based in west European societies had been always in the forefront of the process of development of capitalism in Europe and the global colonies of European powers – starting from the ‘school’ of mercantile capitalism in 16th century, they ‘graduated’ from agrarian capitalism in 17th century, and in 18th century earned ‘master’s’ in industrial capitalism. The autocratic monarchy without democratic government proved to be impediment to the development and growth of capitalism in large part of Eurasia and east Europe. Destruction of four empires opened the floodgate of capitalistic development in those regions at the cost of common people who formed 90% of the population
2.2 Onset of WW-1:
After assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to Austro-Hungarian Empire on 29th June, 1914 in Sarajevo, Serbia Austro-Hungarian empire laid a claim on Serbia. Serbia resisted with backing from Russian empire. Germany and Austro-Hungarian unity was backed by historically German-speaking community in both Germany and Austria, while Orthodox Slavic culture was the bond between Russia and Serbia. If Austro-Hungarian and German leadership were confident that Russian empire would come forward to actively support Serbia in case of any conflict with Serbia, they would not have not crossed that line (since any attack on Russia would mean conflict with France, and any attack on France would mean conflict with Britain). Instead of peace-making efforts British and French diplomacy was busy adding fuel into the fire. British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey enticed Germany and Austro-Hungary at one side and Russia at the other side to declare war against each other, and then involved France and Britain in the war. Key events unfolded as below:
2.2.1 Instead of saying that Britain will support Russia, in July 1914 Grey told German ambassador that, Britain “cannot tolerate the destruction of France.” which meant that, in case of hot conflict between Germany and Russia, the British won’t come into picture unless France came under attack
2.2.2 Grey hosted Russian Ambassador Benckendorf after his meeting with the German ambassador, and expressed that Russia should come to Serbia’s defence when Austria attack Serbia
2.2.3 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov proposed that Russia, England and France collectively pressure Austria, and force Austro-Hungarian Empire into a political settlement of their claims against Serbia. Grey rejected the proposal because that would have killed the entire war plan
2.2.4 On 23rd July, the Austrian ambassador to Serbia presented the Serbs with the ultimatum; Serbian Prince Regent Alexander sent telegram to Russian Tsar Nicholas II seeking help
2.2.5 On 28th July 1914, Austrian guns opened fire on Serbian land on the pretext that couple of clauses of Austrian demand were not agreed by Serbia
2.2.6 On 29th July, the Grey met twice with the German ambassador Lichnowsky. In the words of Lichnowsky “Grey declared that, the British government wished to maintain its former friendship with us, and it would stay out of it, since the conflict was limited to Austria and Russia. If, however, we pulled France into it, then the situation would dramatically change and the British government would potentially be compelled to take immediate action.” British and French Deep State not only organized the First World War, they tried to adjust the situation so that the fighting broke out only between Austria, Germany and Russia. They themselves wanted to stay out of it. Only when Russia and Germany destroy one another, the French and British forces will join the fight to extend their empire! (The Zionist-Capitalist imperialist Deep State followed same simple logic to plan for WW-II.)
2.2.7 Assuming that France and Britain would not join the conflict, on 31st July 1914 Germany (siding with Austro-Hungarian empire) declared war against Russia
2.2.8 France and Russia were party to ‘alliance treaty’ by which France should have come forward in support of Russia against German aggression on 31st July itself – but keeping in line with Grey’s diplomacy, against German query dated 31st July 1914 of whether or not Paris would remain neutral, France pulled back military forces 10 kilometers from the border and told that the action was “proof of France’s peaceful intentions”
2.2.9 But the duplicity was evident next day when French Prime Minister Viviani announced the military mobilization on 1st August 1914
2.2.10 On 3rd August 1914, Germany was left with only one option – to declare war on France
2.2.11 Next day on 4th August 1914, Britain entered the war to help France and Belgium. Thus with an ulterior motive of complete destruction of Russia and Germany, British and French empires ensured that the Austro-Hungarian animosity towards Serbians (culminated through the murder conspiracy) would engulf all key powers of Europe and Eurasia in WW-I viz. Austro-Hungarian Empire, German Empire, Russian Empire, colonial empires of Britain and France.
2.2.11 At the onset of WW-I in 1914, Russian Empire consisted of the following regions/countries in European territory (naming convention as it exists now):
Russia
Ukraine except Western Galician region
Crimea
Belarus
North-Eastern Warsaw-Lublin region of Poland
Finland
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldova (and Transnistria region)
Eastern (Russian) Theatre of WW-I encompassed at its greatest extent the frontier between the Russian Empire and Romania on one side and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, German Empire, Bulgaria, and Ottoman Turk Empire on the other. It stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, involved Eastern Europe. Between August 1914 and the end of 1914, Russian empire was advancing against German and Austro-Hungarian forces, but 1915 onwards German and Austro-Hungarian forces were on the offensive (except Galician and Romanian regions where Brusilov Offensive worked in favour of Russian empire). German-Austrian advance was stopped at the end of 1915 on the line Riga–Dvinsk–Dünaburg–Baranovichi–Pinsk–Lutsk–Ternopil. That imply, the Russian Empire already lost by the beginning of 1916 the following regions/countries in European territory (naming convention as it exists now):
Lithuania
Large part of Ukraine
Large part of Belarus
Large part of Poland
2.3 March (February) Revolution in 1917:
The above mentioned front line did not change significantly until the abdication of Russian Tsar in March 1917 when ‘February Revolution’ was instigated by the following 3 political parties and Provisional Government was formed in Petrograd (Leningrad / St. Petersburg) by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma:
Constitutional Democratic Party (support base – professionals, academicians, lawyers)
Socialist Revolutionary Party (support base – peasantry, agrarian labour)
RSDLP-Menshevik faction (support base – industrial labour, intellectuals with moderate view)
Economy of Russian Empire bore the brunt of the mobilisation and losses in WW-I. Gross industrial production in 1917 decreased by around 36% of what it had been in 1914. Real wages (inflation adjusted) fell to about 50% compared to what they had been in 1913. Over and above that, to meet the war expenditures, Russian Tsarist government took debt of more than 50 billion roubles. In and around Petrograd, discontent with the monarchy erupted into mass protests mainly against food rationing on 23 February (8 March). Mass demonstrations, violent clashes with police and gendarmes, industrial strikes continued for days. On 27 February (12 March) mutinous Russian forces sided with revolutionaries – 3 days later on 15 March Tsar Nicholas II abdicated ending Romanov dynastic rule. In the new post-Tsarist era, State Duma was led first by Prince Georgy Lvov and then by Alexander Kerensky.
There are two groups of ‘nationalist’ intellectuals with leftist and rightist views in Russia and Europe who share, rather a delusional view of 1917 anti-monarchist revolution – they think that the Zionist anti-Orthodox and anti-Russian oligarchy and elites of Europe conspired with Bolshevik communists (popular feeling was all communists are atheist) to destroy the ‘Russian’ Tsar Empire and Orthodox Slavic society (fact of the matter was Romanovs were a German clan migrated from Prussian region). This group of intellectuals forget that (a) for at least two centuries Russian empire was one of the most unequal oppressive hierarchical feudal society, and people from industrial working class, peasantry, soldiers were spontaneously agitating for most basic of the rights – right for food, and (b) in March 1917, Bolshevik communists were completely outsmarted by the above mentioned three party combination, who ousted Tsar and his council of ministers to form Provisional Government – had the Provisional Government not messed up, Bolshevik party would have to wait few decades to come to power.
Historian Alexander Rabinowitch summarised the causes of February 1917 revolution: “The February 1917 revolution … grew out of pre-war political and economic instability, technological backwardness, and fundamental social divisions, coupled with gross mismanagement of the war effort, continuing military defeats, domestic economic dislocation, and outrageous scandals surrounding the monarchy”.
The Zionist-Capitalist imperialist Deep State, was pleased with the abdication by Tsar and the installation of the Provisional Government. They were very swift in recognising the government:
USA government recognition on 22 March 1917
UK, France, Italy government recognition on 24 March 1917
The haste with which the Zionist-Capitalist Deep State (the same elites who manipulated the events that led to entry of Germany and Russia in WW-I) welcomed the Provisional Government led by three anti-Bolshevik parties prove that, the Zionist-Capitalist elites were indeed anti-Tsar anti-Orthodox and anti-Russian, but they teamed up with anti-Bolshevik regime; and identifying Zionist-Capitalist elites with Bolsheviks would be no more than Orwellian truth.
Various estimates suggest Russian empire had around six million casualties (dead, missing, and wounded) during WW-I before January 1917. On the war front, by January 1917 everything was bleak – inadequate supply of arms-ammunition-food, incompetent officers, war-weariness among soldiers, mutinies among soldiers demanding end to war efforts, abnormally low level of morale among officers and soldiers, etc. And, on the home front burning issues like inflation, poverty, scarcity of food commodities, overstretched railway network, and millions of refugees from German-occupied Russia combined to bring a nightmare in Russian empire.
Initial composition of the Provisional Government formed mainly by three parties was led by Minister-President and Minister of the Interior Georgy Lvov. After July crisis, on 6th August 1917 the Second coalition cabinet was formed under the leadership of Alexander Kerensky (Minister-President and Minister of War and Navy). The Third Provisional government led by Minister-President Alexander Kerensky was formed on 8th October 1917. The Provisional Government was inherently weak and incompetent – even if they passed new laws and policies, implementation and enforcement of the same lacked ingenuity. The Provisional Government had internal contradictions on the issue of continuation of WW-I – Kerensky Offensive was launched with disastrous results. Opposition from common people to government policies and war efforts increased by the day.
On 14th March 1917 the Petrograd Soviet issued “Order No. 1,” which instructed the troops to disarm their officers. This was one of the significant instances where Provisional Government and Soviet both wanted to assert their power. To restore Army’s morale Kerensky launched an offensive (Kerensky Offensive) on 1st July which ended in a military catastrophe – morale of the Russian Army went down further. In September 1917 the then commander-in-chief of the Russian army, General Lavr Kornilov’s troops approached Petrograd, apparently to seize power in a military coup. Kerensky arrested them. The Kornilov affair remain unresolved till now. The exist a line of thought which suggest that Kornilov and Kerensky reached an agreement before the troop movement by which it was agreed that power would be shared by two of them; however in reality, Kerensky’s actions were betrayal of Kornilov. Whatever might the reality, relation between Provisional Government and Russian Army hit a new low.
2.4 November (October) Revolution in 1917:
While the country was rapidly sinking in chaos and disorder, the Bolshevik party under Lenin’s leadership quickly recovered the organisational ground lost to the Menshevik Party and Socialist Revolutionary Party in the beginning of 1917, by (a) positioning the Petrograd Soviet as a working committee which was more competent compared to the Provisional Government (indeed, Petrograd Soviet managed to take over the control of Petrograd, the most important trading and port city, gained control of the Imperial Army, and the Russian Railways beside their already existing control of local factories); (b) steadily weakening the three parties who were the backbone of the Provisional Government through pulling the left-minded members of those parties within the fold of Bolshevik party (within just 7 months, intellectual voices almost became non-existent in those three parties which outsmarted Bolshevik party in seizing state power; and, (c) creating the Red Guard units in March 1917 as paramilitary volunteer organizations (comprised mainly of factory workers, peasants, soldiers, sailors) for “protection of the soviet power”. They fought to protect and extend the power of the soviets (like Petrograd Soviet).
Continuous shortage of food, and other supplies created tremendous unrest – there were mass strikes by millions of workers in Petrograd, Moscow, Donbas, Urals, and Central Industrial Region during September and October 1917. The factory committees coordinated workers’ strike and negotiated better pay, working hours, and working conditions. During the same time, the peasant community lost faith that the land would be distributed to them by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries – peasant movements targeted against the landowners spread to 482 of 624 counties. Seizures of land as well as marches on landowner manors became common. Spectre of famine generated a tendency of storing grains rather than selling them in the market. Soldiers and sailors became unionised and they started ignoring the authority of the Provisional Government.
Families of soldiers would incite “subsistence riots”/ “hunger riots” during which rural citizens seized food and other supplies from shop owners, who they believed to be charging higher prices.
The Central Committee of Bolshevik party made the decision on 23rd October to seize power. Red Guards forces attached with Bolshevik party began to occupy the government buildings on 7th November, 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace was captured. The Military-Revolutionary Committee coordinated the Red Guards activities. On 8th November, 1917 the Second Congress of Soviets elected a new cabinet of Bolsheviks known as the Council (Soviet) of People’s Commissars, with Lenin as leader. The cabinet passed the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Landwhich were approved by the Second Congress of the Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.
Historical timeline shows that the first seizure of power in Tallinn by Soviet happened on 5th November 1917, next in Petrograd, Minsk, Novgorod, Ivanovo-Voznesenski and Tartu on 7th November 1917, next in Ufa, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, and Narva on 8th November 1917. Significant power seizures included Pskov, Moscow, and Baku on 15th November 1917, Sevastopol on 29th December 1917, Kiev and Vologda on 8th February 1918, and the last on 25th February 1918 in Novocherkassk.
The Constituent Assembly elections were held on 25th November 1917. On 18th January 1918 the Constituent Assembly had its first and only day in session. The Constituent Assembly rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land that prompted the Congress of Soviets to dissolve the Constituent Assembly.
Apart from the peace and land decrees, Soviet issued other decrees which clearly established their ideology as pro-poor as their party claimed:
Nationalization of private property
Nationalization of Russian banks
Expropriation of Church properties
Expropriation of private bank accounts
Repudiation of foreign debts
Higher rates of wages for workers
Introduction of eight-hour working in factories and other establishments
2.5 WW-I Peace Treaty in 1918:
There were three views prevalent in 1917 Russia:
Continue fighting in WW-I to defend liberty and “Russian honour” – Kerensky (initially the Minister of War, thereafter the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government) was a proponent of this opinion
Opinion called as “revolutionary defensism” suggested achieving peace without annexations and indemnities. Supporters of this view didn’t have much fervour for territorial gains or Pan-Slavic liberation, but if pushed to the wall they were not ready to formally accept defeat
Another view called “defeatism” was held by the Bolshevik Party leaders who proposed that WW-I was an ”imperialist war” where common people were being killed for the expansionist designs of empires – they also wished to achieve peace without annexations and indemnities, but if pushed to the wall they were ready to formally accept defeat
Lenin’s call for cessation of hostilities in WW-I was backed by hard realities of poverty among common Russians and shortage of supplies for Russian Army – Lenin was neither swayed by the aristocratic ‘glory and glamour’ of the Tsarist empire nor influenced by ritualistic ‘patriotism’ parroted by bourgeois and Menshevik socialist politicians. The Decree on Peace called “upon all the belligerent nations and their governments to start immediate negotiations for peace” – peace may be decorative item for oligarchy and aristocracy, but peace is an essential element of plebeian life. Lenin was particularly scathing in exposing the role WW-I played for Russian people’s suffering – food shortage, tax rise, rising cost of living, refugee crisis, etc.
Trotsky was appointed Commissar of Foreign Affairs in new Bolshevik government. Trotsky appointed Adolph Joffe to represent the Bolsheviks at the peace conference with the Central Powers. The key events were:
2.5.1 An armistice between Russia and the Central Powers (German empire, Austro-Hungarian empire, Bulgaria, and Ottoman empire) was concluded on 15th December 1917. A week later peace negotiations started in Brest-Litovsk
2.5.2 Kaiser Wilhelm II, Chief of Imperial German Army Paul Hindenburg, Army General Max Hoffmann, Army General Erich Ludendorff, Foreign Minister Richard Kuhlmann, these five high priests of German imperialism were the main actors on German side during negotiation. On the Russian side Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Stalin were main actors during negotiation.
2.5.3 Germany agreed to Russian demand of peace with “no annexations or indemnities”, but with proposition that Poland and Lithuania will be independent on the basis of ‘self-determination’ (obviously both the so-called independent state will align with German empire). One of the Russian negotiation team member, noted Marxist historian Mikhail Pokrovsky wept and asked how they could speak of “peace without annexations, when Germany was tearing eighteen provinces away from the Russian state”
2.5.4 On 1st January 1918, the Kaiser discussed with Hoffmann on future German-Polish border during which Hoffman suggested Germany should take a small slice of Poland. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were of different opinion who, being the winning side, wanted much more territorial acquisitions including Baltic countries. Ukrainian Rada declared independence from Russia, and demanded the Polish city of Cholm and its surroundings.
2.5.5 During 1st week of February 1918, a group of ‘Left’ Communists comprising of Nikolai Bukharin and Karl Radek wanted to continue the war with a newly-raised revolutionary force while awaiting for socialist revolution in Germany, Austria, and Turkey. Trotsky wanted to “announce the termination of the war and demobilization without signing any peace”. Lenin advocated for signing an early deal rather than having even more disastrous treaty after a few more weeks of military defeats.
2.5.6 Peace negotiation started on 10th February 1918 and Trotsky proposed the German side his concept of ‘no war and no peace’, and abstained from drawing any conclusion
2.5.7 German General Hoffmann notified Russian team on 16th February 1918 that German Army would resume their attack on Russia because peace treaty was not signed. On 18th February 1918 Lenin’s resolution that Russia sign the treaty was supported by Central Committee. Lenin convinced the majority of Bolshevik party leadership (most of whom, as a first choice, wanted a new war to be waged against imperialist Central Powers) that a peace treaty with the Central Powers is a must for the new Bolshevik revolution to sustain in the long run – historical facts show, extremely unfavourable environment at that point of time in Russia because (a) Food shortage was rampant which created large scale civil unrest, (b) Tsarist Army was in complete disorder while Red Army was being built from scratch, and (c) lack of strength of German socialist party to compel their government to cease offensive (as part of WW-I) on Russian front
2.5.8 Germany launched Operation Faustschlag on 18th February 1918. General Hoffmann advanced further into Russian territory till 22nd February 1918, and on 23rd February 1918 he tabled new terms for peace treaty that included withdrawal of all Russian troops from Finland and Ukraine
2.5.9 Trotsky resigned as foreign minister. Sokolnikov arrived at Brest-Litovsk to represent Soviet Russian Bolshevik government, and the peace treaty (called as Treaty of Brest-Litovsk) was signed on 3rd March 1918
2.5.10 With this treaty, Russia had to renounce all territorial claims in
Finland
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Ukraine
Crimea
Belarus
Bessarabia
Russian part of Poland (was under possession of White Army);
Russia was also fined 300 million gold marks. Consequently, Russia lost one-third of its population, half of its industrial land, one-fourth of its railway, three-quarters of iron ore, and nine-tenth of its coalfields as German side insisted that Russia has to cede more than 150,000 sq. km. of territories.
2.5.11 This treaty was annulled by the Armistice of 11th November 1918 when Germany surrendered to the Entente Powers (excluding Russia). The Bolshevik legislature (VTsIK) annulled the treaty on 13th November 1918
2.6 Russian Civil War and Formation of Soviet Union:
Anti-Bolshevik groups landowners, bankers, middle-class citizens, monarchists, army senior officers, and politicians like liberals-conservatives-democrats as well as non-Bolshevik socialists aligned against the Bolshevik Communist government. The anti-Bolshevik groups were collectively known as ‘White Army’ who controlled significant parts of the former Russian Empire between 1918 and 1920.
In January 1918 Trotsky headed the reorganization of the existing Red Guards into a Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in order to create a more efficient military force. In June 1918 Trotsky instituted mandatory conscription of the peasantry into the Red Army, and inducted former Tsarist Army officers as “specialists”. By 1922, more than one-third of all Red Army officers were ex-Tsarist Army officers. To prevent sabotage, the orders of ex-Tsarist Army officers were subject to approval by Bolshevik political commissars assigned to the unit. At the height of the Civil War the Red Army numbered almost five million men. Trotsky was the overall Commander and the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Council.
The Civil War in the military sense was fought on several fronts. The key events during the civil war between the ‘White Army’ and ‘Red Army’ were:
2.6.1 Czechoslovak Legion (by end of 1917, the Legion had more than 60,000 soldiers) was granted permission to evict from Ukraine in February 1918 by the Bolshevik government – since most of Russia’s main ports were blockaded, the Legion would travel from Ukraine to port of Vladivostok, where the men would embark on ocean-going vessels. The slow evacuation by Trans-Siberian Railway was aggravated by shortage of transport vehicles. On 14th May 1918 at Chelyabinsk Legion forces attacked POW and revolted against Bolshevik authorities. The Red Army lost control over Volga, Ural, and Siberia regions along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Czechoslovak Legion occupied more cities in along the Railway route, including Nizhneudinsk, Kurgan, Novonikolaevsk, Mariinsk, Kansk, Samara, Kuznetsk, Irkutsk, and Chita. With Bolshevik forces on retreat, the White Army occupied Petropavl, Omsk, and Syzran, and advanced towards Saratov and Kazan. By 1919 relation between the Legion forces and White Army deteriorated sharply. Between December 1919 and September 1920, the Legion evacuated by sea from Vladivostok.
2.6.2 Western Siberia was the theatre for another White Army – Admiral Kolchak assumed command of this army in November 1918. During the summer and fall of 1919 Kolchak launched successful offensives against Red Army. In the spring of 1919 while approaching the shores of the Volga he was stopped and defeated by the Red Army. He was captured and shot without a trial, and his army disintegrated quickly.
2.6.3 Eastern Siberia Japanese forces entered through Vladivostok in August 1918 strength of which later increased to 70,000 troops. The Japanese were joined by British, USA, Canadian, French, and Italian troops. On 5 September 1918, the Japanese forces linked up with the vanguard of the Czechoslovak Legion. The Japanese forces ventured up to the west of Lake Baikal. By November, they occupied all ports and towns in Siberia east of Chita and the maritime provinces. The British, French, and Italian contingents marched westward to support Kolchak’s White Army.
2.6.4 Southern Russia & Ukraine had Volunteer Army organized among the Cossacks by General Alekseyev and General Kornilov in the winter of 1917-18. General Anton Denikin took over after death of Alekseyev and Kornilov. To extend material support to the White Army the French Army occupied Odessa and Sevastopol on 18th December 1918, a month after the WW-I armistice. In October 1919, Denikin’s Army, augmented by French and British aid and supplies, reached Orel about 250 kilometres south of Moscow. The Red Army crushed Denikin’s Army in the subsequent battles waged in October and November 1919. In the Crimean peninsula General Wrangel reorganized his army and held on for a while, from where it was dislodged on 14th November 1920 when General Wrangel fled Russia.
2.6.5 Caucasus also had its own share of civil war. In 1917, Allied military troops from British forces (and its colonies – Australia and Canada) deployed across Qajar Persia to seize Baku oil fields. The force fought the Red Army at Enzeli, then proceeded by ship to the port of Baku on the Caspian Sea. Ottoman forces clashed with Allied forces in September 1918. After the Ottoman Empire withdrew its forces from the borders of Azerbaijan in the middle of November 1918, fresh British troops arrived in Baku on 17 November.
2.6.6 North Russia was the most intensely battled region (apart from Baltic). To counter German troops that landed in Finland in April 1918 (who could capture Murmansk–Petrograd railway, ice-free port of Murmansk, and city of Arkhangelsk including supply warehouses) and to actively participate in anti-Bolshevik struggle of the White Army, the Allied block sent a huge force to north Russia. The military force comprising of army and navy of Zionist-Capitalist powers (UK and colonies, USA, France, and Italy) led by a British officer Lt. General Poole, launched anti-Bolshevik operation in late May-June 1918 in Arkhangelsk. On 2nd August 1918 Tsarist Russian officer staged a coup under tutelage of General Poole against the local Bolshevik government, and seized power.
In September 1918, the Allied Powers captured Obozerskaya. Their invasion followed the routes of both banks of the Northern Dvina river in the east, Vaga river and Onega river in the west, and Arkhangelsk Railway. Fighting was heavy – after initial gain by Allied forces, Red Army fought back. By next four months the Allied Powers’ gains shrunk to only around 50 km along the Northern Dvina and Lake Onega Area. USA forces fought their last major battle at Bolshie Ozerki from 31st March till 4th April 1919. From April 1919, the inability to defend the flanks and mutinies in the White Army caused the Allied Powers to decide complete withdrawal. On 27th September 1919, the last Allied troops departed from Archangelsk. Murmansk was abandoned on 12th October 1919.
Estonian Commander Laidoner rescinded his command over the White Russians on 19th June 1919, and they were renamed the Northwestern Army under the command of General Yudenich. The Northwestern Army on 9th October 2019 launched Operation White Sword to capture Petrograd with arms-ammunition provided by Britain and France. With the help of Estonian Army, Estonian Navy, and British Royal Navy Yudenich’s troops approached to within 16 km of Petrograd. The Red Army repulsed them back to the Narva River, and launched a counter-offensive in December 1919. Defeated and disorganised, some White Army soldiers retreated beyond Estonian state border and the remnants of the Army were evacuated from Arkhangelsk in February 1920. The Bolsheviks took Arkhangelsk on 20th February 1920 and Murmansk on 13th March 1920.
2.6.7 Baltic campaign of British military (Operation Red Trek) was the biggest naval intervention starting from November 1918 in Russia by the imperialist powers especially UK. British Royal Navy ships supported the Estonian and Latvian anti-Bolshevik troops by bombarding the Red Army positions on land. British military provided military supplies to the anti-Bolshevik troops and denied the Bolsheviks the ability to move by sea. The Russian Baltic Fleet, though severely depleted after WW-I, was still relevant to the Red Army for protection of Petrograd. The Estonian High Command pushed across the border into Russia and initiated an offensive Narva – the attack was supported by British Navy and Estonian Navy. The Estonian Pskov offensive commenced at the same time on 13th May 1919 and captured Petseri town by 25th May to clear the land between Estonia and Velikaya River (to facilitate northern White Army movements). In the summer of 1919, the Royal Navy boxed up the Red fleet in Kronstadt. In the autumn of 1919, British forces provided gunfire support to General Yudenich’s White Army which launched a failed offensive against Bolshevik-held Petrograd. On 2nd February 1920, Soviet Russia signed the peace treaty recognising Estonian independence – this resulted in withdrawal of British Navy from Baltic.
In November 1918 Latvia proclaimed independence, but Red Army launches its assault on the pro-White Latvian troops on 1st December 1918 and moved forward to control most of the territory by February 1919. German and Latvian forces launch counterattack on Red Army on 3rd March 1919. Pro-German nobility formed army and tried to establish their authority before ceasefire on 3rd July. The anti-Bolshevik West Russian Volunteer Army attacked Riga on 8th October, but was defeated after five weeks of fighting. The joint forces of Poland and Latvia launched an attack on the Bolsheviks in Latgale and took Daugavpils. Latvia signed cease-fire on 1st February 1920 with Soviet Russia, and on 15th July 1920 with Germany.
2.6.8 When it became evident that the Red Army and the Bolshevik government has effectively organised themselves across Soviet Russia to crush all resistances by different White Army as well as foreign forces, all Allied forces were evacuated by 1920, apart from the Japanese forces who stayed until 1922. Estimates of the casualties of the Civil War, most of them civilian victims range from a minimum of 10 million to 25 million
2.6.9 By 1921 the Red Army reoccupied all those regions that were part of the defunct Russian Empire except Poland (Poland also seized western part of Ukraine and western part of Byelorussia), and Baltic region (Lithuania-Latvia-Estonia-Finland). On 29th December 1922 a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Trans-Caucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). These two documents were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR. The first USSR constitution was formally adopted in January 1924.
The most agonising irony of this historical period was that, White Army was seeking support (in the name of Tsar) from same imperialists who completely destroyed Tsarist empire just 3 years back. The-then zionist-capitalist Deep State in UK-France-USA-Japan-Italy withdrew all support and threw the Russian White Army contingents into bottomless pit when they found Soviet Russia had built a strong new army – the Red Army.
There exists a view shared by so-called “nationalist” and “patriotic” leaders of past and present Russia – had Bolshevik party led by Lenin not interfered with Russia’s involvement in WW-I to sign a peace treaty with Germany (and its allies), Russia would have been in the ‘winning team’ of the Entente Powers and would have got a share of the booty flowing out of the Versailles Treaty signed just 8 months later. This view is untenable when scrutinised deeply. Had Russia been active on the WW-I war front even after February 1918, they could have lost even more territory that could include Russia proper. By 1916, Russian Army was not only hopelessly short of food, clothing, ammunitions, and other logistics in the war front, but Russian Army morale was, to a large extent, shattered; moreover Red Army was not yet in complete shape. Strategically, Lenin proved to be far-sighted – he could sense that, with USA officially entering the WW-I on 6th April 1917, Entente Powers would win against Central Powers, and those Zionist-Capitalist powers would directly control the vast east European territories (earlier part of Tsar Russia, but lost to Germany during WW-I). Lenin assessed that concluding a peace treaty with Germany in February 1918, while control of at least Russia proper was still with Bolshevik party, was administratively better than, simultaneously facing onslaught of German Army (in absence of a peace treaty) plus assault of White Army buttressed by active support from anti-communist governments of about 15 countries that included significant imperialist power like:
UK, Australia, Canada
France
Italy
Japan
USA
Romania etc.
History proved Lenin’s sagacity – after the conspiracy by British diplomat Bruce Lockhart to sabotage the Bolshevik government in 1918 got exposed, from 1918 till 1921 the Zionist-Capitalist hyenas were out to dismember Russia proper in dozens of pieces using the White Army generals Yudenich, Kolchak, Denikin, and few others, but with German Army neutralized along most of the front, the Red Army valiantly fought against them for unification of Soviet Russia.
2.7 Who Ultimately Won WW-I?
Genoa Economic and Financial Conference was held in Genoa, Italy from 10th April to 19th May 1922, as planned by British PM David Lloyd George. Primarily the objective was how the European countries can deal with the pariah states of Germany and Russia to resolve the major economic issues.
The Zionist-Capitalist Deep State comprising of more than 30 countries including the imperialist powers UK, France claimed that Soviet Russian (Bolshevik) government need to pay them (a) pre-WW-I debts plus interests, (b) war time debts plus interests, (c) all assets provided to the White Army plus interests, (d) cost of all enterprises, which had been owned by foreign citizens. Total claim was worth 18 billion golden roubles. The expectations were that the Bolshevik government would surrender Soviet Russian economy and become a kind of colony of UK-France-Italy.
Lenin’s government submitted a counterclaim 30 billion golden roubles that would pay for the losses due to foreign intervention and the blockade during the civil war. While the imperialist Deep State delegates were busy discussing the unbelievable ‘audacity’ of the Soviet government, the Soviet Russian delegates concluded a pioneering agreement with Germany on 16th April 1922 in Rapallo, the Genoa suburb. Both sides accepted the nullification of Brest-Litovsk Treaty, mutually gave up their territorial and financial claims (like reimbursement of military expenses and civilian losses), Germany acknowledged nationalization of (German state and private) property in Soviet Russia. West European delegations came to know about this Agreement only after it had been signed previous night.
Soviet Russian delegates offered the Zionist-Capitalist Deep State a softer version of Soviet claim – Soviet government would acknowledge pre-war debts of Russia and would provide former owners the right to lease their ex-property or to take it on concession; in lieu of that UK-France-Italy were to acknowledge the Soviet government and provide it with financial support, forgive war debts and interests, acknowledged nationalization of enterprises. The Soviet delegation stuck to their stand during the Hague conference in June, 1922. The objective of the conferences, obviously, were not achieved (by the-then Deep State).
At every step of statecraft – economic, political, diplomatic, and military – Lenin outmanoeuvred the zionist-capitalist oligarchy based in imperialist Anglo and French countries. Their revulsion about Lenin was so complete that they refused to recognise USSR while Lenin was alive! Only after his death on 21st January 1924, USSR was recognised by European and American imperialist powers – UK on 2nd February 1924, France on 28th October 1924, Italy on 7th February 1924, and USA on 16th November 1933.
Soviet Union was constructed on the same map where Tsarist Russian Empire once existed, albeit with smaller footprint. Led by Lenin, the new country set out on the journey of a social development free from ALL sorts of exploitation unheard of in the entire human history. Soon Russia and its imperial adversary Germany patched up in order to tackle their own financial and economic problems. In the final assessment, one can conclude that it was Lenin’s Soviet Union which won the WW-I by not allowing the Zionist-Capitalist Deep State to ruin the Eurasian landmass. And, that fact didn’t go down well with the Zionist-Capitalist oligarchy of imperialists like UK-France-Italy-Japan-USA, who again started next round of conspiracy to draw Soviet Union and Germany into yet another devastating war.
3. Soviet Union and Germany during WW-II
No sooner had the news spread about signing of the Treaty of Rapallo on 16th April 1922 night than the Zionist-Capitalist powers started their plan for another round of conflict between Russia and Germany in order to ruin both. In the 1920s neither Russia nor Germany remained empires ruled by aristocracy, but WW-II remained same old story just like WW-I – a web of deception and conspiracy pieced together by Zionist-Capitalist elites.
3.1 Objectives of WW-II:
In the section 6. ‘Geopolitics 1930 onwards’ of my earlier article ‘Bridging China’s Past with Humanity’s Future – Part 2, I recapitulated on the objectives of Zionist-Capitalist Deep State related to WW-II.
I would like to quote it here, since it is pertinent:
“ With the setting up of Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Switzerland in 1930, the disputes and tussle among the most prominent Jewish and Anglo banker families (like Rothschild, Rockefeller, Morgan, Warburg, Lazard, et al.) over type of business, geographical region of influence, and share of banking sector operations got resolved. The Zionist-Capitalist elites were fully united in words and deeds notwithstanding the occasional rivalry and difference of opinion between followers of two camps: Rothschild and Rockefeller. The long-term objective of the Zionist-Capitalist Deep State clique (representing primarily the Jewish, Anglo, Dutch, French, German oligarch and aristocrat families who had accumulated wealth and have been engaged in business in banking-land-industry-trading) after WW-I has been to establish a hegemonic world order which would:
own ‘political process and power’ in every society/country on the earth
own ‘economic process and wealth’ in every landmass/country/ocean on the earth
control ‘socio-cultural process and population’ in every region/country on the earth
I find it difficult to consider that, ‘winning’ political power anywhere in the world, has ever been an objective of the Deep State – they want to ‘own’ the process through which any political party may be made to ‘win’ or ‘loose’ power depending on short-term and long-term interest of the Deep State.
The Zionist-Capitalist Deep State crystallized in its existing form when WW-II started in 1936 (with signing of anti-communist pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan). Expectations of the Zionist-Capitalist Deep State were destruction of powerful societies (non- Anglo/Jewish/Dutch/French) who had potential to develop advanced economy, and expansion of Zionist-Capitalist empire:
combatants Fascist Germany and Communist Soviet Union decimating each other’s (i) military forces, (ii) physical infrastructure, and (iii) population across entire Eurasia;
combatants Fascist Japan and Nationalist China decimating each other’s (i) military forces, (ii) physical infrastructure, and (iii) population across entire East Asia;
stages (a) and (b) would be followed by occupation of whole Europe and Asia by the ‘benevolent’ Anglo-American military who would claim that they have ‘liberated’ these ancient civilizations from the ‘authoritarian dictatorships’ of fascism and communism;
stage (c) would be followed by establishment of ‘liberal democratic capitalism’ version of empire (as against ‘colonial extractive capitalism’ version) in whole Europe and Asia to continue plunder of wealth in maximum possible way;
Unfortunately half of the objectives remained unfulfilled in the WW-II that was over by 1945 – because of two political parties: Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU) and Communist Party of China (CPC) whose top leadership mobilised their countrymen in collective patriotic spirit, Soviet Union and China didn’t capitulate but their direct adversaries (Germany and Japan) were trounced. “
3.2 Prelude to WW-II:
Treaty of Versailles to end WW-I was signed on 28th June 1919 in Versailles exactly 5 years after assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, with stringent conditions that impacted Germany’s economy. Harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles created a kind resentment among the Germans as well as other peace-loving Europeans, for they anticipated a violent reaction in future from the German population against such humiliating treaty.
3.2.1 Conditions of Treaty of Versailles
Territorial implications – Germany was stripped of 65,000 sq. km. of territory and 7 million people. Germany had to give up all direct territorial gains and protectorates via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Germany would recognize Belgian sovereignty over Moresnet and Eupen-Malmedy. Germany was to cede the control of Saar to League of Nations for 15 years, after which a plebiscite would decide sovereignty. France would control Alsace-Lorraine. A plebiscite would decide sovereignty of Schleswig-Holstein. Germany would recognize the independence of Czechoslovakia including some parts of Upper Silesia. Germany would recognize the independence of Poland including some portions of Upper Silesia, East Prussian Soldau area, Posen, and eastern Pomerania. Sovereignty of Southern East Prussia would be decided via plebiscite. Thus Poland got about 51,000 sq. km. area at the expense of Germany. Germany would cede Danzig and its hinterland for the League of Nations to establish the Free City of Danzig.
German colonies in Africa were converted into League of Nations mandates. Togoland and Cameroon were transferred to France. Ruanda and Burundi were transferred to Belgium. Britain got German East Africa, and (UK’s colony) South Africa got German South-West Africa. Kionga Triangle in northern Mozambique was allocated to Portugal. German Samoa was allocated to New Zealand, while German occupied islands in the Pacific Ocean south of equator were allocated to Australia. German concessions in Shandong, China was transferred to Japan who also got German occupied islands in the Pacific north of equator.
Trading of military machinery – Germany was prohibited from the manufacture or stockpile of armoured cars, battle tanks, military aircrafts, naval vessels, chemical weapon etc. Limits were imposed on the type and quantity of weapons and arms trading.
Reparation implications – An Allied “Reparation Commission” would be established to determine the amount which Germany would pay – it would submit its conclusions by 1st May 1921 after hearing the German Government’s stand. Interim reparation fixed at 20 billion gold marks ($5 billion) in gold, commodities, ships, securities, and other assets.
On 24th April 1921 German Government wrote to USA Government expressing readiness to accept total liability of 50 billion gold marks as reparation. The London Schedule of Payments of 5th May 1921 established final reparation sum of 132 billion gold marks to be paid by all Central Powers combined. The Commission, however, recognized that the Central Powers were not in a position to pay except Germany. Reparation amount was divided into three series of bonds: “A”, “B”, and “C” Bonds. “A” and “B” together had a nominal valuation of 50 billion gold marks (US$12.5 billion) which must be paid by Germany (out of which 9 billion gold marks payments were made between 1919 and May 1921). Reparation against “C” Bonds (82 billion gold marks) may/may not be required to be paid depending on Allied Powers decision in future.
The USA provided UK and France with loans amounting to USD 8.8 billon, when it formally entered WW-I. The total sum of war debt owed to the USA was USD 11 billion (including the loan given between 1919 and 1921) – essentially the UK and France governments wanted Germany to pay the reparations equivalent to their total loans accumulated during the course of WW-I.
3.2.2 Implementation of Reparation Payments
The flight of German capital abroad as a result of reparation payments and lower tax collection resulted in massive state deficit. To overcome that German government printed and dumped German marks without backing of gold/silver/forex. As a result, 1922 to 1924 German currency collapsed on hyperinflation (in 1923, inflation rate reached 578512%, 1 USD was worth 4.2 trillion Deutsch marks). Germany was unable to pay reparations.
During March to December 1923, Dawes Plan was formulated for which John Foster Dulles (legal advisor to USA President Woodrow Wilson), Montague Norman (Head of Bank of England), Charles G. Dawes (Director of one of J.P. Morgan banks), collaborated with Hjalmar Schacht (Dresdner Bank official). Dawes Plan transformed the existing Reichsbank as an institution independent of the Reich government (at least 50% of ruling body non-German) with Schacht as the director of Reichbank. Dawes Plan also introduced Reichsmark on 30th August 1924 replacing the old German mark and the hyperinflation was brought under control. In April 1924 the Dawes Plan formally replaced the “C” Bonds (82 billion gold marks) omitted. In 1st year following the implementation of new plan, Germany would have to pay 1 billion marks. Increasing gradually that figure would become 2.5 billion marks per year by 5th year of the plan. A Reparations Agency was established to coordinate the payments. A loan of 800 million marks would be arranged to back the German currency and economy – over 50% from USA based banks, 25% from UK based banks, and the balance from other European countries.
On 16th September 1928, a joint Allied-German statement was published acknowledging the necessity of a new reparation plan. The Young Plan (formulated by Owen D Young, American industrialist and trustee of Rockefeller Foundation) presented in June 1929 established the final reparation requirements at 112 billion gold marks (US$26.35 billion) with a new schedule of payments that would see final instalment of payment by 1988. In addition, Young Plan shifted the responsibility of coordination of reparation payments to Bank for International Settlements (which was established to coordinate among central banks and to receive and disburse reparation payments). A new loan of 1200 million marks would be raised by USA, UK, France and other European banks to back the German currency and economy.
With the financial crisis in German economy in 1931, USA President Herbert Hoover publicly proposed in June 1931 a one-year moratorium to reparation and war debts. Reparations were suspended for a year. On 16 June 1932 the Lausanne Conference opened, which annulled the Young Plan and instead required Germany to pay a final, single instalment of 3 billion marks. Thus Between 1919 and 1932, Germany paid less than 21 billion marks in reparations.
The relationship between Nazi government and the Zionist-Capitalist Deep State was so good that Reichsbank head Schacht travelled to the U.S. in May 1933 to meet major Wall Street bankers. As a result, USA-based banks provided Germany with new loans totalling USD 1 billion.After that, in 1933 new German Chancellor Adolf Hitler cancelled all payments, but neither Britain nor France forced German government to pay up. In June 1953, London Agreement on German External Debts resulted in agreement to pay 50% of the loan amounts that had been defaulted on in the 1920s and 1930s, but deferred some of the debt until German unification. In 1995, following reunification, Germany began making the final payments towards the loans. A final instalment of US$94 million was made on 3 October 2010, settling German loan debts in regard to WW-I reparations.
It will not be out of place to recall the views on ‘burden of WW-I reparation on Germany’ from three outstanding historians: AJP Taylor in his The Origins of the Second World War stated that in 1919 “many people believed that the payment of reparations would reduce Germany to a state of Asiatic poverty”, and that Keynes “held this view, as did all Germans; and probably many Frenchmen”. However, he also says these “apprehensions of Keynes and the Germans were grotesquely exaggerated”; Hans Mommsen & Elborg Foster wrote in their book The Rise and Fall of Weimar Democracy,“Germany financed its reparation payments to Western creditor nations with American loans”, which the British and French powers then used to “cover their long-term interest obligations and to retire their wartime debts with the United States”. Apparently what the authors wanted to convey between the lines was: as a direct fallout of the Treaty of Versailles, the Zionist-Capitalist banking elites of USA, UK, France and other European countries established total control in 1920s over Germany’s economy including monetary system through loans, and forced equity purchase as reparations.
3.2.3 Zionist-Capitalist Involvement in Economy of Germany
With the support of large bank loans from New York and London economic prosperity returned during 1924 to 1929 period. During this period exports doubled, and by 1929 GDP per capita was about 12 per cent higher than in 1913. However, even before the financial crisis of 1931, unemployment was more than 2 million by the end of 1928.
Germany made payments for both reparations and loans with shares of German companies – that allowed USA-based and UK-based capital to integrate itself into the German economy. The total foreign investment in German industry during 1924 to 1929 period amounted to nearly 63 billion gold marks – repay of loans accounted for 30 billion gold marks, and reparations accounted for 10 billion gold marks. JP Morgan provided majority of the investments. By 1930, German industry (majority owned by USA’s financial and industrial oligarchy) was second ranking in the world:
German military industry company IG Farben was under control of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil
German radio and electrical industry companies AEG and Siemens had General Electric as large investor around 30% stake, JP Morgan controlled General Electric
40% of Germany’s telephone network was controlled by ITT, JP Morgan controlled ITT
30% of Germany’s aircraft manufacturer Focke-Wulf was controlled by JP Morgan
Germany’s automotive industry company Volkswagen was owned 100% by Henry Ford, while Opel was taken over by the DuPont family’s General Motors.
In Germany metallurgical monopoly was established by Rockefeller bank, Dillon Reed and Co in 1926 – Vereinigte Stahlwerke (Unified Steel Trust) of Thyssen, Flick, Wolf etc.
By 1933, USA capital entered major banks like Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank etc.; in 1936 New York branch of Schroeder’s bank merged with a Rockefeller holding to create investment bank Schroeder, Rockefeller & Co.
After Hitler seized power as the Chancellor, 1933 onwards, the economy continued to develop. Like the previous government, Hitler also viewed foreign credit as source of financing his four-year plans. Government mixed pro-people measures (as subsidies) with corporatocracy. UK and Germany signed the Anglo-German Transfer Agreement in 1934 which enabled Germany to become UK’s primary trading partner. Nazi party allotted maximum predominance to Germany’s military industry. During the WW-II German economy was buttressed exploitation of conquered territories and society. Real GDP grew by more than 50% between 1933 and 1937. Spending on military machinery between 1933 and 1939 increased tenfold (from 1.9 billion to 18.41 billion marks) and, growth as a percentage of the annual budget from 24% to 58%. Industrial production increased substantially until 1945 (due to production of military armament) when WW-II ended.
Rockefeller oil giant Standard Oil constructed large oil refineries in Germany that supplied the Nazi war machinery with oil. For the military and aerospace sector also American MNCs like Douglas, Pratt and Whitney tied up with German companies to build aeroplane factories. By 1941, when the WW-II was in full-swing, direct USA investment in the German economy crossed more than USD 0.5 billion (Standard Oil – USD 120 million, General Motors – USD 35 million, ITT – USD 30 million).
3.2.4 Zionist-Capitalist Involvement in Politics of Germany
Weimar Constitution stipulated that Reichstag elections would be held every two years. Such impractical postulation resulted in 9 Reichstag elections over the course of 14 years (1919-1933) and 14 different persons served as chancellor. As a result of the absurdity when Hitler appeared and Nazi party renounced the ‘circus show’ general population welcomed them enthusiastically. The significant points about the rise of Nazi party and Hitler are noted below:
NSDAP (Nazi party) was based on racist imperialist anti-communist philosophy from its birth. Adolf Hitler announced Nazi party’s program on 24th February 1920 which included clause like:
We demand the union of all Germans in a Great Germany on the basis of the principle of self-determination of all peoples
We demand that the German people have rights equal to those of other nations; and that the Peace Treaties of Versailles and St. Germaine shall be abrogated
We demand land and territory (colonies) for the maintenance of our people and the settlement of our surplus population (i.e. Lebensraum – living space)
Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of creed, can be our countrymen. Hence no Jew can be countryman
Etc.
On behalf of USA secret services, US Military Attaché in Germany Captain Truman-Smith explored potential recruits among German politicians who would work to further the interests of Zionist-Capitalist Deep State – retired General Ludendorff, Crown Prince Ruprecht, and Adolf Hitler. On 20th November 1922, the captain met with the future Fuhrer in his apartment. Hitler was quite candid with the American. After returning from Berlin, Truman-Smith submitted a report, which the embassy sent to Washington on 25th November 1922. Hitler, the Nazi leader invited Truman-Smith, the USA diplomat to his next rally. Instead of going there, Truman-Smith sent his friend (another secret service officer) Ernst Hanfstaengl. Ernst Hanfstaengl had dual German-USA citizenship (born in Bavaria, Germany and graduated from Harvard University along with FD Roosevelt as his classmate-cum-friend in 1909). Two meters tall Ernst was called as “Putzi” by Nazis. Ernst Hanfstaengl Putzi was truly the friend-philosopher-guide for Hitler, he was the puppet master behind the scene:
Hanfstaengl, introduced Hitler, the rustic corporal to Munich’s elite society, taught Hitler the manners prevalent in high society and gave Hitler respectability. Putzi’s family did the most important task of image-making for Hitler.
The Hanfstaengl family was rich. In March 1923, Hanfstaengl gave Hitler a loan of USD 1,000, which was a huge amount those days.
In his memoirs, Hanfstaengl states the ideas he embedded into Hitler’s mind: “If there’s another war, whoever has America on their side will win. The only sensible policy that you should follow is friendship with the United States. If they Americans end up on your enemy’s side, you will lose any war…”. During 1923, Hanfstaengl held a series of geopolitical discussions with Hitler to shape his ideas in detail and expanding his horizons – “In many ways, Hitler was still malleable and obedient,” Hanfstaengl wrote. In 1924, “the obedient student” wrote his own book, repeating the thesis of his friend, the USA secret service agent.
Hitler was a gifted orator. Ernst Hanfstaengl added confidence and enhanced effectiveness of Hitler’s communication skills.
Responding to Hitler question: “how can I get through to the German people, without the press? The newspapers totally ignore me. How can build on my success as an orator with our pitiful Volkischer Beobachter (Nazi newspaper), which comes out with my speeches only once a week? We will not achieve anything until it prints daily.” Ernst Hanfstaengl provided a loan of USD 1,000. With the money Nazi party bought a new printing machine for their newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter. Putzi pulled cartoonist Schwartzer to make the newspaper attractive.
Hitler ‘appointed’ Putzi as the foreign press secretary of the party. Furthermore, Putzi also headed the foreign press division in Hitler’s deputy’s office. He was the single most important interlocutor between the German national oligarchy and zionist-capitalist oligarchy based out of USA-UK-France-Italy.
The Beer Hall Putsch or Munich Putsch was a failed coup d’état by Nazi Party led by Hitler – he tried to seize power in Munich along with Hess and Hanfstaengl, Bavaria on 8th and 9th November 1923 using about 2000 Nazis marching to the Feldherrnhalle, in city centre. Police confronted, and a wounded Hitler escaped to Hanfstaengl’s house in Uffing about 60 km from Munich. After 2 days, he was arrested and charged with treason. The putsch brought Hitler to the attention of the German nation through front-page headlines in newspapers. Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to 5 years in prison. In prison he dictated Mein Kampf to his fellow prisoner Hess – in it he extolled the benefits of an Anglo-German alliance (UK and USA being the principal countries of Anglo block). The manuscript of Hitler’s book was secretly taken out of prison. Hitler was released only after 13 months in prison (12th November 1923 to 20th December 1924). The zionist-capitalist oligarchy of Anglo block used their clout to release Hitler so quickly. He came to Hanfstaengl’s new house across the Isar river after leaving prison.
Hitler’s book – Mein Kampf (My Struggle) – was unable to get wide audience. The first edition sold 10,000 copies in 1925, and about 7,000 were sold in 1926. In 1927, first and second editions combined found only 5,607 buyers, and in 1928, only 3,015 buyers took it. But even without any other income, by the summer of 1925, he bought a villa in the Bavarian Alps (future Obersalzberg) and six-seater Mercedes Kompressor car. Hitler’s lifestyle changed – upmarket clothes, a car and chauffer. Responding to the Weimar tax inspectors, Hitler said “neither in 1924, nor in the first quarter of 1925 did I receive any income. My living expenses are covered by loans” – it happened 100 years back, as it happens now – a ‘leader’ selected by zionist-capitalist Anglo oligarchy has multiple avenues of income that a commoner won’t have!
In the summer of 1932, Winston Churchill came to Germany on a personal visit. As written in Winston Churchill’s memoirs: “In the hotel, Regina, a gentleman introduced himself to someone in my entourage. His surname was Hanfstaengl and he spoke at length about the Fuhrer, with whom he was apparently very close… In all likelihood, he was assigned to make contact with me and clearly tried to make a good impression… As it turned out, he was Fuhrer’s closest confidante. He told me I should meet Hitler …”
Hanfstaengl’s side of the story reads differently: “I spent a good deal of time in the company of his son Randolph (son of Churchill) over the course of our pre-election trips. I even arranged for him to fly with us one or two times. He brought to my attention that his father would soon arrive in Germany and that we should organize a meeting”.
American secret services wanted a face-to-face meeting between would-be Chancellor of Germany and would-be Prime Minister of UK so that a personal equation grow between them – in spite of Hanfstaengl’s persuasions Hitler didn’t go to the meeting with Churchill. Churchill lamented in his memoirs: “Thus, Hitler missed his only opportunity to meet me”. However, Churchill discussed very sensitive geopolitical subjects with Hanfstaengl during that meeting. Hanfstaengl’s memoirs mention: “Churchill asked, ‘say, what your boss thinks about an alliance between France, England and your country?”
In February 1934 Hanfstaengl left Germany without the Fuhrer’s consent and went to Italy to meet with Benito Mussolini to initiate rapprochement between the two dictators. Putzi told Mussolini, “Such difficulties can exist between our two Fascist states.” History shows that the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini was on upswing from this point onward. Hanfstaengl time and again proved that he was the boss and Hitler-Mussolini were being groomed to carry out some strategic mission in near future – to destroy Soviet Union and communism.
The Nazi Party became largest party in parliament, but it didn’t get absolute majority. It received 33.1% of vote in November 1932, 37.4% of vote in July 1932, and 18.3% of vote in March 1930. Vote share of Social Democratic Party dropped from 37.9% in 1919 to 18.3% by 1933, while vote share of German Democratic Party dropped from 18.6% in 1919 to 0.8% by 1933.
On 4th January 1932, at a meeting between Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, German Chancellor Franz von Papen, Bank of England Governor Montague Norman, and USA politician John Foster Dulles a secret agreement was reached on funding for the Nazi Party. On 14th January 1933 Hitler held a meeting with Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schroeder, a Nazi-oriented banker during which Nazi party’s programme was fully endorsed. Even if Hitler was unable to win elections, he was sworn in as chancellor on 30th January 1933. Such move by the President Paul Hindenburg could be possible because the oligarchy modified the procedure of appointment of chancellor in March 1930 – instead of the leader of the parliamentary majority becoming the chancellor, the post would be appointed by the country’s president (article 48 of Weimar constitution). So President Hindenburg could appoint any German citizen as chancellor irrespective of result of the parliamentary election.
Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the German parliament (Reichstag) building in Berlin on 27th February 1933, four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler’s government stated that Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist was the culprit – German court gave verdict that Lubbe had acted alone. After that incident, Reichstag Fire Decree was passed – Nazi Party used the fire as a pretext to come down heavily on the German Communist party that was completely against the Nazi party. Historians later concluded based on evidence, that the arson had been planned and executed by the Nazis as a false flag operation. In 2008, Germany posthumously pardoned Lubbe under a law to lift unjust verdicts dating from the Nazi period.
Following the Reichstag fire, the Nazis suspended civil liberties and the Communists were excluded from the Reichstag. At the March 1933 elections, no single party secured a majority. Hitler tabled the Enabling Act on 24th March 1933 which gave him the freedom to act without parliamentary consent and without constitutional limitations. With Nazi paramilitary encircling the building, Hitler forced the Centre Party and Conservatives to vote for the Act while only the Social Democrats voted against (the Communists were excluded). The Act allowed Hitler to rule by emergency decree for next 4 years, though Hindenburg remained President.
Hitler immediately abolished the powers of the states and on 14th July 1933 outlawed all non-Nazi political parties and trade unions. The Act did not infringe upon the powers of the President, and after the death of Hindenburg in August 1934, Hitler usurped the Presidency by appointing himself President. German military took an oath on the day of Hindenburg’s death, swearing “unconditional obedience” to Hitler personally, not to the office or to the nation.
3.3 Onset of WW-II:
The revival and rearming of the German and Italian military forces between 1933 and 1939 occurred with the prior knowledge and continuous financial and technological support of the-then zionist-capitalist oligarchic elites of Anglo block countries especially UK and USA. The goal of this policy was to create a colossal war machine in the guise of Fascist Germany and Fascist Italy in order to strike a deadly blow to the Soviet Union (the resurgent new ‘edition’ of the ancient Rus Slavic civilisation).
3.3.1 Rebuilding German empire
Following Adolf Hitler’s consolidation of state power as a dictator in a single party rule, 1934 onwards Hitler went on a steady military build-up and empire building in Europe in order to create a communist-free German empire that will include most of the Europe and expand into East direction to create a Lebensraum i.e. living space for the racially superior ‘German race’ after decimating local population like Poles, Russians, Jews, Gypsyes, Serbs, Czechs etc. who collectively were termed as the so-called non-Aryan Untermenschen i.e. sub-human creatures (these policies were part of 25-point programme of Nazi party declared in 1920, as well as part of Mein Kampf book published by Hitler in 1925):
3.3.1.1 Hitler’s first major foreign-policy agreement was with Poland – on 26th January 1934 ‘Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact’ was signed for 10 years
3.3.1.2 In June 1935, ‘Anglo-German Naval Agreement’ was signed in London that allowed Germany to build naval power including submarines, beyond the limits set by the Treaty of Versailles signed after WW-I
3.3.1.3 In September 1935 Nazi Germany adopted the ‘Nuremberg Laws’, which revealed the racist philosophy of the Nazi party. According to the “Reich Citizenship Law” citizenship could only be held by a person possessing “German or related blood, who proves by his conduct that he is willing and fit faithfully to serve the German people and Reich.”
3.3.1.4 On 7th March 1936, Hitler sent troops into Rhineland which was a demilitarized buffer zone between Germany and France as per the Treaty of Versailles signed after WW-I
3.3.1.5 In 1936, Nazi Germany signed pacts with Militarist Japan and Fascist Italy to create an anti-communist platform as well as friendly cooperation among themselves
3.3.1.6 Fascist military insurrection against the Spanish government began on 17th July 1936 in Spanish Morocco and in Canary Islands. Within two weeks, two German military squadrons arrived in Spain, and German transport planes brought Moroccan troops into mainland Spain. Nazi Germany continuously sent military supplies, carried out bombing raids, and assisted the Fascist forces of General Franco in Spanish Civil War till Franco’s win in April 1939. It can be safely assumed that the same zionist-capitalist oligarchy from Anglo imperialist countries extended generous help to Franco through Hitler.
3.3.1.7 Nazi Germany forced Austria to sign ‘Austro-German Agreement’ on July 11, 1936 that guaranteed mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs plus independence of Austria as “a German State.” Being served ultimatum on 11th March 1938, Austrian chancellor von Schuschnigg announced his resignation. On 12th March 1938, German troops entered Austria – Germany annexed Austria [practically, WW-II started with it]
3.3.1.8 In the first conference about Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland (where ethnic Germans were numerically much larger than the Czechs) was held in London in April 1938 – British and French statesmen opined that a clash with Germany be avoided at all costs. On 30th September 1938, ‘Munich agreement’ was signed between Germany, Italy, UK, and France represented by Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier to transfer Sudetenland to Germany – the Czechoslovak representatives were not even invited to this meeting! On 1st October 1938, German troops entered Czechoslovakia. By mid-March 1939 Czechia was annexed by Germany. Slovakia announced its independence and withdrew from the country. Hitler allowed Hungary to annex 12000 sq. km of southern Slovakia and a small region of Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia on 2nd November 1938. Hitler also allowed Poland to get a small region of Těšín of Czechia. Instead of taking military or diplomatic measures against Hitler, Bank of England transferred Czech gold reserves worth six million pounds stored in London to Nazi Germany.
3.3.1.9 In October 1938, German Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop demanded that, in lieu of renewal of Poland-German non-aggression pact (signed in January 1934), city of Danzig (now called Gdansk) would be occupied by Germany, and Danzig corridor (to connect Germany proper with East Prussia by a motorway and a railway through Polish land) would be constructed by Germany. As a normal reaction, Poland refused. Hitler rescinded the Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact (and Anglo-German Naval Agreement) unilaterally on 28th April 1939 in the Reichstag, with Germany renewing territorial claims in Poland
3.3.1.10 In April 1939, Nazi German forces seized the Memel district from Lithuania
3.3.2 Policy of Appeasement
1934 Onwards, the period when Hitler went on a steady military build-up in Europe, UK (world’s foremost colonial empire) Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and Ramsay MacDonald as well as French (world’s second largest colonial empire) leader Edouard Daladier followed a compromising policy towards Nazi Germany – this was called in history as the ‘policy of appeasement’ (with German Nazi government). Soviet People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov, who led foreign policy initiatives since 1934 (centred on concept of ‘collective security’ among all big European powers), commented on such policy of appeasement “England and France are now unlikely to retreat from the policy they have set out for them-selves, which boils down to unilateral satisfaction of the demands of all three aggressors – Germany, Italy and Japan. They will present their claims in turn, and England and France will make them one concession after another. I believe, however, that they will reach a point where the people of England and France will have to stop them. Then, probably, we will…return to the old path of collective security, because there are no other ways for preserving peace“.
Stalin gave a speech that was broadcast on Soviet Union television on 10th March 1939, in which he not only identified the policy of appeasement, but, he also outlined the objectives of such policy:
“The war is being waged by aggressor nations, which in every way infringe upon the interests of non-aggressor states, primarily England, France, and the United States, and the latter withdraw and retreat, making concession after concession to the aggressors. Thus, we are witnessing a blatant carving up of the world and its spheres of influence, at the expense of the non-aggressor states, without any attempt at resistance, and with even a bit of their acquiescence. It is hard to believe, but it is so. …. The policy of non-intervention betrays a desire not to impede the aggressors in their shameful deeds, not to obstruct, for example, Japan’s involvement in its war with China, and even better – with the Soviet Union, and not to deter Germany, for example, from getting caught up in events in Europe or from getting involved in a war with the Soviet Union. A motive can be seen to allow all the participants in the hostilities to sink deeply into the quicksand of war, to surreptitiously urge them onward, to allow them to weaken and exhaust each other, and then, when their strength has been sufficiently sapped – to appear on the scene with fresh forces, to take a stand, ‘in the global interest’ naturally, and to dictate conditions to the crippled belligerents.”
Britain, France and Poland continued to sabotage the collective security talks proposed by Soviet Union. UK and France wouldn’t give any guarantees of attacking Germany in the West in case of war – on the contrary, the zionist-capitalist Anglo oligarchy was, in fact, in collusion with Nazi Germany. Poland was generally viewing Russia as a victim for its own colonial war (war between Russia and Poland after Russian Revolution over the Tsarist territory claims-counterclaims still were resonating with Polish leader Pilsudski) and Poland saw Germany as an ally for such an adventure. Poland would not agree to let the Red army engage Germans on Polish territory. Basically the USSR was offered nothing but would have to declare a war on Germany and wait till Germany is done with Poland and invades the USSR.
On March 18 1939, Litvinov again suggested convening a pan-European conference to be attended by Britain, France, Poland, Russia, Romania, and Turkey. During March and April 1939 Europe witnessed hectic parleys over possible tripartite alliance among UK-France-USSR as suggested by USSR through a documented proposal. In the UK Cabinet Committee on Foreign Policy on 24th April 1939, Neville Chamberlain opposed the Soviet proposition saying “The Soviet’s present proposal was one for a definite military alliance between England, France and Russia; It could not be pretended that such an alliance was necessary in order that the smaller countries of Eastern Europe should be furnished with munitions… Then there was the problem of Poland.” (Who oppose any agreement with USSR based on which USSR participate in fighting against Nazi Germany within Poland boundary). Communist USSR’s Joseph Stalin removed Maxim Litvinov and installed Vyacheslav Molotov thinking Molotov to be a dynamic negotiator. Molotov spent May and June 1939 to work out on the same tripartite alliance, but in vain.
In July 1939 Germany proposed a non-aggression pact to Molotov in which they suggested USSR can get control of most part of the former Tsar empire like:
the western parts of Ukraine and Byelorussia following the Curzon line of demarcation discussed during closure of WW-I (both erstwhile Tsar empire provinces, part of which were taken by Poland between 1918 to 1922),
Bessarabia (erstwhile Tsar empire province, part of which were taken by Romania),
Karelia (part of erstwhile Tsar empire Dutchy of Finland),
Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania in Baltic (erstwhile Tsar empire provinces, independent countries WW-I)
And as per the German proposal, rest of the East Europe will come under Nazi Germany sphere of influence either by direct annexation or formation of protectorate. Soviet leadership, after exasperating failure of 5 years of discussions on military pact with UK and France, and in the midst of a massive war since May 1939 with Japanese empire in Khalkhin Gol near Mongolian border, couldn’t miss ‘opportunity’ of getting few extra years (before Nazi assault). On 23rd August 1939 the German–Soviet nonaggression pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) was signed.
USSR regained control of western part of Ukraine and western part of Byelorussia in September 1939 from Poland, and Karelia region from Finland in November 1939. Then USSR moved into Baltic region and Bessarabia in June 1940. While discussing on the annexation by Soviet Union, on 4th October 1939 Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax said in the House of Lords “… the Soviet government’s actions were to move the border essentially to the line recommended at the Versailles Conference by Lord Curzon… I only cite historical facts and believe they are indisputable.”
Hanfstaengl set the ball rolling with frantic pace of militarization in Germany, and then he left Germany in March 1937 before any (future) Nazi war crime could implicate him. Putzi went to USA and was appointed an advisor to his friend USA President FD Roosevelt (as an expert on Nazi Germany he was in a position to suggest best how to coordinate with his ex-student, Hitler)! Ernst Hanfstaengl was the pioneer of a future phenomenon whereby thousands of Nazi scientists, technocrats, businessmen, military officers, and government officials would become American citizens and job seekers through ‘Ratlines’.
3.4 WW-II:
3.4.1 Journey from Phony War to Operation Barbarossa
Hitler’s Germany was in the thick of action during the 1939 through 1941 opening war fronts one after another:
3.4.1.1 Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1st September 1939, Warsaw resisted until 27th September before surrendering. As usual, neither UK nor France militarily intervened to support Poland.
3.4.1.2 On 3rd September 1939, UK and France declared war on the Third Reich which is called as ‘Phoney War’ in WW-II history. The Polish military mission who flew to London had to wait for a week to meet British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Edmund Ironside – General Ironside promised 10000 obsolete rifles (while German Battle Tanks and Fighter Planes were thrashing Poland). During the 8 months duration of Phoney War, only once there was a land operation when French troops invaded Germany’s Saar district for couple of days. British Navy tried to enforce a blockade against German goods transport, and during German attacks at sea Royal Navy carrier HMS Courageous was sunk. During the ‘Nuremberg Trials’, German General Alfred Jodl admitted: “… we did not suffer defeat as early as 1939 only because about 110 French and British divisions stationed in the west against 23 German divisions, during our war with Poland, remained absolutely idle.”
3.4.1.3 Nazi Germany struck again to occupy Denmark with a surprise attack that lasted less than 4 hours on 9th April 1940. Attacking Norway on the same day, German forces completed the Norway invasion on 10th June 1940
3.4.1.4 On 10 May 1940, eight months after Britain and France had declared Phoney War on Germany, German Wehrmacht launched Operation Fall Gelb and marched into Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and northern France marking the end of the Phoney War. By the evening of 10th May most of Luxembourg was occupied by German military. In Netherlands, the battle lasted from 10th May to 17th May, while in Belgium the battle raged on from 10th May to 28th May. In Belgium and northern France the fight was between German Wehrmacht and Allied forces in which France committed their best troops. Between 26th May and 4th June 1940 the defeated Allied soldiers were evacuated from Dunkirk harbour in northern France. German forces began Operation Fall Rot on 5th June 1940 to capture remaining part of France outflanking the Maginot Line. Paris was occupied on 14th June, on 22nd June 1940 armistice was signed by France and Germany.
3.4.1.5 Formal military alliance i.e. ‘Berlin Pact’ was signed by Germany-Italy-Japan in September 1940 (original Axis Power). Later on Hungary joined in November 1940, Romania joined in November 1940, Bulgaria joined in March 1941.
3.4.1.6 In April 1941 Nazi Germany launched an invasion of Yugoslavian regions and Greece (the original Balkan campaign launched by Fascist Italy in October 1940 didn’t achieve the objective, hence this new initiative). Yugoslavian regions and Greece were divided among the Axis Powers viz. Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria.
3.4.1.7 When Nazi Wehrmacht launched ‘Operation Barbarossa’, the largest military operation in documented history of humankind on 22nd June 1941 (officially authorized by Adolf Hitler on 18 December 1940, but got delayed due to delay in finishing Balkan campign) across western border of USSR along a 2,900-kilometer war-front with more than 38 lakh military personnel from countries of Axis Powers, USSR could not sustain its resistance against the Nazi Wehrmacht. Since November 1941 when Nazi military was about 25 km away from Moscow, USSR fought back and launched ferocious counterattack on German military. From January 1943, after winning the Battle of Stalingrad, Red Army became more confident about defeating the so-called ‘unassailable’ Wehrmacht. However, it was the Battle of Kursk (largest tank battle in history) in July 1943 which completely turned the tide in favour of Soviet Red Army. Every passing day the Red Army became unconquerable force that decimated Nazi Wehrmacht single-handedly and liberated entire east Europe before capturing Berlin in May 1945.
As analysed by Mikhail Meltyukhov (Russian military historian working at the Russian Institute of Documents and Historical Records Research), during a period of two and half years (from 1 January 1939 to 22 June 1941) USSR increased their military strength assiduously that helped the final destruction of Nazi Germany:
Battle Divisions increased from about 131 to 316 (140% increase)
Military Personnel increased from 2,485,000 to 5,774,000 (132% increase)
Battle Tanks increased from about 21,100 to 25,700 (22% increase)
Aircrafts increased from about 7,700 to 18,700 (143% increase)
3.4.1.8 Following Adolf Hitler’s consolidation of state power in Germany, Lebensraum (Hitler announced Nazi party’s 25-point program on 24 February 1920 which included Nazi demand for new land and territory for the maintenance of German people and the settlement of surplus German population – known as Lebensraum i.e. living space) became an objective of Nazi party’s militarism and provided justification for the German territorial expansion into Eastern Europe. The Nazi Generalplan Ost policy (GPO) or ‘Master Plan for the East’ dealt with how Germany can set up a Lebensraum in Eastern Europe necessary for survival of so-called Aryan race (Nazis assumed Germans as ‘pure Aryan’ race) by eliminating most of the local non-Aryan population (Nazis assumed Slavs as non-Aryan and hence Untermenschen i.e. sub-human) like Poles, Russians, Jews, Czechs, Slovaks, Gypsyes etc. through mass killing, decimation by starvation and disease, and deportation to Siberia. The body responsible for the GPO was the SS’s Reich Main Security Office under Heinrich Himmler, which commissioned the work before World War II started. After the invasion of Poland, the original blueprint for GPO was discussed by the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (RKFDV) in mid-1940. The next known version of GPO was procured by the RSHA from Erhard Wetzel in April 1942. The next revision was officially dated June 1942. The final settlement master plan for the East came in from the RKFDV on 29th October 1942. A document which enabled historians to accurately reconstruct the Generalplan Ost was a memorandum released on 27th April 1942, by Erhard Wetzel, director of the Nazi party Office of Racial Policy, entitled “Opinion and thoughts on the master plan for the East of the Reichsführer SS”.
Himmler stated openly: “It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply. As of June 1941, the GPO policy envisaged the deportation of 31 million Slavs to Siberia. The Nazi government aimed at repopulating these lands with Germanic colonists in the name of Lebensraum after exterminating majority of the indigenous populations, to enable Germany to confiscate agricultural and mining products to transfer to Germany.
After Stalingrad defeat and surrender by the legendary 6th Army of German Wehrmacht in February 1943, Generalplan Ost was suspended by Nazi party. However, German savagery with the civilian population of Slavs, Jews, and Gypsyes, from 1940 to 1945 still continue to shock the people across world.
3.4.2 Second Front of Allies
True to their deceptive and manipulative core nature, the leaders of UK and USA zionist-capitalist clique didn’t pay any attention to Stalin’s repeated request from 1941 to 1944 of opening a second front in the west against Nazi Germany which would help Soviet Union to get a respite from deadly Nazi onslaught. For the Anglo imperialists the WW-II plan was simple – Germany and Soviet Union should fight between them to finish each other, and then they would appear on the scene to occupy the vast Eurasian landmass and spread Freedom (to loot the natural resources) and Democracy (to install puppets over the illiterate and simple people).
On 28th April 1942, FD Roosevelt addressed to the USA: “These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies – troops, planes, tanks, and guns – than all the other United Nations put together.” Only when it became crystal clear that, in absence of a second front, Soviet Red Army would liberate the entire Europe on its own (thereby banishing any future influences of zionist-capitalist oligarchy on the government formation in whole of Europe), the Allies opened a second front in WW-II in June 1944 with the Allied landings in Normandy.
From all four key perspectives – mobilization, viciousness of struggle, loss of life, and loss of infrastructure – Eastern front was far more significant compared to Western front. In the opinion of Norman Davis:“German losses on the Eastern Front accounted for about 80 per cent of the total…”
At the end of the WW-II, Soviet Union had lost about 26.6 million people, Western Allies lost less than 2 million, Germany lost around 4 million troops in the Eastern front and 1 million on the Western front.
Also, from the military logistics point of view, Soviet Union could defeat the industrially and technologically superior Nazi Wehrmacht and invade Nazi Germany capital by May 1945 because:
21-month respite provided by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was utilised for increasing the production of military machinery on a gigantic scale
Lend-Lease policy of the FD Roosevelt provided food-clothing-raw materials-rail engines-automobiles-petroleum products-ordnance goods and ammunitions etc. between 1 October 1941 to 2 September 1945 (1947 money value of which amounted to about USD 11 billion)
3.5 Aftermath of WW-II:
At the onset of WW-II in 1938, USSR consisted of the following regions/countries in European territory (naming convention as it exists now):
Russia
Ukraine except Western Galician region
Crimea
Belarus
A complete and thorough assessment of WW-II casualties should be again undertaken by the group of CIS countries who were part of USSR 30 years back – every post-1945 citizen of this planet owe a bit to every known/unknown USSR citizen for their immense sacrifice to resist the Fascist forces during WW-II. I think, casualties were more than 30 million – military killed in action, soldiers missing in action, killed/died while POW, military death of wounds, civilian death on front, civilian death of forced labourers in Germany, civilian death in German prisons, civilian death of starvation, missing civilian, the list of category consists of all possible permutation-combination. Even if we accept government figure of 26.6 million dead plus wounded, it become 13.7% of 194 million population of USSR in 1940. Almost all physical infrastructures in Belarus, Ukraine, Crimean, and European regions of Russia were destroyed by indiscriminate bombing of Germany. Tragedy of such gigantic scale in any society would have been the cause of crushing defeat. But Communist Party of Soviet Union led by Stalin withstood such barbaric assaults only to rebound with more strength – economic, political, and military.
At the end of WW-II in 1945, USSR consisted of the following regions/countries in European territory:
Russia
Ukraine including Western Galician region
Crimea
Belarus
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Moldova (Bessarabia)
Except during the initial 6 months of Operation Barbarossa, Stalin proved himself a leader who was in control of the complete situation even at the worst moment. The zionist-capitalist oligarchy based in imperialist Anglo and French countries and their lackeys in east Europe were outsmarted by Stalin at every round of the geopolitical game surrounding WW-II. Stalin was disliked so much among the zionist-capitalist oligarchy and aristocrats that, on the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953 (under suspicious circumstances) the stark enemies like Winston Churchill sent no condolences, or send a sympathy card. Interestingly, only after Stalin’s demise, Churchill was found to be suitable candidate for Knighthood and Nobel Prize (in literature) in 1953.
By 1953 when Stalin died, USSR already changed beyond imagination. A country that had, 30 years back, one of the most oppressive society with extreme poverty, widespread illiteracy, very high mortality, and high concentration of wealth within aristocrats, got transformed into a society where ALL citizens had guaranteed food-education-healthcare-housing-employment-vacation facilities. Soviet Union was the second most powerful country in terms of scientific research, atomic research (second country to test atomic bomb), space research (first country to send space craft), military machinery, and industrial machinery. By then, 85 significant Soviet journals were being translated into English language by USA government funding. Within three decades, Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a major world power struggling almost single-handedly against the Zionist-Capitalist powers and their monstrous Fascist offspring. Born to shoemaker and house cleaner, Stalin was a true anti-elitist plebeian revolutionary who even sacrificed his son during WW-II by refusing to exchange him (in German captivity) with German General (in Soviet captivity).
4. Conclusion
Let me clarify at the end that, this article doesn’t aim to paint a bright untainted image of Stalin. I would like to also take this opportunity to briefly explain why.
The 6th Congress of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) party in July-August of 1917 elected the Central Committee comprising of 21 leaders:
Politburo members – Vladimir Lenin, Andrei Bubnov, Grigory Sokolnikov, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev, Grigory Zinoviev, Leon Trotsky
Secretariat members – Felix Dzerzhinsky, Matvei Muranov, Yakov Sverdlov
Only Narrow Composition members – Vladimir Milyutin, Stepan Shahumyan, Moisei Uritsky
Only members of CC but not part of above groups – Ivar Smilga, Fyodor Sergeyev, Alexei Rykov, Viktor Nogin, Nikolay Krestinsky, Alexandra Kollontai, Nikolai Bukharin, Jan Berzin
In 1940, only 3 of the top 21 leaders of Bolshevik party would be alive: Stalin, Matvei Muranov who was sent into retirement from political life, and Alexandra Kollontai who was sent on foreign diplomatic assignment away from internal politics and governance. A little workout reveals that 7 of the top 21 leaders (Stepan Shahumyan, Moisei Uritsky, Yakov Sverdlov, Fyodor Sergeyev, Vladimir Lenin, Viktor Nogin, and Felix Dzerzhinsky) died due to ailments, or accidents. In other words, the remaining 11 of the top 21 leaders perished during the period when Stalin consolidated his power within the Bolshevik party and USSR. Like many others, I couldn’t get convinced, how more than 50% of the Bolshevik Party leaders were traitors to the state and the party! That would also mean, as a corollary, that Lenin led Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 with less than half of the Bolshevik party central committee members as true patriots! Even considering and acknowledging the facts that:
Trotsky and his team representing the interest of Zionist bankers based in Europe and USA tried to derail the economy and destroy the society across Soviet Union, and
Marshall Tukhachevsky and his team of Generals tried to seize state power and thereafter surrender large tract of the then USSR to Fascist Germany to make peace with Germany,
There can’t be any doubt that, paranoid and autocratic behaviour of Stalin created an organisational disarray within the Bolshevik party which pushed more and more leaders against Stalin’s style of functioning, that again created even more distrust in Stalin, finally culminating in massive purge and repression (after murder of Kirov).
Keeping in view the stellar achievements and leaving aside the organisational mismanagement during the initial decades of formation of Soviet Union, let me remind the readers across the world who love truth-justice-equality-morality, Lenin and Stalin were among the most outstanding leaders of the toiling masses in the history of humankind, who never compromised with capitalism, imperialism, and Zionism (academicians caringly call the combination of these three virus as ‘world-system’ or ‘world order’).
The application of the Marxist theory of socialism, as carried out by CPSU under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin had significant drawbacks, which were resultant of the-then prevailing geopolitical conditions as well as the necessity of creating a ‘material basis’ for the socialist transformation of the society. Fundamental working principle of capitalism has not and will not change in future – whether it was mercantile version, agrarian version, industrial version, or more recent financial version, capitalism (coupled with Zionism and imperialism) will continue to seek accumulation of wealth by direct and indirect exploitation of 90% common people. Considering the maxim ‘failure is the pillar of success’, people across the world look forward to the current Marxist parties and leaders in Russia and other Eurasian regions for making the second and completely successful attempt to initiate a colossal movement that will sweep away the Zionist-Capitalist filth accumulated over past 6 decades in erstwhile USSR, to usher new era of Marxist economy and collective society where every citizen can breathe fresh air free from the polluted pungent smell of capital and profit. Inquisitive readers may look into details of such possibility in one of my previous articles, link of which is given below:
Russian society would, thus vindicate the appearance of so many extraordinary personalities on its soil each of whom was a doyen in their own era, including great humanists like Tolstoy-Chekhov-Gorky and great leaders like Peter-Lenin-Stalin!
Note: The following books were referred:
Nikolay Starikov – Who Set Hitler Against Stalin
William Shirer – The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Joachim C. Fest – Hitler
Short profile:
By profession I’m an Engineer and Consultant, but my first love was and is History and Political Science. In retired life, I’m pursuing higher study in Economics.
I’m one of the few decade-old members of The Saker blog-site. Hope that this website will continue to focus on truth and justice in public life and will support the struggle of common people across the world.
The ice-covered continent, Antarctica, spanning the Earth’s South Pole is rarely covered in news reports. For now, policies of the world’s leading nations do not really concern the Antarctic. There are no mining or extraction facilities, manufacturing plants or military bases on the continent. Inhabitants of Antarctica comprise several hundred researchers from different countries, who reside in South Pole stations and completely depend on supplies from the outside for survival.
The southernmost continent does not belong to any one country or even to a group of nations. The 1959 Antarctic Treaty “sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve”. However it expires in 2048, which is why some nations, such as the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand, Chile and even China, have already begun talking about their rights to stake claims on various parts of the Antarctic. Hence, it seems apt to revisit the history of the seventh continent and its discovery and discuss Russia’s interests in relation to this landmass.
Western theories about “a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe” emerged a long time ago. The great British explorer and navigator, James Cook, and his crew embarked on a journey to determine whether Terra Australis Incognita (“Unknown Southern Land”) indeed existed at the end of 18th century. In 1773, their ship Resolution was the first to have crossed the Antarctic Circle. And “although they discovered nearby islands, they did not catch sight of Antarctica itself”. Expeditions to the southernmost continent then stopped for a number of years. There was renewed interest in exploring the South Pole after English captain William Smith and his crew, in an attempt to avoid contrary wind in the Drake Passage, changed course and became the first men to discover what are now the South Shetland Islands in February 1819. When the news reached Britain, the Royal Navy sent another expedition, headed by experienced mariner and officer in the British Royal Navy Edward Bransfield, “to survey the newly discovered islands”.
In the meantime, the Russian Empire also had plans to explore what is now known as the Southern Ocean. At the time, the Russian and British Empires, which had recently defeated Napoleon and his forces, were the leading world powers. Hence, discovering a new continent could ensure the nation responsible would win the battle for international prestige. Perhaps, this is why the focus of the Russian expedition changed at the beginning of 1819. Its main aim became proving or disproving “the existence of a suspected” continent. Captain Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen was put in charge of the mission.
The first Russian Antarctic expedition began in July 1819. Two ships – Vostok, under the command of Fabian Bellingshausen, and Mirny, under the command of Mikhail Lazarev,- set sail from Kronstadt (a Russian port city) and headed for the Southern Ocean. Having first stopped in Rio de Janeiro, the expedition then reached the sub-antarctic region, where they discovered several islands, which are now part of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (a British Overseas Territory). Soon afterwards, Vostok and Mirny reached impenetrable ice that surrounded the southernmost continent. In search of a passage, the captains went around the landmass in cold and dangerous seas. Although the ships were covered in snow and sailors suffered from exposure to cold weather, the crews continued with their mission until, on January 27, 1820, they spotted an ice shelf at Princess Martha Coast (the first portion of Antarctic mainland discovered by a human). This is when the seventh continent was sighted for the first time. A few days later, on January 30, 1820, the British expedition, captained by Edward Bransfield, reached Antarctica. They approached the landmass at Trinity Peninsula but none of them knew about the accomplishments of the Russian expedition. Edward Bransfield and his crew believed they were the first men to sight the new continent.
The Russian Empire did not see much value in exploring the landmass further and chose not to continue with its studies of it. Up until the end of 19th century, the British showed the most interest in Antarctica, which strengthened their territorial claims in the region. At the beginning of 20th century, the British government declared sovereignty over a number of islands in the sub-antarctic region and over a substantial portion of Antarctica. In addition, the British Empire put Australia and New Zealand, its dominions, in charge of large parts of the Antarctic.
In the first half of 20th century, the United States, France, Norway, Argentina, Chile, Germany and Japan made territorial claims in Antarctica. The answer to “Who discovered Antarctica?” depends on who you ask. Although Fabian Bellingshausen’s expedition “was technically the first to see the unknown continent”, his accomplishment was hidden for decades by an incorrect translation of his journal. The successor of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, was in no hurry to make territorial claims in the Antarctic, and instead focused on its affairs in Europe and the exploration of the Arctic.
In any case, these disputes remain unresolved. Only South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the sub-antarctic region became British Overseas Territory. At the time, none of the nations were keen on fully exploring Antarctica because it was expensive and difficult. Plus, most of the aforementioned nations had very serious problems back then, i.e. the First and Second World Wars.
After World War II, the Antarctic-related issues became a priority once again. Germany and Japan lost in the conflict, hence it was up to the winners to divide the world, including Antarctica, into spheres of influence. There are known reserves of natural resources in the Antarctic, which increases interest in the region in our modern industrialized world. Negotiations, which did not include the Soviet Union, on establishing “an international condominium over the continent first began in 1948”. However, the attempt “rapidly fell apart when the USSR declared an interest in the region”.
There were also more pressing issues for the world’s leading nations to worry about. The Cold War began, and the two super powers, the USA and USSR, focused on the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and other places. They chose not to concern themselves with other problems. The Antarctic-related issues were essentially put on the back burner. And in 1959, the aforementioned Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) was established. ATS regulates “international relations with respect to Antarctica” and “bans military activity on the continent”. The original signatories of the treaty included countries with territorial claims in Antarctica at the time, i.e. Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Norway, Argentina and Chile, as well as the United States, Russia, South Africa, Japan and Belgium, which reserved the right to make claims. Other countries (altogether 48 nations) have since signed the ATS, and Ecuador and Peru have also made territorial claims in the Antarctic.
The treaty expires in 2048, as mentioned earlier. It is possible that it will be extended without any additional changes. Still, it is important to take into account the fact that, in recent decades, there have been more and more discussions about the depletion of fossil fuels and about the world running out of proven reserves of oil and gas in around 50 to 100 years. It is possible that by 2048, the world’s population may need to begin exploiting Antarctic resources and the southernmost continent will then have to be divided. In such a scenario, Russia can claim part of the territory because the expedition sent by the Russian Empire was the first to sight the continent.
There could be debates about who discovered Antarctica first, however. Since the Russian explorers saw the ice shelf at Princess Martha Coast and a mount, which was subsequently named after Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, the British expedition could be considered to be the first crew to sight the continent itself. In fact, Fabian Bellingshausen did not view himself as the first man to see Antarctica.
At any rate, there is no doubt that Russian explorers reached the seventh continent first. And participants of high-level meetings involving scientists and politicians ought to remember this accomplishment and so should the Russian and global populace. After all, public opinion, influenced by media outlets, may have an impact on international policies.
It is especially important to remember such historical moments in 2020, the 200-anniversary of the sighting of Antarctica by Russians. One notable event to commemorate Fabian Bellingshausen’s and Mikhail Lazarev’s expedition on behalf of the entire international community was a circumnavigation of the world by the training fleet of Rosrybolovstvo sailing under the flag of Russia and white sail of Peace. The Sedov barque, the Kruzenshtern of the Baltic Fishing Fleet State Academy and the Pallada of Vladivostok-based FESTFU (the Far Eastern State Technical Fisheries University) were part of the expedition. The crews included cadets from Russian navy academies. The vessels traversed the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, visited French Polynesia, Chile, South Africa and Singapore. They organized a regatta in the sub-antarctic region and covered altogether more than 100,000 nautical miles.
Thanks to these ships sailing under the white sail of peace, many people around the world learned more about the 1819-1821 expedition. This particular event and others of similar nature will help convince the international community of the fact that Russia has every right to make a claim in Antarctica if nations have to divide the continent in the future.
Sofia Pale, PhD in History, Researcher at the Center for Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 