#russia's bloody sunday

[duchesssoflennox]

FOUR DAUGHTERS OF THE LAST TSAR OF RUSSIA...🤍🥀

Four daughters of tsar Nicholas II and the last imperial children of Russia!

in order: Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia✨️ They were known for their special personalities and their Golden hearts, as well as their tragic deaths...💔🥀

I have written their personality characteristics under their photos🫶🥰

Romanov sisters adored their only little brother, Tsesarevich Alexei, who was always sick due to his congenital disease of hemophilia...🥺🌟

In 1917, the Bolsheviks came to power and Romanovs were exiled to Siberia after 300 years of rule. The revolution that began with the massacre of Bloody Sunday by Tsar Nicholas II on January 22, 1905, ended in 1917 when the Bolsheviks came to power! and tsar Nicholas with his wife, Five children and 4 of his crew were shot in July 17, 1918... 💔 Their bodies were then taken to a remote forest where they were mutilated, dismembered and buried with grenades, fire and acid to avoid identification.

Age of family members at the time of execution: Nicholas II was 50 years old, Alexandra Feodorovna was 46 years old, Olga was 22 years old, Tatiana was 21 years old, Maria was 19 years old, Anastasia was 17 years old, Alexei was 13 years old.

Their burial place was discovered by amateur detectives in 1979, and in 1998, 80 years after the execution, the remains of the Romanov family were buried in a state funeral in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg!

In 2007, a smaller grave containing the remains of the two missing Romanov children from the larger grave was discovered by amateur archaeologists. DNA analysis confirmed they were the remains of Alexei and one of his sisters.

During the 84 days following the murders in Yekaterinburg, 27 other friends and relatives of the emperor (14 Romanovs and 13 members of the imperial family) were killed by the Bolsheviks... 😥💔

On August 15, 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church announced that it had canonized the members of Romanov family for their "modesty, patience, and humility."

#olga nikolaevna #tatiana nikolaevna #maria nikolaevna #anastasia nikolaevna #Russian Imperial Family #russian royal family

[mariacallous]

During the broadcast of Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov on Russian state TV, host Vladimir Solovyov proudly announced that he recently traveled to Damascus to interview President of Syria Bashar al-Assad to get his advice about how to interact with “crazed capitalist Western regimes” and “how to combat their lies.” After years of pleading for the attention of the fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Solovyov was able to snag the next best thing by interviewing Assad.

Unable to get his mind off Carlson’s ill-fated interview, Solovyov asked Assad for his prediction as to the outcome of the U.S. elections: “I’ll ask the same question that Tucker Carlson asked Putin: Biden or Trump?” Assad opined, “The analysis of the media and other information shows that Trump will win, but I always say that American presidents resemble one another.” He proceeded to assert that the unnamed figures behind the scenes—and not the U.S. presidents—determine the country’s politics.

During the interview, irony died a thousand painful deaths, as Russia’s most notorious propagandist, known for his hypocrisy, lies and nuclear threats, joined the butcher of Syria, known for committing war crimes and repeatedly lying about his actions. Disregarding Assad’s notorious use of chemical weapons against his own people, Solovyov claimed that the Syrian people “have freely made their choice.”

The Russian host alleged that the world is standing on the precipice of potential nuclear apocalypse, claiming that the United States and Israel are likely to be the first to use nuclear weapons against Iran.

Several times, Solovyov unsuccessfully attempted to extract the condemnation of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel. Taking a page out of Putin’s book, Assad insisted that it’s impossible to discuss that event without delving deep into the history of Israel and Palestine—the way Putin had to educate Carlson on Rurik’s exploits during their talk. The Syrian dictator made no secret of his inspiration for this approach. Assad asked, “Can you separate the war in Ukraine from a historical evolution? Can you describe Russia’s efforts of reunification with the Southern territories without delving into history? Can you separate these efforts from history? All the present is inextricably tied to the past.”

Quoting an unnamed commentator, Solovyov pondered why Russia, with a population of only 150 million, were not afraid to go against the entire NATO, but several billion Muslims can’t defend their Palestinian brothers. He asked, “Why won’t the Arab countries take the steps that would seem justified and necessary, in order to stop the bloody slaughter in Gaza?” Solovyov’s concern was most likely motivated by the well-known talking point among Russian experts, who believe that a wider escalation in the Middle East would distract the U.S. and allies from Ukraine. Assad disappointed him by bemoaning the lack of unity among Arab countries, coupled with strong Western influence in the region.

Solovyov asserted, “The West is constantly lying! This is why we see what is now happening in Ukraine not as our war against Ukraine. For us, this is a holy war and a religious war. We are confronted by Satanism, by the evil in its purest form. Everything that is rejected by our culture and our faith.”

Solovyov then made a comparison that was more damning than exculpatory, by aligning the global condemnation of Assad for his regime’s use of chemical weapons in 2017 with the Bucha massacre in Ukraine. The host stressed, “Our people don’t believe it. The Syrian people don’t believe it. They came out and supported you. Our people came out and supported our Supreme Commander.” In a truly grotesque moment, Solovyov asked Assad, “How do we fight against the lies that are so pervasive?” Assad proceeded to accuse the Western media of keeping everyday people in the dark. Gesturing towards himself and Solovyov, Assad asserted, “We are different. For us, the truth is above all! We are spreading the truth! Transparency is also crucial in politics and government.”

Solovyov brought up the upcoming presidential election in Russia, despite the fact that Putin has no real opponents and the main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, conveniently perished in the run-up to the Kremlin-controlled election charade. He pompously asked, “How much does this election impact the future of the world and not just Russia?” Assad asserted in reply, “The fate of the world depends on Russia—for many reasons, not only because of the war in Ukraine.” He proceeded to explain why the change of leadership in Russia during its fateful war in Ukraine would be impossible to conjure up. Assad asserted that he doesn’t want to interfere in Russia’s internal affairs, but at the same time made it clear that Putin should remain in charge for the good of the country and the world.

Assad pondered out loud, “Does Russia have any other options that would guarantee the kind of policies that will return it to the position of global influence? Of course, not the same as the Soviet Union, but much stronger.” The Syrian dictator repeatedly reiterated that his vocal support for Putin’s continued presidency is merely “his personal opinion.” Solovyov chimed in to reply, “Your personal opinion is very important!”

After praising Putin’s leadership and asserting that it should not be subject to change, Solovyov and Assad awkwardly giggled together, as they jointly mocked and criticized the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.

Solovyov asked, “Do you remember that you are a tyrant and a dictator, just like Vladimir Putin, just like Xi Jinping, just like the Iranian leadership, just like the leadership of [North] Korea? Meanwhile, in America and Europe, they are the democrats. You say that you should listen to the people, but they insist that everyone should listen to them. So who is the tyrant now?” Purporting to slam Western democracies, Assad sounded like he was describing Russia: “There is only one choice, there aren’t many options. The media and celebrities will make it seem that you elected the one you wanted.”

Solovyov repeatedly tried to draw the parallels between Russia and Syria, except for one glaring similarity. He failed to mention that both Assad and Putin are wanted for their war crimes.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Tumblr's Guide to Shostakovich: Part 2- Background and Beginnings

Hello, and welcome back to Tumblr's Guide to Shostakovich, the series where I talk about the life and works of Dmitri Shostakovich! Today, I want to talk some about his family background, and about his childhood. The main sources I'll be using for this post are Dmitri Shostakovich: The LIfe and Background of a Soviet Composer by Victor Seroff and Nadezhda Galli-Shohat (who was Shostakovich's aunt), Pages From the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich by Dmitri and Lyudmila Sollertinsky, and Shostakovich: A Life Remembered by Elizabeth Wilson. Photos are from Dmitri Shostakovich: The Life and Background of a Soviet Composer and the DSCH Publishers website.

Dmitri Shostakovich was born on September 25, 1906, to Dmitri Boleslavovich and Sofiya Vasiliyevna (nee Kokaoulina) Shostakovich in St. Petersburg, Russia. His maternal grandfather, Vasiliy Jakovlevich Kokaoulin, hailed from Siberia and advocated for improved working conditions for miners in the Lena Gold Field, where he became the manager. Sofiya Vasiliyevna was one of six children, and studied music at the Irkutsk Institute for Noblewomen; her brother Jasha became involved with the growing revolutionary movement. When a student protest on Kazan Square in February 1899 was violently disbanded by armed Cossacks, Sofiya and her siblings became more deeply sympathetic towards the revolutionaries; her sister Nadezhda Galli-Shohat would become a member of the Social Democratic Bolshevik Party (she would later come to disagree with Bolshevism and emigrate to the United States in 1923).

(Sofiya Vasiliyevna Shostakovich, the composer's mother. 1911.)

Shostakovich's father, Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, came from Polish origins ("Shostakovich" is actually a Russification of the Polish surname "Szostakowicz.") and worked as a senior keeper at the Palace of Weights and Measures. His father, Boleslav, was deeply involved in the Polish revolutionary movement, and organized the release of Jaroslav Dombrovsky, who had been imprisoned due to his part in the Polish Uprising. As a result, Boleslav was exiled to Siberia. (Side note- Shostakovich's first name was nearly "Jaroslav," but the Orthodox priest at his christening advised his parents to name him "Dmitri," after his father.)

(Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the composer's father. 1903.)

(The composer around age one and his sister Maria ("Marusya"), 1907.)

By the time Shostakovich's parents were raising their three children in a middle-class household on Nikolaevskaya Street, revolutionary sentiments were sharply rising; Shostakovich himself was born just a year after the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of 1905. However, another major component of the artist young Mitya Shostakovich would become was highly present in their home- music. His mother was a skilled pianist, and his father- a "kind, jolly man" who would sing to her accompaniments. Shostakovich would listen to his neighbour, Boris Sass-Tisovsky, play the cello, and the Shostakoviches would take their children to the opera. Seroff and Galli-Shohat include an anecdote illustrating the contrasting personalities of Sofiya and Dmitri B. Shostakovich: "Sonya [Sofiya] gradually weeded out most of the Siberian friends of Dmitri's [Boleslavovich] student days because, for her, there was too much of the "muzhik" [term for a male peasant] about them and in these days she sought a different society. Dmitri took all this reform very good-naturedly and only retained, in spite of all that Sonya could do, his heavy gait and his rough, Siberian-peasant way of speaking. Sonya would have despaired of his slangy speech except that she knew his gay and lovable disposition always won him friends wherever he went. "Sonya, Sonya," he would say, shaking his head and looking at her over the top of his glasses, "I'm a bad one. Squirt me another glass of tea."

(Mitya, Maria, and Zoya Shostakovich with their parents, 1912.)

Despite an early recognition of his talents as a prodigy, Shostakovich was never pressed into music unwillingly; for the most part, he had a happy childhood with his sisters Zoya and Maria, gathering mushrooms, reading adventure books, and watching their father play solitaire (which would later become one of Shostakovich's favourite pastimes as well). However, at the age of nine, after attending a performance of Mussorgsky's The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Mitya was able to recite and sing most of the opera from memory the following day. That summer, in 1915, he began piano lessons. Among his first childhood works was the "Funeral March for Victims of the Revolution;" he recalled that he "composed a lot under the influence of external events," a trait that would come to follow him throughout his future career. He took lessons from Ignati Glyasser, and later Aleksandra Rozanova. By the time he entered the conservatoire at age thirteen, the city he was born in had been renamed to Petrograd; WWI had meant a Russification of the name "St. Petersburg" due to anti-German sentiment. In 1924, it would once again be renamed "Leningrad," following the death of Vladimir Lenin. (Today, the city is once again called "St. Petersburg," following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.) Shostakovich's enrollment was on the recommendation of the composer and professor Aleksandr Glazunov, who would play a highly significant role in his conservatory years.

(Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Rozanova, Shostakovich's piano teacher.)

(Ignati Albertovich Glyasser with his piano class, 1917. Dmitri Shostakovich is located second from the right in the first row; Maria Shostakovich is located fourth from the right in the second row.)

In the next few entries, I will talk more about his adolescence and conservatory years, along with some drama in his personal life. ;) See you then!

#dmitri shostakovich #classical music #music history #soviet history #russia #classical music history #composer #russian history #shostakovich #tumblr's guide to shostakovich

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up April 13-17, 2023

Under the cut:

Kyiv said on Monday a U.N.-brokered initiative allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain was in danger of "shutdown" after Russia blocked inspections of participating ships in Turkish waters.

Ukrainian and Russian armed forces are fighting extraordinarily bloody battles in the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut, but pro-Kyiv forces are still holding on, Ukraine’s military says.

Russia launched attacks across Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Donetsk oblasts over the past 24 hours, causing widespread property damage and injuring at least three people.

At least 11 people have died and 22 more are wounded after Friday's strikes on residential buildings in the eastern city of Sloviansk, according to an update from the State Emergency Services. (The death toll has been updated to 15, but this number may continue to change.)

One hundred and thirty Ukrainian prisoners of war have been released and returned home in a "great Easter exchange", a senior Ukrainian presidential official said on Sunday, the day of Orthodox Easter.

Kyiv said on Monday a U.N.-brokered initiative allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain was in danger of "shutdown" after Russia blocked inspections of participating ships in Turkish waters.

Ukrainian Black Sea ports were blockaded after Russia's invasion last year, but access to three of them was cleared last July under a deal between Moscow and Kyiv that was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey.

The agreement - intended to help ease a global food crisis - was extended last month, but Ukraine said the number of cargo ships passing through the Bosporus carrying Ukrainian agricultural products was critically low.

"For the second time in 9 months of operation of the Grain Initiative, an inspection plan (for participating vessels) has not been drawn up, and not a single vessel has been inspected," Ukraine's restoration ministry said on Facebook under the headline "Grain initiative under threat of shutdown."

Highlighting the bottleneck in the Bosporus, Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said on Twitter over 50 ships were awaiting approval to go to Ukrainian ports "to load grain that will feed those who need it."

Russia did not respond to Brink's or the ministry's comments, but the Kremlin said prospects for a renewal of the grain deal were "not so bright".

Moscow says a separate deal, under which the U.N. agreed to help Russia with its food and fertilizer exports, is not working.

Ukraine's restoration ministry said Russian representatives in a Joint Coordination Center were operating an "unacceptable" plan for inspecting vessels which contradicted the terms of the initiative.

In the last three days, Russian inspectors had refused to register three vessels without any explanation, it said.

"Ukraine categorically rejects Russia's latest demands and opposes its interference in the operation of Ukrainian ports," the ministry said.

-via Reuters

~

Ukrainian and Russian armed forces are fighting extraordinarily bloody battles in the ruined eastern city of Bakhmut, but pro-Kyiv forces are still holding on, Ukraine’s military says.

Reuters reported that Russia’s defence ministry said earlier on Saturday that fighters from the Wagner mercenary group had captured two more areas of Bakhmut, the main target of Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine.

Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern military command, told the 1+1 television channel:

Bloody battles unprecedented in recent decades are taking place in the middle of the city’s urban area.

Our soldiers are doing everything in bloody and fierce battles to grind down [the enemy’s] combat capability and break its morale. Every day, in every corner of this city, they are successfully doing so.

The Russian defence ministry said Wagner units had taken two areas on the northern and southern outskirts of the city. Russian army paratroop units were supporting the claimed advance by holding back Ukrainian forces on the flanks, it added.

Reuters could not independently confirm the report.

The UK said in an intelligence update on Friday that Ukrainian troops had been forced to cede some territory in Bakhmut as Russia mounted a renewed assault there.

-via The Guardian

~

Russia launched attacks across Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Donetsk oblasts over the past 24 hours, causing widespread property damage and injuring at least three people.

Settlements in the Kharkiv, Kupinask, Chuhuiv, and Izium districts of Kharkiv Oblast were targeted by Russian attacks over the past 24 hours, Governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote.

At least 11 buildings were damaged and fires had to be put out, according to Syniehubov. In the village of Kurylivka, located in the Kupiansk district, a private home was damaged as a result of Russian mortar attacks.

A private home in the village of Pershotravneve, located in the Izium district, was destroyed. However, there were no reported casualties.

Russia launched 56 attacks against 16 settlements in Zaporizhzhia Oblast over the past 24 hours, Governor Yurii Malashko reported.

This includes 46 artillery strikes, four air strikes, four drone attacks, and two attacks with multiple launch rocket systems.

According to Malashko, there are at least 52 reported cases of damage to infrastructure, including apartments, private houses, and cars.

A 61-year-old man was hospitalized for his injuries.

There were ten recorded strikes after Russian forces used rocket launchers to attack the Bilopollia community in Sumy Oblast overnight on April 17. There were no casualties, the Sumy Oblast military administration wrote.

Russian forces also shelled the border of Chernihiv Oblast. Six explosions were recorded between 06:45 a.m. and 07:15 a.m. near the village of Karpovychi, Operational Command North reported. Russian forces likely fired 120mm mortar rounds.

From 06:50 a.m. to 06:52 a.m. two explosions, also likely to be from 120mm mortar rounds, were recorded near the village of Leonivk. No casualties were reported.

Russian forces shelled Kherson Oblast 46 times on April 16, firing 170 shells from heavy artillery, drones, and aviation. Residential areas in Kherson were targeted three times, the Kherson Oblast military administration wrote. No casualties were reported.

Nikopol and a nearby settlement of the Chervonohryhorivka in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast were attacked with barrel artillery on April 16, Yevhen Yevtushenko, head of Nikopol's military administration, wrote.

Two people were injured as a result of the attack. One man received outpatient care and one woman was hospitalized for her injuries, but she is in stable condition, according to Yevtushenko.

A church, five residential buildings, two cars, several power lines, and four buildings were also damaged. One was also destroyed.

Kostiantynivka in Donetsk Oblast was hit by two missiles, Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote. According to the governor, Russian forces were targeting the territory of an enterprise. Three buildings and a car were damaged.

Russian forces shelled multiple other settlements across the oblast but no casualties were reported beyond the rising death toll from the April 14 missile strike on Sloviansk, which killed 15 people, including a two-year-old boy.

-via Kyiv Independent

~

At least 11 people have died and 22 more are wounded after Friday's strikes on residential buildings in the eastern city of Sloviansk, according to an update from the State Emergency Services.

The Ukrainian agency said four more people may still be trapped under the rubble Saturday.

“A total of 75 tonnes of rubble have been dismantled at the site,” the service's report said.

At least eight explosions rocked the city Friday afternoon local time, as Russian forces targeted it with S-300 rockets, according to Sloviansk Mayor Vadym Liakh. The strikes hit apartment buildings, houses, administrative buildings and a schoolyard.

A 2-year-old boy was among those killed in the assault.

-via CNN

The death toll from Friday's Russian missile barrage on residential buildings in Sloviansk, Ukraine, has reached 15, according to a regional Ukrainian official.

A further 24 people were wounded in the strikes, up from the previously reported total of 22, Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Donetsk region's military administration, said in a Telegram post Sunday.

Kyrylenko said rescuers pulled five people, including a 14-year-old girl, from under the rubble. The bodies of 10 of the victims were recovered.

Some context: The strikes, which killed a 2-year-old boy, are among the worst attacks on Sloviansk since the year began.

At least eight explosions rocked the city Friday afternoon local time, as Russian forces targeted it with S-300 rockets, according to Sloviansk Mayor Vadym Liakh. The strikes hit apartment buildings, houses, administrative buildings and a schoolyard.

-via CNN

~

One hundred and thirty Ukrainian prisoners of war have been released and returned home in a "great Easter exchange", a senior Ukrainian presidential official said on Sunday, the day of Orthodox Easter.

Ukrainian and Russian forces have held regular prisoner exchanges during Moscow's invasion, now in its 14th month. Russia holds swathes of territory in Ukraine's east and south.

"We are bringing back 130 of our people. It (the exchange) has been taking place in several stages over the past few days," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on the Telegram messaging app.

It was not clear how many Russians were sent back the other way.

Yermak said those returning home included military, border guards, national guard members, sailors and employees of the state border guard.

The exchange was the second large prisoner swap in the past week. On Monday, Russia and Ukraine said they carried out a major prisoner swap with 106 Russian prisoners of war being freed in exchange for 100 Ukrainians.

Ukraine said on Friday it had also retrieved the bodies of 82 of its soldiers from Russian-controlled territory.

-via Reuters

#Daily Update #Ukraine #Russia #War in Ukraine #Bakhmut #Black Sea #Sloviansk #Kharkiv

[warningsine]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/shooting-blast-reported-concert-hall-near-moscow-agencies-2024-03-22/

MOSCOW, March 22 (Reuters) - At least 40 people were killed and over 100 hurt when gunmen in camouflage clothing opened fire with automatic weapons on people at a concert in the Crocus City Hall near Moscow on Friday, Russia's FSB security service said.

In one of the worst such attacks in Russia in years, at least five gunmen were shown in unverified videos firing repeatedly at screaming civilians cowering in the concert hall as Soviet-era rock group "Picnic" was about to perform.

The 6,200-seat concert hall in a suburb west of Moscow, which is near a shopping mall also called Crocus City, was sold out for the performance.

Other video footage showed the men shooting people below what looked like an entrance sign to Crocus City Hall. People lying motionless in pools of blood outside the hall were also visible.

"Suddenly there were bangs behind us - shots. A burst of firing - I do not know what," one witness, who asked not to be identified by name, told Reuters.

"A stampede began. Everyone ran to the escalator," the witness said. "Everyone was screaming; everyone was running."

Flames leapt into the sky, and plumes of black smoke rose above the venue as hundreds of blue lights from emergency vehicles flashed in the night, Reuters pictures and video showed.

Helicopters sought to douse the flames and evacuated around 100 people from the basement, Russian media reported. The roof of the venue was collapsing, state news agency RIA said.

Russian media reported a second blast at the venue, and there were reports that some of the gunmen had barricaded themselves in the building.

It was not immediately clear who the attackers were. No group had yet claimed responsibility. Russia's foreign ministry said it was a "bloody terrorist attack".

ATTACK WARNING

Two weeks ago, the U.S. embassy in Russia warned that "extremists" had imminent plans for an attack in Moscow.

The embassy issued its warning several hours after the FSB said it had foiled an attack on a Moscow synagogue by a cell of the militant Sunni Muslim group Islamic State.

President Vladimir Putin, who was on Sunday re-elected for a new six-year term, sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022 and has repeatedly warned that various powers - including countries in the West - are seeking to sow chaos inside Russia.

Putin is receiving regular updates about the incident, the Kremlin said.

"Vladimir Putin was informed about the beginning of the shooting in the first minutes of what happened in Crocus City Hall," the Kremlin said.

"The president constantly receives information about what is happening and about the measures being taken through all relevant services. The head of state gave all the necessary instructions," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

SECURITY TIGHTENED

After the attack, Russia tightened security at airports, transportation stations and across the capital - a vast urban area of over 21 million people.

"A terrible tragedy occurred in the shopping centre Crocus City today," Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. "I am sorry for the loved ones of the victims."

The White House said that images of the shooting were hard to watch while Germany's foreign ministry called the images "horrific."

"...Our thoughts obviously are going to be with the victims of this terrible, terrible shooting attack," White House spokesman John Kirby said.

Germany foreign ministry said on X, "The background must be clarified quickly. Our deepest condolences go out to the families of the victims."

"The entire world community is obliged to condemn this monstrous crime," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. "All efforts are being thrown at saving people."

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that Kyiv "had absolutely nothing to do with these events" in a video message posted on Telegram while Kirby said there was "no indication at this time that Ukraine, or Ukrainians were involved in the shooting."

Zakharova questioned how the U.S. knew this and said Washington should immediately pass any information it had to Moscow, or stop making such statements.

"On what basis do officials in Washington draw any conclusions in the midst of a tragedy about someone's innocence?" Zakharova said.

#russia #news tag

[no-phrogs-in-hats]

If I Could Turn Back Time

Larissa Weems x Fem!Reader

A/N: This fic is cross-posted on Wattpad and Ao3

Chapter 3

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

First period had started ten minutes before as I rushed into the building. The halls were void of students and staff, and the only sound was the squeaking of my coffee-sodden shoes on the white tiles. 

Every head in the classroom shot up from their phone as I burst through the door, setting my bag down and taking out the soaked papers to dry. “I am so sorry, guys!”

“Miss Foster,” one kid said. “Is that coffee on you?”

I paused and stared at them like a deer in headlights. “Um–uhh…yeah.” I began to set up my desk–booting up my computer, filing away papers, trying my best to not cry at the feeling of wet socks–while simultaneously trying my best to form a coherent response. “Little accident at the Weathervane. I ended up spilling all of my latte on me…and another customer.”

I took a deep breath and fixed my shirt, sighing as I tried to gather my thoughts, but something–her–she lingered in the back of my head. Larissa. Not even ten minutes together and her eyes, her smile, her very person was already imprinted in my mind. “Okay–uh…what class is this again? First period? Right, okay. Where’d we leave off yesterday?”

“The intro to the Russian Revolution of 1917,” a girl in the back answered.

“Right!” I moved to the white board and took a marker, drawing a long line with dashes here and there. When the timeline was built, I began to lecture the students, smiling to myself when turned away from them, knowing that they had no clue I had first hand experience with the subject at hand.

“Okay, the Russian Revolution…” I started. “As we learned yesterday, the revolution was initiated in February of 1917. The first revolt was centered around the capital at the time, Petrograd. This would later become Saint Petersburg. Tsar Nicholas II eventually stepped down from the throne after being convinced by the high ranking military officials that in doing so, the mutinies and turmoil would subside. This would allow the new government, led by the Russian Duma, to take over, and this becomes the Russian Provisional Government.” 

I looked across the sea of students all looking at the board, some taking notes, and one trying to not fall asleep. “Can anyone tell me what was a major contributing factor to the 1917 revolution?”

A girl in the back shot her hand up quickly. “Oh! The Russian Revolution of 1905.”

“Good!” To know that at least one of my students was paying attention and that I wasn’t talking to the wall always filled me with hope–especially in a town like this. “As we learned last week, the events of Bloody Sunday caused a lot of upheaval. If you turn to page 276 of your textbook you can see a primary source image of propaganda from 1905, and if you turn to page 301 you can also see a comparison of the multiple revolutions Russia had pre-World War One and throughout…”

The soft glow of lamplight encases the living room as the TV plays quietly in the background. I scan over tests, marking each incorrect answer and unfortunately recording more D’s than A’s. 

I glance at my phone. It had been an entire day since I spilled coffee on Larissa. I had no idea who she was or what she did for a living, but scenarios crossed my mind as to why she hadn’t reached out yet.

What if she was just being polite?

What if she wants nothing to do with me?

I barely know this woman and I’m already craving her approval and attention.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I don’t even know her last name and I’m already clinging to her.

It had been three days since the incident and now I was convinced Larissa wanted nothing to do with me. I stood in line at the Weathervane, staring off into space. As I stepped up to the counter, I smiled and placed my order before moving off to the side to wait. But once again I was a complete idiot.

“Wow, I really need to start looking where I’m going,” I huffed after running straight into her.

The softest smile from her sent butterflies through my chest. It was incredible, the effect this woman had on me. “Well, at least there was no coffee this time.” 

Larissa’s giggle was the sweetest sound to grace my ears. 

“Oh, by the way,” she continued. “I just wanted to apologize for not messaging you sooner. I’ve been quite busy recently.”

I smiled back, relieved it was all in my head. “That’s fine! I completely understand. I’m a history teacher at Jericho High School, so I’m well acquainted with ‘busy’.”

Larissa paused for a moment. “Would you want to sit down with me? I have some free time so I didn’t order my coffee as takeaway.”

“I would love that,” I said after taking a second to think. “But, unfortunately, I have to be at work in fifteen minutes.”

I could’ve sworn there was a look of disappointment in Larissa’s eyes. The blue hue grew ever so slightly darker and her smile faltered briefly before widening. “That’s quite alright. Your students come first.”

“Well,” I chuckled. “More like my need to pay the bills comes first. The students can be a pain in the rear, but you do have a point. The students are our future. And to have a better future they need a good education.”

The entire day I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It got so bad to the point where I actually had to give one of the classes a free period. “I need to catch up on grading,” I told them. 

What a lie.

I spent the entire time thinking about Larissa. How her hips swayed when she walked. How her perfect red lips would curve into the sweetest smile. And how her eyes could tell you every emotion she ever had. 

“Miss Foster?” 

“Miss Foster?”

A voice brought me from my trance and I looked up at the girl. How long had she been standing there? “Oh god. I’m sorry, Macy. What can I help you with?”

“Well, I just had a question about this section of the assignment you gave us yesterday…”

As she explained her problem it was hard to focus. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my phone screen light up with a text. My heart practically burst at the unknown number and suddenly, for the time ever, I didn’t want to help a student. 

But, I did. I answered her questions, and I helped her answer an essay prompt about the early civilization lesson we were going over. As soon as she sat back down I picked up my phone, and sure enough it was Larissa.

‘I was just wondering if you’d be available to go to dinner tomorrow night? A new restaurant opened up in the square, and I’ve been meaning to try it.’

Dinner. She does want to go to dinner. 

‘And what about the dry cleaning?’

‘The lady said she couldn’t do anything about it. The fabric was too light.’

Figures. 

‘I’m available anytime after 4.’

‘Is 5:30 okay?’

‘Sounds perfect. I’ll see you then.’

I don’t think I had ever been so impatient in my life until then. It was less than a day away and my heart was already fluttering uncontrollably, and it felt like years before the final bell of day had rung, dismissing the students from class.

#larissa weems x reader #larissa weems #wednesday #gwendoline christie

[honoviadakai]

Ivan’s neck scar

(Cw: mentions of decapitation, mentions of attempted s*icide, violent historical events and mental health issues)

So in case this is new information, Ivan Braginsky does in fact have a scar around his neck

(not the best image but it’s there under the neck bandages, I promise)

It’s not yet been revealed when or how he got that scar but it’s there and Ivan seems to not what people to see it, much less talk about it. That leads me to believe that whatever happened was a very traumatic incident for him which leads me to a few theories.

Mongolia or Tatarstan attacked Ivan when he was a child.

When a very young Ivan first meets a very young Tolis, he explains to him that living under Tatar is very difficult and that he wants to become a crazy strong country soon so he is no longer under their control. There’s even a brief moment where you can see blood on Ivan’s hands, and maybe even on his clothes, implying he has to fight everyday just to survive till the next day. It’s very possible that Ivan tried to rebel a few times. Given that at the time he was a very small child, neither of the aforementioned older nations probably punished him too severely but I can see a situation where they got fed up with Ivan’s rebellious attitude and either completely or partially decapitated him as a way to show him who was stronger and that if he kept rebelling, they’d do worse.

Either Feliks or Tolis tried to decapitate him.

Both Lithuania and Poland we’re having wars with Russia/the Soviet Union starting in the early 1900s and some of the battles got really intense so there might have been an intense fight between 2, or even all 3, parties involved and one of them struck a deadly blow to Ivan. Tolis in particular is stated to be a very disciplined and competent combatant so I’m definitely leaning more towards the idea that in the heat of the battle, Tolis either particular or completely decapitated Ivan.

A human attacked Ivan during one of the many revolutions that occurred in Russia’s history.

I specifically think Ivan was attacked during the attack knows as “Bloody Sunday”(St. Petersburg January 22, 1905). We see time and time again in the anime and Manga, especially with Russia, that nations have to follow their bosses orders to the letter even if they personally don’t agree with what they’re bosses are doing. He was most likely ordered to join the imperial forces and shoot his citizens, some of whom did try to fight back before dying. I don’t think they fought back enough to go too deep, but I do think the human who attacked him most likely picked up some scrap metal and at the very least cut through his exterior and anterior jugular veins.

He’s done it to himself…multiple times

You don’t live through some dark times and come out unscathed. His history has canonically caused psychological damage to Ivan’s psyche that persists into modern day. It’s very likely that living through so much traumatic history would leave him with depression and PTSD at minimum. He has more than likely tried, on multiple occasions, to end his suffering by attempting to take his own life but has never succeeded because of his immortality.

Whatever the cause, I definitely think it’s caused physical issues such as his voice being as high pitched and airy as it is. He sounds very young and childish, as if his vocal cords didn’t develop properly once he hit puberty. He’s capable of deepening his voice but he has to actively force it, such as when he’s mad and wants to sound intimidating/threatening or during character songs when his voice slips into a deeper tone when he’s actively forcing his voice. When he laughs it’s a very airy “ufufuf” sound. That might also be due to vocal damage and if he’s ever in a situation where he’s laughing so hard, he’s holding his sides, he’ll most likely have an eerily silent laugh where he only makes noise when his trying to take air into his lungs. I also imagine neck is very sensitive and he doesn’t allow people to touch him there unless he absolutely trusts them with his entire being. Swallowing might also be a problem for Ivan, especially if he’s eating very hot food.

Of course he also has some self esteem issues because of his neck scar. Looking at it makes him feel ashamed because it’s a reminder that he was weak enough to let someone hurt him. It’s also a reminder that people didn’t like or trust him in the past so he thinks that’s still true. It’s a scar that reminds him of all that he has suffered and of all the people who have hurt him, it’s a reminder that he’s survived over 1,000 years of hell on earth.

#hetalia #aph Russia #hws Russia #Ivan Braginsky #aph lithuania #hws lithuania #tolys laurinaitis #aph poland #hws poland #feliks łukasiewicz #aph mongolia #hws mongolia #cw: decapitation #cw: attempted suicide #cw: war #cw: historical violence #Ivan’s really gone through some shit

[reidio-silence]

When news of the 1903 Kishinev massacre and subsequent pogroms in Russia reached New York, 100,000 paraded the streets, and emotion was deep well beyond the boundaries of the Jewish ghetto. The Friends of Russian Freedom, a section of the Narodnaya Volya (the Socialist-Revolutionary Party), was already active in the area, and when its most famous militant, Catherine "Babushka" Breshkoskaya, arrived in New York, a meeting was called at the Cooper Union to welcome her. Shortly after, news of the 1905 Russian Revolution arrived, and again the Lower East Side 'lived in a delirium, spending almost all of its time at monster meetings and brought into close comradeship by the glorious events happening in the fatherland' [Emma Goldman]. And when Bloody Sunday followed, and revolution was crushed in terror and repression, such a virulent anti-Russian sentiment developed in the neighborhood that the Orleneff Theatre on East 3rd Street, performing mainly Russian plays, had to close down. The first anniversary of the 1905 Revolution was celebrated in Union Square, with "Mother" Jones and Jack London among the speakers. Meanwhile, the veritable semi-civil war raging in the Western coal-mining regions was being followed with great passion, and the attempt to frame Western Federation of Miners's officials William "Big Bill" Haywood, Charles Moyer, and George A. Pettibone again stirred the neighborhood into action. "Mother" Jones, the miners' beloved activist, was asked to speak on several occasions, while, after the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905 and above all during the 1913 Paterson strike, "Big Bill" often spent time on the Lower East Side, staying at Emma Goldman's place at 210 East 13th Street (the 'home of lost dogs', as it was termed by writer and bohemian Hutchins Hapgood). And Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a young IWW militant who played a major rôle in the 1912 Lawrence strike, came to be well-known for her eloquent and passionate street-corner speeches. Anger once again exploded, this time in 1914, when miners and their families were shot and burned to death in Ludlow (Colorado) by the Rockefeller Company's private police. Stormy meetings were held at the Cooper Union, and several demonstrations at Union Square broke into violent rioting. Militants from nearby IWW headquarters on East 4th Street called for action and left for the West by bumming rides on freight-trains. "Sweet" Marie Ganz even tried to reach and shoot John D. Rockefeller in his office. The whole Lower East Side was literally seething with revolt. The prospects of a war with Mexico, the news of the February and October revolutions in Russia (with the emotion they provoked among such exiled revolutionaries as Leon Trotzky, who was in New York at the time), and the United States's entry into World War I — all were occasions of great turmoil.

— Mario Maffi, Gateway to the Promised Land (1995)

#nyc #lower east side

[spandexbutterfly4lyfe]

Follow up on that last post — anyone special-interest-ifying the romanovs is so funny. If you woobify the last tzar of russia do me a favor and google bloody sunday real quick

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 6/26/2023 | The Libertarian Institute

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 6/26/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

On Thursday, a group of Republicans introduced a bill in the House and Senate that would reaffirm NATO’s Article 5 does not override congressional war powers. The effort was led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Warren Davidson (R-OH). AWC

Cuba

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Thursday told the House Armed Services Committee that he wants to give President Biden the authority to intervene militarily in Cuba to “take out” Chinese assets that are allegedly on the island. AWC

Russia

Russia’s Wagner Group has called off its march on Moscow and agreed to stand down after launching a two-day mutiny and seizing a military base in the city of Rostov-on-Don. AWC

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday passed a resolution to pressure President Biden to escalate US involvement in the Ukraine war by supplying Kyiv with longer-range missiles. AWC

President Biden warned Monday that the threat of Russian President Vladimir Putin using tactical nuclear weapons is “real.” AWC

The Pentagon on Tuesday claimed that an “accounting error” has freed up an additional $6.2 billion to spend on military aid for Ukraine. AWC

Ukrainian officials are still pushing for a commitment on Kyiv’s potential NATO membership at the alliance’s upcoming July summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. AWC

The US weapons maker Lockheed Martin says it is “standing by” to help Ukrainians fly and maintain F-16 fighter jets once NATO countries finalize their plans to provide Kyiv with the aircraft. AWC

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Tuesday that the Russian military has information that shows Ukraine is plotting to attack Crimea with US-provided HIMARS rocket systems and British-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles. AWC

A group of Belarusian exiles is receiving training in Poland to prepare for a day when they return to Belarus to take on the government of President Alexander Lukashenko, The Times reported on Sunday. AWC

The New York Times reported Monday that the US and its Western allies have shipped weapons to Ukraine that were broken and needed repair or were only useful for spare parts. AWC

A Pentagon official has told Congress that controversial cluster munitions Ukraine has been seeking from the US would be “useful” to Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. AWC

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will travel to Denmark this weekend for a meeting organized by Ukraine that is expected to be attended by officials from several countries that have remained neutral on the war, including India, China, South Africa, and Brazil. AWC

Russian officials said Thursday that a bridge in northern Crimea that connects to Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast was damaged by a Ukrainian missile strike. AWC

Western officials told CNN that Ukraine’s bloody counteroffensive is “not meeting expectations on any front” as Ukrainian forces are struggling to break through Russia’s defenses. AWC

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is going “slower than desired” as Ukrainian forces have made little progress and are taking heavy losses. AWC

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $1.3 billion in new economic aid for Kyiv at a meeting on Ukraine’s reconstruction held in London, known as the Ukraine Recovery Conference. AWC

Two US B-1B Lancer bombers arrived in Sweden this week as Stockholm is awaiting entry into NATO. According to the US military, it marks the first time US bombers landed in the Nordic nation. AWC

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Saturday that training for Ukrainian pilots on US-made F-16 fighter jets should begin next month. AWC

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill last week banning the import of books produced in Russia or printed in the Russian language. The new law is Kiev’s latest escalation in its extensive effort to eliminate Russian culture in Ukraine. The Insitute

Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive has been underway for over two weeks, and Kiev has little to show for the loss of life and military equipment expended the in the operations. The Institute

Several US media outlets have reported that US intelligence was aware Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was planning to take military action against Russia’s defense establishment before his short-lived uprising began on Friday. AWC

Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested on Sunday that the US was expecting more unrest in Russia following Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s two-day uprising. AWC

China

President Biden on Tuesday called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator” just one day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the Chinese leader in Beijing. AWC

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Beijing and Havana are negotiating to establish a joint military training facility in Cuba, something the report acknowledged China would be exploring as a response to further US military entrenchment in Taiwan. AWC

 Taiwanese military experts will join US and Japanese analysts in conducting war game simulations for a potential conflict with China in the Taiwan Strait, The South China Morning Post reported Monday. AWC

The Taiwanese Defense Ministry said that eight Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) warplanes came close to Taiwan’s contiguous zone, which extends 24 nautical miles off the island’s coast. AWC

The Chinese government summoned the US ambassador in Beijing to lodge a formal complaint over President Biden calling Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator,” The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. AWC

The commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz said Chinese vessels and planes that he encountered during a seven-month deployment in the western Pacific were “very polite and very professional.” AWC

A US Coast Guard cutter made a rare solo transit through the Taiwan Strait on June 20, which came a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded his two-day visit to Beijing. AWC

Two US B-52 bombers arrived in Indonesia on Monday, marking the first time the nuclear-capable aircraft landed in the Southeast Asian nation as the US is looking to beef up its military presence in the region to prepare for a future war with China. AWC

The Taiwanese Defense Ministry said that eight Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) warplanes came close to Taiwan’s contiguous zone, which extends 24 nautical miles off the island’s coast. AWC

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan docked in Da Nang, Vietnam, on Sunday for a six-day visit to the country amid rising tensions between the US and China in the region. AWC

Korea

The arrival of a large US nuclear-powered submarine in South Korea was a “dress rehearsal” for the docking of a nuclear-armed submarine, Nikkei Asia reported Monday. AWC

Saudi

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran on Saturday and signaled Riyadh is open to a naval alliance with Tehran, an idea recently put forward by Iran’s navy chief. AWC

Read More

#kyle anzalone #libertarian institute #news roundup

[duchesssoflennox]

"if I'm murdered by nobles and your relatives and if they shed my blood, none of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years"

Rasputin to Alexandra Feodorovna

After the murder of Grigori Rasputin in 1916, the most influential priest of the Russian court, by Tsar Nicholas II's relatives,A letter from him to the Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, discovered That was Rasputin's last letter to the Empress, in which he made shocking predictions about his own death and the future of Russia which made him one of the most mysterious people in history:

"I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I will leave life before January 1st.If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children But *if I am murdered by nobles and your relatives and if they shed my blood, none of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years, They will be killed by the Russian people and for twenty-five years there will be no nobles in the country..."

What you read is only a part of the letter and all the things mentioned come true in the coming years...

In 1917, the Bolsheviks came to power and the Romanovs were exiled to Siberia after 300 years of rule. The revolution that began with the massacre of Bloody Sunday by Tsar Nicholas II on January 22, 1905, ended in 1917 when the Bolsheviks came to power! and tsar Nicholas with his family and 4 of his crew were shot in July 17, 1918!💔 But after a century, Rasputin's prophecies still continue...💀

#Rasputin #alexandra feodorovna #tsar nicholas ii #Olga nikolaevna #tatiana nikolaevna #maria nikolaevna #anastasia nikolaevna #alexei nikolaevich #romanov dynasty

[lady-nightmare]

Google translation:

They warn Poland. "Putin has prepared a provocation," he wants a scandal

For decades, the subject of the Volhynian massacre has ignited the emotions of many circles in Poland. In the current situation of the war in Ukraine, it seems that our relations with our eastern neighbor are extremely good. Nevertheless, the anniversary of this crime gives rise to discussion again. - In the coming days, there may be physical attacks or, for example, a cyber attack, which will be aimed at causing a scandal of a political nature or serve to accuse Kiev of "ingratitude" towards Poland - says Michał Marek, author of the monograph "Operation Ukraine" in an interview with WP and an expert in the field of disinformation.

Mass slaughter of Poles

July 11 is the anniversary of the bloody Sunday of 1943, when at night UPA units attacked 99 Polish towns under the slogan "Death to Lachom". At that time, their inhabitants were prevented from escaping, and there were murders and destruction. Poles were killed by bullets, forks, knives or hammers, and after the murder of the population, Polish villages were burned down to prevent their resettlement.

The action was coordinated. In the village of Gurów, out of 480 Poles, only 70 survived. The same was true in other places - in the colony of Orzeszyn 270 out of 340 people died, in the village of Sądowa out of 600 Poles only 20 managed to survive.

The victims of the murders, which culminated in the summer of 1943, were Poles, but also - on a much smaller scale - Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians and Czechs, as well as representatives of other nationalities who lived in Volhynia. Historians estimate that about 50-60 thousand people died then. Poles.

Many historical data indicate that the causes of the genocide in Volhynia are closely related to the ideology of Ukrainian integral nationalism.

On July 22, 2016, the Sejm established July 11 as the National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists on the citizens of the Second Polish Republic.

Extremely good neighborly relations

Despite the very good Polish-Ukrainian relations today, which is related to the support of Ukraine by Poland in the war with Russia, the discussion about the Volhynia massacre - as every year - returns and arouses many emotions. The historian from the Institute of National Remembrance, Dr. Damian Markowski, said for the website Do Rzeczy: "Until there are graves on the graves of brutally murdered people, relatives, Poles and Ukrainians, current inhabitants of those lands, will not stand there and these will not become common places, the topic will be postponed ".

When talking about good neighborly relations, it is worth paying attention not only to the help of Poles for refugees from Ukraine, but also to political relations, such as those between Andrzej Duda and Volodymir Zelensky.

An example is Duda's speech in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Our president spoke there as the first Western politician since the outbreak of the war with Russia. In his speech, he emphasized the friendship between Warsaw and Kyiv, and that it was impossible to move on to the agenda of the crimes of Russians in Ukraine.

We're talking about a new good-neighborly deal. Maybe it is the time to clarify this system, to determine what is to be included in it. This is a breakthrough situation in Polish-Ukrainian relations - said Jan Piekło, former Polish ambassador to Ukraine in an interview with the Polish Armed Forces.

Increased activity of the Russians before the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre

Michał Marek, the author of the monograph "Operation Ukraine" and an expert in the field of disinformation, emphasizes in an interview with Wirtualna Polska that for Russian propaganda the anniversary of the crime in Volhynia is an opportunity to act: to stimulate tensions between Poles and Ukrainians.

On the one hand, it issues Russian-language materials which, by influencing the Ukrainians, are intended to depreciate the image of Poland and Poles. On the other hand, Russian propaganda centers influencing Poles promote materials that create Ukrainians as "enemies of Poland" who allegedly pose a threat to us, he says.

And he emphasizes: by de facto pro-Russian groups operating in social networks that position themselves on "truly Polish" and "pro-freedom" sources.

As Michał Marek notes, disinformation messages most often refer to the issue of creating an image according to which the present pro-Ukrainian and pro-NATO government of the Republic of Poland "covers up the truth" about the Volhynian massacre and "prohibits" the commemoration of people killed in Volhynia in 1943.

"They want to authenticate the message that Poles allegedly hate Ukrainians"

In recent days, the circles that have been cooperating with the Russian propaganda apparatus for years have also become more active. Some of them organize demonstrations commemorating the victims of the Volhynia massacre. These events, however, are primarily of a political nature, relegating the issues of commemorating the slaughter victims to the background - emphasizes the expert.

Such events are monitored by the Russian side in terms of obtaining materials for disinformation activities. Each provocation or aggressive slogans are used to authenticate the message that Poles allegedly hate Ukrainians en masse - he adds.

The threat of Russian provocations

Michał Marek points out that the Russians want to "distort the positive image of Poland in Ukraine" in this way. - The indicated actions are also used to convince the Russians that the West will soon stop supporting Ukraine. That "victory is imminent" because the West "is fed up with Ukrainian Nazism." The coming days may therefore bring provocations or a complex information and psychological operation aimed at achieving goals in the indicated directions - both the Russian internal market and the "Polish" and "Ukrainian" direction - warns the expert.

In his opinion, there may also be physical attacks or, for example, a cyber attack aimed at causing a political scandal or accusing Kiev of "ingratitude" towards Poland for the aid provided to this state (the blame for the attack may be blamed on the Ukrainian services) .

There are many possibilities. It is important that in the event of such a phenomenon, the society approaches the reports in a balanced manner. All such activities boil down to convincing Poles that it is not worth helping Ukrainians. The Russians want to block Polish support for Kiev, he adds.

Zelenskiy dismissed Andriy Melnyk

On the eve of the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre, the president of Ukraine dismissed, inter alia, Ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk. "Bild" wrote, citing several sources in Kiev, that Melnyk may leave Germany and return to Ukraine by autumn.

Melnyk has been Ukraine's ambassador to Germany for eight years. The diplomat has recently been criticized for statements in which he defended the leader of Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera.

He said, among others on the persecution of Ukrainians in the Second Polish Republic "in a way that is hard to imagine". In his opinion, Poland was for Ukrainians at that time "the same enemy as Nazi Germany and the USSR". Melnyk admitted that there were Ukrainian crimes against Poles in Volhynia. - It was a war - said the politician.

Special status of a Pole in Ukraine

Meanwhile, according to gazeta.pl, on Monday Volodymyr Zelenskiy is to submit a bill on the special status of Poles to the Verkhovna Rada. In addition, in connection with the anniversary of the Volhynia massacre, the President of Ukraine in his daily speech is to condemn the crimes against innocent victims.

According to the website, the intention of both parties - Polish and Ukrainian - is not to give Russia any pretexts to divide Warsaw and Kiev.

#poland #ukraine #russian propaganda #wołyń #upa #russia tries to divide poles and ukrainians

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up June 19, 2022

Under the cut: Ukraine’s parliament has voted through two laws which will place severe restrictions on Russian books and music in an attempt to break cultural ties between the two countries; Kyiv has been attacked from the air again in Vyshhorod district this morning; Ukrainian troops have “successfully repulsed” Russian attacks on villages near the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk; Germany will significantly increase its use of highly polluting coal to preserve energy supplies ahead of the winter as Russian cuts to gas exports threaten shortfalls; The Kyiv Independent has published photos documenting Russia’s invasion of the Donbas region. 

“Ukraine’s parliament has voted through two laws which will place severe restrictions on Russian books and music in an attempt to break cultural ties between the two countries.

One law will forbid the printing of books by Russian citizens, unless they renounce their Russian passport and take Ukrainian citizenship. The ban will only apply to those who held Russian citizenship after the 1991 collapse of Soviet rule, Reuters reports.

It will also ban the commercial import of books printed in Russia, Belarus, and occupied Ukrainian territory, while also requiring special permission for the import of books in Russian from any other country.

Another law will prohibit the playing of music by post-1991 Russian citizens on media and on public transport, while also increasing quotas on Ukrainian-language speech and music content in TV and radio broadcasts.

The laws need to be signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to take effect, and there is no indication that he opposes either. Both received broad support from across the chamber, including from lawmakers who had traditionally been viewed as pro-Kremlin by most of Ukraine’s media and civil society.”-via The Guardian

~

“Kyiv has been attacked from the air again, with the sound of air raid alarms and explosions ringing through the Ukrainian capital.

“Explosions were heard in Vyshhorod district this morning. Air defence fired at enemy targets,” the military governor of the Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, said on his Telegram channel on Sunday.

He said the shelling had not caused damage or injuries in the city, but asked Kyiv residents to continue taking refuge in shelters.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had hit a tank repair plant in Kharkiv with its Iskander missiles, and destroyed ten howitzers as well as up to 20 military vehicles in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv that had been supplied by Western countries over the past 10 days, Reuters reports.”-via The Guardian

~

“Ukrainian troops have “successfully repulsed” Russian attacks on villages near the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk, where bloody battles have been raging for weeks, Kyiv’s armed forces said Sunday.

The UN warned this week that remaining civilians in Sievierodonetsk, in the eastern region of Donbas, are running out of clean water, food and sanitation.

“Our units repulsed the assault in the area of Toshkivka,” the Ukrainian army said on Facebook. “The enemy has retreated and is regrouping.”

It said an attack from Russian forces who were “storming” towards the village of Orikhove had been warded off.

Sievierodonetsk is mostly, but not entirely, under Russian control, according Ukrainian officials, AFP reports.

“All declarations by Russians that they control Sievierodonetsk are lies. Indeed, they control the majority of the city but they do not control it entirely,” local governor Serhiy Haidai said on Telegram Sunday.”-via The Guardian

~

“Germany will significantly increase its use of highly polluting coal to preserve energy supplies ahead of the winter as Russian cuts to gas exports threaten shortfalls in Europe’s largest economy.

The German government said on Sunday it would pass emergency laws to reopen mothballed coal plants for electricity generation and auction gas supplies to industry to incentivise businesses to curb consumption. The move illustrated the depth of concern in Berlin over possible gas shortages in the winter months.

“This is bitter but in this situation essential to lower the use of gas,” said German economic minister Robert Habeck, a member of the Green party.

Russia cut capacity on the main gas export pipeline to Germany this week by 60 per cent, sending ripples across the continent as western officials became convinced that Moscow is weaponising its gas exports in response to EU sanctions following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Italy, which has also seen gas supplies from Russia fall, is expected to announce emergency measures in the coming days if supplies are not restored.”-via The Financial Times

~

The Kyiv Independent has published photos documenting Russia’s invasion of the Donbas region. 

“Two months after President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that the “Battle of Donbas” had begun, shelling and rocket fire intensifies as fierce fighting continues across the region.

“Russia wants to destroy every city in Donbas, (and) ‘every’ is not an exaggeration,” Zelensky said in an evening video address on June 10. “Like Volnovakha, like Mariupol. All these ruins in once happy cities.”

Russia turned its focus towards Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions after failing to capture Kyiv in a nine-week assault that reduced the capital’s suburbs to rubble and killed thousands. Moscow now focuses on capturing the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland comprised of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

Both Ukraine and Russia are suffering an immense number of casualties as the conflict transitions into a war of attrition.”

#Daily Update #Ukraine #Russia #War in Ukraine #Severodonetsk #sieverodonetsk #germany #kyiv #donbas

[warningsine]

Sudan's army appeared to gain the upper hand on Sunday in a bloody power struggle with rival paramilitary forces after blasting its bases with air strikes, witnesses said, and at least 59 civilians were killed including three U.N. workers.

The fighting erupted on Saturday between army units loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan's transitional governing Sovereign Council, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who is deputy head of the council.

It was the first such outbreak since both joined forces to oust veteran Islamist autocrat Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 2019 and was sparked by a disagreement over the integration of the RSF into the military as part of a transition towards civilian rule.

Burhan and Hemedti agreed to a three-hour humanitarian pause from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. local time (1400 GMT-1700 GMT) on Sunday proposed by the United Nations, the U.N. mission in Sudan said, with both sides saying in separate statements they had agreed to it.

A Reuters witness in central Khartoum said firing appeared initially to have subsided, but shortly afterwards reported heavy bombardments. Gunfire could still be heard and plumes of smoke seen in the background of live broadcasts from the Sudanese capital.

Doctors' unions had said earlier it was difficult for medics and the sick to get to and from hospitals and called on the army and RSF to provide safe passage.

The United States, China, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the U.N. Security Council, European Union and African Union have appealed for an quick end to the hostilities that threaten to worsen instability in an already volatile wider region.

Efforts by neighbours and regional bodies to end the violence intensified on Sunday. That included an offer by Egypt and South Sudan to mediate between the fighting parties, according to a statement by the Egyptian presidency.

The eruption of fighting over the weekend followed rising tensions over the RSF's integration into the military. Discord over the timetable for that has delayed the signing of an internationally-backed agreement with political parties on a transition to democracy after a 2021 military coup.

AIR STRIKES

Witnesses and residents told Reuters that the army had carried out air strikes on RSF barracks and bases, including in Omdurman across the Nile river from the capital Khartoum, and managed to destroy most of their facilities.

They said the army had also wrested back control over much of Khartoum's presidential palace from the RSF after both sides claimed to control it and other key installations in Khartoum, where heavy artillery and gun battles raged into Sunday.

RSF members remained inside Khartoum international airport besieged by the army but it was holding back from striking them to avoid wreaking major damage, witnesses said.

"The hour of victory is near," the army said in a statement on Sunday. "We pray for mercy for the innocent lives taken by this reckless adventure taken by the rebel Rapid Support militia ... We will have good news for our patient and proud people soon, God willing."

But a major problem, witnesses and residents said, was posed by thousands of heavily armed RSF members deployed inside neighbourhoods of Khartoum and other cities, with no authority able to control them.

"We're scared, we haven't slept for 24 hours because of the noise and the house shaking. We're worried about running out of water and food, and medicine for my diabetic father," Huda, a young resident in southern Khartoum told Reuters.

"There's so much false information and everyone is lying. We don't know when this will end, how it will end," she added.

Tagreed Abdin, an architect in Khartoum, said the power was out and people were trying to conserve phone batteries. "We can hear air strikes, shelling, and gunfire," she said.

Sudan's MTN telecommunications company blocked internet services on the orders of the government telecommunications regulator, two company officials told Reuters.

State television cut its transmission on Sunday afternoon, Reuters reporters in Khartoum and several cities outside the country said. It was not clear what caused the outage.

UN HALTS FOOD AID OPERATIONS

The U.N. World Food Programme said it had temporarily halted all operations in hunger-stricken areas of Sudan after three Sudanese employees were killed during fighting in North Darfur and a WFP plane was hit during a gun battle at Khartoum airport.

"I ... am extremely appalled by reports of projectiles hitting U.N. and other humanitarian premises, as well as reports of looting of U.N. and other humanitarian premises in several locations in Darfur," Volker Perthes, U.N. special envoy for Sudan and head of its country mission, said in a statement.

A protracted confrontation could plunge Sudan into widespread conflict as it struggles with economic breakdown and tribal violence, derailing efforts to move towards elections.

Energy-rich powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have sought to shape events in Sudan, seeing the transition away from toppled strongman Bashir's rule as a way to roll back Islamist influence and improve stability in the region.

They have also pursued investments in sectors including agriculture, where Sudan holds vast potential, and ports on Sudan's Red Sea coast.

CAUGHT UP IN THE FIGHTING

Several groups of people reported being stranded by fighting near the presidential palace and military headquarters in Khartoum.

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors reported at least 56 civilians had been killed and 595 people including combatants had been wounded since the fighting erupted.

Scores of military personnel were killed, the doctors' committee said, without giving a specific number due to a lack of first-hand information from hospitals.

Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan bin Al-Saud had separate phone calls with Burhan and Hemedti and called for an end to military escalation, Saudi state media said on Sunday. The minister affirmed Riyadh's call for calm.

In a speech to an Arab League meeting on the crisis on Sunday, Sudan said the Sudanese should be allowed to reach a settlement internally without foreign interference.

In an emergency session, the African Union's Peace and Security Council also said it strongly rejected any external interference that could complicate the situation in Sudan.

The armed forces said it would not negotiate with the RSF unless the force dissolved. The army told soldiers seconded to the RSF to report to nearby army units, which could deplete RSF ranks if they obey.

RSF leader Hemedti, deputy head of state, called military chief Burhan a "criminal" and a "liar".

(This story has been refiled to fix Saudi foreign minister's name to Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, not Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdul, in paragraph 28)

#sudan #news

[anotherworldnowblog]

7

THE SOVIET AGAINST THE SOVIETS

A Longer View of The Workers’ Councils in Hungary 1956

The story of the Soviet, of the Workers’ Council, is the familiar story of history: tragedy and then farce.[1] The Soviet is freedom in motion, it is the unity of revolutionary theory and practice, but it has been buried alive beneath the heavy rubble of history. In one of the endless haunting ironies of the twentieth century, the murderers, grave diggers, and eulogizers of this idea either bore its name on their lapels or exalted its democratic virtues, all while quietly stamping the fresh earth flat, packing it tight lest the dead rise up once more.

1905: The Soviet Is Born

The Soviet was first conceived, simultaneously as both an idea and a practical organizational formation, by the workers of St. Petersburg during the October Revolution of 1905 in the Tsar’s Imperial Russia. The St. Petersburg Soviet can be understood as a horizontal system of representation and communication, “founded on the basis of 1 deputy for every 500 workers,”[2] designed to coordinate strike activity, and which proved itself to be highly effective in the chaos of rebellion.[3] “The Soviet was the axis of all events, every thread ran towards it, every call to action emanated from it.”[4] The wildly diverse grouping of anarchists, socialists, revolutionaries, and intellectuals that comprised the St. Petersburg Soviet first met in the apartment of the anarchist Volin in a preliminary effort to create cohesion across the revolting sectors of society.[5] This humble meeting, a testament to the type of ingenuity and even “left unity” that is possible when ideology takes a backseat to the practical activity of making a revolution out of concrete reality, would go on to change the course of world history forever. But, to fully understand this first Soviet, we must pause to consider the grisly set of preconditions out of which it first arises.

Proletarians at this time live in absolute immiseration and were entirely at the mercy of the capitalist, as well as the tsarist State. The proletariat in Tsarist Russia have “little or no labour legislation; no trade unions; no rights of combination, assembly, strike, or speech. The working class, quite simply, have no rights.”[6] Not only did the proletariat have no legal rights, as Serge alludes to, they also had no state-sanctioned organizations or even press outlets. This would soon change as a result of concessions made in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution, perhaps specifically in reaction to the actions of the St. Petersburg Soviet. We must also remember that the inter-imperialist war with Japan was an absolute disaster for Russia, shattering national pride and further crippling an already stunted economy. Faith in the Tsarist system was disintegrating rapidly. Lastly, we must recall that the proletariat had now been twice denied democratic suffrage, first through the persistence of feudal political relations well beyond the emergence of capitalist economic relations, and second through the farcical creation of the first Duma, only two months prior and in response to the growing unrest, on August 6th.[7] Considering the trajectory of Russian history in comparison to the rest of the imperial states, one must wonder if representative democracy is not a key component of industrial capitalism, necessary for the stabilization of the capital-labor relation. If so, the effect its absence has had on the development of Russian capitalism is quite astounding. 

Finally, in October of 1905, the workers of St. Petersburg, after decades of abuse, national decline, accelerating labor action, and with the January Bloody Sunday[8] massacre of hundreds of their comrades fresh in their memories, rather spontaneously make their world historical attempt to circumnavigate the disfigured hybrid feudal-capitalist society that blocks their every move. They strike, riot, and fight in the street, now coordinating their activities through the Soviet. For a moment, everything seems possible. Isolated with the exception of the uprisings in Moscow, the proletariat in St. Petersburg is tragically crushed within a matter of weeks as the rest of the country accepts concessions and eventually an expanded, but ultimately insufficient, franchise. In the countryside, “two thousand landowners’ homes were reduced to cinders.”[9] The peasants, acting in narrow self-interest, think only to attempt to reclaim their lands from the entrenched landlord class, but eventually settle for the promise of land reform. There was apparently no coordination between the proletariat in the town and the peasants in the country and even this well-timed campaign of fire could not fully shake loose the decrepit feudal fetters of the old Russian society in the countryside. The Soviet goes silent as leadership is arrested. “January 1906 is a month of firing squads.”[10] But the idea of the council lingers on, as a ghost. A revolutionary form of cooperation is let loose upon the world, a form of government-that-is-not, and it already here hints at its potential to simultaneously transform political and economic relations in one gesture.

February 1917: The Soviet Awakens

Barely a decade later, Imperial Russia has found its way into yet another disastrous war, this time with the rapidly industrializing German forces, and economic catastrophe of truly unfathomable proportion. This was an empire at the end, that much was clear to all. Serge describes the grim situation preceding 1917 vividly: “Whole armies entering the field without munitions… sudden fortunes in the hands of manufacturers of war supplies… Rasputin appointing and dismissing ministers between one drunken orgy and the next; Russia sliding towards the abyss… inflation… a bread and a fuel shortage.”[11] Tsarist rule had become completely untenable, it was now simply a question of how it would end.

It is the workers of Petrograd, beginning first with the women of the critically important textile manufactures, who land the final blows on the Tsarist order and bring down the three-hundred-year-old dynasty. Despite the best efforts of the authorities to discipline the restless and hungry workforce, pressure built up inside the factories until it burst out, “into the streets: it [the revolution] came down from the factories with thousands of workers out on strike, to cries of ‘Bread! Bread!’”[12] Strikes follow strikes, until hundreds of thousands of demonstrators fill the soot-stained streets of Petrograd, emboldened and empowered by each other’s presence and confident in the absolute necessity of their actions. Soldiers begin to join the workers in the streets and key weapons caches are secured by the growing masses. It is at this point that the workers of Petrograd, and indeed across Russia, begin to organize themselves into councils. On February 27th, the Temporary Revolutionary Committee of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies is established in Petrograd and immediately calls out for “workers and soldiers to send representatives to a meeting called for that evening.”[13] That same night, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies is founded. The next day, the workers of Petrograd release the following statement to the Russian people:

“The fight is still on and must go on to the end. The old power must be completely crushed to make way for popular government. In that lies the salvation of Russia. In order to succeed in this struggle for democracy, the people must create their own governmental organ. Yesterday, February 27, there was formed at the capital a Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, made up of representatives of factories, mills, revolted troops, and democratic and socialistic parties and groups. The Soviet, sitting in the Duma, has set for itself as its main task to organize the popular forces, and to fight for the consolidation of political freedom and popular government… We invite the entire population of the capital to rally at once to the Soviet, to organize local committees in their wards and take into their hands the management of local affairs.”[14]

True to the spirit of the first councils in 1905, this soviet was not simply a product of organizational necessity, but a bold experiment in and invitation to self-governance. Councils explode throughout the city of Petrograd and across Russia, both into urban centers such as Moscow as well as into the countryside as peasants rise up and reclaim their lands. Finally, the Tsarist forces are commanded to restore order once and for all by way of lethal force. The soldiers refuse to rain hot lead on the masses of demonstrators and the old regime is finished. Tsar Nicolas abdicates his throne with one final plea: “May the Lord God help Russia!”[15] A Provisional Government of party leaders representing the landed, conservative elements of the old society is declared, the incomplete character of the revolution is confirmed, and revolutionary Russia enters a tense period of competing centers of power; “Russia has the choice between two dictatorships: either that of the proletariat or that of the bourgeoisie.”[16]

October 1917: The Soviet Betrayed

Lenin immediately recognizes the bourgeois nature of the February Revolution and desperately urges the Bolsheviks to not let up for an instant. The Petrograd Soviet, at this point headed by Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, offers its conditional support to the Provisional Government and appears content to function as a democratic organ within the emerging bourgeois order. Despite a flurry of reforms issuing from the Provisional Government, the central issues that provoked the dissolution of Tsarism remain unresolved: Germany continues to menace Russia as war remains the policy of the Provisional Government, food remains scarce and prices high, and the peasants await resolution to the burning question of land reform. The work of revolution remains far from finished and with astonishing rapidity, the revolutionary elements of society begin to understand just this. It is at this point that Lenin, who’s timing is never anything but impeccable, arrives in Petrograd at Finland Station and demands the transfer of, “all power to the soviets.”[17]

The self-organization of the workers and peasants continues apace, while Lenin urges his Bolshevik comrades to recognize the situation unfolding in front of their eyes. The councils begin to confederate; that same month the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets is held and a sprawling system of democracy from below begins to take shape. Documents from this period concerning the organization of the Congress give some idea of the incredible numbers of people now taking part in the partial self-management of Russian society: “Soviets numbering from 25,000 to 50,000 have 2 delegates; 50,000 to 75,000 have 3 delegates; 75,000 to 100,000 have 4 delegates; 100,000 to 150,000 have 5 delegates; 150,000 to 200,000 have 6 delegates; over 200,000 have 8 delegates.”[18] The masses have never stopped moving and as soon as the Bolshevik party falls behind the Leninist line they are marching in lockstep with the people, and they are alone in doing so. This is immediately reflected in the soviets themselves as the Bolsheviks, a small minority during the February revolution, take majorities in councils across Russia. It is at this point where a complicated dialectical relationship between party and people first emerges that would go on to define post-revolutionary Russia, for at least the following decade. At times the masses are pushing forwards, even to the great fear of the bold revolutionaries in the Bolshevik party. At other moments, the party is providing coherence to the wild movements of the masses where none existed prior. The workers of Petrograd continued to organize themselves for the seizure of power, creating armed regiments within the workplaces and adopting an industrial discipline that the imperial armies of the Tsar could only have dreamed of. Again, it is the workers themselves who take the lead in this process: “The initiative in forming the Red Guards in Petrograd came from the factory workers, who began it instinctively after the fall of Tsardom. In disarming the old order they had to begin to arm themselves.”[19] The masses are moving towards revolution despite the vacillations of socialist parties and the resistance of the Provisional Government, and by September, “the use of weapons was being taught in 79 Petrograd factories.”[20]

By October, the workers and soldiers were ready to put an end to the infuriating deferrals of the sham Provisional Government and the Bolsheviks, at Lenin’s urgent instruction, take command of the ensuing insurrection. Bolshevik representatives publicly abandon the Provisional Government; the Red Guards, now numbering in the tens of thousands and bolstered further still by the defections of countless soldiers, form military revolutionary committees and occupy key points across Petrograd; and a fleet of battleships, having quietly made for Petrograd in the days prior, begins bombardment of the Winter Palace, firing only blanks. “Just as the Reds are surrounding the Winter Palace, the Petrograd Soviet meets. Lenin comes out of hiding, and he and Trotsky announce the seizure of power. The Soviets will offer a just peace to all the belligerent powers.��[21] Mensheviks and right-Socialist Revolutionaries protest and abandon the Soviet, but their actions are meaningless as the people of Petrograd are firmly behind the council, recognizing it for what it is: an institution of their own, a chance at a different type of society, and the sparkling promise of realizing those always elusive 19th century ideals, progress and democracy.

But as the revolution is being made, as the Bolsheviks through the Soviets announce their first decrees (the end of the war, the abolition of private property and recognition of the peasants’ claims to the land, workers control of production[22]), the revolution is being unmade. In Moscow, the organization of the Soviets is far less complete than in Petrograd and despite the eventual ouster of the reactionary elements from the city, a bloody campaign of terror is unleashed upon the revolution by a proto-White coalition of military academy students, bourgeois intellectuals, and middle-class reactionaries. These White forces attempt the restoration of the status quo through the rapid deployment of one gruesome horror after another, as if these protectors of the Provisional Government intend to literally “drown the workers’ revolution in blood.”[23] This episode darkly presages the coming Civil War and, occurring almost simultaneously as the triumph of Petrograd, marks the beginning of a period of counterrevolution that is carried out both within and without the new ruling revolutionary coalition.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks, recognizing their fragile grasp on power and the incredible challenge of holding together a society so deeply fractured along class and party lines, reluctantly follow through with one of the early demands of the February Revolution left unresolved by the Provisional Government, namely the institution of a Constituent Assembly and universal suffrage. Lenin, weary of extending democratic powers to all elements of Russian society, including and especially those that did not carry out the revolution, makes the case that the executive committees and revolutionary leadership would not be bound by the results of such an election, arguing that true democracy has always lied in the hands of the working people, in the republic of soviets. The Constituent Assembly yields predictable results, a right-Socialist Revolutionary as its president and the Bolsheviks securing only 24 percent of the 700 delegates.[24] Crucially, this includes about half of the soldiers’ votes with the rest divided among the tangled web of remaining political parties. On January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly meets for the first time in the Tauride Palace of Petrograd and is surrounded and evicted by the Red Guard, acting on behalf of the Central Executive Committee of the soviets. This act, which Bolshevik accounts tend to argue was an absolute necessity for the protection and expansion of the gains of the revolutionary classes, set into motion the unfathomable bloodshed of Civil War and paved the way for the counterrevolutionary centralization and consolidation of Bolshevik power, over and above the heads of the Russian people, very much including the growing Russian proletariat.

In the desperate and bitter months and years ahead, a secret police force is established to root out enemies of the revolution on both the right and the left, obviously contrary to Lenin’s earlier insistence in his April Theses that the revolution must abolish the police; genuine worker power in the form of the soviets is transferred upwards into a state-controlled council of trade unions which describe themselves in January 1918 as “instruments of state authority;”[25] and the valiant leaders of the October revolution sink lower and lower to find flimsy theoretical justifications for their party’s activities: “Red terror cannot, in principle, be distinguished from armed insurrection.”[26] Eventually, largely out of wretched necessity, a capitalist economy in the form of the 1921 New Economic Policy is partially reintroduced as a last-ditch effort to compel the peasants, who are once again separated from the fractured coalition that had made the revolution inevitable, to produce enough foodstuffs to keep the urban proletariat and the Red Guard from succumbing to starvation. The Red forces at last emerge victorious in 1922, but at what cost? Many of the brightest and most committed revolutionaries have fallen in combat, the ideological diversity of the Red forces has been greatly reduced by the Cheka, and workers’ councils are neutralized and with them, the dream of a society defined by the free association of producers and the free development of each person is plunged once again beneath the surface of the rushing, black waters of human consciousness.[27] Communist society is suppressed and postponed in the name of Communism, cooperative relations are transformed into new relations of command, and the bright star of revolution is mercilessly pursued by the Bolshevik leaders over the horizon of history, never suspecting that their revolutionary efforts, first in 1905 and next in 1917, had already twice divulged a political formation capable of overturning society and implementing a socialist one, and it was not The Party. It would be almost four decades until the council rises once more, and although it was unable to withstand the terrified onslaught of fully industrialized reaction, the truth of its form and the completeness of its revolution shattered illusions on both sides of the iron curtain about what kind of society the Soviet Union had established, opening a space of clarity and independence of thought, especially within the global communist movement, that has affected and continues to affect the trajectory of world history to this day.

October 1956: The Hungarian Workers’ Councils

The origins of the revolution in Hungary, much like those in Russia, must be at least partially traced back to the aftermath of World War I and Hungary’s own experience of a cancellation of progress, a denial of democracy forced down from above and outside the nation’s ever shifting borders, and the generally backwards nature of Hungarian society, especially when considering class composition and the degree of industrialization with respect to the powerful capitalist nations to its West. In 1918, Hungary is a nation of peasants who are almost uniformly “landless, unemployed, and close to starvation.”[28] Virtually all the land is held by either the Church or a wealthy aristocratic class and this disturbing level of inequality, bordering on the absurd, has no equal in all of Europe at this time. However, roiling beneath the surface in this fertile corner of Eastern Europe exists a rising revolutionary sentiment, with both patriotic and socialistic characteristics. Prisoners of war returning home from the Russia spread the news of the October revolution and fan the flames of desire for another way of life among the Hungarian people.[29]

In March of 1919, the Allied powers chopped up the Hungarian territory in an effort to appease the neighboring Poles, Czechs, and Romanians, reducing it “to a fraction of its former size.”[30] The ensuing chaos toppled the government of pseudo-populist Count Karolyi and the Hungarian Soviet Republic is declared by the newly established coalition of then-imprisoned communists and social democrats, with foreign minister Bela Kun as its de facto leader and the solid red flag as its symbol. It seems worth remembering that at this point, the Russian communists were fighting for their lives against the well-funded, well-armed White menace in a Civil War that would last three more years. The activities of Hungarian communists in this moment are almost entirely independent of direct Russian influence. As the name suggests, the new system concentrated power within democratic councils, but strangled by Allied embargoes and with neighboring enemies taking full advantage of Hungarian disarmament by invading and occupying vast swaths of the country, the promising situation deteriorated quickly. Nationalist expansionist ambition ran into conflict with communist internationalist ideology, as the patriotic desire of many to restore Hungary’s prewar borders created serious internal conflict with those in leadership whose loyalties lied first and foremost in the growth of the communist movement. In August, and with Allied and Romanian forces pressing in on the precarious soviet republic, “a right-wing counterrevolutionary army under Admiral Miklós Horthy marched into Budapest, disposed of the communists with swift brutality, checked the advance of the Romanians, and instituted the first fascist government in Europe.”[31]

Horthy’s twenty-six-year reign as Regent of Hungary can be characterized most readily by its fervent anticommunism, which was rivaled only by its virulent antisemitism. This twisted fusion of aristocratic conservatism and modern fascism unleashed wave after wave of reactionary violence upon Hungarian society as, “thousands of Communists and Socialists were rounded up by fascist gangs, beaten, tortured, killed. The Trade Unions were violently suppressed. Those merely suspected of socialist sympathies were tortured and finally murdered. Thousands of people, quite unconnected with such ideas, suffered persecution and death. So frightful were the reports of atrocities that even the British (who knew all about atrocities in India) were moved to send a Parliamentary Commission to Budapest. The Commission reported that ‘the worst stories of mutilation, rape, torture and murder’ were proved.”[32] When World War II came, Horthy’s Hungary fought at Hitler’s side.[33] By 1944, the Hungarian forces were decimated, Russia continued to advance West, and Hitler, sensing Horthy’s restlessness, sent military units into Hungary to ensure its continued support. It is around this time that leaders of the SS also arrive in Hungary to carry out the “final solution” and extermination of its Jewish population. Before the war’s end, roughly 500,000 Hungarian Jews are rounded up and killed in Auschwitz.[34]

When the Nazi occupation ends and the Soviet occupation of Hungary begins, there exists great hope that the fortunes of the Hungarian people are turning, that a better life is drawing nearer, that change is on the horizon. These hopes for the outcome of the Stalinist occupation faded quickly with the announcement of the formation of a new Hungarian government. “The First Minister was the Hungarian Commander-in-Chief General Bela Miklos de Dolnok… the first Hungarian personally to receive from Hitler the greatest Nazi honour: Knight Grand Cross of the Iron Cross… months earlier, in July 1944, General Bela Miklos had held the highly trusted job of messenger between the principal organiser of the White Terror, Admiral Horthy, and the vilest Nazi of them all, Adolf Hitler.”[35] The despair of the Hungarian people, including many of the remaining Hungarian Communists, was palpable. The promise of liberation had been snatched away once more, this time by the self-proclaimed protectors of the planet’s working classes. Stalin appears to have been more concerned with maintaining an iron hold over the vast, war-torn spoils of his Red Army’s nightmarish march West than with the liberation of the masses or even the successful flourishing of any form of Communist ideology. All that mattered was that in Hungary, “a political vacuum existed. There was a real danger of it being filled by the organisations thrown up by the industrial and agricultural workers. The workers had taken Communist propaganda at its face value. They had already begun to act upon it. This was extremely dangerous for the Soviet leadership…The only people the Russians could rely on were the remnants of the previous ruling groups.”[36]

A Stalinist secret police is immediately established in Hungary. Known as the A.V.O. and staffed by “the old vermin of the Horthy regime and the new scum of the Communist Party,” the group becomes infamous almost overnight for their monstrous torture techniques, a synthesis of Gestapo and N.K.V.D. knowledge, and even the lowest ranking members make around three times the national average income.[37] Needless to say, they are hated almost universally across Hungarian society. What the A.V.O. are indirectly tasked with is enabling the accelerated resumption of production across the Hungarian economy and thus, enabling the pillaging of Hungarian resources by the Soviet Union. Rather than being welcomed into the Communist fold as comrades in the class struggle, the treatment of Hungary during this period is comparable only to the relationship the imperial powers of the early 20th century had with their colonies. Hungary was not alone in this fate:

“The satellite states were regarded as a source of raw materials and of cheap manufactured goods. Exploitation worked in two directions. Russia secured the satellites’ exports at below world prices. And it exported to them at above world prices. The Polish-Soviet agreement of August 16, 1945, for the annual export of Polish coal to the U.S.S.R. is a startling example. ‘The robbery of Poland through this transaction alone amounted to over one hundred million dollars a year. British capitalists never got such a large annual profit out of their investments in India.’”[38]

Predictably, labor conditions for most Hungarians begin to deteriorate under the new government; piece-work is introduced on a massive scale, and even some party members now begin to object to the obvious exploitation of their country and countrymen. “On January 9, 1950, the Hungarian Government issued a decree prohibiting workers from leaving their place of work without permission.”[39] But as workers endure greater degradation with each passing day, so too did they begin to mount a deepening resistance. Rates of absenteeism and poor craftsmanship soar with devastating effects on productivity, despite the best efforts of the government and its secret police to create a compliant and efficient working class.[40]

In 1953, the death of Stalin and the subsequent revelations at the 20th Congress about his dictatorship rattle the Communist world and inaugurate a period of supposed “relaxation” that extends into Hungary. Imre Nagy, who up to this point was known only for his role as Minister of Agriculture in the 1944 government, becomes Prime Minister and immediately announces a new program of modest reforms. By 1955 however, the Kremlin decided that Nagy had gone too far, that he had done too much to stimulate the imaginations of the people, and he is hastily removed with the feared leader of the Hungarian Communist Party, Mátyás Rákosi, resuming his role as leader of Hungary. But something is stirring in the hearts and minds of those in the so-called satellite nations. In Poland in October of 1956 and to the great alarm of Soviet leadership, workers spontaneously arm themselves even as Russian troops advance on Warsaw to reestablish control over their prized and hard-won territory where even the promise of reforms could not prevent an incredible, and illegal, strike wave from rocking the country that summer.

In Hungary, rebellion had been in the air since at least April of the same year, when a group of Young Communists and intellectuals, largely students, begin meeting regularly and find themselves drifting further and further from the party line. “Assisted by the Writers’ Union, it soon became an important and effective centre for the dissemination of opinion, criticism, and protest about the deplorable state of Hungarian society… Soon, the meetings of the Petőfi Circle were attracting thousands of people. These gatherings, already unanimous in their demands for intellectual liberty and truth, began to hear voices openly calling for political freedom.”[41] While the Petőfi Circle had begun as a reformist discussion group, generally supportive of Imre Nagy, all summer long and as the meetings grew in size and length, the young participants also sharpened and deepened their critique of Hungarian society, eventually adopting the idea that Hungary must find its way out from under the Soviet Union’s boot and chart its own path to communism. Intellectual and artistic agitation blossoms across Hungary. In September, the Poznan trials begin in Poland and the workers charged are handed down surprisingly merciful sentences for their insubordination. As perfect summer days give way to brisk autumn wind, the workers of Hungary awaken.

Across the country, factory workers rise with one revolutionary demand on their lips: self-management of the workplace. The Petőfi Circle, perhaps somewhat naively, adopts the workers’ revolutionary demands and calls “for a mass demonstration on October 23, ‘to express the deep sympathy and solidarity with our Polish brothers’ in their struggle for freedom.”[42] At least 50,000 people show up. After several vague but stirring speeches and demands are delivered by students and members of the Writers Union, the demonstration ends. But the mass of people refuses to disperse and instead spontaneously heads towards Parliament Square, all the while the crowd continuing to swell. Someone suggests sending a delegation to the radio station headquarters nearby to broadcast the demands of the demonstrators. “Eventually a deputation moved off in the direction of Sándor Street ... followed by 100,000 people!”[43] The massive throng arrive at Sándor Street to find it blocked off by A.V.O. officers. After some pleading and chanting, a delegation is allowed to proceed behind the menacing wall of state terrorists. Many workers now come into the streets to join the students, inspired by their courage in marching on the radio station and hearing the state’s denunciations of the demonstration over the radio earlier that evening. Time passes, and still no word from the group inside. The crowd grows restless once more. Now chants demanding the release of the delegation rumble louder and louder, echoing off the high apartment walls and up into the heavens.

“A spontaneous surge forward swept the A.V.O. cordon aside. The people halted in front of another line of A.V.O. men guarding the Radio Building… The demonstrators were unarmed — but there were thousands of them and they were angry…For their protection, ruling minorities always staff their police forces with men whose minds only work one way. The A.V.O. men knew only one answer. Machine-guns fired. Agonized shrieks arose as the front ranks of the peaceful demonstrators crumpled to the ground. The crowd became infuriated. The police were quickly overwhelmed, their arms used to fire at the windows of the Radio Building from which lead now streaked into the throngs below. The Hungarian Revolution had begun.”[44]

Over the course of the dramatic next few weeks, time would either speed up, a year’s events compressed into the span of hours, or at moments cease to exist altogether, a vortex to an endless present having opened up, if only for a few beautiful instants. The workers spring into action, immediately moving to arm themselves and their young comrades in the streets. “Those who had earlier left the arms factories returned there. Their comrades of the night shift helped load lorries with commandeered arms: revolvers, rifles, light machine guns, and ammunition. Many on the night-shift then left the factories and went to Sándor Street to help distribute the weapons and join the ever-increasing crowds. The police made no attempt to disperse the demonstrators. Many handed over their weapons to the workers and students, then stood aside; some policemen joined the demonstration.”[45] That same night, Hungarian soldiers, mostly peasants, handed over their arms to the demonstrators and stood aside. As night slipped into morning, every main street and square in the city was occupied, with arms strategically dispersed throughout the massive assemblies.

As dawn breaks, the sitting head of the Hungarian state is removed and Imre Nagy is invited to take charge over a situation that has, within hours, become an armed popular uprising. It is at this point, under Nagy’s direction, that the first call for Russian assistance is allegedly made. The naïve student contingent is stunned and momentarily paralyzed by the news, but the workers carry the struggle forwards. “In the society they were glimpsing through the dust and smoke of the battle in the streets, there would be no Prime Minister, no government of professional politicians, and no officials or bosses ordering them about. The decision to call in Russian troops only strengthened the morale and resolve of the workers. They were now more determined than ever to fight to the end, whatever that end might be.”[46] A revolutionary council of workers and students is commenced in Budapest and remains in permanent session throughout the duration of the revolution, coordinating activities, printing leaflets, and advancing the vision of the new society they sought to deliver to the world. “The Hungarian people created twenty-five new newspapers overnight, the older artists and the younger talents pouring out news, articles, stories, and poems, in a flood -tide of artistic energy.”[47]

Later that same day, Wednesday the 24th of October, was the arrival of Russian tanks. The tanks are immediately attacked in some parts of the city whereas in others, students who knew Russian are reported to have explained to the foreign soldiers that they were working class Hungarians, potentially to the genuine surprise and certainly much to the embarrassment of soldiers tasked with upholding and defending Marxist-Leninist thought. By Saturday, thirty Russian tanks had been destroyed to the cheers and laughter of the revolutionaries. In the same period however, hundreds of Hungarians had lost their lives to A.V.O. massacres, street fighting, and sporadic tank shelling. Within days it becomes clear that many of the Russian troops do not have the stomach for the fighting. It is reported that during an unarmed march in memorial of those killed by the guns of the A.V.O., multiple Russian tanks and armored vehicles joined the somber procession, only to be fired upon as demonstrators themselves in what became yet another massacre.[48] The 24th of October was also and most critically the day the strike began. “It spread quickly through the industrial suburbs of Budapest – Czepel, Rada Utca, Ganz, Lunz, Red Star – then out into the industrial centres of the country – Miskolc, Győr, Szolnok, Pécs, Debrecen. In Budapest, almost the whole population had risen… Everywhere the workers formed ‘councils’: in the factories, in the steel mills, in the power stations, in the coal mines, in the railway depots… Everywhere they armed themselves.”[49]

The councils explode across the country, all advancing a radical program calling for the dissolution of the old order, and by Thursday the 25th the councils had begun to connect with one another and join their struggles. Nagy is now pleading with the councils to return to work, but they intensify their efforts and deepen their organization. “The Workers Councils proceeded immediately to manufacture their own arms. The decision was immediately taken that these newly-produced arms should be distributed to the striking workers in other industries who were to withdraw themselves into an army of defense. Production for use was for them not a theory but an automatic procedure from the moment they began to govern themselves.”[50] They made it clear that they would only be returning to work if and when Nagy enacts a radical program. On the 28th, Nagy announces the supposed withdrawal of Russian troops and his intention to reform the government entirely: “we shall dissolve the organs of state security. No one who took part in the armed fighting need fear further reprisals.”[51] On the 30th, even the Soviet government is forced to acknowledge to rising: “The course of the events has shown that the working people of Hungary, who have achieved great progress on the basis of their people’s democratic order, correctly raise the question of the necessity of eliminating serious shortcomings in the field of economic building, the further raising of the material well-being of the population, and the struggle against bureaucratic excesses in the state apparatus.”[52] But the councils and the occupations remain, no longer capable of trusting the authorities and completely saturated with faith in each other. The movement is beginning to understand itself, no longer as the catalyst that will exact the new world as a concession from state power, but as the new world itself. Even the peasants, “broke up the collective farms which were in reality factories in the field… But at the same time they immediately organized themselves to establish contact with the workers and others in the towns on the basis of social need. They organized their trucks to take them food, did not wait to be paid but went back to the countryside to bring in new loads, risking their lives to do so.”[53] It is the total revolution of an entire society.

While October made good on its revolutionary legacy, November was not with the rebels. “At 4 o’clock on Sunday morning, November 4, Budapest was roused by the thunder of shells bursting in the city centre. Hundreds of guns in the hills of Buda opened fire, their flashes flood-lighting the MIG fighters, as they screamed over the city.”[54] The Russian forces this time unleash an all-out attack on the revolution across the entire country, simultaneously. The barricades are rebuilt, but to no avail. The tanks pound Budapest with phosphorous, setting the city aflame, this time without hesitation or sympathy. The Hungarian revolutionaries fight hand-to-tank, correctly intuiting that this would be their last chance to defend the collective vision and sense of purpose that had emerged between them and upended their rotten society. Molotovs fly, grenades are bravely dropped into tank hatches, and all the while workers and peasants act in perfect coordination to keep the pinned-down fighters supplied to the end. As the slaughter in the streets wound down, hauntingly ironic posters began appearing across Hungary, plastered to bombed out infrastructure and scattered across the rubble, bearing slogans such as: “Come and see our beautiful capital in Soviet-Hungarian friendship month.”[55] Even in death, the revolution smiles.

As the Red Army regained control, the A.V.O., now with a new name and new uniforms, “crawled out of their hiding places, like rats from sewers…They were burning for revenge… Torture and beatings began again… freedom fighters were being hanged from the bridges on the Danube and in the streets. Almost all were workers. The bodies, sometimes hanging in groups, had notices pinned to them: ‘This is how we deal with counter-revolutionaries.’”[56] By January 1957, despite the crawling persistence of sporadic street demonstrations and daring labor action, the councils had been completely destroyed. Leadership was arrested and replaced by government lackeys and in an all too familiar turn of events, the councils are made formally subordinate to the trade unions. “On November 17, 1957, it was officially announced that all remaining Workers’ Councils were to be abolished forth-with. The very name ‘Workers’ Council’ now both embarrassed and infuriated the regime. The bureaucracy attempted the impossible: to expunge from the memory of the Hungarian people and from History itself the great, positive experience of working class self-administration.”[57]

Conclusion

Attempting to tease meaning from such a bloody and senseless display of domination is inevitably fraught with difficulty and contradiction. There is no post-ideological method of analysis, especially of events as recent and contested as these, and our interpretation of history is undoubtedly colored by our own unique way of seeing the world, as well as by the material realities underlying and conditioning our very perception of that world. That said, the first observation we can draw from our brief study is the powerful effect representative democracy has on the stability of industrial production, whether it’s state or market driven. The absence or denial of such democratic buy-in or consent to be ruled is a common feature across all three revolutions we have analyzed; all three resulted in the spontaneous formation of democratic governing structures from below, councils, where state sanctioned democratic institutions failed to create the appearance, illusory or real, of popular sovereignty. For better or worse, there have been no revolutionary workers’ councils in the United States, and one is left to speculate if this can at least be partially explained by the existence of more robust democratic institutions, offering a greater sense of legitimacy to the miserable status quo and the expectation that societal change can occur through legal methods of struggle. One also can’t help but look at the ongoing crisis of American politics and wonder what becomes of bourgeois democracy in post-industrial society? And what might this evaporation of the democratic illusion mean for the prospect of a second American Revolution?

Through our analysis of these three revolutionary episodes, we can also begin to make a claim that the council, even above the party, is the revolutionary form par excellence, for at least as long as industrial conditions of production persist. As the Marxist historian C.L.R. James tells us, “One of the greatest achievements of the Hungarian Revolution was to destroy once and for all the legend that the working class cannot act successfully except under the leadership of a political party.”[58] While it is indisputable that, during the events of October 1917, the Bolshevik party did provide invaluable structure and guidance to the revolutionary movement, the party was quickly exposed not as a revolutionary organ of the people but rather as the germ of the old society, embedded within the new. This is confirmed by the consolidation and rapid expansion of state power wielded by a tiny minority of party members, in stark contrast to Marxist theories of revolution and of communism and in direct contradistinction to the type of power presupposed by the existence of the Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies in Petrograd and elsewhere. It is a testament to the strength of the global forces of counterrevolution and reaction, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, that memory of this revelatory triumph of self-rule, and the ensuing tragedy, hardly exists today.

At last, we arrive at the reason the existence of these councils were so incredibly dangerous for the Soviet Union, as well as for the Western capitalist powers. When the workers’ councils erupt once again in 1956, the uniquely liberatory spirit and character of their revolution is so immediately apparent to all that it acts as a bright mirror held up against the twisted faces of the industrialized powers on both sides of the East-West divide, violently tearing the masks off “Official Society” and exposing its hidden truths. The Soviet Union does not think to recognize the councils of Hungary as the new governing body, or even as the living embodiment of Marxist-Leninist theory, because the Soviet Union is not communist; it is not even socialist. The Soviet Union, and especially its rapidly ossifying ruling class of party elite, depend upon the satellite nations and the uneven status quo for the fulfillment of their economic needs and the reproduction of the existing order, from which they reap great personal benefit.[59] In a single sweeping movement, all of the lies and myths and propaganda about the nature of Soviet society are cut down, the bankruptcy and violence of industrial social relations are exposed, and Hungary is momentarily transformed both economically and politically into the simultaneous realization of centuries old, liberal ideals of progress as well as the fulfillment of the Marxist vision of a communist society of freely associated producers. The working classes of the world should never again have reason to doubt our capacity for collective decision, the power of our social intellect and our unique understanding of our own situation, or that our destiny lies in the self-administration of society, and as long as the memory of the Hungarian Revolution persists somewhere, the dimly flickering flame of revolution is not extinguished.

“Previous revolutions have concentrated on the seizure of political power and only afterwards faced the problems of organizing production according to new procedures and methods. The great lesson of the years 1923-1956 has been this, that degradation in production relations results in the degradation of political relations and from there to the degradation of all relations in society. The Hungarian Revolution has reversed this process.”[60]

“The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for, body and soul.”[61]

 “Do not be afraid of the initiative and independence of the masses; entrust yourselves to the revolutionary organisations of the masses.”[62]      

Notes 

[1] “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: Die Revolution, 1852) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/

[2] Victor Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution (London, New York: Pluto Press, Writers and Readers Inc., 1992), 41

[3] Peter Kennez, A History of the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 8

[4] Leon Trotsky, 1905 (New York: Random House, 1971), 104

[5] “One evening when there were several workers at my house, as usual – Nossar was there too – we had the idea of forming a permanent workers' organization: something like a committee, or a council, which would keep track of the sequence of events, would serve as a link among all the workers, would inform them about the situation and could, if necessary, be a rallying point for revolutionary workers. I don't remember exactly how this idea came to us. But I think I remember that it was the workers themselves who suggested it. The word Soviet which, in Russian, means precisely council, was pronounced for the first time with this specific meaning…The idea was adopted.” Volin, The Unknown Revolution (New York, London: Libertarian Book Club, Freedom Press, 1954), 31

This claim by Volin is of course disputed by Trotsky’s account of the St. Petersburg Soviet in his book, 1905 (1971): “The first meeting of what was to become the Soviet was held on the evening of the thirteenth, in the Technological Institute.” 105

[6] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 37

[7] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 39

[8] “After January 9 the revolution knows no stopping.” Leon Trotsky, 1905, 81

[9] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 41

[10] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 42

[11] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 47-48

[12] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 48

[13] “Formation of the Soviets,” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/formation-of-the-soviets/

[14] “Formation of the Soviets”

[15] “Abdication Manifesto, Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/february-revolution/february-revolution-texts/abdication-manifesto/

[16] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 49

[17] “April Crisis,” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/april-crisis/

[18] “Calling an All-Russian Congress of Soviets,” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/formation-of-the-soviets/formation-of-the-soviets-texts/calling-an-all-russian-congress-of-soviets/

[19] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 61

[20] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 62

[21] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 69

[22] “First Bolshevik Decrees,” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/first-bolshevik-decrees/

[23] Serge, Year One of The Russian Revolution, 75

[24] “Constituent Assembly,” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/constituent-assembly/

[25] “Workers Organization,” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/workers-organization/

[26] “State Security,” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1917-2/state-security/

[27] “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, (London: Pluto Press, 2008), 66

[28] Andy Anderson, “Hungary ’56,” (1964) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/andy-anderson-hungary-56#toc1

[29] Michael Korda, Journey to a Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 49

[30] Korda, Journey to a Revolution, 49

[31] Korda, Journey to a Revolution, 50-51

[32] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[33] “Hitler kept a signed photograph of Admiral Horthy in a silver frame conspicuously displayed on his desk, in honor of Horthy’s role as the first fascist in Europe.” Korda, Journey to a Revolution, 56

[34] Korda, Journey to a Revolution, 62

[35] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[36] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[37] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[38] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[39] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[40] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[41] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[42] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[43] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[44] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[45] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[46] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[47] C.L.R. James, Facing Reality (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2006), 17

[48] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[49] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[50] C.L.R. James, Facing Reality, 12

[51] “Formation and Program of a New Government,” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1956-2/hungarian-crisis/hungarian-crisis-texts/formation-and-program-of-a-new-government/

[52] “Soviet Statement On Hungary” Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, accessed November 1, 2021, http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1956-2/hungarian-crisis/hungarian-crisis-texts/soviet-statement-on-hungary/

[53] C.L.R. James, Facing Reality, 17

[54] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[55] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[56] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[57] Anderson, “Hungary ’56”

[58] C.L.R. James, Facing Reality, 14

[59] Paul M. Sweezy, Post-Revolutionary Society (London, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980), 65

[60] C.L.R. James, Facing Reality, 12

[61] Karl Marx, “The Class Struggle In France” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/index.htm (quote is located in the introduction written by Fredrich Engels in 1891)

[62] V.I. Lenin, “One of the Fundamental Questions of the Revolution,” 1917 https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/andy-anderson-hungary-56#toc28

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[brookstonalmanac]

Events 3.28 (before 1940)

AD 37 – Roman emperor Caligula accepts the titles of the Principate, bestowed on him by the Senate. 193 – After assassinating the Roman Emperor Pertinax, his Praetorian Guards auction off the throne to Didius Julianus. 364 – Roman Emperor Valentinian I appoints his brother Flavius Valens co-emperor. 1065 – The Great German Pilgrimage, which had been under attack by Bedouin bandits for three days, is rescued by the Fatimid governor of Ramla. 1566 – The foundation stone of Valletta, Malta's capital city, is laid by Jean Parisot de Valette, Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. 1776 – Juan Bautista de Anza finds the site for the Presidio of San Francisco. 1795 – Partitions of Poland: The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, a northern fief of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, ceases to exist and becomes part of Imperial Russia. 1801 – Treaty of Florence is signed, ending the war between the French Republic and the Kingdom of Naples. 1802 – Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovers 2 Pallas, the second asteroid ever to be discovered. 1809 – Peninsular War: France defeats Spain in the Battle of Medellín. 1814 – War of 1812: In the Battle of Valparaíso, two American naval vessels are captured by two Royal Navy vessels. 1842 – First concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Otto Nicolai. 1854 – Crimean War: France and Britain declare war on Russia. 1860 – First Taranaki War: The Battle of Waireka begins. 1862 – American Civil War: In the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of the New Mexico Territory. The battle began on March 26. 1910 – Henri Fabre becomes the first person to fly a seaplane, the Fabre Hydravion, after taking off from a water runway near in France. 1918 – General John J. Pershing, during World War I, cancels 42nd 'Rainbow' Division's orders to Rolampont for further training and diverted it to the occupy the Baccarat sector. Rainbow Division becomes "the first American division to take over an entire sector on its own, which it held longer than any other American division-occupied sector alone for a period of three months". 1918 – Finnish Civil War: On the so-called "Bloody Maundy Thursday of Tampere", the Whites force the Reds to attack the city center, where the city's fiercest battles being fought in Kalevankangas with large casualties on both sides. During the same day, an explosion at the Red headquarters of Tampere kills several commanders. 1920 – Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1920 affects the Great Lakes region and Deep South states. 1933 – The Imperial Airways biplane City of Liverpool is believed to be the first airliner lost to sabotage when a passenger sets a fire on board. 1939 – Spanish Civil War: Generalissimo Francisco Franco conquers Madrid after a three-year siege.

#Events