Podcasts about Soviet Army

Richard W. Harrison's The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941-1992 (Casemate Academic, 2022) is the first full treatment of the unique phenomenon of High Commands in the Soviet Army during World War II and the Cold War. The war on the Eastern Front during 1941–45 was an immense struggle, running from the Barents Sea to the Caucasus Mountains. The vast distances involved forced the Soviet political-military leadership to resort to new organizational expedients in order to control operations along the extended front. These were the high commands of the directions, which were responsible for two or more fronts (army groups) and, along maritime axes, one or more fleets. In all, five high commands were created along the northwestern, western, southwestern, and North Caucasus strategic directions during 1941–42. However, the highly unfavorable strategic situation during the first year of the war, as well as interference in day-to-day operations by Stalin, severely limited the high commands' effectiveness. As a consequence, the high commands were abolished in mid-1942 and replaced by the more flexible system of supreme command representatives at the front. A High Command of Soviet Forces in the Far East was established in 1945 and oversaw the Red Army's highly effective campaign against Japanese forces in Manchuria. The Far Eastern High Command was briefly resurrected in 1947 as a response to the tense situation along the Korean peninsula and the ongoing civil war in China, but was abolished in 1953, soon after Stalin's death. Growing tensions with China brought about the recreation of the Far Eastern High Command in 1979, followed a few years later by the appearance of new high commands in Europe and South Asia. However, these new high commands did not long survive the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and were abolished a year later. The book relies almost exclusively on Soviet and post-communist archival and other sources and is the first unclassified treatment of this subject in any country, East or West.Richard W. Harrison earned his Undergraduate and Master's degrees from Georgetown University, where he specialized in Russian Area Studies. He later earned his doctorate in War Studies from King's College London. He also was an exchange student in the former Soviet Union and spent several years living and working in post-communist Russia. He has taught Russian History and Military History at the US Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Harrison lives with his family near Carlisle, Pennsylvania.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Richard W. Harrison's The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941-1992 (Casemate Academic, 2022) is the first full treatment of the unique phenomenon of High Commands in the Soviet Army during World War II and the Cold War. The war on the Eastern Front during 1941–45 was an immense struggle, running from the Barents Sea to the Caucasus Mountains. The vast distances involved forced the Soviet political-military leadership to resort to new organizational expedients in order to control operations along the extended front. These were the high commands of the directions, which were responsible for two or more fronts (army groups) and, along maritime axes, one or more fleets. In all, five high commands were created along the northwestern, western, southwestern, and North Caucasus strategic directions during 1941–42. However, the highly unfavorable strategic situation during the first year of the war, as well as interference in day-to-day operations by Stalin, severely limited the high commands' effectiveness. As a consequence, the high commands were abolished in mid-1942 and replaced by the more flexible system of supreme command representatives at the front. A High Command of Soviet Forces in the Far East was established in 1945 and oversaw the Red Army's highly effective campaign against Japanese forces in Manchuria. The Far Eastern High Command was briefly resurrected in 1947 as a response to the tense situation along the Korean peninsula and the ongoing civil war in China, but was abolished in 1953, soon after Stalin's death. Growing tensions with China brought about the recreation of the Far Eastern High Command in 1979, followed a few years later by the appearance of new high commands in Europe and South Asia. However, these new high commands did not long survive the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and were abolished a year later. The book relies almost exclusively on Soviet and post-communist archival and other sources and is the first unclassified treatment of this subject in any country, East or West.Richard W. Harrison earned his Undergraduate and Master's degrees from Georgetown University, where he specialized in Russian Area Studies. He later earned his doctorate in War Studies from King's College London. He also was an exchange student in the former Soviet Union and spent several years living and working in post-communist Russia. He has taught Russian History and Military History at the US Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Harrison lives with his family near Carlisle, Pennsylvania.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

Richard W. Harrison's The Soviet Army's High Commands in War and Peace, 1941-1992 (Casemate Academic, 2022) is the first full treatment of the unique phenomenon of High Commands in the Soviet Army during World War II and the Cold War. The war on the Eastern Front during 1941–45 was an immense struggle, running from the Barents Sea to the Caucasus Mountains. The vast distances involved forced the Soviet political-military leadership to resort to new organizational expedients in order to control operations along the extended front. These were the high commands of the directions, which were responsible for two or more fronts (army groups) and, along maritime axes, one or more fleets. In all, five high commands were created along the northwestern, western, southwestern, and North Caucasus strategic directions during 1941–42. However, the highly unfavorable strategic situation during the first year of the war, as well as interference in day-to-day operations by Stalin, severely limited the high commands' effectiveness. As a consequence, the high commands were abolished in mid-1942 and replaced by the more flexible system of supreme command representatives at the front. A High Command of Soviet Forces in the Far East was established in 1945 and oversaw the Red Army's highly effective campaign against Japanese forces in Manchuria. The Far Eastern High Command was briefly resurrected in 1947 as a response to the tense situation along the Korean peninsula and the ongoing civil war in China, but was abolished in 1953, soon after Stalin's death. Growing tensions with China brought about the recreation of the Far Eastern High Command in 1979, followed a few years later by the appearance of new high commands in Europe and South Asia. However, these new high commands did not long survive the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and were abolished a year later. The book relies almost exclusively on Soviet and post-communist archival and other sources and is the first unclassified treatment of this subject in any country, East or West.Richard W. Harrison earned his Undergraduate and Master's degrees from Georgetown University, where he specialized in Russian Area Studies. He later earned his doctorate in War Studies from King's College London. He also was an exchange student in the former Soviet Union and spent several years living and working in post-communist Russia. He has taught Russian History and Military History at the US Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Harrison lives with his family near Carlisle, Pennsylvania.Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

By the spring of 1945, the Soviet Army was closing in on Berlin from the east, the Allies had entered Germany from the west, and Adolf Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. From the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, some 20 million military personnel had been killed along with 40 million civilians. Of those, 6 million were Jews and that included 1.5 million children.This podcast season takes you into the personal stories of nine elderly Jews we interviewed between 2001 and 2010. In the first episode three Ukrainian Jews will tell you about fighting their way into Berlin. In episode two, we'll hear from a young Jewish man freed from a German work camp, a teenager in Budapest who went to the train station hoping her father would be coming back, and from someone who stumbled back in Lodz, hoping to find someone in her family might still be alive.The third episode is all about starting over: in Vilnius in Lithuania, in Bitola in today's North Macedonia, and in Targu Mures in Romania.All these stories were told to us by Jews who had been born in Europe—and who remained in Europe. Their stories were recorded in each of their languages. We have translated and edited them and they are read for us by actors in London.This podcast season was co-funded by the European Union. 

Semyon Nezynsky was born in a Ukrainian shtetl near Kyiv but from the time he was a teenager, he had dreams of a military career. By the time he was 21 he was a major in the Soviet Army commanding a Katyusha rocket brigade. In May 1945 his unit fought their way into Berlin and Semyon strode up the steps of the Reichstag in Berlin to write his name on the wall.Allan Corduner reads Semyon's story for us, and it is based on an interview conducted by Ella Levitskaya in Kyiv in 2003.

Eva R. was born in 1919 in a village not far from Dnipro. She studied medicine and found herself drafted into the Soviet Army in 1941. Eva served at Stalingrad and by 1945 she had been promoted to the rank of major. She ended the war in Berlin walking through Adolf Hitler's chancellery.Jane Bertish in London reads Eva's story, which is based on an interview conducted by Ella Levitskaya in 2004.

Judit Kinszki was born in Budapest in 1927. In 1944 her brother Gabor was sent to a concentration camp, her father was herded onto a death march. Judit and her mother spent nearly five months in the infamous Budapest Ghetto and the day they were liberated by the Soviet Army, they went to the train station every day, hoping to find Judit's brother and father. Judit's story is read for us by Jeni Barnet and Judit was interviewed for Centropa by Dora Sardi in 2005.

Declassified CIA KGB File: Aliens CRUSHED the Soviet Army..!! Uncover the shocking truth behind the declassified KGB files! In this video, we dive deep into a 1989 UFO incident in Siberia where aliens allegedly turned 23 Soviet soldiers to stone, as revealed by a CIA document. Did the USSR army really face an extraterrestrial attack? What secrets did the KGB hide? Join us as we explore this mysterious event, the petrified soldiers, and the conspiracy theories surrounding it.Join Cristina Gomez as we dive deep into the UFO Russian mysteries. 00:00 - Intro 01:33 - The KGB File 15:38 - Nuclear Missile Incident23:12 - Height 611/Dalnegorsk UFO Crash29:01 - Kapustin Yar Incidents36:35 - Live Comments40:11 - Outro and Credits To see the VIDEO of this episode, click or copy link -   http://youtu.be/usYnBCeDf7cVisit my website with International UFO News, Articles, Videos, and Podcast direct links -www.ufonews.co❤️ EXCLUSIVE FREE MERCH INCLUDED & BEHIND-THE-SCENES ONLY FOR MY SUPPORTERS ON PATREON ➔ https://www.patreon.com/paradigm_shifts/membership Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/strange-and-unexplained--5235662/support.

Dive deep into the world of psychological warfare with Echoes of Subversion, a thrilling exploration of ideological manipulation and its global impacts. Join us as we uncover the hidden tactics used by governments to mold public perception and control societal norms. Featuring the chilling insights of Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative, this podcast peels back the layers of historical subversions that have shaped the world's political landscape. Each episode is crafted with meticulous research, providing you with a comprehensive understanding of how deep-seated ideologies can influence everything from national policies to individual beliefs. Whether you're a history buff, a political aficionado, or someone intrigued by the psychological play behind global events, Echoes of Subversion promises to engage your mind and challenge your perceptions. Tune in and transform the way you see the world.[00:19-00:53] Yuri Bezmenov describes his background, highlighting his father's role in the Soviet Army and his own recruitment by the KGB. He mentions his education and initial volunteer work in Kazakhstan, leading to his KGB engagement.[01:34-02:08] Bezmenov explains his role at Novy, the Soviet press agency, revealing it as a front for the KGB. He details his assignments, including brainwashing foreign diplomats and spreading disinformation globally.[02:45-03:20] He discusses the anti-American propaganda he was taught as a child in the Soviet Union, including the belief that the U.S. was about to invade the USSR and was sabotaging Soviet crops.[07:45-08:25] Bezmenov touches on the continuation of Soviet labor camps, contradicting the belief in the U.S. that they were a thing of the past, and stresses the lack of change in the Soviet regime's repressive nature.[11:08-11:50] He emphasizes the irony and danger of Western support for the Soviet system, arguing that it enables the oppressive regime's survival and the exportation of Soviet ideology and control.

Last time we spoke about the Guangzhou, Gansu and Red Spear Uprisings. During China's Warlord Era, the CCP faced many challenges as they sought to implement land revolutions and armed uprisings. Following the Nanchang and Autumn Harvest uprisings, the CCP held an emergency meeting criticizing Chen Duxiu for his appeasement of the KMT right wing. With strong encouragement from Soviet advisors, the CCP planned a major uprising to seize control of Guangdong province. In November 1927, the CCP saw an opportunity as petty warlords in Guangdong and Guangxi engaged in conflict. Zhang Fakui's troops, vulnerable and demoralized, were targeted by the CCP. Mobilizing workers and peasants, the CCP initiated the Guangzhou Uprising. The uprising was ultimately suppressed by superior NRA troops, resulting in heavy CCP casualties and brutal reprisals. The failed uprisings, though unable to achieve immediate goals, ignited a persistent revolutionary spirit within the CCP, marking the beginning of a prolonged civil conflict that would shape China's future.   #121 The Sino-Soviet Conflict of 1929 Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. All the way back in 1919, the brand new Soviet government's assistance Commissar of foreign affairs, Lev Karakhan, issued a manifesto to the Beiyang government, promising the return of the Chinese Eastern Railway at zero financial cost. That statement was made in late July and alongside the railway, he also mentioned relinquishing a lot of rights the former Russian Empire had acquired from unequal treaties, such as the Boxer Protocol. This all became known as the Karakhan Manifesto, and it was formed in a time when the Soviets were fighting the Russian Civil War, advancing east into Siberia. In order to secure the war in Siberia the Soviets had to establish good relations with the Chinese. Yet six months after the july manifesto, Karakhan personally handed over a second version of said manifesto, one that did not influence the rather nice deal of handing over the Chinese eastern railway for free. The Soviets official statement was that they had accidentally promised the deal prior. The truth of the matter was some real politik work at play. The Soviets had been trying to secure a Sino-Soviet alliance against the Japanese, but it looked to them it would never come to be so they simply took the deal off the table.  Henceforth the issue cause a lot of friction. In March of 1920 the Fengtian forces disarmed White Russian Troops along the railway and seized control over its operations. In February of 1922 China and the USSR signed a agreement stipulating the Beiyang government would set up a special agency to manage the railway. Then in November the Chinese announced an area within 11 km along the railway would be designated a Eastern Province special district. In December the Soviet Union officially formed and by May the two nations agreed to settle a list of issues. The Soviets agreed to abolish all the unequal treaties formed by the Russian Empire handing over all the leased territories, consular jurisdiction, extraterritoriality, Boxer payments and such, but the Chinese Eastern Railway would be jointly managed by China and the USSR. Now since the railway sat in the area that Zhang Zuolin came to control, in September of 1924 the Soviets signed an agreement with the Fengtian clique. In this agreement, the Soviets lessened the 80 year lease over the railway to 60 years. The Soviets also promised to hand full control to Chinese administrators, but had a trick up their sleeve. The Soviets let the Chinese think they were adding workers and officials loyal to them, in reality the Soviets were creating more jobs on the railway while hiring Soviet workers. In the end the Soviets controlled roughly 67% of the key positions. When Zhang Zuolin went to war with Feng Yuxiang's Guominjun this changed things considerably. In December of 1925, Zhang Zuolin's army owed the Chinese eastern railway some 14 million rubles, prompting the Soviet administrator over the railway, Ivanov to prohibit Zhang Zuolin's army from using it. Fengtian commander Zhang Huanxiang simply arrested Ivanov disregarding his ban. The Soviets then sent an ultimatum to the Beiyang government demanding his release. So Zhang Zuolin ran to the Japanese to mediate. Things smoothed over until 1928 when the Huanggutun incident saw Zhang Zuolin assassinated. As we saw at the end of the northern expedition, his son Zhang Xueliang responded by raising the KMT flag on December 29th of 1928, joining Chiang Kai-Shek. The next day Zhang Xueliang was made commander in chief of the Northeast.  Now Chiang Kai-Shek's government had broken diplomatic relations with the USSR after the Shanghai massacre purge. Thus Zhang Xueliang felt the old treaties signed by his father with the Soviets were null and void and looked upon the Chinese Eastern Railway enviously. To give some context outside of China. At this point in time, the USSR was implementing rural collectivization, ie; the confiscation of land and foodstuffs. This led to wide scale conflict with peasants, famines broke out, I would say the most well known one being the Holodmor in Ukraine. Hundreds of millions of people starved to death. The USSR was also still not being recognized by many western powers. Thus from the perspective of Zhang Xueliang, it looked like the USSR were fraught with internal and external difficulties, they had pretty much no friends, so taking the railway would probably be a walk in the park.  Zhang Xueliang began diplomatically, but negotiations were going nowhere, so he got tougher. He ordered his officials to take back control over the Chinese Eastern Railway zone police, municipal administration, taxation, land, everything. He instructed Zhang Jinghui, the governor of Harbin's special administrative zone to dispatch military police to search the Soviet embassy in Harbin and arrest the consul general. Zhang Jinghui did so and closed the Soviet consulates in Harbin, Qiqihar and Hailar. All of this of course pissed off the Soviets who responded by protesting the new Nanjing government, demanding the release of their people, while increasing troops to the border of Manchuria. The Soviets announced they were willing to reduce their control over the railway as a concession. This entire situation became known as the May 27th incident and unleashed a tit for tat situation. On July 13th, the Soviets sent an ultimatum giving three days for a response "If a satisfactory answer is not obtained, the Soviet government will be forced to resort to other means to defend all the rights of the Soviet Union." On the 17th the Soviets recalled their officials, cut off the railway traffic between China and the USSR, ejected Chinese envoys from the USSR and cut off diplomatic relations with China. In the background Joseph Stalin was initially hesitating to perform any military actions, not wanting to antagonize the Japanese in Manchuria. However the Soviet consul in Tokyo, sent back word that Japan was completely willing to stay out of any conflict if the Soviets limited it to just northern Manchuria. Thus Stalin decided to act. On August 6th, Stalin formed the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army under the command of General Vasily Blyukher. It was composed of three infantry divisions; the 1st Pacific Infantry Division, the 2nd Amur Infantry Division, and the 35th Trans-Baikal Infantry Division), one cavalry brigade (the 5th Kuban Cavalry Brigade), and the addition of the Buryat Mongolian Independent Cavalry Battalion. The total force was said to be as many as 30,000 with their headquarters located in Khabarovsk. Blyukher also had the support of the Far Eastern Fleet, roughly 14 shallow water heavy gunboats, a minesweeper detachment, an aviation detachment with 14 aircraft, and a marine battalion commanded by Yakov Ozolin. Blyukher had served during the civil war and was a military advisor in China attached to Chiang Kai-SHek's HQ. He had a large hand to play in the northern expedition, and was one of the select Soviets Chiang Kai-Shek intentionally made sure got home safe during the purge. Blyukher would exercises a unusual amount of autonomy with his far east command, based out of Khabarovsk. For the upcoming operation a 5th of the entire Red Army was mobilized to assist. On the other side Zhang Xueliang mobilized as many troops as he could, including many White Russians hiding out in Manchuria. His total strength on paper was 270,000, but only 100,000 would be actively facing the Soviets as the rest were needed to maintain public order and to defend southern Manchuria. The person in charge of the Eastern Line of the Chinese Eastern Railway was the brigade commander of the Jilin Army, Ding Chao, and the western line was the brigade commander of the Heilongjiang Army, Liang Zhongjia, and the chief of staff was Zhang Wenqing. Wang Shuchang led the First Army to guard the eastern line, and Hu Yukun led the Second Army to guard the western line. The Soviet army also had a quality advantage in equipment. In terms of artillery, the Soviet army had about 200 artillery pieces, including more than a dozen heavy artillery pieces, while the Chinese army had only 135 infantry artillery pieces and no heavy artillery. At the same time, the Soviet army also had a quality advantage in machine guns because it was equipped with 294 heavy machine guns and 268 highly mobile light machine guns. The Chinese army was equipped with only 99 heavy machine guns. In terms of air force, the Chinese army had 5 aircraft that were combat effective. On July 26th the Soviets bombarded Manzhouli from three directions along the western end of the Chinese Eastern Railway. Two days later a Soviet infantry regiment, 3 armored vehicles and 4 artillery pieces advanced to Shibali station, cutting the lines to Manzhouli. They then ordered the Chinese military and police to withdraw as they captured Manzhouli. Then on the 29th the began bombarding Dangbi. On August 8th, 100 Soviet troops carrying two artillery pieces and 3 machine guns engaged Chinese forces outside the south gate of Oupu County street, casualties were heavy for both sides. 5 Soviet aircraft circled over Suifenhe City firing 200 rounds and dropping bombs over the Dongshan Army defense post and Sandaodongzi. The next day 40 Soviet soldiers established two checkpoints at Guzhan blocking traffic and they even began kidnapping civilians. That same day 300 Soviet soldiers and two gunboats occupied the Hujiazhao factory. On the 12th, Sanjianfang, Zhongxing and Lijia's Oil Mill were occupied by over 2000 Soviet troops. Meanwhile 80 Soviets amphibiously assaulted Liuhetun using 8 small boats, killing its defenders before returning to the other side. The next day two Soviet gunboats, 300 marines and 2 aircraft attacked Suidong county in Heilongjiang province while another force attacked Oupu county with artillery. On the morning of the 14th both counties fell. In response the Nanjing government dispatched Liu Guang, the chief of the military department to inspect the Northeast front. On the 15th Zhang Xueliang issued mobilization orders against the USSR, seeing his standing front line forces bolstered to 100,000. On the 15th the foreign minister of the Nanjing government, Wang Zhengting reported to Chiang Kai-Shek negotiations were going nowhere, the Soviets were adamant about getting their rights returned over the Chinese Eastern Railways. The next day, Wang Zhenting told reporters that if the Soviets attacked anymore China would declare war. The next day Zhang Xueliang was interviewed by the Chicago Daily News and had this to say. "The Soviet Union disregarded international trust, trampled on the non-war pact, and rashly sent troops to invade our country. We respect the non-war pact and have repeatedly made concessions to show our responsibility for provoking the provocation. If the Russian side continues to advance, we will be willing to be the leader of the war, so we have prepared everything and will do our best to fight to the death."  On the 16th two Soviet infantry companies and one cavalry company attacked Zhalannur from Abagaitu along the border. The two sides fought for 2 hours until the Soviets stormed the Zhalannur station. After another 5 hours of combat the Soviets pulled back over the border. By this point enough was enough. China declared war on August 17th escalating what was an incident around the Chinese Eastern Railway zone into a full blown war.  Blyukher had developed a plan for an offensive consisting of two rapid operations. The first would be against the Chinese naval forces and the second against the ground forces via a large encirclement. After the war was declared on the 17th, the Soviet Army advanced into Manchuria from the western end of the Chinese Eastern Railway. The Red Banner Special Far Eastern Army initially dispatched a total of 6,091 infantrymen and 1,599 artillerymen in front of Manchuria, equipped with 88 artillery pieces of 76.2 mm or above, excluding artillery belonging to infantry regiments, 32 combat aircraft, 3 armored trains, and 9 T-18 light tanks . The army units included: the 35th and 36th Infantry Divisions of the 18th Infantry Army; the 5th Cavalry Brigade; the Buryat Mongolian Cavalry Battalion; an independent tank company equipped with T-18 tanks, the 6th Aviation Detachment, the 25th Aviation Detachment, the 26th Bomber Squadron, the 18th Army Artillery Battalion, the 18th Engineering Battalion, and a Railway Battalion.  The first battle broke out around Manzhouli. Liang Zhongjia, the brigade commander stationed in Manzhouli, reported this to his superiors of the engagement “of the battle situation, the 38th and 43rd regiments under my command fought with a regiment of Soviet infantry and cavalry for 4 hours in the afternoon and are still in a standoff. The Soviet army has more than one division of troops near Abagaitu”. At 10:30 p.m. on the 18th, the Soviets began to attack the positions of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 43rd Regiment of the Northeastern Army in Zhalannur. At 1 p.m. on August 19, the Soviets added about 600 to 700 troops opposite the positions of the 43rd Regiment of Zhalannur. At 5 a.m the Soviets dispatched five aircraft from Abagaitu to Shibali Station. On the 19th, the Soviets captured Suibin County with ease. At 6 a.m. on the 20th, the Soviets used armored trains to transport more than 200 troops to attack the 10th Cavalry Regiment of Liang Zhongjia's troops. After fighting for about an hour, the Soviets retreated. On the 23rd a battle broke out in Mishan and on the 25th 400 Soviet cavalry began building fortifications roughly a kilometer near the Chinese 43rd regiment at Zhalannur. Zhang Xueliang spoke again to the Chinese and foreign press on the 25th stating this. "Foreigners have many misunderstandings about the Eastern Province's actions this time, thinking that it is to take back the Eastern Route and violate the treaty. In fact, we have no intention of violating the 1924 Sino-Russian Agreement or the Agreement with Russia, because China has signed it and has no intention of violating it. China has no intention of taking back the route at all. What it wants is to remove the Russian personnel who are involved in the communist movement. Moreover, in this matter, the Eastern Route is a very small issue. The real point is that the Russians use China as a base for communism, and we have to take measures in self-defense." Between the 28th to the 30th an intense battle broke out at Wangqing.  On the 31st, Soviet gunboats bombarded three garrisons around  Heihe. On September 4th, the Soviet army bombarded the right wing of the 43rd and 38th Regiments stationed in Lannur. At 4 pm on the 9th, a single regiment of the Soviet army, under the cover of artillery, launched a fierce attack on the Chinese army at Manzhouli Station from the Shibali Station, but by 8:30 pm, they pulled back. At 4 pm, 8 Soviet aircraft bombed Suifenhe Station, causing over 50 Chinese casualties and injured a regimental commander. On the night of the 16th, more than 100 Soviet troops attacked the Kukdoboka checkpoint in Lubin County and burned down the checkpoint. On the 18th, the Soviet government announced to the ambassadors of various countries that they had always advocated for a peaceful solution to the issue of the Chinese Eastern Railway, while China's attitude was hypocritical and insincere. It was believed that future negotiations were hopeless, and all previous negotiations mediated by Germany were terminated. From now on, they stated quote “the Soviet Union would not bear any responsibility for any ominous incidents caused on the Sino-Russian border”. With negotiations completely broken down, Blyukher was given the greenlight to launch a fatal blow.  On October 2, more than a thousand Soviet infantryman, supported by aircraft and artillery stormed the positions of the 3rd Battalion of the 38th Regiment in Manzhouli. The two sides fought until the morning of the 3rd. On the 4th Zhang Xueiliang drafted the “national volunteer army organization regulations letter” trying to embolden the population stating "when the foreigners invade the border, the first thing to do is to resist. All citizens or groups who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country on the battlefield will be volunteers or volunteer soldiers." The new regulations stipulated that volunteers of this new group would be named as the National Volunteer Army. On October the 10th, 30,000 Soviet forces on the Baikal side advanced through the northeastern border of China. At this time, the brigade responsible for defending Liang Zhongjia had been fighting with the Soviet troops for dozens of days. There was no backup and they were in urgent need of help. According to Chinese observations, the Soviets deployed nearly 80,000 troops by land, sea and air on the Sino-Soviet border. Along the eastern front, the Soviets capture in succession Sanjiangkou, Tongjiang and Fujin. Meanwhile at 5am on the 12th the Far Eastern Fleet commanded engaged in a firefight with the Songhua River Defense Fleet, near Sanjiangkou. According to Chinese reconnaissance, the Soviet warships participating in the battle included: the flagship "Sverdlov" a shallow-water heavy gunboat led by Sgassk, the shallow-water heavy gunboat "Sun Yat-sen", the shallow-water heavy gunboat "Red East", the shallow-water heavy gunboat "Lenin", the inland gunboat "Red Flag", and the inland gunboat "Proletariat", with a total of 4 152mm cannons, 26 120mm cannons, 6 85mm anti-aircraft guns, 8 37mm anti-aircraft guns, and more than ten aircraft for support. The Chinese forces were led by Yin Zuogan who commanded six shallow-water gunboats, including the "Lijie" (flagship), "Lisui", "Jiangping", "Jiang'an", and "Jiangtai", and the "Dongyi" armed barge as a towed artillery platform. Except for the "Jiangheng" of 550 tons and the "Liji" of 360 tons, the rest were all below 200 tons, and the entire fleet had 5 120mm guns. In the ensuing battle the Jiangping, Jiang'an, Jiangtai, Lijie, and Dongyi, were sunk, and the Lisui ship was seriously injured and forced to flee back to Fujin.The Chinese side claimed that they damaged two Soviet ships, sunk one, and shot down two fighter planes; but according to Soviet records, five Soviet soldiers were killed and 24 were injured.  At the same time as the naval battle around Sanjiangkou, two Soviet gunboats covered four armed ships, the Labor, Karl Marx, Mark Varyakin, and Pavel Zhuravlev, carrying a battalion of more than 400 people from the 2nd Infantry Division Volochaev Regiment, landing about 5 kilometers east of Tongjiang County and attacking the Chinese military station there. The Northeast Marine Battalion guarding the area and the Meng Zhaolin Battalion of the 9th Army Brigade jointly resisted and repelled the Soviet's initial attack. The Chinese suffered heavy losses, with more than 500 officers and soldiers killed and wounded, and more than 70 people including the Marine Battalion Captain Li Runqing captured.  On the 14th, the Chinese sank 6 tugboats, 2 merchant ships and 2 warships in the waterway 14 kilometers downstream of Fujin, forming a blockade line; and set up solid artillery positions and a 13-kilometer-long bunker line nearby, destroying all bridges on the road from Tongjiang to Fujin. A battle broke out at Tongjiang and according to the the report of Shen Honglie “the Northeast Navy suffered more than 500 casualties (including marines), 4 warships were sunk, 1 was seriously damaged, and the "Haijun" gunboat (45 tons) was captured by the Soviet army and renamed "Pobieda"; 17 officers including the battalion commander Meng Zhaolin and 350 soldiers of the army were killed; the Chinese side announced that 2 Soviet planes were shot down (some sources say 1), 3 Soviet warships were sunk, 4 were damaged, and more than 300 casualties”. On the 18th, the Soviets completely withdrew from the Tongjiang, allowing the two regiments of Lu Yongcai and Zhang Zuochen of the 9th Brigade to recapture it. On the 30th, Admiral Ozolin led some Soviet land forces in a major attack in the Fujian area. He organized the troops under his jurisdiction into two groups. He led the first group personally, who were supported by heavy gunboats Red East, Sun Yat-Sen and gunboats Red Flag, Proletarian, Buryat, minelayer Powerful and the armored boat Bars. Their mission was to annihilate the remnants of the river defense fleet anchored in Fujin. The second group was commanded by Onufryev, the commander of the Soviet 2nd infantry division. His group consisted of the shallow-water heavy gunboat Serdlov, gunboat Pauper and the transport fleets steam carrying the Volochaev Regiment and the 5th Amur regiment who landed at Fujin.  On the other side the Chinese had concentrated two infantry brigades, 3 cavalry regiments and a team of police with the support of the gunboats Jiangheng,  Lisui, Liji and the tugboat Lichuan. At 9 am on the 31st, the 7 Soviet ships suddenly destroyed the river blocking ropes and entered the Fujin River bank, bombarding the Chinese army, as cavalry landed. The Chinese ships "Lisui" and "Lichuan" sank successively, and only the "Jiangheng" managed to participate in the battle, but soon sank after firing only three shots. At 7 pm 21 Soviet ships sailed up the Songhua River, as part of the cavalry landed at Tuziyuan, advancing step by step towards Fujin. At 9 pm 7 Soviet ships approached the Fujin River bank, with roughly 700 infantry, cavalry and artillery soldiers of the 2nd Amur Infantry Division landed. The Chinese army collapsed without a fight, retreating to Huachuan, and by11am, Fujin county was occupied. Chinese sources reported “the Soviet army burned down the civil and military institutions separately and destroyed all the communication institutions. They distributed all the flour from the Jinchang Fire Mill to the poor, and plundered all the weapons, ammunition and military supplies." On the evening of November 1, the Soviet infantry, cavalry and artillery withdrew from the east gate. On the morning of the 2nd, the Soviet ships withdrew one after another. According to Soviet records, nearly 300 Chinese soldiers were killed in this battle, with thousands captured, while the Soviet army only lost 3 people and injured 11 people . The Chinese Songhua River fleet was completely destroyed, and 9 merchant ships were captured. In early November, the weather in the north became freezing cold, leading the rivers to freeze. Soviet warships retreated back to Khabarovsk, and their infantry and cavalry also returned by land. The war on the Eastern Front was basically over.  As for the western front, the main battlefields revolved around Manzhouli and Zhalannur. Since August 1929, conflicts here continued, a lot of back and forth stuff. The soviets would storm the areas and pull out. Yet in November, the war in the west escalated.  The commander of the Soviet Trans-Baikal Group, was Stepan Vostrezov, wielding the 21st, 35th and 36th infantry divisions, the 5th Cavalry Brigade, 331 heavy machine guns, 166 light machine guns, 32 combat aircraft, 3 armored trains, 58 light artillery, 30 heavy artillery, 9 T-18 ultra-light tanks, amongst other tanks. The Chinese side had about 16,000 people. There would be three major battles : the Battle of Zhallanur, the Battle of Manzhouli, and the Battle of Hailar. On November the 16th, the Soviets unleashed a large-scale offensive, tossing  nearly 40,000 troops, 400 artillery pieces, 40 tanks and 30 aircraft against the western front. At 11pm the Soviets crossed over the border. At 3am on the 17th the 5th Kuban Cavalry Brigade set out from Abagaitui, followed by the 35th Infantry Division who crossed the frozen surface of the Argun River, hooking around the rear of the Chinese garrison in Zhalannur along the east bank of the Argun River. At 7am Soviet aircraft began bombing the western front. The Chinese garrison headquarters, tram house, 38th Regiment building, and military police station were all bombed, and the radio station was also damaged. At noon, the Binzhou Railway was cut off 10-12 kilometers east of the city, and Zhalannur was attacked. Supported by 8 T-18 tanks and fighter planes, they attacked Zhalannur several times. On the morning of the 18th, the Soviet 5th Cavalry Brigade launched an attack against the 7,000-man 17th Brigade of the Chinese Army guarding Zhalannur. At 1pm on the 18th the Zhalannur Station and the Coal Mine was occupied by the Soviet army. The Chinese defenders, Brigadier Han Guangdi and Commander Zhang Linyu, were killed in action. More than half of the brigade officers and soldiers were killed and more than a thousand were captured. After capturing Zhalannur the Soviets concentrated their forces against Manzhouli. On the 19th, 7 T-18s supported the 108th Infantry Regiment of the Soviet 36th Division to attack Manzhouli from the east and west. Artillery pounded the city, before it was stormed. The 15th Brigade of the Chinese Army guarding the area was quickly surrounded by the Soviet army. Brigade Commander Liang Zhongjia and Chief of Staff Zhang Wenqing, alongside nearly 250 officers, fled to the Japanese consulate and surrendered to the Soviet army on the 20th. According to Soviet records, in the battles of Zhalannur and Manzhouli, over 1,500 Chinese soldiers were killed and more than 9,000 were captured, while the Soviet side lost 143 people, 665 were wounded and 4 were missing. Additionally 30 Chinese artillery pieces and 2 armored trains were captured by the Soviet army. The Soviets claimed that Chinese troops from Lake Khinkai were attacking Iman, modern day Dalnerechensk. In the name of self-defense, the Soviets began bombing Mishan on November 17 and mobilized  the Soviet Primorsky State Army and the 1st Pacific Rifle Infantry Division. The 1st Pacific Division and the 9th Independent Cavalry Brigade advanced towards Mishan, 40 kilometers from the border. Soviet records showed that during this battle the Chinese army suffered more than 1,500 casualties and 135 prisoners. The Soviets seized 6 machine guns, 6 mortars, 500 horses, 6 mortars, 200 horses and a large number of confidential documents. On November 23rd, 12 Soviet aircraft bombed Hailar, before capturing the city the next day.  By late November the Chinese had suffered something in the ballpark of 10,000 casualties along various fronts and an enormous amount of their equipment was taken by the Soviets. The Chinese officially reported 2000 deaths, 1000 wounded with more than 8000 captured. The Soviets reported 812 deaths, 665 wounded with under 100 missing. The Japanese had actually been quite the thorn for the Chinese during the war. They had intentionally barred Chinese forces from advancing north through their South Manchurian Railway zone, a large hindrance. Likewise the Kwantung army stationed in Liaoning were mobilizing, giving the impression they would exploit the situation at any moment.  In the face of quite a catastrophic and clear defeat, Nanjing's ministry of foreign affairs tossed a cease fire demand asking for foreign mediation. By December 3rd, Britain, France and the US asked both sides to stop the war so they could mediate a peace. The USSR rejected the participation of a third nation and suggested they could negotiate with China mono e mono. Zhang Xueliang accepted the proposal, dispatching Cai Yunsheng quickly to Shuangchengzi who signed an armistice with the Soviet representative Smanovsky. On the 16th real negotiations began and on the 22nd a draft agreement was signed. The draft stipulated both nations would re-cooperate over the Chinese Eastern Railway and that the Red Army would pull out of Manchuria as soon as both sides exchanged prisoners and officials. Thus the entire incident was resolved after humiliating China. While this all seemed completely needless, perhaps not significant, don't forget, the Japanese were watching it all happen in real time, taking notes, because they had their own ideas about Manchuria.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. And so the Soviets and brand new Nationalist Republic of China went to war over, honestly a petty squabble involving railway rights and earnings. It was a drop in the bucket for such a war torn nation and only further embarrassed it on the world stage. Yet the Soviets might not be the foreign nation China should be looking out for. 

Kidnapping of Christians; Sack of Rome; Soviet Army; Barbara Honegger; Stories About and Moses

To mark Refugee Week 2024, here's a compilation of stories from five of the interviews I've done in the last 12 months that reflect different aspects of the refugee experience from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. There's Ieva's story of her whole family walking 200km to get to the port of Riga to escape the oncoming Soviet Army, Sandra's tale of when a to-close-for-comfort missile attack was the final straw for her family to leave Damascus. Khadga explains how ethnic Nepalis were brutally imprisoned, threatened and expelled from Bhutan and Lawrence describes his memories of life of being a South Sudanese refugee in a camp in Uganda. Finally, Aubert explains part of the legacy for genocide survivors from Rwanda and the long-lasting effect it has. Image attribution under Creative Commons 2.0 Creator: Mirek Pruchnicki  Copyright: Mirek Pruchnicki | Flickr

GOOD EVENING: The show begins on Normandy, recalling that the Soviet Army was half the success for launching Operation Bagration to tie down and destroy German divisions that could have been moved to the West.  To Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing, Ulan Bator.  To Jerusalem, Gaza, Westchester, Tehran. To Mexico City, Washington City,  South China Sea To Speculoos 3b around the red dwarf Speculoos. May 1944 Royal Ulster Rifles and Montgomery

Аладдин Самедов, родился в Азербайджане, в маленькой деревушке. После средней школы закончил Бакинский планово-экономический техникум. Служил в Советской армии в Латвии и Архангельске авиационной эскадрилье. Работал 8 лет в Бакинском проектном землеустроительном институте. Закончил 4 курса в Московском государственном институте по землеустройству. После развала СССР стал предпринимателем, в то же время закончил Башкирский Государственный университет по дисциплине теология, после в том же вузе закончил магистратуру по философии. Живет в Башкирии в городе Нефтекамск. С двадцати лет начал интересоваться религией и философией. Aladdin Samedov was born in Azerbaijan, in a small village. After finishing secondary school, he graduated from the Baku Planning and Economic Technical College. He served in the Soviet Army in Latvia and Arkhangelsk in an aviation squadron. He worked for 8 years at the Baku Land Management Design Institute. He completed 4 years at the Moscow State Land Management Institute. After the collapse of the USSR, he became an entrepreneur and simultaneously graduated from Bashkir State University with a degree in theology. He then completed a master's degree in philosophy at the same university. He lives in Neftekamsk, Bashkiria. From the age of twenty, he began to take an interest in religion and philosophy. FIND ALADDIN ON SOCIAL MEDIA Instagram ================================SUPPORT & CONNECT:Support on Patreon: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/denofrich⁠Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/denofrich⁠Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/mark.develman/⁠YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/denofrich⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/den_of_rich/⁠Hashtag: #denofrich© Copyright 2024 Den of Rich. All rights reserved.

PREVIEW: RUSSIA: D-DAY: Conversation with colleague Anatol Lieven of Quincy re the missing presence of the Soviet Army at the 80th Anniversary of the Normandy landings -- and the poor memory of the American public as to the Soviet contribution to the Normandy success.  1944 Normandy 

Capturing the nation's mood in the hours after 9/11. Trading parts of a Soviet Army uniform for some “CIA trinkets.” Keeping that one big foster beagle no one else would have. All are episodes in the writing life of Peter Grier, a 45-year Monitor veteran whose quick mind and economy of language have brought Washington politics down to earth for Monitor readers (and no doubt still will, sometimes, even from retirement). For this episode, he spoke with guest host Gail Chaddock, a Monitor alum and fellow D.C. traveler, about his rich Monitor career.

Capturing the nation's mood in the hours after 9/11. Trading parts of a Soviet Army uniform for some “CIA trinkets.” Keeping that one big foster beagle no one else would have. All are episodes in the writing life of Peter Grier, a 45-year Monitor veteran whose quick mind and economy of language have brought Washington politics down to earth for Monitor readers (and no doubt still will, sometimes, even from retirement). For this episode, he spoke with guest host Gail Chaddock, a Monitor alum and fellow D.C. traveler, about his rich Monitor career.

On 17 February, Russian forces finally captured Avdiivka - once a city of 30,000 people - just ten kilometres from Donetsk. 110th Mechanised Brigade had defended the ruins for the last two years without relief. The end came when Russian forces infiltrated the south of the city using a concealed passage offered by a man-sized water pipe feeding Donetsk filter station. More units advanced from the north in the area of the Terrikon (slag heap) and dachas adjoining the Koksokhim (Avdiiv chemical coke plant). With 80-110 glide bombs landing on the defenders every day, and with the threat of the city being cut in two, the Ukrainian command took the prudent decision to withdraw. The next phase for Russian forces should have been an exploitation of the breach in the defence. In fact, the assault on Avdiivka which had started the previous October quite exhausted the attackers. 16,000 soldiers were killed according to a disillusioned Luhansk separatist. A staggering 531 pieces of equipment were destroyed, damaged or abandoned, including 169 tanks. It was not until the end of March that Russian forces were able to resume the advance in an organised way (although small-scale and suicidal attacks never stopped across the front lines). This article reviews the action since and specifically examines the battle for the Durna river line. Ukrainian and Russian dispositions Ukrainian and Russian dispositions are shown on the map below. For both sides, unit and formation names do not correspond to actual size. A 'brigade' may be a weak battalion. 'Battalions' are commonly just companies. Russian prisoners routinely report how a company may start with 100 men but be reduced to as few as ten fit soldiers. Caution is also needed because units are rotated (withdrawn) when exhausted. This is especially true of Russian forces. The map therefore represents all reported units/formations and where, but they may not have been present all the time, or in strength. Russian troops on this front are referred to as 'Centre Group'. They are drawn from Central Military District (CVO) and 1st DNR Army Corps. Commander 'Centre Group' is the 48-year old infantryman Colonel-General Andrei Mordvichev. He has participated in the war from the beginning rising from army commander to army group commander. CVO has been the best performing military district - ironically - as traditionally it is the reserve district in the Russian Federation and least favoured with resources. Ukrainian command in this sector falls under the Khortytsia Operational-Strategic Group (OSUV). The commander is a General Sodel [Sodol]. It is not possible to estimate troop numbers with any certainty. Both sides are depleted. The Russians continue to commit units to destruction further complicating estimation of strengths. Nor is it possible to estimate equipment numbers. With the exception of the battalion-level attack at the beginning, Russian attacks are typically platoon strength involving 1-2 tanks and as many as four AFVs. The ad hoc mix of vehicle types tells the story of Russian problems with replenishing combat losses. Ukrainian counter-attacks typically involve a single tank or AFV. Artillery and rocket fire on the Russian side involves single guns or launchers that fire one salvo then scoot. Ukrainian indirect fire has been minimal due to 'shell starvation'. FPV and Mavic-style drones rule the battlefield and both sides go to great lengths to conceal themselves, in the case of vehicles, guns and rocket launchers; or to remain underground if infantry. Camouflage is insufficient. The only true protection is total concealment. Saturated ECM has also become a prerequisite for survival. Avdiivka front - Russian operational objectives Cold War students of the Soviet Army probably remember the concept of immediate and subsequent objectives. This echeloning endures in the modern Russian Army. The immediate objective on the Avdiivka front was the Durna river line, just 10 kilometres from Avdiivka...

Sometimes America experiences  terrible tragedies  which threaten our way of life  in the good old USA.  Thankfully there is not now a major war involving US troops.  Yet Selective Service can be used with groups like Americorps to help worthy endeavors.  Who gets drafted?  President Nixon got rid of the draft in 1970.  As the Vietnam War ended  so did the Draft.  Unexpectedly The draft soon was preparing to get ready for a what would be a new draft in a place known as Afghanistan.  The Russians were on the move.   Yet tensions ended as the Soviet Army went back to "Mother Russia".The leader of Selective Service is a great innovative leader.  He is a graduate of the US Naval Academy and deeply committed to our country. The Draft is known as the " Fire Extinguisher at the Door".

Joining me today is Army MAJ (Ret) Ruslan Emelyanov. Ruslan was born and raised in the former Soviet Union.  When he turned 18, he was conscripted into the Soviet Army in 1989 and chose to be a Paratrooper.  Over the next couple years, he accepted an invitation to attend the newly formed Russian Military Academy.  He graduated in 1995 and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Russian Army.  He had also earned his Jumpmaster status at that time.  His first assignment was to join his new unit already fighting in the First Chechen War.  At the conclusion of the war, his unit redeployed in December 1996.  Ruslan was then reassigned to Moscow and transferred to the Military Police.  In 1998 as a Captain, he resigned his Commission and left the Russian Army. Family relatives who lived in California applied for a Green Card for Ruslan, and in 2000, he joined his relatives in Carmel, CA.  When the Sep 11th attacks occurred in 2001, he contacted an Army recruiter about the possibility of joining the U.S. Army.  The recruiter said he could enlist with a Green Card and signed him up as an 11B Infantry MOS.  At 28, he attended Basic Training at Ft. Benning, GA.  After graduating Basic, he attended Jump School and earned his U.S. Parachute Badge.  His first assignment was to B Co., 2/35th Infantry at Schofield Barracks, HI.  In 2003, he renounced his Russian citizenship and was sworn in as a U.S. citizen.  In April 2004, his unit deployed to Afghanistan for a year tour.  Upon returning, he was promoted to SGT.  He also earned Jumpmaster in the U.S. Army.  A few years later, he was recommended for OCS at Ft. Benning, and in 2007 he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Infantry.  In 2009, Ruslan changed branches to Civil Affairs and spent the next 12 years working with Special Operations Forces out of Ft. Bragg, NC.  He retired from the Army in 2023.

THE UNWOMANLY FACE OF WAR by Svetlana Alexievich / UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN by John Krakauer   The choosening really brought some heavy hitters to the book nook this time - these tomes pack a punch! First Andrew learns about the women of the Soviet Army during World War II in Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich's THE UNWOMANLY FACE OF WAR, a harrowing oral history. Then Bailey dives into John Krakauer's part true crime, part history UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN. There's plenty more in this episode, including a very intense job interview, some truly wild facts, and GAK!

(Bonus) The Cold War originated in the breakdown of relations between the two main victors in World War II: United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, in the years 1945–1949. The origins derive from diplomatic (and occasional military) confrontations stretching back decades, followed by the issue of political boundaries in Central Europe and non-democratic control of the East by the Soviet Army. In the 1940s came economic issues (especially the Marshall Plan) and then the first major military confrontation, with a threat of a hot war, in the Berlin Blockade of 1948–1949. By 1949, the lines were sharply drawn and the Cold War was largely in place in Europe.[1] Outside Europe, the starting points vary, but the conflict centered on the US's development of an informal empire in Southeast Asia in the mid-1940s.[2] Events preceding World War II and even the Communist takeover of Russia in 1917, underlay older tensions between the Soviet Union, European countries and the United States.

This is your Friday Refresh brought to you by… Collisions Auto Repair Services in Killen,Alabama. You can contact them at (256) 272-2007. It was November of 1939 and the country of Finland was staring down the barrel of a war machine of unimaginable power. Only three months before the German forces, led by Adolf Hitler, had invaded Poland, triggering a declaration of war. Now, the people of Finland were facing their own war with the Soviet Army lead by Joseph Stalin. They had rejected a proposal from the Soviet Union to move some of their shared border, give up some of their land, tear down their fortifications, and lease a Peninsula to build a military base. As the Soviets prepare to strike no one believes the skirmish would last more than 2 weeks. The Soviets had 3X more soldiers, 5X more artillery, 30X more aircraft, and 100X more tanks. On paper this would be a rout. And little more than a blip on the radar of world history. Links mentioned in this episode: http://www.benandtravis.com http://www.facebook.com/groups/benandtravis http://www.patreon.com/benandtravis Reframing Hope Book https://www.benandtravis.com/books Helping. Healing. Humor. with Ben and Travis: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/batify/id1457601152?mt=2&uo=4 Good Old Fashioned Dislike podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-old-fashioned-dislike/id1643163790 Co-Producers: Justin B., Doris C., Rhonda F., Scott K., Mary H. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

This is episode 3 and the Russians have just bombed Helsinki on the morning of 30th November 1939 — missing most of the vital infrastructure but hitting the residential area and a square in front of the main railway station, as well as a hangar at Malmi Airfield. Two hundred people died in the first few hours of the invasion, most were civilians. The Finns were caught totally off guard - their anti-aircraft gunners managed to fire off a few shots but by then Russian bombers had turned and were miles away. As the planes disappeared to the east, air raid sirens began to wail, a belated warning which by then was a waste of time. However, after lunch, the planes were back. Fifteen Red Air Force bombers swept in for another raid soon after the all-clear had sounded in Helsinki, the streets were choked with people clearing up after the morning attack — fifty more civilians died and at least 150 were wounded in this second bombing run. The Russians also targeted other towns, including Viipuri, the harbour in Turku, and they took aim at the hydroelectric plant at Imatra and then bombed a small gas mask factory in Lahti. The hydroelectric plant at Imatra was not the only target, the Russians bombed an important road between the northern shores of Lake Ladoga and Helsinki, north of the Mannerheim Line. While this was going on, the Red Army landed specialist commandos on the uninhabited islands of Sieksari, Lavansaari, Suursaari and Tytarsaari —without firing a shot. Back in Helsinki, the shock of the attack was visible on everyone's faces. Parts of the city were on fire and it was through this maze of blackened buildings, corpses and craters in the roads that Field Marshal Gustav Mannerheim wound his way in his chauffered car. There was no time to waste. Finland's geography suited their initial plans. The Karelia Isthmus was the lynchpin, so Mannerheim was concentrating his defences there. The only other area that offered an immediate threat, was the 65 mile stretch just north of Lake Ladoga's shores. There were two good roads here, one started from inside Russia at Petrozavodsk, and the other from Murmansk along the rocky coast of Lake Ladoga. Both roads converged near the small town of Kitela, and a few miles from there was Finlands crucial rail network. It also was a point where good roads led north and south. Mannerheim knew that the Russians were going to aim at these two areas and he was right. This central zone near Kitela was the backdoor to the Isthmus and could support a large army on the move. The Finns were ready for this backdoor trick, they'd been practicing during war games in the preceding years for precisely this route. The strategy was even more interesting. They would let the large Soviet Army move along these roads until they reached a line of defences that linked Lake Ladoga to Kitela and another Lake called Syskyjarvi. Then they'd pin down the Russians, and hit their logistic route now strung out back eastwards, their left flank now up against Lake Ladoga, and the right exposed to Finnish soldiers on skis. The would cut off the head of the Russian salient and then methodically destroy the Russian army north of Ladoga. Desmond Latham blog

In this episode, we discuss: *Col Glantz's Vietnam service *How his experiences in Vietnam influenced him as a military historian and researcher *What led him to study the Nazi-Soviet War *The Army's Art of War Symposia from 1984-1987   *How the Soviet Army and US Army defined doctrine (move???)   *The case for an operational level of war   *The introduction of the operational level of war to US Army doctrine   *The origins of the US Army's AirLand Battle doctrine   *The 11 January 1976 Incident   *The evolution of Soviet operational mobile groups, tank corps, tank armies, and mechanized corps *The concept of lessons learned and Col Glantz's critique of it   *The Soviet approach to lessons learned, including the practice of Socialist Criticism *The effect Stalin's purges on the officer corps had on the Soviet military's performance in World War II   *Col Glantz's thoughts on why the Soviets didn't march on Berlin in February 1945   *Comparing and Contrasting Zhukov and Rokossovsky   *How and why Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, failed   *Turning points of the Eastern Front   *Forgotten battles of the war   *Major myths of the war   *Correlation of forces   *Initiative and risk-taking in the Red Army   *Improvements in Soviet training   *German and Soviet penal battalions   *The work of Jack Radey and Charles Sharp   *Notable Soviet and German amphibious operations   *Some of the discoveries Col Glantz made in writing his trilogy on Stalingrad   *Similarities between the Soviet storm groups and the German stormtrooper units of WWII   *The 7th and 8th Guards Tank Armies as a potential “pocket force” at the end of WWII   *The relative levels of military-theoretical development the Soviets and Western Allies had reached by May 1945   *The Russian-language military history websites Col Glantz uses for research   *The movies Enemy at the Gates and Stalingrad The founding of The Journal of Soviet Military Studies, now The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, and some of its more noteworthy pieces   *Persistent errors, misconceptions, and faulty interpretations in the literature of the Nazi-Soviet war   *Col Glantz's advice to young scholars of the Soviet-Nazi War   *What service members can learn from the Eastern Front today, and Col Glantz's advice on studying the war   *Areas of the Nazi-Soviet War we know relatively little about and where Col Glantz would like to see research done   *Col Glantz's current projects   *His thoughts on the war in Ukraine Errata *Col Glantz states that Hermann Balck was the commander of 48th Panzer Corps during the German relief attempt of the Stalingrad Pocket. Balck, however, was the commander of 11th Panzer Division, a subordinate formation of 48th Panzer Corps. Links Col Glantz's Amazon page   Col Glantz's website for his self-published atlases and works   When Titans Clashed by Col David Glantz   Zhukov's Greatest Defeat by Col David Glantz   The Soviet-German War: Myths and Realities by Col David Glantz   Commanding the Red Army's Sherman Tanks: The World War II Memoirs of Hero of the Soviet Union Dmitriy Loza   Fighting for the Soviet Motherland: Recollections from the Eastern Front by Dmitriy Loza   The Defense of Moscow 1941: The Northern Flank by Jack Radey and Charles Sharp   Kharkov 1942: Anatomy of a Military Disaster Through Soviet Eyes by Col David Glantz Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War II by Col David Glantz --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/damien-oconnell/support

CONTENT The guest today is Kim Read a former member of the "stay behind" Special OP Troop.  This unit was tasked with conducting operations against the Soviet Army if they had crossed the inner German border during the Cold War when they would engage the enemy with the long range guns of the British Army. We covered a bit about the school on pod #005 but a few listeners have requested more detail.  So here it is.    DESERT ISLAND DITS BOOK CHOICES Most of our book recommendations can be bought via the Unconventional Soldier Bookshop.  10% of each purchase supports the pod and helps independent book stores on line sales.  My choice was Longitude  by Dava Sobel and Kim's was Mawson's Will by Lennard Bickel . "BUY ME A COFFEE" If you want to support the podcast you can buy me a coffee here. SOCIAL MEDIA Check out our blog site on Wordpress Unconventional Soldier Follow us on social media and don't forget to like, share and leave a review. Instagram @the_unconventional_soldier_pod. Facebook @lateo82.  Twitter @TheUCS473. Download these and other platforms via Link Tree. Email us: unconventionalsoldier@gmail.com.  This episode brought to you in association with ISARR a veteran owned company.

Jeff was joined by lobbyist Paul Fuhs. They talk about his time serving as mayor of Dutch Harbor, his time serving as Commerce commissioner under former Governor Wally Hickel, a trip he took to the Soviet Union in 1990 and how he ended up singing "Back in the U.S.SR." with a Soviet Army band, trips Jeff and Paul have taken to Crimea since the Russian annexation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what that means for Arctic cooperation, how the war in Ukraine will likely end, and the importance of domestic energy. 

Having destroyed the German Army Group Center and pushed back Army Group North and Army Group South, the Soviet Army in late 1944 and early 1945 swept through the Balkans and Poland, while thousands of German refugees fled westward. Join Sean and James as they discuss the westward drive of the Soviet juggernaut as well as the fateful February 1945 Yalta Conference.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4747725/advertisement

Sofia Municipal Council issued a previous decision to remove the monument, taken back in 1993, but not implemented for 30 years. - Столичния общински съвет извади предишно решение за премахване на паметника, взето още през 1993, но неизпълнено цели 30 години.

Dirk lived in the town of Bernau about 15 miles from East Berlin. Just outside Bernau was Wandlitz the residential estate of the East German leadership. As a result, Bernau had one of the highest densities of Stasi facilities in East Germany.Dirk shares details of his childhood growing up in a Plattenbau block of flats where his school friends were children of NVA officers, Stasi officers, and Soviet Army officers.He shares some fascinating details of school life and visits the homes of his school friends in Bernau.  However, his parents clashed with his school teachers as they bullied Dirk for wearing western clothing.We also hear how his parent's anti-soviet view originated with his grandparents fleeing the World War 2 Soviet invasion of East Prussia and an Uncle who was arrested and disappeared in Berlin in 1945. Cold War history is disappearing; however, a simple monthly donation will keep this podcast on the air. You'll become part of our community and get a sought after CWC coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/If a monthly contribution is not your cup of tea, We also welcome one-off donations via the same link.Videos and extra episode info here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode278Support the showSupport the project! https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/ Follow us on Twitter here https://twitter.com/ColdWarPodFacebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/Instagram https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/Youtube https://youtube.com/@ColdWarConversations

Eighty years after the Soviet Army defeated Hitler's forces in the Battle of Stalingrad, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to get the memory of the bloody and pivotal showdown to fit his false narrative of the war in Ukraine. Ian Garner, an author and expert on Russian war propaganda, joins host Steve Gutterman to discuss.

Guest Host: Marty Carpenter Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 78 years since the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz. The Holocaust is obviously a difficult event to remember and contend with, but it's also vitally important that we never forget what happened. Rabbi Avremi Zippel explains how we can honor this day and promote awareness among our community. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, historian Dr. Dan McMillan, author of "How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust," spoke with WCBS 880 Anchor Steve Scott.PHOTO: A view of barbed wire fence and surveillance towers at the former Auschwitz Birkenau site on January 27, 2022 in Oswiecim, Poland. The main theme of the 77th anniversary will be the beginning of the extermination in the German Nazi camp Auschwitz, which took place in the spring of 1942. The Nazis killed an estimated one million people at the camp during the World War II occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany. The Soviet Army liberated the camp on January 27, 1945. (Photo by Omar Marques/Getty Images)

BEFORE being used as a bargaining chip in a one-for-one prisoner swap that freed women's basketball star Brittney Griner, convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout otherwise known as the “Merchant of Dеаth” -- was born on what's believed to have been January 13th, 1967. Douglas Farah, a senior agent at the International Assessment and Strategy Center who once co-authored a book on Bout told CNN in 2010 that Viktor's early days are still largely a mystery, even to high-up government officials. That being said, according to multiple passports, Bout was likely raised in Dushanbe, Tajikstan as the son of a bookkeeper and an auto-mechanic. At the age of 18, he was conscripted into the Soviet Army after having spent much of his youth playing competitive volleyball according to a New Yorker profile. After being forced into military service, Viktor served two years in an infantry brigade in western Ukraine, before graduating from the Military Institute on Foreign Languages, which has a reputation for being a well-established feeder school for Russian military intelligence. In other words – the likelihood is that Viktor was a Soviet officer, ranking as highly as perhaps even a Lieutenant. During his time in the Russian forces, Bout worked in war-torn areas like Mozambique and Angola, where Russia had large military presences at the time. He first landed on the radar of the wider world at large when the United Nations began to investigate him in the early-to-mid 1990s. That's also right around the time the United States began to get involved as well.

Russia freed WNBA star Brittney Griner early today in a dramatic prisoner exchange, as the US released notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout but failed to win freedom for another American, Paul Whelan, who has been jailed for nearly four years. The swap, at a time of heightened tensions over Ukraine, achieved a top goal for President Joe Biden but carried a heavy price. “She's safe, she's on a plane, she's on her way home,” Biden said from the White House, where he was accompanied by Griner's wife, Cherelle, and administration officials. The deal, the second such exchange in eight months with Russia, procured the release of the most prominent American detained abroad. Griner is a two-time Olympic gold medalist whose months-long imprisonment on drug charges brought unprecedented attention to the population of wrongful detainees. Biden's authorisation to release a Russian felon once nicknamed “the Merchant of Death” underscored the escalating pressure that his administration faced to get Griner home, particularly after the recent resolution of her criminal case and her subsequent transfer to a penal colony. The Russian Foreign Ministry also confirmed the swap, saying in a statement carried by Russian news agencies the exchange took place in Abu Dhabi and that Bout had been flown home. Russian and US officials had conveyed cautious optimism in recent weeks after months of strained negotiations, with Biden saying in November he was hopeful that Russia would engage in a deal now the midterm elections were completed. A top Russian official said last week a deal was possible before year's end. Even so, the fact the deal was a one-for-one swap was a surprise given US officials had for months expressed their determination to bring home both Griner and Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive jailed in Russia since December 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the US government has said are baseless. “We've not forgotten about Paul Whelan,” Biden said. “We will keep negotiating in good faith for Paul's release.” Whelan's brother David said in a statement he was “so glad” for Griner's release but also disappointed for his family. He credited the White House with giving the Whelan family advance notice and said he did not fault officials for making the deal. “The Biden Administration made the right decision to bring Ms Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn't going to happen,” he said. In releasing Bout, the US freed a former Soviet Army lieutenant colonel whom the Justice Department once described as one of the world's most prolific arms dealers. Bout, whose exploits inspired a Hollywood movie, was serving a 25-year sentence on charges that he conspired to sell tens of millions of dollars in weapons that US officials said were to be used against Americans. The Biden administration was ultimately willing to exchange Bout if it meant Griner's freedom. The detention of one of the greatest players in WNBA history contributed to a swirl of unprecedented public attention for an individual detainee case — not to mention intense pressure on the White House. Griner's arrest in February made her the most high-profile American jailed abroad. Her status as an openly gay black woman, locked up in a country where authorities have been hostile to the LBGTQ community, infused racial, gender and social dynamics into her legal saga and made each development a matter of international importance. Her case not only brought unprecedented publicity to the dozens of Americans wrongfully detained by foreign governments, but it also emerged as a major inflection point in US-Russia diplomacy at a time of deteriorating relations prompted by Moscow's war against Ukraine. The exchange was carried out despite deteriorating relations between the powers. But the imprisonment of Americans produced a rare diplomatic opening, yielding the highest-level known contact between Washington and Moscow — a phone call between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — in more than five months. In an extraordinary move during otherwise secret negotiations, Blinken revealed publicly in July that the US had made a “substantial proposal” to Russia for Griner and Whelan. Though he did not specify the terms, people familiar with it said the US had offered Bout. Such a public overture drew a chiding rebuke from the Russians, who said they preferred to resolve such cases in private, and carried the risk of weakening the US government's negotiating hand for this and future deals by making the administration appear too desperate. But the announcement was also meant to communicate to the public that Biden was doing what he could and to ensure pressure on the Russians. Cherelle Griner, Brittney Griner's wife, speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday about the prisoner swap, with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Photo / AP Besides the efforts of US officials, the release also followed months of back-channel negotiations involving Bill Richardson, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and a frequent emissary in hostage talks, and his top deputy, Mickey Bergman. Griner was arrested at the Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport in February when customs officials said they found vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage. She pleaded guilty in July, though still faced trial because admitting guilt in Russia's judicial system does not automatically end a case. She acknowledged in court that she possessed the canisters, but said she had no criminal intent and said their presence in her luggage was due to hasty packing. Before being sentenced on August 4 and receiving a punishment her lawyers said was out of line for the offence, an emotional Griner apologised “for my mistake that I made and the embarrassment that I brought on them.” She added: “I hope in your ruling it does not end my life.” Her supporters had largely stayed quiet for weeks after her arrest, but that approach changed in May once the State Department designated her as unlawfully detained. A separate trade, Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in the US in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy, spurred hope that additional such exchanges could be in the works. Whelan has been held in Russia since December 2018. The US government also classified him as wrongfully detained. He was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison. Whelan was not included in the Reed prisoner swap, escalating pressure on the Biden administration to ensure that any deal that brought home Griner also included him. - Eric Tucker, Matthew Lee and Zeke Miller, APSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Discover what a former Soviet Union Submarine Communications Base is now used for. What the Soviet Army intended to use to occupy the world, is now used for something totally different. https://www.keyministries.net/podcast/episode/394fddf0/turning-bad-into-good --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayskey/message

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: LW Petrov Day 2022 (Monday, 9/26), published by Ruby on September 22, 2022 on LessWrong. Next Monday is Petrov Day (September 26), an annually observed Rationalist/EA holiday inspired by the actions of Stanislav Petrov: As a Lieutenant Colonel of the Soviet Army, Petrov manned the system built to detect whether the US government had fired nuclear weapons on Russia. On September 26th, 1983, the system reported five incoming missiles. Petrov's job was to report this as an attack to his superiors, who would launch a retaliative nuclear response. But instead, contrary to the evidence the systems were giving him, he called it in as a false alarm. It was subsequently determined that the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite. In explaining the factors leading to his decision, Petrov cited his belief and training that any U.S. first strike would be massive, so five missiles seemed an illogical start. Petrov underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his actions. Initially, he was praised for his decision. Petrov himself stated he was initially praised by Votintsev and was promised a reward, but recalled that he was also reprimanded for improper filing of paperwork with the pretext that he had not described the incident in the military diary. He received no reward. According to Petrov, this was because the incident and other bugs found in the missile detection system embarrassed his superiors and the influential scientists who were responsible for it, so that if he had been officially rewarded, they would have had to be punished. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post, took early retirement (although he emphasized that he was not "forced out" of the army, as is sometimes claimed by Western sources), and suffered a nervous breakdown. For more information see 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident Each year, people find ways to commemorate Petrov Day, e.g. with this ceremony written by Jim Babcock or Raemon's Modes of Petrov Day. On LessWrong, we find our own way to celebrate, generally involving a large red button that brings down the frontpage for the duration of Petrov Day. What does Petrov Day celebrate? There isn't a canonical precise answer accepted by everyone. There's a cluster of virtues and actions that people find worthy of remembering with different degrees of emphasis. These include: Not doing things that would cause immense destruction (or the end of the world) Avoiding the dangers of unrestrained escalation Not taking unilateralist action Resisting social pressures in order to do the right thing Making the right decision even in the face of uncertainty You might even say part of the Petrov Day tradition is debating which virtues Stanislav Petrov displayed and which ones we ought to celebrate. Personally, I like the underlying simple theme of "someone was in a high-stakes situation where they could have chosen a destructive path, and they didn't" and "things were close, but we survived". As far as the LessWrong celebration goes, each year I like the idea of exploring a different sub-element of surviving high-stakes scenarios and the virtues required to do so. This brings us to this year's plans... The 2022 Plan This is what I'm thinking: Every user with an existing LessWrong account (created before 2022-09-21) and non-negative karma is able to participate. We may manually exclude some known historical troublemakers. Your actions will be anonymous, including to the LessWrong team. This is a major change from last year. If you act counter to what other people think you should do, you'll only have to live with your own self-judgment and the mental simulation of others :P There is a virtue in preventing ...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: LW Petrov Day 2022 (Monday, 9/26), published by Ruby on September 22, 2022 on LessWrong. Next Monday is Petrov Day (September 26), an annually observed Rationalist/EA holiday inspired by the actions of Stanislav Petrov: As a Lieutenant Colonel of the Soviet Army, Petrov manned the system built to detect whether the US government had fired nuclear weapons on Russia. On September 26th, 1983, the system reported five incoming missiles. Petrov's job was to report this as an attack to his superiors, who would launch a retaliative nuclear response. But instead, contrary to the evidence the systems were giving him, he called it in as a false alarm. It was subsequently determined that the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite. In explaining the factors leading to his decision, Petrov cited his belief and training that any U.S. first strike would be massive, so five missiles seemed an illogical start. Petrov underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his actions. Initially, he was praised for his decision. Petrov himself stated he was initially praised by Votintsev and was promised a reward, but recalled that he was also reprimanded for improper filing of paperwork with the pretext that he had not described the incident in the military diary. He received no reward. According to Petrov, this was because the incident and other bugs found in the missile detection system embarrassed his superiors and the influential scientists who were responsible for it, so that if he had been officially rewarded, they would have had to be punished. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post, took early retirement (although he emphasized that he was not "forced out" of the army, as is sometimes claimed by Western sources), and suffered a nervous breakdown. For more information see 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident Each year, people find ways to commemorate Petrov Day, e.g. with this ceremony written by Jim Babcock or Raemon's Modes of Petrov Day. On LessWrong, we find our own way to celebrate, generally involving a large red button that brings down the frontpage for the duration of Petrov Day. What does Petrov Day celebrate? There isn't a canonical precise answer accepted by everyone. There's a cluster of virtues and actions that people find worthy of remembering with different degrees of emphasis. These include: Not doing things that would cause immense destruction (or the end of the world) Avoiding the dangers of unrestrained escalation Not taking unilateralist action Resisting social pressures in order to do the right thing Making the right decision even in the face of uncertainty You might even say part of the Petrov Day tradition is debating which virtues Stanislav Petrov displayed and which ones we ought to celebrate. Personally, I like the underlying simple theme of "someone was in a high-stakes situation where they could have chosen a destructive path, and they didn't" and "things were close, but we survived". As far as the LessWrong celebration goes, each year I like the idea of exploring a different sub-element of surviving high-stakes scenarios and the virtues required to do so. This brings us to this year's plans... The 2022 Plan This is what I'm thinking: Every user with an existing LessWrong account (created before 2022-09-21) and non-negative karma is able to participate. We may manually exclude some known historical troublemakers. Your actions will be anonymous, including to the LessWrong team. This is a major change from last year. If you act counter to what other people think you should do, you'll only have to live with your own self-judgment and the mental simulation of others :P There is a virtue in preventing ...

Trident Wargaming - Bolt Action - Smoke & Mirrors The Forgotten Rules... Check out our work on: https://www.instagram.com/trident.wargaming   In some games players tend to forget about options they can use in their games. In Bolt Action and Locally we find that there are a few tactics and options that rarely get used. In this Episode Jason joins Andy in going over how often you see the use of such options like, do you ever see anyone taking advantage of using Smoke? or how about When was the last time you seen a player use the Outflanking Maneuver? Also how effective is the Recce rule? Come join us and lets us know your thoughts on the subjects. Maybe we missed something we would love to hear from you in the comments or even send us a message.  You can catch Trident Wargaming on social media platforms in the links below! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TridentWargaming You can check out our personal Instagram pages to see what we have been up to before the Podcast... Any where from Bolt Action, Horus Heresy, Warhammer 40k much more. Bonko - https://www.instagram.com/diabolist_b... U.S. Army Monte - https://www.instagram.com/zzmontezz/ Germany Army, Soviet Army, French Army....   Got questions? Comments? Want to be guest? Write us at: Tridentwargamingpodcast@gmail.com

Trident Wargaming - Bolt Action - Think TANK! How effective is your Tank choice? Check out our work on: https://www.instagram.com/trident.wargaming   The Return of Bonko's bastards! Andy and Bill go over a Think Tank on how effective your choice of tanks are. In this episode we go over some of the Tank choices and tactics that you can use in your armies and possibly other options instead of just using your main gun. What is your goal with your tank in your game? How aggressive are you with it? or do you hunker down? Come check this episode out.   You can catch Trident Wargaming on social media platforms in the links below! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TridentWargaming You can check out our personal Instagram pages to see what we have been up to before the Podcast... Any where from Bolt Action, Horus Heresy, Warhammer 40k much more. Bonko - https://www.instagram.com/diabolist_b... U.S. Army Monte - https://www.instagram.com/zzmontezz/ Germany Army, Soviet Army, French Army....   Got questions? Comments? Want to be guest? Write us at: Tridentwargamingpodcast@gmail.com

This is the 2nd part of my interview with Lt Col. Stephen Harrison, MBE who served for two years as a full-time Touring Officer with BRIXMIS. The tours were hazardous three-man, vehicle-borne patrols collecting intelligence on the Warsaw Pact forces in East Germany for up to five days and nights over a series of four-month patrolling periods. In this episode, we hear of Stephen's imprisonment in a Soviet Army gaol, following detention in a Soviet Army garrison town as well as East German and Soviet Army press coverage about his activities. Stephen's speciality was using his language skills to engage and befriend opposition troops and thereby gaining valuable intelligence. He used to go into bars frequented by Soviet officers and recalls one particular drunken night in Potsdam..  We also hear about his visit to the infamous World War 2 prison camp of Colditz castle where he befriends the staff enabling other BRIXMIS tours to visit regularly.Stephen also shares details of the top-secret Operation Tomahawk, a particularly unpleasant mission which may not be for those of a sensitive disposition.In later years Stephen obtained his Stasi file which reveals that the surveillance on him was far closer than he'd ever believed.Don't miss part 1  of this fascinating interview here.Cold War history is disappearing; however, a simple monthly donation will keep this podcast on the air. You'll become part of our community and get a sought after CWC coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history. Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/If a financial contribution is not your cup of tea, then you can still help us by leaving written reviews wherever you listen to us as well as sharing us on social media. It really helps us get new guests on the show.I am delighted to welcome Stephen to our Cold War conversation…Episode notes here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode251/Follow us on Twitter here https://twitter.com/ColdWarPodFacebook here https://www.facebook.com/groups/coldwarpod/Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/coldwarconversations/There is nothing like hearing history from those that were there...The Jordan Harbinger ShowApple Best of 2018-Learn the stories, secrets & skills of the world's most fascinating pplListen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show

Trident Wargaming - Bolt Action - An Introduction to another great game Victory at Sea! By Warlord Games. Check out our work on: https://www.instagram.com/trident.wargaming   Fast -paced WW2 fleet Actions brought to the tabletop. Andy plunges into a small overview Victory at Sea. Checking out some of the game mechanics, miniatures and overall game play and fun factor for this great game. Seeing the interest in local communities is always something we love to see here at Trident Wargaming if you'd like to see more of Victory at Sea please let us know and share your armies with us.   You can catch Trident Wargaming on social media platforms in the links below! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TridentWargaming You can check out our personal Instagram pages to see what we have been up to before the Podcast... Any where from Bolt Action, Horus Heresy, Warhammer 40k much more. Bonko - https://www.instagram.com/diabolist_b... U.S. Army Monte - https://www.instagram.com/zzmontezz/ Germany Army, Soviet Army, French Army.... Got questions? Comments? Want to be guest? Write us at: Tridentwargamingpodcast@gmail.com

Trident Wargaming- Bolt Action - The Balancing Act: The tools of a Balanced Army... Check out our work on: https://www.instagram.com/trident.wargaming Working on figuring out your army is always a constant part of the hobby. In this episode Andy and Jason decided to talk about the Balanced List. Based off of a Reinforce Platoon in the game of Bolt Action, the guys give their insight and ideas on what a balanced list may have for options in it. We go over everything from the infantry to the Recce vehicles and what role and counter role they are good for. Slap on those boots, prime the engines and let's hit that front line. You can catch Trident Wargaming on social media platforms in the links below! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TridentWargaming   You can check out our personal Instagram pages to see what we have been up to before the Podcast... Any where from Bolt Action, Horus Heresy, Warhammer 40k much more.   Bonko - https://www.instagram.com/diabolist_b... U.S. Army Monte - https://www.instagram.com/zzmontezz/ Germany Army, Soviet Army, French Army    Got questions? Comments? Want to be guest? Write us at: Tridentwargamingpodcast@gmail.com

  Trident Wargaming - Bolt Action -Project Normandy!   Building one of the Ultimate boards for any event can be very challenging. In this episode Andy and Jason discuss what it takes start things off. Being the Community Influencers the challenge has come up to actually build a Normandy D-day landing table for the local community and events. Its a great discussion for anyone who has hobby plans. Planning, materials and brainstorming ideas are great when your able to share them, were looking forward to sharing this journey with everyone.   Check out our work on: https://www.instagram.com/trident.wargaming/   You can catch Trident Wargaming on social media platforms in the links below! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TridentWargaming   You can check out our personal Instagram pages to see what we have been up to before the Podcast... Any where from Bolt Action, Horus Heresy, Warhammer 40k much more.   Bonko - https://www.instagram.com/diabolist_bonko/ U.S. Army   Monte - https://www.instagram.com/zzmontezz/ German Army, Soviet Army, French Army.....   Got questions? Comments? Want to be guest? Write us at: Tridentwargamingpodcast@gmail.com

Mike: Common-ism [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome to another episode of the Nazi Lies podcast. I'm happy to be joined by Rutgers History Professor, Paul Hanebrink, author of the really easy to read book, A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. The book charts the development of the belief that communism or certain forms of it are instruments of Jewish power and control, from its pre-history and medieval antisemitism and Red Scare propaganda, through his development among proto-fascist and ultimately a Nazi Party, and the legacy of fascist campaigns against Judeo-Bolshevism in former fascist states. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Hanebrink. Paul Hanebrink: Thanks very much for having me, it's a pleasure to be here. Mike: So before I opened your book, I was expecting to hear a story of the fascist myth of Judeo-Bolshevism as told primarily by fascists through to the present day, but that's not the story you tell. Instead, you tell more of a people's history of believing that Judaism and communism in whole or in part are linked and tied to bad things generally. Besides the fact that this is your area of expertise, why did you decide to tell this history? Paul: I'm glad that you picked up on that. I am very much interested in how this myth or this conspiracy theory connects to a whole host of other issues. And I came to it actually when I was in Hungary in the 1990s. I'm a historian of Hungary by training, and I was doing my research for my dissertation, and my dissertation was on Hungarian nationalism and its relationship to Christianity in the 1920s and '30s and '40s. I was really struck by how so many of the different phrases and ideas and, sort of, thinking about Jews and communism which I was reading in my archival sources during the day, were reflected in journalism and in sort of public discussion about the recently vanished communist regime and what that had meant for Hungary and for the Hungarian national society. And I knew also that this was not just a particularly Hungarian issue, that this same kind of conversation, the same kind of debates about the relationship of Jews to communism was going on in other countries across the former Soviet bloc, especially in Poland, especially in Romania. And I knew that it had also been a major factor in Nazi ideology and an issue that kept coming back in strange ways even in German society. So I wanted to try to think about why this idea had such legs, as it were, why it seemed to endure across so many different kinds of regimes, and also try to figure out why it was so ubiquitous if you will, why it could be appearing in so many different places and so many different societies simultaneously. And so the book is an attempt to try to paint a broad canvas in which I could explore the different things that it meant to different people at different times. Mike: Okay. One thing I brought up in book club was that the book almost feels like a military history in the way you tell it, very event- and people-heavy and diachronic across the chapters, but told geographically within the chapters. So talk a little bit about your choice of historiography, because it definitely feels like a careful choice you made in how consistent your style remains throughout. Paul: Yeah. Well, I mean, as I said, one of the things I wanted to do was I wanted to capture the sense that this was a conspiracy theory that was powerful in a lot of places at the same time, and that it didn't radiate out from one place to another, but that it sort of sprang up like mushrooms in a lot of different places in different periods throughout the 20th century. I wanted a broad geographical canvas, and I didn't want to just simply focus on one country or do a kind of comparison between two countries or something like that. So I wanted to sort of figure out a way to tell this as a European story, and to be able to track the different ways in which this conspiracy theory circulated across borders and from one political formation or political group to another and also over time. The other thing that I wanted to focus on with this book in addition to the broad geographical canvas was also the notion that I didn't want a book that was just going to be a lot of different antisemitic texts one after the other, and so I just kind of piled them up in a big heap and kind of read them closely and pulled out all the different symbolisms. I wanted instead, to try to show using carefully chosen examples of people or groups or political parties or moments in history or events to really show how this ideological substance, this conspiracy myth, became something that had meaning and had power for people that shaped the way in which they saw and interpreted what they were doing and what others were doing. And so for that reason, I think, very carefully throughout each chapter, I try to find actors in a way that I could hang the narrative on and that I could sort of develop the analysis by leading with specific kind of concrete, more vivid examples. And that may be perhaps what you picked up on when you were reading it. Mike: Okay, so let's get into it. A lot of people know kind of the rudiments of old-school antisemitism and anti-communism, but not how they co-evolved into the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. So, how did antisemitism and anti-communism become modern? Paul: Yeah, it's an interesting question. What I wanted to try to think about in the book–and I explore this I think most carefully in the first chapter–is the way in which very old ideas about Jews, specifically about the ways in which Jews, have been used to symbolize in a sense a world turned upside down or illegitimate power or some kind of dystopia. And you can see this particular set of ideas throughout a number of centuries going back into the Middle Ages. So I begin with this, this idea that Jewish power is somehow illegitimate power. And then I look very carefully at the accusations that were circulating in Europe during World War I about Jews in a sense gathering power on the homefront while the true members of the nation were away on the front fighting. And so there was a real concern across Europe about Jewish loyalty and about Jews as being potential subversives or traitors or spies. And that feeds very easily into Jews as revolutionaries. So you have these two things that come together in that sort of end of World War I moment where also the Bolshevik revolution breaks out, and that there's this very old language that is familiar and comfortable to so many people thinking about Jews as eager to sort of accumulate illegitimate power, that's the very old story that reaches back to the Middle Ages, but tied to this very particular moment in European history in which there's concern about Jewish responsibility for the collapse, for example, of empires from Russia to the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the role that they're playing in revolutionary movements and revolutionary politics in so many different places across the European continent at that time. And I think it's the crucible of those two in that moment that really creates the Judeo-Bolshevik myth as a particular form of Jewish conspiracy theory. I'm not saying it's different. I'm saying that there are many different faces and iterations of the myth of a Jewish conspiracy, but that this is a particular one or particular version. And that it does particular ideological things, particular political things for people during the 20th century. Mike: Okay, so if modern anti-Semites and modern anti-communists largely belong to the right, their ideas coalesced into this conspiracy theory of Judeo-Bolshevism. Now you honestly don't spend a large amount of space in the book describing the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, and there's two things going on in your book. On the one hand, you have the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism which is this theory that there is a secret cabal of Jews who control the world through joint efforts of banking finance and world communist movements that operate to destabilize Western civilization through financial panics and revolutions, so there's that. Then on the other hand there's what you spend more time on, which is the perception that communism or at least its excesses in actual existing communism, is Jewish in origin and operation. Like, it's not necessarily a belief in a conspiracy necessarily so much as a dislike of Jews and the belief that they're inordinately involved in communism. So when antisemitism and anti-communism became modern and intertwined, the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, this totalizing conspiracy theory started to form. Who were the major players in that and what kinds of influence do they have? Paul: Yeah. I guess there are two things I want to pick up on in your question. The first is that I think you're right that I'm more interested in approaching the question in a particular way. And that is that, you know, a lot of the kind of antisemitic rhetoric and antisemitic ideology from the 20th century, there was this real insistence that you could somehow count the number of Jews who were in communist parties, and you could determine that this was a high number and that therefore Jews were somehow responsible for communism. And so much of the politics around trying to resist that was around kind of factually disproving that. I find it much more interesting to sort of not get drawn into the trap of saying, "Well, it's partly right or partly wrong," but to look instead at the way in which this conspiracy gained momentum, and that it came to seem so self-evidently right and sort of self-evidently commonsensical to so many different groups of people. And that brings me to the second part of your question. It's very interesting especially if you look at this moment right after World War I in the early 1920s across Europe, you find all kinds of different political groups across a wide selection of the political spectrum raising this conspiracy theory and using it to try to make sense of the fact that this massive revolutionary movement had broken out. So you certainly find fascists or perhaps proto-fascists, if you like, in the early 1920s really making this central to their ideology. Certainly you see that in the early Nazi Party but also in a number of the other far-right paramilitary groups that you can see active in different parts of Europe at this time. But also, you know, people who might call more mainstream conservatives, people who are definitely interested in a kind of national consolidation but very distrustful of the tactics of fascists or of national socialists, making use of this also, for example, to talk about threats to national sovereignty or threats to borders or, you know, the fear that Jewish refugees from war-torn parts of Eastern Europe are going to flood across the borders, and when they do, they're going to bring with them a revolutionary infection which is going to cause radicalism to break out at home. You can find it also among religious conservatives who are concerned primarily with the breakdown of moral and social order and who are interested in combating what they see as being the evils or the ills of secular modernism. They also blame Jewish communists for in a sense driving it, but also being a kind of reflection of these deeper secular trends which they strongly oppose. So you can find this language in a lot of different places, and there's, in a sense, kind of different coalitions in different countries that form among groups who disagree about a number of policy issues, but have a certain kind of common shared understanding that Jews and political activism, or left political activism and certainly revolutionary politics are somehow all related. And that somehow particular tension has to be paid to that constellation of threats in order to forestall or to ward off some kind of greater danger or challenge to the national body. Mike: So fascist parties rode the wave of the relative popularity of the Judeo-Bolshevism myth, and it became kind of a guiding philosophy in a way for fascist public policy. So talk about Judeo-Bolshevism in the hands of fascist states. Paul: Here I would fast forward to the late 1930s when you really see Nazi Germany making a pitch for being the most resolute enemy of communism on the European continent. I think one of the things that you can see as the Nazi vision of a new order of Europe comes into focus is that people–and far-right movements and far-right nationalist movements across the continent that see their own place in that and see a kind of shared goals and shared vision–find Judeo-Bolshevism almost a kind of shared language in which they can create common ground for working with or collaborating, if you like, with Nazi power. You can see this in France especially on the far right, just before and after the creation of Vichy and the military defeat of France in 1940. You see the far-right really seeing the Judeo-Bolshevik threat as a kind of glue which will allow them to work together with German power to regenerate France. You can also see this on the Eastern Front after the German army invades the Soviet Union in 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. You can find far-right Ukrainian nationalists, Lithuanian nationalists, Latvian nationalists who see the fight against Jewish communists as being a way to make common cause with Nazi power in the hopes that when the war is over, and as they believe, the Germans win, they will be able to reap the rewards by getting, for example, statehood or some other kind of political power. You see this also amongst some of Nazi Germany's East European allies in the war against the Soviet Union, both Hungary and Romania, although those two states are in bitter opposition over so many things, especially territorial claims. Both of them go to war on the side of Nazi Germany precisely because they believe that after the war is over and after Germany has won, they will get some special dispensation in the peace that follows. They go to war against the Soviet Union in the same belief that it's a crusade against Judeo-Bolshevik threat in the East, and that the war against the Soviet Union has to be fought in this way. And so fascist movements, fascist states, or fascists who would like to have a state in the future, see in the Judeo-Bolshevik threat not only a threat to their own national interest, but also a space of common ground or a space of cooperation which will allow them to work with Nazi power even if they disagree with Nazi ideology on other points, and even if the Nazi vision for Europe doesn't actually pan out for them in the way that they hope. Mike: Okay, so with the collapse of the fascist states came an almost immediate transformation of the public's perception of the Judeo-Bolshevism myth. So the new states that emerged were expected to denounce such prejudices as fascist and hence bad, and publics to varying degrees were expected to comply. So talk about the, shall we call it, 'withdrawal effects' of the collapse of fascist states on their publics? Paul: Yeah, you can see this most vividly in Eastern Europe where the collapse of fascism and the defeat of Nazi Germany is accompanied by the arrival of the Soviet Army and the immediate ambitions to political power of communist parties and communist movements across the region. You can see that communist parties have to struggle to seek legitimacy among people in societies where so many people are very well accustomed to thinking of communism as something alien, and also something Jewish. And so from the very beginning, you see communist parties and communist movements wrestling with the fact that in certain segments of society, there's a kind of association of them with Jewish power. And so they try to navigate this. You can also see it, for example, in the efforts by post-war regimes in transition that are either communist-controlled or on the way to being communist-controlled, who are having trials of war criminals. There are many people, you can see this in Hungary and in Romania, who look at these trials and you can say, "Well, these are not trials of fascists. This is in fact a kind of Jewish justice or a kind of Jewish revenge." And so they associate the search for or the desire for justice after the war and the desire to punish real criminals with illegitimate Jewish power that has only come into being because of the fact that the Soviet power has placed it there. And so the fact that there's a complete regime change doesn't change the fact that people across the region still have the memory of the legacy of this language that had been baked into all aspects of political life for the preceding two or three decades. And this very much shapes the way in which people see Soviet power, see Soviet takeover, see communist parties, see especially the crimes that Red Army soldiers commit–you know, rapes and seizures of property–are immediately associated in many people's minds as being somehow Jewish crimes. All of this seems plausible because fascist movements and fascist regimes had conspired with the Germans to eliminate Jewish presence from life across Eastern Europe. And now after 1945, survivors of the Holocaust are in public again trying to put together their lives. And so a group of people who had been absent from public space are back in it. And so that only kind of heightens the attention around Jews and around how suddenly the tables seem to have been turned and how the new political regimes that are coming into being are somehow antithetical to the true national interest or the true national identity. Mike: All right. There was also a certain evolution in the West in response to the experience of World War Two and its aftermath regarding Judaism and communism. What did that look like? Paul: Yeah, one of the things I found really interesting, and I did devote a chapter to it because I did find it so curious, is that at the same time that this story that I'm telling you in Eastern Europe was going on, there is this really interesting transformation of the relationship in political discourse of Jews and communism in Western Europe as a result of the Cold War. You can see this most clearly in the kind of ubiquity of the notion of Judeo-Christian civilization as the thing that Cold War liberals are going to protect against Communist aggression. And this very interesting migration of the adjective Judeo from, you know, Judeo-Bolshevism to Judeo-Christian civilization. And you can see this in all aspects of American popular culture and political culture in the '40s and '50s, a willingness to compare using theories of totalitarianism to compare Nazi crimes to Soviet crimes and to present Jews as being victims of both. But also to, you know, really kind of focusing on Jewish communists–there was a lot of focus for example on Ana Pauker in Romania who served as a really important Communist official–as being, you know, Jews who had lost their way and who had lost their sense of religious tradition and religious identity and become completely transformed morally into this almost monster. There are lots of articles about figures like this presenting her as being just something that's called a Stalin in a skirt or something like this. And these figures were then presented as being empowered by communism to attack the moral and religious values on which Western civilization was founded and which the US-led West was going to defend against Soviet expansion and the expansion especially of Communism and communist ideas into the West. I guess a way to bring it back is to say that there's a very interesting way in which this relationship of Jews and communism is completely recoded and reshuffled by Cold War liberals in the 1940s and 1950s to create this kind of very stout, multi-confessional anti-communism that was so prevalent in the US at that time. Mike: All right, so back to the East. So the death of Stalin and subsequent public inquests into his regime revealed excesses that shaped public perception and public policy across the former fascist world. How did the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism play in the post-Stalin world? Paul: You know what's really interesting is that once Stalin dies, there is a rush by Communist Party leaders across Eastern Europe to blame the excesses of Stalinism on somebody or some group in order to present themselves as charting a new way forward that is going to make communism more compatible with the national character, the true sort of national interests, or to create a kind of truly national path to communism. You can see this happening in Poland and Hungary and Romania and other places as well. And one of the ways in which that sort of political strategy works is by demonizing or accusing the most hardline Stalinist leaders who are now discredited for being anti-national or unnational, and for being Jews. And there were a number of figures who were sort of held up as being examples of this. You can see this in Hungary most clearly where the leading figures of the Communist Party in the early 1950s in the Stalinist period were all men of Jewish background. And so the Hungarian Communist regime, without really launching a major antisemitic campaign, let it be known in all sorts of different ways that this new way forward after the death of Stalin, after especially the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, was going to be built around creating a much more truly Hungarian form of communism that will *wink, wink, nod, nod* have many more ethnic Hungarians at the forefront. You can see something very similar going on in a number of different countries, coming most particularly to a head in 1968 in Poland when there is a major campaign against Jews, accusing them of being cosmopolitan, accusing them of being Zionist, as a way of saying that in fact, the Communist regime in Poland is the truly national regime and it truly represents the interests of the Polish nation. And so Jews become the enemy of this true national communism, and the fervor around that leads the vast majority of what remains of the Polish-Jewish community to emigrate in 1968, leaving what is today a very, very tiny community. Mike: Okay. So, eventually the communist states collapse and their economies are restructured along neoliberal lines. How does Judeo-Bolshevism rear its head? Paul: It rears its head, I think, in two ways. The first is in this, again, as a kind of an antithesis or a kind of opposition, you see right-wing nationalists coming to the fore in 1989 very ambitiously trying to create a new right-wing political party, new right-wing political movement in societies where that had been banned for decades. And they set themselves up as being the true spokespeople for the nation in opposition to the Communist regime that went before which they say was an imposition from abroad by forces that were anti-national, completely forgetting the ways in which the communist regimes across Eastern Europe had worked so hard to try to present themselves as national and to try to build up national legitimacy. And in that process, you find right-wing nationalists really very easily slipping into describing the regimes that had gone as being Jewish or inspired by Jews or recalling the role that Jews had played at various moments in it. So you see it coming back in this politics of memory. The other way in which you see it coming back, and it also has to do with historical memory, is the debates about how to understand World War II and the Holocaust. The stakes around that are very high because in the 1990s, as some of your listeners will undoubtedly remember, there was this new focus that continues to this day on Holocaust memory as being a kind of token or sign of a society that had embraced liberal values of human rights and democracy, the idea that you know, if we commemorate the Holocaust or remember the Holocaust, that's a sign that a society is developing towards becoming a mature democracy. And so for that reason there was a lot of intense interest in how the Holocaust should be represented, how it should be remembered, how it should be written about, how it should be talked about. And in a number of different societies across the former Communist East, you have nationalists who are very wary of this European liberal project, who express their wariness as a dissatisfaction with a memory of the war which they say is one-sided and which they say only prefaces the memories of what they would call "others' Jewish memory", and which doesn't pay sufficient attention to the crimes of communists that had been committed against “us,” “us” being the national community without Jews. And in those debates, there's a lot of focus on what role did Jews play in Communist coming to power right after World War II? What role did Jews play in those parts of Eastern Europe where the Soviet Army had turned up in 1939 in Eastern Poland, parts of Romania, for example? And, you know, did they welcome the Soviet Army and did they, at that time, betray the nation? And how should we remember that? So there was a lot of focus in the 1990s, and into today, about how Jews, communism, fascism, and the Holocaust should all be remembered. Some of your listeners might remember or know about the big controversy in Poland around the historian Jan Gross' book, Jedwabne, which had to do with a big, a truly terrible pogrom in which the Jews of this one particular town were killed by their neighbors. At the core of that event was the accusation that they had collaborated with the Soviets when the Soviets were in power between 1939 and 1941. And that that issue became a live one in Poland in the 2000s because it was tied up with these debates about how to remember the past, but also how to imagine the Polish future in Europe going forward. Mike: Okay, and now you take the book to the present day. So how does the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism live with us today? Paul: I think it lives in a number of different ways. The first place that you see it is in what you might call the ideological arsenal of the far-right in a lot of different countries. If you listened to, for example, what the marchers were saying in Charlottesville in 2017, many of them were talking about how Jews will not replace “us,” “us” being White nationalists. They also in a kind of knee-jerk way were going on about how they were opposed to communism, even though I don't think there were any communists anywhere in the area. But nonetheless, they saw communists as being somehow related. You can see this in the number of really horrific shootings of Jews by shooters in this country and elsewhere, where Jews are associated with immigration. There's this accusation that Jewish cosmopolitans are somehow ringleaders or are organizing the migration of other sorts of racial inferiors into the country. And that's a kind of real play and adaptation of something that was central to Nazi ideology. When, you know, Nazi Germany went to war against the Soviet Union, one of their main arguments was that the Soviet Union was controlled by Jews and that Jewish commissars were going to lead armies of racial subhumans or racial inferiors into the heart of Europe. And that the head of this Jewish-led army were going to be millions and millions of different kinds of migrants who were going to swamp Europe. You can see that kind of language being repurposed and repositioned by the far right to fit into immigration debates today. So that's one place: on the far right. The other place where you really see it is the, kind of, reshuffling of the Jewish conspiracy, and I think this is where I would say the book that I've written really tries to focus on how this particular version of the Jewish conspiracy theory or the Jewish conspiracy myth or the myths of Jewish power took a particular form at a particular historical moment in the 20th century. And that with the end of communism, there has been a reshuffling, and so now the face of the Jewish enemy or the great threat is not a Jewish communist like, let's say, Leon Trotsky who figures so prominently in anti-communist ideology throughout the 20th century, but is now someone like George Soros who is anything but a communist, obviously. He is a very wealthy financier, someone who's not only made a lot of money in the financial markets but also is using it to try to promote things like the open society through his nongovernmental organizations. And so you see this idea of an international Jewish plot or an international Jewish conspiracy linked to things like cosmopolitanism, which are anti-national. These themes have been reshuffled, refolded, and repurposed into a now what is the post-communist age. And so in some sense, if the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism is becoming a kind of substance of historical memory, you can see the conspiracy theory that was at the heart of it lives on because it has acquired, in a sense, new clothes. There's new language to talk about it because it's being fit into new scenarios and put to new purposes. Mike: All right. Well, Dr. Hanebrink, thank you so much for coming on the Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. The book, again, is A Spectre Haunting Europe, out from the Belknap Press which is an imprint of Harvard. Dr. Hanebrink, thank you once again. Paul: Thank you very much for having me, it was a pleasure talking with you. Mike: The Nazi Lies book club meets every week to discuss the books of upcoming guests on the podcast. Come join us on Discord. A subscription to Patreon gets you access starting as low as $2. Thanks for listening. [Theme song]  

Tanks defined 20th century conflict — they conjure to mind images of Tiananmen Square or the Soviet Army rolling into a liberated Berlin. But over the past couple of weeks, we have began seeing them again on our TV screens during the current fighting in Ukraine. Today on Patented, we are joined by war historian James Holland to explore where the idea of the tank came from, how they have been used through time, and what role they play in future conflicts. For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Soviet Army was the largest active army in the world from 1945 to 1991. How did it fare when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979?

Rambo 3 is a classic action film from the 80s. Get ready for a heart-stopping, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride as Rambo is out to rescue Colonel Trautman. Let's talk about the explosions, gunfights and hand-to-hand combat that made this movie an instant classic!  The film depicts fictional events during the Soviet–Afghan War. In the film, Rambo sets out on a dangerous journey to Afghanistan in order to rescue his former commander and his longtime best friend, Col. Sam Trautman, from the hands of an extremely powerful and ruthless Soviet Army colonel who is bent on killing both Trautman and Rambo, while helping a local band of Afghan rebels fight against Soviet forces threatening to destroy their village.   #rambo3 #rambomovies #actionmovies  

Rambo 3 is a classic action film from the 80s. Get ready for a heart-stopping, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride as Rambo is out to rescue Colonel Trautman. Let's talk about the explosions, gunfights and hand-to-hand combat that made this movie an instant classic!  The film depicts fictional events during the Soviet–Afghan War. In the film, Rambo sets out on a dangerous journey to Afghanistan in order to rescue his former commander and his longtime best friend, Col. Sam Trautman, from the hands of an extremely powerful and ruthless Soviet Army colonel who is bent on killing both Trautman and Rambo, while helping a local band of Afghan rebels fight against Soviet forces threatening to destroy their village.   #rambo3 #rambomovies #actionmovies  

Summary Hans Holmer (LinkedIn) joins Andrew (Twitter; LinkedIn) to discuss his time as a CIA operations officer and his transition to a cyber strategist. He served on every continent except South America and won a CIA Intelligence Star. What You'll Learn Intelligence The advantages for a case officer growing up in two cultures and speaking multiple languages before joining the IC The tech person trained to be a case officer vs. a case officer trained to be a tech person debate That no amount of technology will make up for a lack of “cyber strategy” The concept of “digital dandruff” Reflections Growing up in Denmark, moving to the US for high school, joining the Army then CIA Privatizing information gains but collectivizing information losses What it was like to program back in 1973! And more… Episode Notes  Hans Holmer describes the cat-and-mouse of surveillance and counter-surveillance the most fun you can have (a) in public and (b) sober. Ever wondered how you go from a CIA case officer in the Sub-continent, to a technical counterintelligence evangelist who travelled the world, to a cyber strategist living in Vienna, Austria? To find out, listen to this week's episode where you'll find Hans thoughtful and articulate, but I think you will also appreciate his forthright views on corporate data leaks and digital personal responsibility. He originally got in touch to talk about the Operation Silver, the British intelligence operation that covertly tapped the communications of the Soviet Army HQ in Vienna, at SPY we actually have a piece – yes, an actual piece – of the Berlin Tunnel, which was a successor operation – betrayed by communist MI6 officer George Blake – which borrowed heavily from Silver: it was even called Operation Gold! The monitoring station in Op. Silver was disguised as a tweed clothing shop on the assumption that no one in Vienna would be interested in Scottish clothing! Hans actually tracked down the modern site of the tweed store and is trying to dig (no pun intended) for further information on the operation – can anyone help…? Quote of the Week "I've been arguing that the way to improve cyber security in the U.S. is very simple. Any company that loses personally identifiable information, payment card information, healthcare information, HIPAA data, or access to critical infrastructure, has to pay each victim a dollar a day from the beginning of the breach till it's been closed off…the average breach lasts about a hundred days…some of the more recent breaches are a hundred million people. So, imagine a hundred million people who get a dollar a day for a hundred days. Companies would take that seriously." Resources SpyCasts “Operation Gold” - Steve Vogel & Bernd von Kostka (Berlin Tunnel) “George Blake, Happy Traitor” – Simon Kuper (Berlin Tunnel) Zero Days – Nicole Perloth Part I and II (Cyber) “The Cyber Zeitgeist” – Dave Bittner (Cyber) “Snowden & Surveillance” – Barton Gellman (Cyber) Books Betrayal in Berlin, S. Vogel (CH, 2019) Spymaster – MI6 Chief Oldfield, M. Pearce (Transworld, 2016)  Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin, D. Steury (CSI, 1999) Best Books on Cybersecurity (Five Books) Articles “Engineering the Berlin Tunnel,” SII (2008) “Betrayal in Berlin - Review,” WaPo (2019) Documentaries The Great Hack, Noujaim & Amer (2019) Zero Days, A. Gibney (2016) Education Cyber Training Series (DNI) The Danger of Stone Age Habits in a Cyber World (HSToday, 2019) Primary Sources Cyber Security Officer (CIA, 2022) CIA Director Burns - Cyber (WSJ, 2021) National Cyber Strategy of the USA (WH, 2018) Interview with CIA Director Brennan - Cyber (NPR, 2016) The IC's Role Within Cyber R&D (FAS, 2013) Remarks by DNI Clapper at HPSCI (DNI, 2011) Securing Critical Infrastructure in the Age of Stuxnet (HSGA, 2010) Mail Service of the Soviet Army in Austria (CIA, 1955) Wildcard Resource “Technical Counterintelligence Officer,” INTEL.gov 

narrated by: Sara Kestelman Isaac Aizman was a neurosurgeon in Riga. His wife Tobe-Leya remained at home raising four children. When war came, Dr Aizman was conscriopted into the Soviet Army. He told his wife to flee eastward. She hesitated. And that would cost them all. Read Feiga Kil's Centropa biography and see her pictures here.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Honoring Petrov Day on LessWrong, in 2019, published by Ben Pace on the LessWrong. Just after midnight last night, 125 LessWrong users received the following email. Subject Line: Honoring Petrov Day: I am trusting you with the launch codes Dear {{username}}, Every Petrov Day, we practice not destroying the world. One particular way to do this is to practice the virtue of not taking unilateralist action. It's difficult to know who can be trusted, but today I have selected a group of LessWrong users who I think I can rely on in this way. You've all been given the opportunity to show yourselves capable and trustworthy. This Petrov Day, between midnight and midnight PST, if you, {{username}}, enter the launch codes below on LessWrong, the Frontpage will go down for 24 hours. Personalised launch code: {{codes}} I hope to see you on the other side of this, with our honor intact. Yours, Ben Pace & the LessWrong 2.0 Team P.S. Here is the on-site announcement. Unilateralist Action As Nick Bostrom has observed, society is making it cheaper and easier for small groups to end the world. We're lucky it requires major initiatives to build a nuclear bomb, and that the world can't be destroyed by putting sand in a microwave. However, other dangerous technologies are becoming widely available, especially in the domain of artificial intelligence. Only 6 months after OpenAI created the state-of-the-art language-modelling GPT-2, others created similarly powerful versions and released them to the public. They disagreed about the dangers, and, because there was nothing stopping them, moved ahead. I don't think this example is at all catastrophic, but I worry what this suggests about the future, when people will still have honest disagreements about the consequences of an action but where those consequences will be much worse. And honest disagreements will happen. In the 1940s, the great physicist Niels Bohr met President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, to persuade them to give the instructions for building the atomic bomb to Russia. He wanted to bring in a new world order and establish global peace, and thought this would be necessary - he believed strongly that it would prevent arms race dynamics, if only everyone just shared their science. (Churchill did not allow it.) Our newest technologies technologies do not yet have the bomb's ability to transform the world in minutes, but I think it's likely we'll make powerful discoveries in the coming decades, and that publishing those discoveries will not require the permission of a president. And then it will only take one person to end the world. Even in a group of well-intentioned people, natural disagreements will mean someone will think that taking a damaging action is actually the correct choice — Nick Bostrom calls this the “unilateralist's curse”. In a world where dangerous technology is widely available, the greatest risk is unilateralist action. Not Destroying the World Stanislav Petrov once chose not to destroy the world. As a Lieutenant Colonel of the Soviet Army, Petrov manned the system built to detect whether the US government had fired nuclear weapons on Russia. On September 26th, 1983, the system reported multiple such attacks. Petrov's job was to report this as an attack to his superiors, who would launch a retaliative nuclear response. But instead, contrary to all the evidence the systems were giving him, he called it in as a false alarm. This later turned out to be correct. (For a more detailed story of how Stanislav Petrov saved the world, see the original LessWrong post by Eliezer, which started the tradition of Petrov Day.) During the Cold War, many other people had the ability to end the world - presidents, generals, commanders of nuclear subs from many countries, and so on. Fortunately, none of them did. As the ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Honoring Petrov Day on the EA Forum: 2021 , published by Aaron Gertler on the AI Alignment Forum. Petrov Day Today we celebrate not destroying the world. We do so today because 38 years ago, Stanislav Petrov made a decision that averted tremendous calamity. It's possible that an all-out nuclear exchange between the US and USSR would not have actually destroyed the world, but there are few things with an equal chance of doing so. As a Lieutenant Colonel of the Soviet Army, Petrov manned the system built to detect whether the US government had fired nuclear weapons on Russia. On September 26th, 1983, the system reported five incoming missiles. Petrov's job was to report this as an attack to his superiors, who would launch a retaliative nuclear response. But instead, contrary to the evidence the systems were giving him, he called it in as a false alarm, for he did not wish to instigate nuclear armageddon. For more information, see: 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident Petrov is not alone in having made decisions that averted destruction — presidents, generals, commanders of nuclear submarines, and similar also made brave and fortunate calls — but Petrov's story is salient, so today we celebrate him and all those who chose equally well. As the world progresses, it's likely that many more people will face decisions like Petrov's. Let's hope they'll make good decisions! And if we expect to face decisions ourselves, let us resolve to decide wisely! Mutually Assured Destruction (??) The Petrov Day tradition is to celebrate Petrov's decisions and also to practice not destroying things, even when it's tempting. In both 2019 and 2020, LessWrong placed a large red button on the frontpage and distributed "launch codes" to a few hundred "trustworthy" people. A launch would bring down the frontpage for the duration of Petrov Day, denying hundreds to thousands of people access to LessWrong. In 2019, all was fine. In 2020... let's just say some bad decisions were made. And yet, having a button on your own page that brings down your own site doesn't make much sense! Why would you have nukes pointed at yourself? It's also not very analogous to the cold war nuclear scenario between major world powers. For those reasons, in 2021, LessWrong is teaming up with the Forum to play a game of mutual destruction. Two buttons, two sets of codes, and two sets of hopefully trustworthy users. (The button will appear on the homepage on Sunday morning, 8 AM PST.) If LessWrong chose any launch code recipients they couldn't trust, the EA Forum will go down, and vice versa. One of the sites going down means that people are blocked from accessing important resources: the destruction of significant real value. What's more, it will damage trust between the two sites ("I guess your most trusted users couldn't be trusted to not take down our site") and also for each site itself ("I guess the admins couldn't find a hundred people who could be trusted"). For exact rules of the game, see the final section below. Last year, it emerged that there was ambiguity about how serious the Petrov Day exercise was. I'll be clear as I can via text: there is real value on the line here, and this is a real trust-building exercise that was not undertaken lightly by either LessWrong or the Forum. Both sites have chosen recipients who we hope will understand this. How Do I Celebrate? If you were one of the two hundred people to receive launch codes for LessWrong or the Forum, celebrate by doing nothing! Other ways of celebrating: You can discuss Petrov Day and threats to humanity with your friends. You can hold a quiet, dignified ceremony with candles and the beautiful booklets created by Jim Babcock. And you can also play on hard mode: "During said ceremony, unveil a large red button. If anybody presses the button, the cere...

Greetings, Comrades! This episode is all about Soviet urban legends, straight from the USSR army! Enjoy!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tom Service lifts the lid on the music of the most popular living composer - Arvo Part. Nominated for 11 Grammy awards and revered by Bjork, P.J Harvey, and Radiohead, as well as classical musicians around the world, his seemingly simple and spiritual music is loved by millions. Born in Estonia in 1935 he did military service in the Soviet Army, worked as a radio producer, and wrote music for films, documentaries and animations, before creating his unique style of composition ‘tintinnabulation'. But what exactly is tintinnabulation? What do you get when you cross mathematics with love? And how can strict rules and discipline ultimately mean freedom? Our witnesses are violinist Viktoria Mullova who has recorded many of Part's seminal works, and theologian Dr Peter Bouteneff who has researched his music's connections with his Orthodox faith. Producer: Ruth Thomson

I speak with Aden Magee who operated as the commander of a highly specialized Counterintelligence (CI) unit in West Germany during the last decade of the Cold War.We talk about his book The Cold War Wilderness of Mirrors - Counterintelligence and the U.S. and Soviet Military Liaison Missions 1947–1990. This is a rare book that details some never-before documented accounts of the Soviet Military Liaison Mission (SMLM) in West Germany and the U.S. Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) in East Germany and shows how they were microcosms of the Cold War strategic intelligence and counterintelligence landscape. I also discuss with Aden how the book shows the impact of CIA Director James Angleton's legacy which restricted counterintelligence operations long after his departure.  Buy the book and help support the podcast.UK listeners buy hereUS listeners buy hereWhat do you think the podcast is worth to you?  Single or monthly donations really help keep the podcast on the air.Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/If you can't wait for next week's episode do visit our Facebook discussion group where guests and listeners continue the Cold War Conversation.I am delighted to welcome Aden Magee to our Cold War conversation…Casemate publishers have kindly provided 3 copies of “The Cold War Wilderness of Mirrors - Counterintelligence and the U.S. and Soviet Military Liaison Missions 1947–1990” to give away!** Note: Casemate publishing has only made this giveaway available to US and European listeners **Detail on how to enter here https://coldwarconversations.com/episode196/ Have a look at our store and find the ideal gift for the Cold War enthusiast in your life? Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/store/Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/coldwarpod)

Русско-английские mp3 разговорники и аудиокниги Russian-English Audiobooks-VK Playlist From The Zone by Sergei Dovlatov- rus-eng parallel text-mp3 podcast.mp3 Sergei Dovlatov's 80th Anniversary Sergei Donatovich Dovlatov-Mechik (Russian: Сергей Донатович Довлатов-Мечик; 3 September 1941 – 24 August 1990) was a Soviet journalist and writer. Internationally, he is one of the most popular Russian writers of the late 20th century https://omdarutv.blogspot.com/2021/08/from-zone-by-sergei-dovlatov-rus-eng.html Written in Sergei Dovlatov's unique voice and unmatched style, The Zone is a satirical novelization of Dovlatov's time as a prison guard for the Soviet Army in the early 1960s.

George Koval was born in Iowa. In 1932, his parents, Russian Jews who had emigrated because of anti-Semitism, decided to return home to live out their socialist ideals. George, who was as committed to socialism as they were, went with them. It was there that he was recruited by the Soviet Army as a spy and returned to the US in 1940. A gifted science student, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he knew scientists soon to join the Manhattan Project, America's atom bomb program. After being drafted into the US Army, George used his scientific background and connections to secure an assignment at a site where plutonium and uranium were produced to fuel the atom bomb. There, and later in a second top-secret location, he had full access to all facilities and he passed highly sensitive information to Moscow. His story is told in the new book "Sleeper Agent: The Atomic Spy In America Who Got Away." Ann Hagedorn has been a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and has taught writing

現在抖內賓狗，有好康回饋啦！ https://pay.firstory.me/user/bingobilingual 你英文想變更好嗎？快來 PressPlay 訂閱賓狗： https://www.pressplay.cc/bingobilingual · 免費試用 3 天 · 搭配本集 Podcast 的詳細講義 · 手機背景播放，善用零碎時間學習 · 一次掌握頂尖學習資源：文法、發音、口說及更多 1【futility 徒勞；無意義】- 名詞 The Soviet Army and the Americans come and go, Afghans are left with a deep sense of sadness at the futility of a foreign presence. 2【rubble 瓦礫】- 名詞 Search efforts for possible survivors in the rubble have been suspended. 3【gender 性別】- 名詞（比較 gender 跟 sex） Applicants for a U.S. passport will have the option to select a gender marker that isn't male or female. 美國, 邪惡美帝, 阿富汗, 911, 性別, 美國護照, 性別重置 賓狗誠心徵求廠商乾媽乾爹!!  歡迎來信：weeklybingoenglish@gmail.com  口播案例：https://bingobilingual.firstory.io/playlists/ckmm0e1of9zai08974rfszzfh  想跟賓狗一起不死背、「玩單字」嗎？ 歡迎加入臉書私密社團： https://www.facebook.com/groups/883689222203801/  賓狗的 IG @bingobilingual_bb https://www.instagram.com/bingobilingual_bb 賓狗的 FB https://www.facebook.com/bingobilingual 陪賓狗錄 podcast： https://www.youtube.com/c/BingoBilingual （側錄影片） 【Podcast的廣告效益 - 學生問卷】 5-10 分鐘，幫學生一個忙，還可以抽獎喔！ 學術單位：國立臺北商業大學 企業管理系 研究所與大學部學生 抽獎資格：只要有在 Podcast 節目中聽過廣告內容的經驗，填寫問卷並留下Email，都有機會參加抽獎！ 抽獎禮物：7-11百元禮券*10位 問卷連結：https://forms.gle/ZZAfiwotkmQRbpiaA  *問卷皆採匿名方式，請安心填寫 你想要高品質中英對照新聞嗎？訂閱《風傳媒》，就能隨意暢讀華爾街日報的新聞，中英對照喔！原價一年一萬四，立刻降到三千九，趕快透過賓狗的專屬連結訂閱吧： https://events.storm.mg/member/BGWSJ/  跟賓狗 Line 聊天： https://line.me/ti/g2/AnkujGhzM4qHqycKmUd9Nw?utm_source=invitation&utm_medium=link_copy&utm_campaign=default 在 KKBOX 收聽賓狗： https://podcast.kkbox.com/channel/4tuXnkLJpEDF7ypC6S?lang=tc 節目配樂剪輯自《七十億分之一 Instrumental》 演唱： Julia 吳卓源、婁峻碩SHOU 編曲： terrytyelee 梁永泰、Tower Da Funkmasta 陶逸群 、Julia 吳卓源 作曲： Julia 吳卓源、婁峻碩SHOU 製作： terrytyelee 梁永泰 發行： ChynaHouse 授權： https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/deed.zh_TW 連結： https://kkbox.fm/KsYmHa?utm_source=firstory&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=audio_library 謝謝你抖內我，我們一起點亮整片夜空！:Jelly - 希望可以支持賓狗繼續做節目~Danny Wu - Don't give up!匿名贊助者 - 謝謝賓狗做出這麼棒的節目～～～ Powered by Firstory Hosting

This episode recounts the story of Jamal Khashoggi's years-long relationship with Osama bin Laden. As a young journalist, Khashoggi was invited by bin Laden — a friend through their mutual involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood — to cover the war by Arab fighters against the Soviet Army occupying Afghanistan. Khashoggi's stories championed the role of bin Laden in the first, giving him his first burst of publicity. Khashoggi never condoned bin Laden's later terrorist career, but he retained some sympathy for him right up until the Al Qaeda leader's death. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Audio Transcript: This media has been available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. If you're new, if your visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that through the connection card either virtually in the app or in the website. If you fill it out, we'll be sure to get in touch with you over the course of the week. We also have an app that you can just grab in the back. If you fill it out, just toss it on the white box or leave it at the Welcome Center.Happy Father's Day to all the fathers in the house. Any fathers in the house? Raise your hand. Happy Father's Day. Three. That's many Mosaic for you, many Mosaic. I love Father's Day. I've got four daughters. Praise God. I love Father's Day very much because I don't have to do anything except get one person a gift, and that's different from all the other holidays.One question word before we get into the sermon. So, when we prepare our sermon calendar, we do it about six months in advance. What's important to us is just going through the text. The text is what sets up our preaching calendar. We just go chapter by chapter, verse by verse. That's what we do. We are not a church that plans their sermon calendar around fake hallmark holidays. No offense, none taken, but we get to Father's Day and we're at Genesis 22, and it's the story of Abraham being told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. What does that have to do with Father's Day? You're about to see everything.I just mentioned that because I see God's divine orchestration and little details like this like when we were at Genesis 19 the week right before Pride Month starts. It's just God showing, "I'm with you, guys. I'm with this church. The Holy Spirit is working in and through you." So, for me, that's really encouraging. I just wanted to share that with you. Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word?Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good Father and we love you for that. We thank you that your goodness is poured out on us and your grace and your mercy, but not only. You pour out your grace and mercy on us often in a way that doesn't feel like grace and mercy, doesn't feel like a blessing because, often, you train us. You test us in order to train us to make us stronger, stronger in life, stronger in spiritual warfare, stronger when the next battle comes. We are even more prepared. Therefore, we can have greater victories, therefore, bringing you greater glory.We thank you Lord that you love us so much that you gave your son Jesus Christ for us, that you yourself, you didn't just allow this to happen. You weren't just a passive bystander as your son was being crucified. No, no. You personally evolved, that you put your son to death because that was the only way that we rebels could be forgiven, could be reconciled with you, could be adopted in to your family. It's the only way that the orphans could be named.We thank you Jesus that you were willing to do that, that you submitted perfectly to the will of God. You are the only one who perfectly did that. We thank you Holy Spirit that you take that gospel, that you take that truth and you make us so alive today that our hearts are on fire. I pray Holy Spirit, set more hearts on fire today. Draw people to yourself. Continue to build your church here in this desolate place. We pray that your kingdom flourishes. Bless our time in the holy scriptures. Pray all of this in the beautiful of Jesus Christ. Amen.Title of sermon is Faith Under Pressure. A reality of life, a truth of the universe, and a truth of holy scripture that's at the center of everything is that God is. God is. Whether you like it or not, God is. Whether you like it or not, God does what God wills. Whether you like it or not, God is God over you, and God has demands over you. He demands things of you. What he demands of you is faith in him, a true faith that works itself out in true love. He demands faith. He demands love. He demands obedience. Whether you like it or not, God requires our faith be demonstrated to him in particular when it's the hardest, in particular when we are under pressure.This is the kind of faith that overcomes the world. Faith and obedience are two sides of the same coin. If you believe in God, you have to love God because true faith always leads to true love in God, and you can't say, "I believe in God and I love God," if you don't obey God in particular when it's the hardest.You don't need to exercise faith when things are easy. Thou shalt eat chocolate. You don't need to exercise faith. Thou shalt live any way you want. Thou shalt be the ruler of giving guideline and moral laws for yourself. Thou shalt decide for yourself what is the right thing for you. Thou shalt do what feels good to yourself. Thou shalt live however you want and you will still inherit heaven however you define it. That's not true, and that doesn't need true faith.Now, true faith is exercised when the God of universe demands that we sacrifice that which we love most, and he demands that we sacrifice ourselves, self-denial, our own passions, our own dreams for ourselves, denial of personal desires, and that's what we have with Abraham.Abraham begins to understand that God is God, that God is God. I'll give you an SAT word, maybe a GRE, I don't know. God is peremptory, peremptory. God does not allow room for refusing or denying his will. No. If you do refuse or deny his will, he is going to bring consequences upon you. That's where we are beginning, and that's really the only way of understanding what's about to happen. What's about to happen, it seems cruel. What's about to happen, it seems incredulous. How could you God take a man Abraham, promise him a son, make him wait 25 years and then give him that son, and watch him love that son for over a dozen years as the most precious thing, the apple of his eye, and then go to him and say, "Abraham, I want you to take your son and I want you to offer him up as an offering to me."To really understand this text, you need to understand that Abraham loves God. That's really where we are. Now, what does this have to do with Father's Day? Absolutely everything. I'll tell you just from my personal experience of having a dad and being a dad, four daughters, the absolute most important thing that I can do, the absolute greatest gift that I can give to my daughters is to love God more than them, is to love God more than their mom, more than my wife, is to love God more than anything, and obey him because when I love God and I obey him, they see me making sacrifices because I love God and because I want to obey him and they're like, "You know what, Dad? Your words actually mean something, and I'm going to listen. You have an authority and a respect that you have earned with me, your child, because you are a great child of God the Father."Absolutely, every fathers, the moms or the dads, that's how you become a great parent by submitting to God the Father, walking with God the Father, and then doing what God the Father does to you with your kids.With that said, we're going to read Genesis 22. I'm going to read the whole text because this is one of the greatest text in all of human literature. As you read it, it feels like we're standing on a holy ground. Would you look at the text with me? Genesis 22:1."After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham!' and he said, 'Here am I.' He said, 'Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.' So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to the young men, 'Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.' And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, 'My father!' And he said, 'Here am I, my son.' He said, 'Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?' Abraham said, 'God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.' So they went both of them together.When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand, and took the knife to slaughter his son, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, 'Abraham, Abraham!' And he said, 'Here am I.' 'Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.' And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked up, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide; as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.'The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, 'By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth bless because you have obeyed my voice.' So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beer-sheba; and Abraham lived in Beer-sheba.Now after these things it was told to Abraham, 'Behold, Milcah also has borne children to your brother Nahor: Uz his first-born, Buz his brother, Kemu′el the father of Aram, Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethu′el.' Bethu′el, father of Rebekah. These eight Milcah bore to Nahor, Abraham's brother. Moreover, his concubine, whose name was Reumah, bore Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Ma′acah."This is the reading of God's holy, inherent and fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time: the test, the test passed, and the test rewarded.In verse one, we're told that God has come to test Abraham, "After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham!' and he said, 'Here I am.' After these things, after what things? After Abraham has walked with God for two and a half decades waiting for the promised son. Finally, the son is born, Isaac. Here, Abraham and Sarah are laughing. Isaac's name means laughter. They're having a good time. They plant a tree, meaning that they're settling down. They're rooted in their community. It feels like Abraham has retired. It feels like Abraham has finally arrived, has finally passed all the tests that God has for him. No. That was just a setup. That was just a preparation for the ultimate test."After these things God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham!' and he said, 'Here I am." Information about this is communicated to us by the narrator. It's not communicated to Abraham. Abraham doesn't know it's a test. It's not communicated to him that God never really intended for Abraham to actually kill his son, to actually burn his son's body on the altar. We're told that God does test. Why does God test? God tests us. He tests us to grow our faith. There's a difference between testing and temptation.God tests us to grow our faith. Satan tempts us to destroy our faith. Often, it's the same event. Whatever the event is in our life, God is using, trying to use that event to test us in order to train us, you pass the test, you just got trained, you're stronger now, and Satan is trying to destroy our faith with a temptation. What temptation? To not take the test and say, "God, I don't want the test. It's too hard. I don't want to endure this pain. I want to take the easy way out."Verse two he said, "Take your son." This is the test. "Take your son, your only son, whom you love." God the Father knows that Abraham is a good father who love this son, been waiting for this son, "whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah." By the way, this just came to me. More teenagers in the United States have cellphones than have fathers. It's a fact. That's a fact, that have fathers that love them. To be a father that loves your children it starts with fidelity to the Lord and fidelity to your wife. That's where it starts."Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."None of this really makes sense. This text doesn't really make sense unless you understand the hidden secret in the wording, in the Hebrew wording to show you that this isn't just an account in Abraham's life, that this is the culmination of everything that God has been teaching Abraham.How do we know that? Because twice God comes and tells Abraham the same phrase, "Go there forth. Go forth." Twice that's used in the Hebrew bible, once when God calls Abraham for the first time in Genesis 12:1 and the second time here in Genesis 22, "Go forth to the land I'll show you." This is Genesis 12:1. Now, the Lord said to Abraham, "Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father's house to the land that I will show you."In Genesis 22, it's the same exact language. These are the bookends of the biography of the faith of Abraham. This underscores the deliberate use of parallelism here, that God is calling Abraham to do the same thing that he did that time just on a greater scale. Abraham was called in chapter 12 to go from his father's house and not told precisely where. Here, God says, "Go. I'm going to you. Just keep going."The drama is heightened by a series of terms. In chapter 12, Abraham was told to, "Leave your country." He's told to, "Leave your family and leave your father." God said, "I want to see, Abraham, if you love me more than your family, if you love me more than your country, if you love me more than your father, go. I'll be a father to you." Here, Abraham in chapter 22 was told, "Leave. Take your son, your only son, the son you love. Abraham, do you love me more than your father? Abraham, do you love me more than your son?" That's the test here.In both cases, we see Abraham responds in faith and was rewarded with the promise of glorious posterity. In both cases, we have the record of Abraham building an altar at the end. The word son is used 10 times in the chapter and together with only son and the son whom you love. It just emphasizes the severity of the test. This is a real test. Abraham understands, understands that he needs to act.One of the reasons why a lot of people don't understand Christianity is because a lot of people try to take Christianity like they take a class in college that they audit. There's different class levels. So, in my college, there's a class that you take and you're graded. You can also take classes for pass/fail if it's for a grade. Obviously, you're working harder in any class. You're trying to absorb every single piece of information in the class, in the reading because you don't know what the test will try to expose from your knowledge base. You're paying attention to absolutely everything because you know you will have to use this information.Pass/fail, it would be foolish for you to do slightly more than just enough to pass. Then audit the class, you just go for the entertainment. You just go for the little piece where the professor just goes off the cuff and just tells war stories and jokes and you do that. Then when your mind actually has to focus and you have to do the hard work of learning material, your mind is gone. A lot of people, the problem you don't get what you're supposed to from Christianity, from the faith, and from following God is because you're trying to audit.You show up to church just for a good time or perhaps you'll meet somebody, and then perhaps you'll get the group of friends, you're trying to audit. Then when God's like, "Hey, auditors, you got to take a test," all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, I wasn't ready for that one," and then your faith, it crashes and burns. So, that's my little rant. You're welcome.Abraham was ready for the test. He was ready because he's been walking with God for 25 years. The Lord isn't asking him here. He's telling him, "Take your son." How old was Isaac at this time? The word for boy is the same word that's used of Ishmael in the previous chapter in verse five and 12. He's probably older. He's probably 15-17. The Lord says, "Take this son of your old age " life form, the son whose birth was a miracle, the son for whom you're willing to do everything and anything. He's the apple of your eye, the son upon whom you put all of your hopes and dreams for the future, 'You are all my hopes and dreams. You are the fulfillment of everything.'"God shows up and says, "Take the son. I want you to sacrifice him," to a man who's already lost a son. God's already told him, "Send Ishmael away." So, because of God, he's already lost one son and it looks like he's going to lose a second son. How does Abraham feel? The text doesn't say. It doesn't tell us one detail of how he feels. Obviously, his heart break. Obviously, his heart is torn asunder. Obviously, there's shock and there's numbness. "What on earth, Lord, are you feeling? How can you call me to do this?" Are you calling me to child sacrifice like the Canaanite gods, like the American gods, sacrificing millions of babies in abortion? Is that what you're calling me to, God?"No, no. Abraham knows deep inside no. No. The first word that God game me, and there's a second word that God gave me, and there's the middle that I just don't understand. The first word that God gave me is it's through Isaac that your offspring is going to be blessed. He is the child of the promised. He gets that. Then he gets to another word and says, "You need to sacrifice the son."Abraham looks here and says, "I don't understand the connection between the two, but you, God, have always been faithful and fulfilling, all of your promises. I'll do what you tell me to do. You've given me marching orders, and I'm going to start marching." What a sleepless, troubled, tortured night he must have had. God probably came to him in a dream. How did he know it was God? He's heard God's voice. He's walked with God for 25 years. He knows what GOd's voice sounds like. Here, we see Abraham at night, get a glimpse of the awful struggle of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he's under so much duress, so much pressure, so much anxiety of what's about to happen, praying to God, "Let this cup pass from me." So much pressure that the capillaries on his face are bursting, and he's sweating blood. Jesus Christ, he knows what's coming.He said, "God, don't ask me to do this. There's got to be another way. Not my will but yours be done."In Genesis 22:3, "Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey." Rising early shows promptness, a resolution despite the gut-wrenching, heartbreaking difficult of the assignment, he said, "God told me to do it. I'm going to do it." "Saddles his donkey. Took two of his men and his son Isaac and cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him."We can see in the order of what's happening how distraught he is. We see a glimpse of his mind. First, he saddles the donkey, then he calls the servants, the young men, and then he cuts the wood. It should be the other way around. It should be you call the to help you chop the wood and then you saddle the donkey. What we see is perhaps he's so distraught he can't think straight or perhaps he's postponing the most painful part of the preparation, but what we don't see here is him pushing back at God. What we don't see here is the Abraham that's debating God, negotiating with God.When God told him, "I'm going to punish and condemn Sodom and Gomorrah," we don't see any negotiation. This right here, I'm going to give you a working definition of God because everybody worships. Everybody worships. Everybody has a god or a lot of gods. Working definition of god is what's your non-negotiable. What's your non-negotiable? What's that one thing you can't touch this. If God tells you, "Hey, I want you to sacrifice that thing from your life. I want you to cut that thing out of your life. I want you to mortify that thing in your life," and you say, "God, no." Well, that's your real god. It could be sex. It could be power. It could be a relationship. It could be your career. It could be money. Whatever it is, that's your real god.What we see with Abraham here is God has finally become his non-negotiable. When God speaks, I'm not even going to negotiate. Do I understand? I do not understand, but I do understand that his ways are above my ways, greater than my ways, and often counterintuitive to my ways. God's mind isn't just higher than ours. God loves to do the counterintuitive. God's wisdom is the opposite of human wisdom. So, he does it, and he gets the marching orders and he kept going.Verse four, "On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar." Just think about this. Just go there. Three days. Three days with your son. You know what you have decided to do. You're walking with your beloved son for three days just having conversations with him about life, about God, "Dad, isn't God so great? Dad, isn't God just so incredible on how much he's blessed us?" Sitting around the campfire at night before they go to sleep while looking at the stars.Abraham's thinking, "God, you promised me, I'm going to have more descendants than the stars in the heavens, and the one descendant that you've given me, you're telling me to kill."Having that conversation, savoring the last moments together, protracted, sustain obedience, step after step after step after step. Finally, he gets to this place. We're not told how he knows this. Perhaps divine intuition that God gives him or a sign.Verse five, "Then Abraham said to his young men, 'Stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come back to you.'" You read this and you don't notice much going on here if you just read it from the perspective of the Old Testament, but the New Testament commenting on this verse points out the fact that Abraham had said to his servants, "I and the boy. We together are going to go up to the mountain. We together are going to worship and we together are going to come back." It's not even just faith. It's faith that's morphed in the knowledge, "I know this is fact that we're coming back together, and unless we're together, we're not coming back."Hebrews 11:17-19, the commentary, "By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offspring be named." He considered that God was able to raise him from the dead, from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. Abraham, he knew. He didn't know all the details, but he knew God was going to work it out. He knew that even if he actually killed his son Isaac, which he had decided to do in his heart, he knew that God could bring him back. He believed in the resurrection.This is before he had the witness of the New Testament that God brought his son back from the dead, that God brought Lazarus back from the dead, that God brought people back from the dead. Abraham had no witness, he just had the fact the omnipotent God of the universe can do whatever he wants. He has the power. Also, he's faithful to his word. Abraham had been told by God more than once, "It's Isaac. It's Isaac. He is the fulfillment of the promise, and Abraham's faith was like those of who believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead as Hebrews tells us.Did Abraham understand what God had ordered him to do? No. He didn't understand at all. He couldn't know what was about to pass, but he knew that God is good and God is great. It's one thing to sacrifice your son, to pierce his heart with your knife because you know that is the most painless way to go. To torch the wood and to see your son going up in flames and with him all of your hopes and dreams. That's one thing. It's another thing of doing, of making the greatest sacrifice that God calls you to make knowing that the resurrection is true, and because the resurrection is true, every single sacrifice that we make for God is absolutely worth. This is the Christian life, trusting God to be true to his word no matter the circumstance, no matter your bafflement at God, "How can this be the plan?" No matter your bafflement at God of how you're managing the things in the world, no matter your ability to explain.You know who he is. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your understanding. God often does things that are difficult for us to train us, to strengthen us, to make us better servants of him, and he does that because he's good father. He believes in us.A good father who believes in his kids will make his kids do hard things. It's the father who has no faith in their children and says, "Do whatever you want. I don't care. You want to eat whatever? You eat whatever you want. You don't want to do your homework? Don't do your homework because I don't believe in you." That's not love, that's hate. It's the loving the father.I was with my daughter. We got four daughters. So, I've been putting this stuff into practice for a while, for a decade, actually, so I've got two PhDs on being a dad. I was with my daughter doing Math and because of online school, her teacher basically stopped teaching. That's what happened. Then they went back from remote and in-person and her teacher said, "You know what? I still don't feel comfortable going back in-person." So, they started piping her teacher into the class and no one learned anything.So, I'm doing Math with my daughter. We were doing two numbers times two numbers like 22 times 22, whatever. I'm showing her how to do that, and then she said, "Let's do three number times three numbers." I said, "Oh, great."As soon as we wrote down the number, she starts crying. I said, "Baby," I took a napkin. I said, "Baby, I love you. Look me in the eyes. I love you. Wipe off your tears. This isn't time for emotion. Emotion has nothing to do with Math. Turn off your emotion and turn on your brain."You know what? It worked. It worked. I always thought because I got raised by a Russian dad. My dad's name is Vladimir Viktorovich Vezikov. I thought his parenting style was just Russian, where he made me do hard things. Five years old, I'm like, "Pops, can I have some money for ice cream?" "No, but you can come paint with me in my painting company," at five years old. "Here's a paintbrush. Here's a little roller. Here's a little scraper." He got me the smallest versions of each. "I'm going to make you do hard things."I look back now and it's not because it wasn't a loving thing. It was a Christian thing. He knew God the Father. God the Father sometimes, it feels like he's cruel with us, calls us to do things that are punishingly difficult, and then you do them, and you look back and you say, "Thank you. Thank you, Dad."I think that's what's missing with American parenting, by the way. We cuddle our kids, and then we wonder why when the kids graduate college they have absolutely zero life skills. They're just grown man child, especially with the men. So, free parenting lesson from here. Make your kids do hard things.Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and a hope." A lot of modern American church loves this verse. This is on so many mugs and bumper stickers. We love this church. God has great plan for us, a plan to prosper for us. It's for our welfare, et cetera.Hey, by the way, is God blessing Abraham here in the story? It doesn't feel like a blessing, but he is. It doesn't feel like a blessing. Often, God's greatest blessings don't feel like blessings at the moment. One of the reasons why the American church is where it is is because we've got to the point where feelings overrule faith, that if it doesn't feel good, I don't have to believe it. If I don't like it, then I can cut it out of my bible, and now it's feelings that are really God instead of God telling us to believe and that faith is what controls our feelings.Faith says, "I don't get it." Faith can even say, "I don't like it, but God told me to do it. I'm going to do it because he is God. I'm going to put another one foot in front of the other in obedience nevertheless."Verse six, "Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife so they went both of them together." Here, you can't but think about Jesus Christ with the cross, wooden cross on his back and Isaac here is walking with the wood on his back like a condemned man carrying his cross and Abraham walking along side of him carrying the instruments of death, the fire and the knife. You see the father and the son together as they approach the time and place of sacrifice.Verse seven, "Isaac said to his father Abraham, 'My father,' and he said, 'Here I am, my son,' and he said, 'Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?'" Isaac is thinking. He breaks the oppressive silence and the narrator emphasizes the sacred precious relationship between father and son, where Isaac says, "My father," and these words must have cut and pierced to the heart of Abraham sharper and more painful than Abraham's knife into the heart of Isaac, "My father."Abraham said to him, "God will provide for himself the lamb for burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar and there laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. We don't know if there was a conversation here, but Isaac is probably a smart guy and he understands exactly what's happening, "Oh, we're building the altar. There's no lamb. Oh, the wood is there. Oh, it's in order. The fire is ready. Oh, there's ropes. Oh, those ropes are for me."It's fascinating here that Isaac could have run away. We know he's strong enough to run away, old enough to run away because he carried the wood off the mountain. So, if he carried the wood off the mountain, then he's stronger than 100-year-old guy, probably 115-year-old guy. He doesn't do any of that.I used to wrestle with my dad. My dad loves wrestling. He loves combat sports. He's savage, Soviet savage. That's my dad. We used to wrestle all the time. We used to wrestle all through elementary school, just wrestle every day. Then I started high school wrestling. Then 10th grade, my dad just stopped wrestling me, just done. "Pops, you want to wrestle?" "Nope, nope," because what? Because he understood it's changed. The power has changed.Isaac doesn't run away and Isaac doesn't fight his dad. Isaac submits to his father because he sees Abraham submitting to his father. That's what's happening here. So, this isn't just for Abraham. This is for God to show Isaac, "Hey, look how much your dad loves me. Your dad loves me more than he loves you."Now, if you are going to understand what it means to walk with God, you Isaac need to have your own faith where you love me above all else. You see Isaac surrendering himself to death in submission to his father, and in submission to God, and this is nothing short of heroic.Verse 10, "Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son." Takes the knife, most likely the same knife that he used to circumcise his son eight days after he was born. Takes that knife and he's about to plunge it into the heart of his son. Both of them weeping, Abraham willing to sacrifice what he love most, whom he love most, for whom he love most, and then the culmination of the text, the culmination of this whole episode, the story of Abraham, the greatest moment of Abraham's life, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham," and he said, "Here I am."The angel of the Lord definite article, other times in the narrative where we've seen this we know it's a theophany. It could be argued. It's a Christophany. It could be argued. This is Jesus Christ himself stopping Abraham as he's about to offer up his son. Abraham's passed the test. Verse 12, "He said, 'Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now I know that you fear God seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.'"Abraham lifted up his eyes and he looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns, and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. "For now I know that you fear God." It doesn't say, "Now I know that you love God more than anything." It says fear God because, ultimately, the way that you love God is to fear God. You can't love God without fearing him with this awe and a reverence because you understand who he is.The more you love him, the more you know who he is. The more you know who he is, the more you fear him. Do you love him? Do you fear him? Do you obey him? That's the connection. Then the key phrase of this text is instead of his son, he takes the ram and he offers it, instead of his son. The ram dies, the son goes free, and this is the very first explicit explanation of substitutionary atonement in all of scripture.Scripture says substitutionary atonement is one life dying for the sake of another, sacrifice of one life for the sake of another or others. The scriptures are about God's work in the life of people. That's true. The scriptures are about obedience to God's commandments. That's true. The scriptures are about how we ought to live by faith to God and obedience. Even if you're not familiar with Christianity, even if you have never read the bible, even if you think that the first books of the bible are Genesis, exorcism, Leviathan, and do the right thing, and if you didn't laugh, then you really don't know the bible. This just proves it. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy.You know that Christianity is about morality, doing the right things, right? You know that. Everybody knows that because that's from the sheer volume of teaching of scripture. That's the thing that's repeated more than anything else, but that's looking at a house and saying, "The most important thing about this house is the house." False. None of that matters without the foundation. The foundation of God's divine intervention in the world to save people. God intervenes and there's various ways to talk about God's intervention, salvation of the world, divine election, regeneration of sinful human hearts by the Holy Spirit, consummation of all things at the second coming of Christ, but central to divine intervention is the work of God on behalf of sinful, unworthy human beings through substitutionary atonement.It's embedded in the religious practices of the law of Moses, of the people of Israel. It was a regular, highly organized essential feature of the Israel's religious life. Sacrifices explicitly for the purpose of atonement to remove sin, achieved through the death of an animal. You literally, you bring an animal to the high priest at the temple and you put your hands on that animal, and you just feel in that moment that this animal is about to be slaughtered because of my sin. You put your hands there. Transfer of guilt goes on that animal that did nothing wrong, did nothing wrong. The animal is slaughtered because of your guilt, because your guilt, your sin, my sin, it deserves death. That's what we deserve. The penalty for sin is death.Then the blood was taken, sprinkled, splashed on the people. So, just graphically emblazoning on their minds that this is what we deserve. As time passes, revelation of reality of substitutionary atonement is advanced. As it's advanced, it reaches its Old Testament culmination, Isaiah 53, but the suffering servant and it reads as if it had been written beneath the cross of Calvary.Isaiah 53:6, "All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him singular the inequity of us." So, a historical person who would bear the weight of the penalty for sin of every single person who would trust in him, who in all of human history could do that? Who's that one person who could do that for absolutely everyone? That's our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. The only one who's truly perfect, the son of God and the son of man who came to reconcile us with God.Verse 14, "So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide; as it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.'" This right here is the first incident of substitutionary atonement that is developed later in Isaiah 53, but, ultimately, we see this culminating in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ comes, starts as ministry. John the Baptizer, his cousin, points to Jesus Christ and said, "That's the Lamb of God who will take on the sins of the world." Jesus lives a sinless life, perfect life, perfect submission to God, perfect fear and reverence to God and love toward people.Then he goes and he's crucified because he claimed to be God. He kept claiming to be God. Finally, he's crucified for that claim, and on the cross, Jesus Christ is bearing the wrath of God that we deserve. He is our substitutionary atonement. He is the Lamb of God that dies instead of us. Jesus in my place, that's the heart of Christianity.So, Christianity isn't what you do for God. That's not where it starts. Christianity is what God did for you. That's always been like that. God goes to Israel and said, "I'm the one that led you out of captivity. Therefore, here's the 10 commandments. I saved you, now this is how to live."What's fascinating here is Abraham is at the absolute righteousness pinnacle of his life. His faith has never been stronger. His obedience has never been more resolute, and even at his greatest moment, he needs substitutionary atonement, which shows us that every single one, no matter how good you are, you can't save yourself from God's wrath for the sin you deserve by atoning for your own sins.Even if you say, "From now on I'm going to live a perfect life and I'm going to do everything I possibly can to atone for all my past sins," that's not Christianity. It's not atonement. It's substitutionary atonement. We need someone else to die for us, and the only one who did it perfectly was Jesus Christ. Then we see point three, the test rewarded.Verse 15, "But the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, 'By myself I have sworn.'" That's fascinating. So, the angel says from the Lord, "The Lord is swearing by himself." Why is the Lord swearing by himself? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you you?" That's going on. "I swear to me." That's what God is doing. Why is God doing that? Because there is no higher authority than God.God is the highest authority that there is, "By myself I have sworn," declares the Lord. "Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, as the sand that is on the seashore, and your offspring has possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice, because you have obeyed my voice." That's where the stress is laid here. This is how the text ends. The narrative ends with this, "Because you've obeyed my voice."Promise of God's covenant had to be claimed by an obedient faith, which is fascinating because you look at this promise. Word for word, it's the same thing as in Genesis 12. Genesis 12, God came before Abraham had done everything and God made him a promise, "I'm going to promise to bless you. I promise to bless your family. I promise to give you a promised child. I promise to bless the nations. I promise." At the end he says, "Oh, yeah. I'm going to do all of that because you have obeyed my voice."I thought we were saved by grace, through faith, not by works. It's together, friends. If you're saved by grace through faith, then you truly will have works. We're saved grace through faith, but work out your salvation with fear and trembling. The gift is given and it's guaranteed, but you still have to obey and live with obedient faith.My first job out of college was working for a consulting firm in Washington, D. C. My consulting firm, long story, they hired me, but they hired me when one company bought another company and then they hired. So, CGI bought AMS, and then they fired all the people in the internals of AMS and then they realized, "Well, we can't merge. We need these people back." So, I got hired at a time where my boss is like, "Hey, I got fired and then rehired, and I know I'm going to get fired as soon as the transition happens. They hired more people to help with the transition, but, yeah, I don't have any work for you because we're going to just work for a few months." So, long story short.So, I had a lot of time on my hands. So, I started, and I got out of school. I started a painting business on the side. I would clock in to work, come in, shake some hands, drink some coffee, and then I would change my clothes, get in to my paint truck and then go paint some houses. So, I had this tremendous little gig going. It's like people getting multiple jobs during COVID because everyone is working from home.So, I'll just tell you this one story. One guy is like, "Hey, I like you and I trust you. I'm going away. Here's a check for the total amount of what it's going to take to paint my house. It's $4,500. Here's the check right away. I'm leaving. I'll be back in a few weeks."I'm like, "Okay." I just met the guy two days ago. I didn't have a website because I didn't really register my business with anybody. I was like, "I could literally take this check right now and just put it in my account and do nothing." Then I realized, "No. I'm a Christian. I'm not going to do that."I think that's what a lot of people do with Christianity. You're saved by grace through faith. Great. I got the check. My turn to be secure. All my sins are forgiven past, present, and future. You still got to paint the house. That's the point. The point is payment is guaranteed. We got to do the work. It's not just because God demands it, but he does, but it's also because the more that we do, the more that we train our own lives, the more people we can bless, and that's what happened with Abraham. That's what happened with Isaac and later on.The other thing I want to point is where's Jesus in this text. Obviously, Jesus is everywhere in this text. The whole story is a depiction of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. Actually, the story doesn't make sense apart from the New Testament and apart from the gospel. Apart from the New Testament, God here telling Abraham to literally sacrifice his child, which sounds capricious. This is all to point to Jesus Christ. Where do I see that? I see it in multiple places, but just talking about geography.God says, "Go to the mountain of Moriah." Why is that significant? Where do we see the mountain of Moriah in other places of the scripture. Mountain of Moriah is the place King David buys a threshing floor in Araunah for the temple, the site of the temple. He has a dream to build the temple of God himself. He buys the land. He has all the materials ready and God said, "No, you're not doing it. Your son Solomon will do it."2 Chronicles 3:1, "Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father at the place that David had appointed on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite."Mount Moriah is the place that King David wanted to build a temple. Finally, Solomon builds the temple, and this is the place where hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of animals are sacrificed, where there were rivers of animal blood sacrifice. Blood was coming from the river. This is the same place where Calvary was, except Calvary was just outside of the gate of the temple.So, as you see, Isaac going with his father, son and father going up the mountain, you can see Jesus Christ on the Via Dolorosa and he's not just carrying the cross by himself. He's carrying the cross with his father. His father is right there with him.Why did God have to do this cruel thing to Abraham? Why did God have to do this? He does this to show us the glimpse of God's great love for us, and that he was willing to endure the cruelty of the cross, and not just that, but endure the tension and the relationships, the severing of the relationship in the Holy Trinity.God the Father, God the Son on the cross. God the Father isn't just a passive bystander. He's the one with the knife over his son, piercing his son's heart. How does God the Father pierce the heart of God the Son? God the Son cries out and says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" God the Father silent. With the silence, he pierces the son's heart and the son dies, and that's the penalty. That's God bearing the penalty that we deserve. We deserve God the Father to never speak to us again and leave us to ourselves in a place called hell. Jesus Christ experienced that for us. Why? Because that's what it took and he was willing to take it because he loves us.Romans 8:31-32, what then shall we say to these things. If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Jesus Christ goes to the place of sacrifice as a son of God, and there is no substitute for him. There is no ram caught in the thicket because Jesus Christ was the substitute.I wonder what happened with Abraham and Isaac when they got home. I wonder if Abraham told Sarah any of this. I definitely wouldn't."Honey, how was your camping trip?""Oh, it was wonderful. It was wonderful."Both of them aged 80 years. "It was wonderful. It was great."You know and I know when all of this was said and done that Abraham looked back and he would have never traded that experience for anything. He wouldn't have traded the experience of him walking up the mountain of Moriah, the preparing of the altar, the preparing of the knife, hearing Christ himself stop him because Christ himself would take the knife himself. He would never have traded those experiences for a few more uneventful days at home.Difficult as they were, these were the greatest days of his life. What are our favorite stories? My favorite stories are war stories, and not made up war stories. War stories from people who have gone to war, those are my favorite war stories. My dad, all the time, he served in the Soviet Army because you had to, and that's what made my dad my dad. All the time just war stories, not real war, but it's like, "Yeah. You know who still holds the Soviet record for pullups with boots on and a coat? Yeah, I do. Yeah."I think he does. I don't know. He could have made that up. We never fact checked him, Vlad. I don't know about that. I don't know. You know what it takes to get war stories? It takes going to war. It takes going through events like this. Then you come out and you're stronger. You're just a different person. Pascal said in his Ponce, he said, "There's some pleasure in being onboard a ship battered by storms when one is certain of not perishing."I think Abraham became a much better dad after this because he realized, "You know what? Isaac's not my son. Isaac is a gift. I need to steward this gift well, and then God will do whatever he wants with the gift." What's most important here and this is the last text, verse 20 to verse 24, what we see here is a transition from the story of Abraham to the story of Isaac, a transition from one generation to the next, a transition not just of life, but of faith.I won't read the whole text, but I'll just point out verse 23, "Bethu′el father of Rebekah." This is important because Rebekah then becomes the wife of Isaac, but all this is showing us that now there's a transition. Now, the camera is fading from Abraham to Isaac. "Abraham, you've done your job. You've fathered well. You've been a son to God the Father and you've done a great job, and you've fathered your son well. Time for your son to take over."In conclusion, given the great sacrifice of God for us, what are you just unwilling to sacrifice right now? What is there in your life that you are just clinging on to and you know that God is calling you to sacrifice this? What is it? It might be a sin. It might be a good thing. It might be a dream that God has given you and this dream is from God, but you've begun to love this dream more than God himself. Perhaps you got to sacrifice that dream or that desire or that wish.What is God's calling you to lay on the altar in obedience to his will, to his plan? He knows best, and the resurrection makes every sacrifice worth it. Few verses from the gospels, and then we'll close with prayer.Matthew 10:37, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."Matthew 19:27-30, "Then Peter said in reply, 'See, we've left everything and followed you. What then will we have?' Jesus said to him, 'Truly I say to you, in the new world, when the son of man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. Everyone who has left houses,'" with parking lot, with parking space, "'or brother or sisters or mother or father or mother or children or lands, backyards, for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life, but many who are firsts will be last, and lasts first."If you're not a Christian, if you're not a believer, today we call you. Repent of your sin. Repent of your rebellion, and look to the cross of Jesus Christ where God the Father was willing to do in giving up God the Son, bore the penalty for your sin. Repent of your sin and turn to him in faith.If you are a Christian, ask now for the Lord in prayer and worship to search in you and give you discernment if there's any area of life that you haven't really offered up to the Lord, that you haven't consecrated to the Lord. Let's pray.Lord, we thank you for this holy scripture. It seems like we're standing on holy ground seeing Abraham, the pinnacle of his faith, the culmination of his faith, that he was willing to sacrifice what or whom he loved most for you because you're worthy of this love. You're deserving of this love. You're deserving of the greatest amount of love that we can muster. You're deserving of it. By the power of the Holy Spirit, expend our hearts to love you more and to love neighbor as self. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Joey is joined by Jim and his soon to be brother in-law Ed and Ed's son Benji. Ed (Russian Jew) owns his own practice in anesthesiology. He talks about his past in Russia where he served as a medic for the Soviet Army. Being Jewish in the Soviet was very difficult for him. Eventually Ed left Russia and moved to Israel. He later moved to the U.S. and served in the Army as a medic and later began practicing in Anesthesia. Learning to Speak English is tough, but Ed had a good teacher, Howard Stern. 

NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT: THE STORY OF A POLISH JEWS RESISTANCE by D.W. Duke It is September 1, 1939 when Germany invades Poland and transforms eight-year-old Casimir Bieberstein's world forever. The son of a wealthy Jewish businessman, Cass happily lives in a thirty-room mansion. But when his family is forcibly ejected from their opulent and luxurious existence, Cass is immersed in a dark life he never could have envisioned in his wildest dreams. After moving from one apartment to the next, Cass and his family are eventually forced into the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw nearly three years later. Cass, who is seeking justice and the neutralization of Arturo, responds in the only way he knows and becomes a sniper for the Jewish Resistance. As battles lead him to fight in the 1943 and 1944 uprisings as well as with the Soviet Army when they finally drive Germany out of Poland, Cass ultimately turns the tables on his oppressors and becomes a shining example of the inner-strength and determination of the Jewish people to never give up, no matter what. Not without a Fight shares the true story of a Polish Jew's journey to become a Resistance Fighter intent on seeking justice for wrongs while attempting to survive the atrocities of the Holocaust. DW Duke is an experienced trial attorney, writer and noted lecturer. He has authored six published books including the popular books The Duke Legacy and Not without a Fight. He has also written dozens of articles on various legal topics ranging from real estate law to human rights and is a freelance editor for Oxford University Press. DW received his bachelor of arts from the University of Michigan and his Juris Doctor from Washington University School of Law. He lectures regularly to members of various professional institutions. DW is the President of the Institute for Children’s Aid. DW holds a fifth-degree black belt in taekwondo with the World Taekwondo Federation in Seoul, Korea. He is an accomplished musician who plays keyboards and guitar. DW has appeared on numerous radio and television broadcasts including Time Warner News, The Al Cole People of Distinction, The Dee Armstrong Show, the Ron Williams Show, The Susan Sherayko Show, The Daily Spark with Angela Chester, PhD., and America Tonight with Kate Delaney, among others. He lectures frequently for such entities as the California Association of REALTORS® and Rutter Group/Thomas Reuters law book publishers Admissions: • California • United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit • Supreme Court of the United States https://www.amazon.com/Not-without-Fight-Polish-Resistance/dp/1532026676 https://www.holocaustfighter.com/ http://www.bluefunkbroadcasting.com/root/twia/dwdukebt.mp3

By mid-February 1945, the Wehrmacht had finally reached strategic bankruptcy. In January and February alone, it had lost 660,000 men. The Home Army lacked the weapons (including small arms) and ammunition to equip new divisions. In January, against a monthly demand for 1,500,000 tank and anti-tanks rounds, production fell to 367,000.Despite this hopeless position, with Russia within seventy miles of Berlin, Hitler planned another offensive in Hungary, using the 6th SS Panzer Army, which had been pulled out of the Ardennes in January. Hitler planned to envelop a large part of the 3rd Ukrainian Front between the Danube and the Drava, sweep across the Danube, recapture Budapest, and overrun eastern Hungary. Of course it failed. Hitler committed suicide in April and the army surrendered shortly after.How were Hitler’s forces finally defeated? What happened after the well-known Battle of the Bulge? That famed clash was not the end for Nazi Germany, yet the critical and horrific battles that followed and forced it into submission have rarely been adequately covered. Today’s guest is Samuel Mitcham, author of the new book The Death of Hitler’s War Machine: The Final Destruction of the Wehrmacht. We discuss how the once-dreaded Nazi military came to its cataclysmic end. Hitler’s army had risked all to win all on the Western Front with its surprise winter campaign in the Ardennes, the “Battle of the Bulge.” But when American and Allied forces recovered from their initial shock, the German Army, the Wehrmacht, was left fighting for its very survival—especially on the Eastern Front, where the Soviet Army was intent on matching, or even surpassing, Nazi atrocities.The Death of Hitler’s War Machine gives the detailed and little-known account of how the Wehrmacht—at the mercy of its own leader, the Führer—was brought to its bitter end. We discuss:•Hitler’s disastrous foreign policy that pitted the Wehrmacht against most of the world•How Hitler refused to acknowledge reality and forbade German retreats—essentially condemning the troops to death•Why the Wehrmacht was slowly annihilated in horrific battles, the most brutal of which was the Soviet siege of Budapest, which became known as “the Stalingrad of the Waffen-SS”•The loss of the air war, 1943–1944, which led to the devastation of German cities and the complete disruption of her industry and infrastructure

KGB DEFECTOR YURI BEZMENOV'S WARNING TO AMERICA:29 YEARS AGO, Soviet defector and KGB operative Yuri Bezmenov, specializing in the fields of Marxist-Leninist propaganda and ideological subversion; warned us about the silent war being waged against America as part of a long term plan to take over and destroy the American system and way of life.Watch this clip in AMAZEMENT as you realize he is describing EXACTLY what's happening in America today, whereby Obama and his gang of Marxist usurpers who now have control of your government are just the culmination of a very long term plan but are the ones who are about to bring it into fruition.Bezmenov was born in 1939 in Mytishchi, near Moscow to a high-ranking Soviet Army officer. At the age of seventeen, he entered the Institute of Oriental Languages, a part of the Moscow State University which was under the direct control of the KGB and the Communist Central Committee. In addition to languages, he studied history, literature, and music, and became an expert on Indian culture. During his second year, Bezmenov sought to look like a person from India; his teachers encouraged this because graduates of the school were employed as diplomats, foreign journalists, or spies.As a Soviet student, he was also required to take compulsory military training in which he was taught how to play "strategic war games" using the maps of foreign countries, as well as how to interrogate prisoners of war.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/nate-and-friends/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We continue the story of Bill, a US Army Intelligence Analyst with Combined Analysis Detachment-Berlin (CAD-B) from episode 127. Germany has now been re-unified and Russian troops have withdrawn from East Germany. Bill tells us of the little known story of continued US Army involvement in intelligence gathering alongside the German security services, the BND.We hear about "Operation Giraffe", described as the largest intelligence service procurement campaign of the West since the end of World War II, how Russian sources recruited during the Cold War were managed and, how Britain’s MI6 was cut out of receiving the information they had received freely during the Cold War. Bill tells us of a joint BND/CIA mission to monitor the disposal of Russian nuclear weapons.It’s a fascinating look into the murky world of human intelligence gathering, corruption, and rivalry in the immediate post Cold War period.I could really use your support to help me to continue to produce these podcasts. A monthly donation of $4, £3 or €3 via Patreon will really help and you will get the sought after Cold War Conversations coaster as a thank you and bask in the warm glow of knowing you are helping to preserve Cold War history.Just go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/Thanks to all our latest supporters including Tim Simmons, Fredrik Lundberg, Mary J O’Grady, Robert Ritchie, and Katie Brown.If a financial contribution is not your cup of tea, then you can still help us by leaving written reviews wherever you listen to us as well as sharing us on social media. It really helps us get new guests on the show.I am delighted to welcome Bill to our Cold War conversation…There’s further information on this episode in our show notes which can also be found as a link in your podcast app here. If you can’t wait for next week’s episode do visit our Facebook discussion group where guests and listeners continue the Cold War Conversation. Just search Cold War Conversations in Facebook.Thank you very much for listening. It is really appreciated – goodbye.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/coldwarpod)

At the time I went from Warsaw to Belarus, they issued a 5-day visa on arrival. So, I decided to spend 4 days in the country, since my flight out would have been a few hours too late. This five-day visa on arrival was changed one day after my visit to 30 days. It must have been because I made such a good impression on the government that they changed it. Belarus It has borders with Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia – and is a fairly unexplored corner of Eastern Europe. The population of Belarus is about 9.5 million people, which puts them on the 93rd place in the world. So somewhere in the middle when it comes to population. But the land mass is quite big so it's not that densely populated. Minsk, the capital of Belarus, is about 2 million, so Minsk is the 11th most populous city in Europe. After an hour bus ride from the Airport to the city, I met my Airbnb host, Svetlana. She let me in to a wonderful apartment with a huge bathtub. TOURING MINSK WITH A COUNTRYMAN I have a Danish friend of a friend who lives here permanently. I've been in contact with him for a while. And it was actually my plan to go to Belarus in the very start of my journey in 2016… but only because he wasn't in the country at the time, I decided to go there later. As we both are Danish, we obviously speak Danish, so you probably won't be able to understand much. If you – on the other hand do speak the language head over to the Danish version of this podcast. While we're walking, we pass the building where the president is working. It's not the White House of Belarus. He doesn't live here. LIVING IN A DICTATORSHIP Belarus is a dictatorship, and a few days before my visit, I shared a YouTube clip with President Lukashenko where he said these words… and I kid you not… “I think it's better to be a dictator – than being gay”. Yes, he actually said that. Lukashenko has run Belarus with an iron fist since 1994, and Belarus is often referred to as the last dictatorship in Europe. It's a country where gay rights are almost non-existent, a country where there's no free press. But according to Carsten, it's not as bad as people think. Yes, there's no freedom of speech, and the elections might not be totally fair. But it's not North Korea, he says. There's still a nice quality of life here, and it's not something he feels in his daily life. When I posted the video on Facebook and was appalled by the statement about it being better to be a dictator than being gay, someone commented: ” Oh .. how judgmental and prejudiced you are Palle Bo. When you are so biased and negative, I don't understand at all that you choose to travel to Belarus.” This was something I also heard when I went to North Korea. But I don't see it that way. Going to a country doesn't mean that I support the leadership and the way things are run. I've also been to the USA during the Trump presidency – even though I'm not a big fan of him. I know, you can't compare USA to a dictatorship. Not at all, but when I go to a country, it's to learn things and hopefully make some local friends along the way.  I try to educate myself before, during and after my visit to a country, and I do feel that I also try to keep an open mind. I speak up about the things that I feel is wrong and also talk about the things that are good about my visit. I also did that in my North Korea episode, where I spoke highly of the people. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this… Is it wrong for me to travel to a country like this? Make a comment on Facebook.com/theradiovagabond, drop me a line on listener@theradiovagabond.com or record a voice message by clicking on the “talk to me-banner” on theradiovagabond.com. CARSTEN'S VIEWS ON LIVING HERE They do have elections here, but according to Carsten the result is more or less decided before. And they do have a parliament but all the people in it are in Lukashenko's pocket. When I ask him if he's afraid to speak out loud about this he says. “No, as long as I'm not protesting with a megaphone and a sign in the city, nothing will happen. Sometimes I'm a bit tired of the way western media are describing the country. Yes, it is a dictatorship, but many of the countries that we (quote-unquote) are “friendly with” … like Saudi Arabia, The Emirates and China… are also dictatorships.” Some things are good in Belarus. Compared to many of the other former Soviet countries, he's cracking down on corruption ­– maybe except for himself. Other good things, Carsten mentions are that it's quite clean here in the city and then it's safe. There's no need to be afraid of walking around even at night here. And in the 90's he came down hard on the Belarusian Mafia. Carsten actually says: “So, there are good thing about having a dictator”, which makes me laugh – and we decide that this quote will be the title of this episode. FACTS ABOUT WHERE WE ARE: Here are some facts about Belarus that you might not know: Around 40% of Belarus is covered by forest – and sometimes referred to as the ‘Lungs of Europe'. Belarus is the last country in Europe that still has the death penalty. It's the Las Vegas of Eastern European. When gambling was banned in Russia, a lot of casinos were opened in Belarus, which is one the reasons so many Russians come here. Belarus is one of the few countries that does not switch to daylight saving time. The country has an extremely low unemployment rate, less than 1%. Beggars and homeless people are also very few here. Minsk is a very green and clean city. Not only do they have many parks, but here is also the third largest botanical garden in the world. Stretching over 15 kilometres across the capital, Independence Avenue is the country's longest street. Throughout history, it has not only grown in length and width but has also had 14 name changes. one of the longest streets in Europe, a candidate for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List. MINSK METRO, GORKY PARK, AND VICTORIA SQUARE We're heading down underground to The Minsk Metro. It opened in 1984, and it's not that big – presently it only consists of 3 lines and 33 stations. Unlike the Moscow metro, here the signs are also in letters that we can read, which makes riding it a bit easier. Not only is it a fast way to move around Minsk, it's also cheap: A ticket you can use all days is only around 30 cents. Victory Square in the historic center of Minsk and it's the key landmark of Minsk. It's close to Gorky Park – yes, like Moscow they also have a Gorky Park here, which holds an amusement park. In the middle of the square there's a monument that was built in 1954 in honour of the soldiers of the Soviet Army and partisans of Belarus, during the Second World War. Being between Europe and Russia they were really stuck in the middle when Hitler and Stalin were fighting. So, Minsk and a lot of the country has been more or less totally rebuilt after the war. THE COMMUNIST PARTY STARTED HERE Carsten then takes me to a tiny green house and tells me a story that I didn't know. In this little house they founded the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party that was the forefather of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This was all the way back in 1898 – so before the revolution in 1917, for those of you than know your history. And it all started right here in Minsk. Not in Moscow. NO BOWLING = KENNEDY ASSASINATION And then another thing that I didn't know. A few meters away in number 4 of the same street lived a guy called … Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin accused of shooting President John F. Kennedy. He defected to the USSR in the early '60s, after he was discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps and ended up living right here in Minsk. But he didn't like it here. In his diary he wrote, “I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough.” Shortly after that, he wrote to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow requesting to get his American passport back, since he never formally renounced his U.S. citizenship. So, in other words: If there were bowling alleys and nightclubs here at the time… he might have stayed, and Kennedy might never have assassinated. That is if you don't believe in the conspiracy theories that he didn't do it. KHATYN MEMORIAL SITE We're heading 50 km north to Khatyn to visit the Memorial site where a tragic even took place in the Second World War. Khatyn was a village of 26 houses. On March 22, 1943, almost the entire population of the village was massacred by a Nazi Battalion in retaliation for an attack on German troops by Soviet partisans. The people here had nothing to do with the attack and were completely innocent. 149 people, including 75 children under 16 years of age, were killed – burned, shot or suffocated in fire. The youngest baby was only 7 weeks old. The village was then looted and burned to the ground. This massacre was not an unusual incident in Belarus during World War II. At least 5,295 Belarusian settlements were burned and destroyed by the Nazis, and often all their inhabitants were killed – some amounting up to 1,500 victims. Many of the villages were burned down many times. Altogether, over 2,000,000 people were killed in Belarus during the three years of Nazi occupation, almost a quarter of the region's population. MEET VALERIE FROM MINSK Back in Minsk we meet one of Carstens friends. Valerie, who is born and raised here in Minsk. She tells me that she really likes living here, and a few of the things she mentions is that it's a city that never sleeps – you can always find a cozy bar and a buzzling nightclub any night of the week. Apparently a lot different than when Lee Harvey was here. That was all from Belarus, that turned out to be a great experience. Like Albania this wasn't a country I had high expectations from. But if I look back on all the countries in the eastern part of Europe, I've visited in this season, Albania and Belarus are my favourites. Maybe because I didn't expect much. My next stop will be the last in this season… I'm going to the Czech Republic and I'm so looking forward to that. My name is Palle Bo and I gotta keep moving. See ya.     LETTER FROM A LISTENER I've got a letter from a listener… from Dublin, Ireland. Hi Palle I discovered your podcast when a friend recommended it to me, and since then I've been totally hooked on it. I started by binching your current episodes from Europe, and after that I went back in the archives and listened to your episodes from Asia. I love following your journey, and it inspires me to travel more myself – when the Pandemic lets us. Normally I listen while I cook, and I'm always looking forward to hearing what happens next. Keep up the good work, Ian from Dublin. I would love to hear from you and now there's a simple way for you to send me a voice message. It's a cool little web-based app called Tellbee and all you have to do is click on the banner called TALK TO ME on TheRadioVagabond.com and talk. Tell me where you are and what you're doing when you listen to this. It's super simple and one of the cool things is that you can listen to it and redo it if you're not happy with it – before you click send. I get a small soundbite I can play on the show and it's always wonderful to hear from you guys. You can off course also just fill out the form under contact on the website.   SPONSOR This episode is supported in part by Hotels25.com where you always can find the best prices on hotels, guesthouses and hostels.

Matthew Bannister on Mario Molina, the chemist who won the Nobel prize for revealing the devastating impact of CFCs on the ozone layer. Irina Antonova, the director of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow for more than fifty years. She was caught up in a controversy over her refusal to send back priceless works of art looted by the Soviet Army at the end of the Second World War. Valery Giscard d’Estaing, President of France between 1974 and 1981. He introduced liberal social reforms and was a passionate supporter of closer European integration. Peter Alliss, the jovial former player who became known as TV’s “Voice of Golf” Interviewed guest: Tony Adamson Interviewed guest: Prof James Shields Interviewed guest: Konstantin Akinsha Interviewed guest: Dr Tony Cox Producer: Neil George

This week the Germans launch Operation Blue where Army Group South is supposed to head towards the Caucuses to secure the all-important oil. We heard last week how Adolf Hitler was under the false impression that seizing the oil would also damage Russia's fighting capability – but little did he know that the Soviet Union had vast resources in other regions as I explained. The Upper Volga and Kama area in the Urals and in the northern region of Ukhta also produced oil as well as a narrow belt east of the Caspian sea across the whole south of the Soviet Union. Hitler did not understand this – he was fixated on Baku. In 1942 there were few oil pipelines in use. The main pipeline which ran 1200 miles from Baku to the Black Sea port of Batum had been in existence since the First World War, and other shorter lengths ran from Grozny to Tuapse on the Black Sea as well as Armavir to Rostov and Trudovuya. Hitler had decided on three parallel thrusts to be made all West to East. The first and most northerly would be an armoured attack from the area near Kursk towards the Don River and Voronezh. The tanks would then turn south east after taking the city and move down the west bank of the Don rolling up the enemy. Simultaneously, a second parallel thrust would be made from the area of Kharkov striking at the concentrated Soviet Army forces on the Don, and a third parallel thrust was to be made from lower Don region to join up with the other two German forces in the area of Stalingrad. The city with Stalin's name was mentioned at this point for the first time. The capture of the city was not part of the strategic aim, although it was important. As we'll see, both Halder and von Bock were to oppose Hitler later when he became obsessed by overrunning the city. By the Spring of 1942 it had already become apparent that German resources could not cope with a full-scale offensive on the whole length of the Russian front – from Leningrad in the north to Sebastopol in the South. The campaign in the Caucuses had significant economic considerations. There were coal and iron in the Donetz Basin, oil in the Caucuses and the Volga. Hitler had many other things to worry about in Western Europe. The shock of his attacks in 1939 had worn off and by Autumn 1941 occupied peoples in Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg as well as France were beginning to recover.

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the crazy case of a Cleveland man named John Demjanjuk, and the decades long court battle to prove he was the evil Ivan the Terrible. Ivan the Terrible was a guard at the gas chambers in the Treblenka concentration camp. He was notorious for stabbing the prisoners with a saber, cutting their ears off on their way to a work shift, rape, killing babies, and nailing people’s ears to the walls of the death chamber. If John Demjanjuk was truly Ivan the terrible, he deserved to pay for his crimes. But the battle in various international courts were a roller coaster of evidence. Was he Ivan the Terrible? What is known about Demjanjuk is that he was born in the Soviet Union in 1920 He survived the Holodomor famine, worked on a state-owned farm, and was finally drafted into the Soviet Army in 1940. While there, he fought in the horrible Battle of Kerch Peninsula where Soviet Casualties were above 570,000 in five months. He was captured and taken as a prisoner of war. However, the Germans used their Soviet POWs in some concentration camps. Many of the Soviet prisoners hated the Jews so much, that they would become complicit in the final solution. At the end of the war, he was bounced around a bit, got married, and settled in Ohio. He became an American citizen, had four children, and worked at a Ford Plant. The American Dream. But, in 1975, a reporter brought evidence to a US Senator, and the court saga was on! His American citizenship was stripped, and he was extradited to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity. Through a very emotional case filled with dozens of eyewitness horror stories, Demjanjuk was found guilty and given the death penalty. But, there was an appeal. And then an appeal to an appeal, and a crazy bunch of court madness that took him Israel back to the US and then Germany to stand a second trial. Janet Reno even got involved. Once the Soviet Union Collapsed, thousands of records that may pertain to his case were declassified as the KGB vanished. And that brought a whole new batch of evidence. So, what crimes was he finally convicted of by Germany? How did he only get five years jail time? How did he die before he could ever serve his sentence? What were the full crimes of the notorious Ivan the Terrible? How bad was Treblinka? Who else might have been Ivan the Terrible if it wasn’t Demjanjuk, and what ever happened to that guy? Visit Our Sources: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/john-demjanjuk-prosecution-of-a-nazi-collaborator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-01-28/demjanjuk-sobibor-nazi-holocaust-death-camp https://www.jpost.com/international/john-demjanjuk-jr-new-pictures-are-not-proof-my-father-was-a-nazi-guard-616059 https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a29698588/devil-next-door-holocaust-killer-ivan-the-terrible-john-demjanjuk-true-story/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPq0HXWRf48 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Kerch_Peninsula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_the_Terrible_(Treblinka_guard) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblinka_extermination_camp https://www.history.co.uk/article/ivan-the-terrible-the-infamous-treblinka-guard http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5609/the-terrible-crimes-of-ivan  

In this episode, we discuss: -How Stuart got into studying Russia -Stuart's childhood interest in military history and the books that have influenced him most -What led Stuart to translating books on the Eastern Front -The prolific work of Colonel David Glantz, US Army (ret), and how he helped get Stuart his “big break” -What are the key roles and responsibilities of a translator and editor of Russian military history -The excellent Great Patriotic War website “I Remember” -Stuart's role models and inspirations when it comes to translating and editing -Working with Russian military historians and researchers -Russians' propensity to write large books and the special role of authors in Russian society -Stuart's favorite Russian military historians and the challenges that historians in Russia face in writing “objective” history -Which books Stuart has enjoyed translating the most -What Stuart has learned about the Eastern Front since becoming a translator -Three stereotypes that Westerners still hold about the Soviet Army of WW II: commissars, blocking detachments, and penal companies and battalions -The Red Army's ability to learn quickly from their failures and how Stalin became more open to listening to his generals as the war went on -On General Konstantin Rokossovsky—Stalin's Polish-born “Gentlemen Commander” -Stuart's interest in the forgotten (and horrific) Battle of Rzhev -Forgotten offensives and battles of the Eastern Front -How well Americans understand the influence of the Great Patriotic War on the Russian memory and psyche -How well Russians understand the American contribution to WWII -How much WWII still influences Russia's behaviors on the world stage -The Russian Army's long-held emphasis on maskirovka -What every American should know about Russia's experience in the Second World War -Stuart's advice on which books Marines and soldiers should read to begin their study of the Great Patriotic War -Sources for potential tactical decision games, decision-forcing cases, and wargames from the Eastern Front -How Stuart got into wargaming -How wargaming plays a role in his translation work -Stuart's thoughts on using wargames as training and educational tools -Decision games as a form of therapy -The lifesaving wargaming efforts of the Western Approaches Tactical Unit in WWII -Some perils of wargaming Links Stuart Britton's translations on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=stuart+britton&ref=nb_sb_noss David Glantz's books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=david+glantz&ref=nb_sb_noss_2 The “I Remember” website: https://iremember.ru/en/ Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the Eastby David Stahel: https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Barbarossa-Germanys-Cambridge-Histories-ebook/dp/B00B23DEBQ/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=david+stahel&qid=1589214281&sr=8-2 Errata At the 00:50:25 mark, Stuart references the movie “Stalingrad.” He meant to say instead the movie “Enemy at the Gates.” --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/damien-oconnell/support

The need for a heavily armed tank was highlighted for the British Army in 1945, when the Soviet Army unveiled its newly developed heavy tank – the IS-3 – at the Berlin Victory Parade. The Armies of Britain, France, and the USA realized they had nothing to counter this new threat. Great Britain would develop the FV214 Conqueror to counter the IS-3.Decades later, the popular online game World of Tanks (WoT) was preparing a new British tank line. Due to poor research or possibly completely intentionally, the top of the tree appeared as the Heavy Gun Tank FV215b, a fictional marriage of a FV215 chassis with the FV214 turret and gun with a fictional engine. Fortunately, Wargaming has withdrawn this fake vehicle, although they replaced it with an equally questionable one. Article: https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/coldwa... If you liked this video, please consider donating on Patreon or Paypal! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tankartfund Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/tankartfundOur website: http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tanksencyclo...Email: tanks.encyclopedia@gmail.comAn article by Mark Nash Video mounted by Jim Zawacki Audio edited by Kraiger Voicing by Stan Lucian

Nolan and Ethan are joined by Russian Five author and longtime Detroit Free Press scribe Keith Gave to talk about how the Red Wings got Sergei Fedorov to defect, the bribe that got Vladimir Konstantinov released from the Soviet Army, and the team's ensuing championship run. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nolan and Ethan are joined by Russian Five author and longtime Detroit Free Press scribe Keith Gave to talk about how the Red Wings got Sergei Fedorov to defect, the bribe that got Vladimir Konstantinov released from the Soviet Army, and the team's ensuing championship run. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution by the Soviet Army., the Hungarian Communist Government of Kadar takes revenge, thousands are imprisoned and hundreds are hanged.  Many spend years in prison.  Two hundred thousand Hungarians flee the country.  Imre Nagy is arrested, put on trail and hanged alongside of Pal Maleter and Miklos Gimes.  A biography of Miklos Gimes, Hungarian freedom fighter and friend of Imre Nagy.

On Sunday 4th November 1956, the Soviet Army assaults  Budapest to crush the Hungarian revolution.  In a one sided battle against poorly armed and poorly trained Hungarian revolutions, the Soviet Army use fire from tanks artillery and warplanes against the Hungarians who despite their bravery are defeated.  A biography of General Bela Kiraly, commander of Hungarian forces in Budapest.  The Soviet impose Janos Kadar as their puppet ruler of Hungary.

The events of Thursday 1st November until Saturday 3rd November 1956.  The Soviet Army reinforces its tanks and troops in Hungary and prepares for an assault on Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution.  The Soviet ambassador to Hungary lies to Imre Nagy as to the Soviet plans.  Janos Kadar the leader of the Hungarian Communist Party flies to Russia, to offer his services to the Soviet Government, who choose him to the puppet leader of Hungary, a biography of him.

The events of Friday 26th October until Monday 29th October 1956.  the revolution in the rest of Hungary outside of Budapest a biography of Attila Szigetthy leader of the revolution in Western Hungary.  Heavy fighting in Budapest between the Soviet Army and Hungarian freedom fighter carries on but Imre Nagy the Hungarian Prime Minister reaches a ceasefire agreement with the Soviets who on Monday 29th October begin to pull their troops and tanks out of Budapest.     

The events of Wednesday 24th October and Thursday 25th October 1956.  Soviet troops and tanks are sent into Budapest to crush the popular revolt against the Hungarian Communist regime.  However young armed Hungarians resist the Soviet Army in street battles in Budapest.  A biography of Hungarian Army Colonel Pal Meleter who joins the revolution movement in Budapest and becomes one of the best known leaders.

Andrej's father served with the Soviet Army in Germany. He grew up on a military base and shares his childhood memories as East Germany began to disintegrate.So would you like one of those Cold War Conversations coasters you keep hearing me talk about? Well it's easy, just sign up to https://www.patreon.com/coldwarpod and for the price of a couple of coffees a month you'll be helping to cover the costs of the show and keep us on the air plus you get that sought after coaster of to you just go toJust go to https://coldwarconversations.com/donate/So back to you today's episode. Andrej's father was a lieutenant in Signals and Andrej provides a fascinating child's eye view of life on the base and in his East German kindergarten as well as insight into the changing mood of some of the East German population to the Soviets as the GDR began to disintegrate.Next week they'll be a second episode with Andrej where we hear his experiences as a child refugee in West Germany after the Wall fell. Do make you are subscribed via your favorite podcast app so you don't miss that.I'm delighted to welcome Andrej to our Cold War Conversation...I do hope you found Andrej’s story interesting. We have further photos, videos and information in our show notes which are at https://coldwarconversations.com/episode86/ or will show as a link in some podcast apps. Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/coldwarpod)

The Soviet Army digs in for the long haul while a Tajik warlord named Ahmed Shah Massoud makes them pay for every inch of land they take. Support the show and get access to our bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy a shirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store If you like military sci fi grab Joe's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Earth-Galaxy-Joseph-Kassabian/dp/1949645347

Stephen Hoyt is a University of Maryland Professor, former analyst and President of the USMLM Association - United States Military Liaison Mission in Berlin. USMLM in cooperation with British and French Allies were the only observers with daily access behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Mission reports provided not only a realistic picture of the Soviet Army, but a window into East German Society. Stephen talks about the origins, singularity and legacy of USMLM along with the Mission Potsdam Conference June 20-22nd of this year 2019 - sponsored by the University of Maryland and hosted by the Potsdam Museum, where notable speakers will discuss this unique HUMINT organization from a variety of perspectives. Thomas Favia is a retired cavalryman and Sergeant First Class US Army. He served in Berlin from 1989 through the fall of the wall until 1993. He lives in Germany and enjoys the occasional good cigar with brothers-in-arms of various nationalities. More information about the annual LTC Arthur Nicholson Memorial and upcoming conference events can be found on USMLM website.USMLM Association Website  Cold War Spies - USMLM PageTRANSMISSION 024 If you've enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, please consider signing up as a contributing patron and join the community for exclusive commentary, and content.  A $5 a month donation will really keep us going - https://www.patreon.com/thelivedropAlternatively, if you would like to help make Season 3 operational you could make a one time donation of any amount right here ---> https://www.paypal.me/thelivedropThank you for listening and your support,Live Drop Team Get bonus content on Patreon Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

For more on our guest, visit: https://slavxradio.fireside.fm/admin/guests/844c0e5b-e1c5-4117-8497-9661fbe51195/edit This episode was recorded on April 24th, 2019 at the University of Texas at Austin. CREDITS Co-Producer: Matthew Orr (Connect: facebook.com/orrmatthew) Associate Producer: Tom Rehnquist (Connect: facebook.com/thomas.rehnquist) Associate Producer: Lauren Nyquist (Connect: facebook.com/lenyquist Instagram: @nyquabbit) Associate Producer: Milena D-K (Connect: facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010939368892 Instagram: @thedistantsea and @milena.d.k) Music/Sound Design: Charlie Harper (Connect: facebook.com/charlie.harper.1485 Instagram: @charlieharpermusic www.charlieharpermusic.com) Producer & Creator: Michelle Daniel (Connect: facebook.com/mdanielgeraci Instagram: @michelledaniel86) Follow The Slavic Connexion on Instagram: @slavxradio, Twitter: @SlavXRadio, and on Facebook: facebook.com/slavxradio . Check out our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDqMRKmAtJRxBVxFTI82pgg Thanks for listening and please don't forget to subscribe!! Special Guest: Aliaksandr Herasimenka.

GM Michal Krasenkow has battled many legends of the chessboard during the course of his life, and he has been one of the top 10 chess players in the world. He is also a respected chess trainer and author. His recently released and excellent new book, Learn from Michal Krasenkow shares many of his memories and favorite games. In our conversation, we discuss GM Krasenkow’s book in great detail, along with the usual assortment of improvement advice, recommendations, and favorite stories. Please read onward for many more details of this week's podcast.  0:00- Introduction. Then GM Krasenkow discusses the legacy of chess in the Soviet Union and shares with listeners details from his experience of falling in love with chess in Moscow in the 1970’s. Details include which future grandmasters he studied with, which trainers he worked with, and how classes and tournaments were structured at the fabled Pioneers Palaces that Michal attended.15:30- GM Krasenkow describes his late teenage years, where he studied Applied Mathematics at University, and shares how he ended up pursuing a career as a chess professional rather than another field. His time in the Soviet Army was one of the factors that pushed him toward chess because he was able to pursue chess while serving in Armenia and Azerbaijan.28:00- GM Krasenkow describes the impact that the collapse of the Soviet Union had on his chess career in the early 1990’s. He ultimately emigrated to Poland with the help of some local chess players there. He has lived in Poland ever since.34:00- We transition to discussing GM Krasenkow’s chess career. What does he consider the greatest achievement of his storied career? GM Krasenkow also describes what it was like to make a big push to reach the top 10 of the world only to enter a slump, during which he lost more than 100 ELO points in subsequent tournaments.41:00- We discuss a few of GM Krasenkow’s most memorable games. Michal mentions, Krasenkow-Nakamura 2007 where he was victim to a striking sacrifice by GM Nakamura.  Some of the most memorable victories include Krasenkow-Defirmian 1995, and the elegant Lagunov-Krasenkow 1985 (included in the book, but not online).47:00- What was it like to attend the lectures of legendary trainer Yuri Razuvaev? What was GM Razuvaev’s teaching style?48:00- What is GM Krasenkow’s advice for chess improvement? His primary advice is to play in lots of tournaments against stronger opponents.53:00- Book recommendations! GM Krasenkow recommends IM Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, along with his other classics, and describes what it was like to train with IM Dvoretsky.59:00- How have computers changed chess in the past few decades?1:02- GM Krasenkow answers a question from one of the podcast's Patreon supporters about what life lessons chess has given him.1:07- Story time! GM Krasenkow tells a couple of his favorite stories from time he spent with former World Champion GM Vasily Smyslov in 1995. 1:12- Goodbye and contact information. GM Krasenkow can be reached  here.His book is available from Thinker’s Publishing, on the Forward Chess app, and you can order it in the U.S. from Chess4Less and some other retailers. If you would like to help support the podcast, go here.

On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated by the Soviet Army. This Jan 27, 2018, is Holocaust Remembrance Day. We are observing the day by re-airing portions of interviews with two survivors of the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Amram Deutsch is a survivor of Auschwitz from Sighet, now living in Los Angeles. Originally recorded and aired in 2015. Esti Shnek (maiden name Jahr) is a survivor of Auschwitz from Jasina, Czechoslovakia (which is now Yasinya, Ukraine), now living in Haifa. Originally recorded and aired in 2017. Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS, an instrumental track from the CD Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz Holocaust songs to conclude: Adrienne Cooper: Shtiler, Shtiler Chava Alberstein: Zog Nit Keynmol Norbert Horowitz: Farvos Iz Der Himl Geven Nekhtn Loyter? Norbert Horowitz: Shtil, Di Nakht Iz Oysgeshternt Air Date: Jan 24, 2018

Why do some monuments provoke such powerful emotions while others are forgettable? "Monumental Issues: Thinking about Monuments in Public Spaces" is a presentation by Dr. Jeffrey H. Jackson with additional material by Dr. Ellen K. Daugherty. It provides a broader context for debates about historical monuments and the role these markers play in local communities today. Looking at monuments as both public history and public art helps us understand how we make sense of our past and what role we want our past to play in our common future. Jackson is the J.J. McComb Professor of History at Rhodes College in Memphis; Daugherty is Professor of Art History at Memphis College of Art. The program was sponsored by Humanities Tennessee. Here are links to some of the works mentioned in the recording. (If you listen in the browser, right-click and open in a new tab as these monuments are mentioned, so that you can keep listening.) http://www.war-memorial.net/Memorial-to-the-Murdered-Jews-of-Europe-1.104 (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) http://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/02/the-painted-monument-to-soviet-army-in.html (The Painted Monument to the Soviet Army in Bulgaria) http://tjcenter.org/free-speech-monuments/ (Free Speech Monument) https://www.rome.net/piazza-campidoglio (Piazza del Campidoglio) with replica of equestrian Marcus Aurelius statue https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/Richmond/MonumentAveHD.html (Monument Avenue) with http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Photograph:%20va1626&fi=number&op=PHRASE&va=exact&co%20=hh&st=gallery&sg%20=%20true (Robert E. Lee equestrian statue) http://livornonow.com/i_quattro_mori_the_four_moors_statue (The Four Moors) https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/grand-army-plaza-m062/monuments/1442 (General Sherman) statue https://www.nps.gov/boaf/learn/historyculture/shaw.htm (Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment) http://digitalcollections.archives.nysed.gov/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/1302 (Emancipation Memorial) and https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.dc0785.photos?st=gallery (views of Lincoln Park with Bethune statue) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. https://www.nps.gov/mlkm/learn/building-the-memorial.htm (figural memorial in Washington, D.C.) and http://richardhuntstudio.com/?avada_portfolio=i-have-been-to-the-mountaintop (abstract memorial in Memphis) "https://www.tripsavvy.com/walking-tour-of-lafayette-park-washington-dc-1038795 (Samey" statues in Lafeyette Park) Mass-produced https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/why-those-confederate-soldier-statues-look-a-lot-like-their-union-counterparts/2017/08/18/cefcc1bc-8394-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html?utm_term=.7be8602339cd (Confederate/Union soldiers), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hiker_(Kitson) (The Hiker), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_the_American_Doughboy (Spirit of the American Doughboy) http://www.wtcsitememorial.org/fin7.html (Reflecting Absence) https://washington.org/DC-guide-to/korean-war-veterans-memorial (Korean War monument) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Jetty (Spiral Jetty) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/12/arts/design/a-subtlety-or-the-marvelous-sugar-baby-at-the-domino-plant.html (Marvelous Sugar Baby) http://agnesdenesstudio.com/works7.html (Wheatfield: A Confrontation) http://winhttp.nsula.edu/regionalfolklife/civilwartocivilrights/02Statue.html (Uncle Jack) statue Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/25/big-blue-cock-trafalgar-square (Hahn/Cock) and https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/23/yinka-shonibare-ship-bottle-greenwich (Nelson's Ship in a Bottle) http://cwmemory.com/2013/01/02/abraham-lincoln-war-veteran-projection-2012/ (Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection)

In this episode we discuss news and rumours with a focus on the Soviets in K47.   James recovers from man flu to take part and I struggle to wrestle this beast down to 2 hours and 29 minutes!   00:00 - 01:50 - Intros 01:51 - 35:08 - News & Rumours 35:09 - 44:50 - Hobby Bench 44:51 - End  - The Soviet Army in K47

Monika Jephcott Thomas grew up in Dortmund Mengede, north-west Germany. She moved to the UK in 1966, enjoying a thirty year career in education before retraining as a therapist. Two young doctors form a profound and loving bond in Nazi Germany; a bond that will stretch them to the very limits of human endurance. Catholic Max - whose religious and moral beliefs are in conflict, has been been conscripted to  join the war effort as a medic, despite his hatred of Hitler’s regime. His beloved Erika, a privileged young woman, is herself a product of the Hitler Youth. In spite of their stark differences, Max and Erika defy convention and marry. But when Max is stationed at the fortress city of Breslau, their worst nightmares are realised; his hospital is bombed, he is captured by the Soviet Army and taken to a POW camp in Siberia. Max experiences untold horrors, his one comfort the letters he is allowed to send home: messages that can only contain Fifteen Words. Back in Germany, Erika is struggling to survive and protect their young daughter, finding comfort in the arms of a local carpenter. Worlds apart and with only sparse words for comfort, will they ever find their way back to one another, and will Germany ever find peace? ?Fifteen Words is a vivid and intimate portrayal of human love and perseverance, one which illuminates the German experience of the war, which has often been overshadowed by history.

Today we look at symbols and mythologies. When competing narratives on history clash, the battle over symbols becomes heated and emotional.Vitaliy Nakhmanovich is a Ukrainian historian who has written extensively on the formation—and manipulation—of national memory. He has been particularly incisive in analyzing the politics of memory.Nakhmanovich contributed an important essay to the book Babyn Yar: History and Memory, which was recently published to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the tragedy.His essay, entitled “Babyn Yar: A Place of Memory in Search of a Future” details the complex—and sometimes cynical—debates over the symbols of commemoration in a contested landscape of memory.Nakhmanovich points out that Babyn Yar provokes a confrontation. During the Soviet era this was a confrontation between the public’s need to honor the memory of Jewish victims of the Nazis and the actions of the Soviet government trying to impose an artificial memory of events.The Soviet authorities also physically destroyed the scene of the crimes at Babyn Yar. Nakhmanovich reminds us Babyn Yar was flooded with a deluge of pulp from nearby brick plants in the 1950s. This resulted in a notorious mudslide in 1961, when the pulp smashed through a flimsy dam and destroyed Kyiv city neighborhoods, killing many people.In subsequent decades new streets were laid across the filled-in ravine at Babyn Yar. Nearby cemeteries—Jewish, Orthodox Christian, Karaite, and Muslim—were closed, destroyed, and built over to a large degree.In 1976 the Soviets put up what Nakhmanovich calls a pretentious and tasteless monument at Babyn Yar. The monument was dedicated  “to the Soviet citizens and captive soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army who were shot by the German fascists in Babyn Yar.” Four out of seven small ravines that remained at the very summit of Babyn Yar were destroyed.After Ukrainian independence in 1991, the monuments and their symbolic meanings became more inclusive. There were joint commemorations of Jewish victims by the Jewish and ethnic Ukrainian communities as well as by state leaders.  The Menorah Monument was dedicated to the memory of the Jewish victims.  A commemorative marker in honor of the prisoners of the Syrets concentration camp was also placed.Since then there have been additional monuments and markers dedicated to other victims such Ukrainian nationalists, Orthodox Church priests, children, and the Roma. Debates continue over proposed new monuments.Nakhmanovich reminds us that we must turn to various mythologies to make sense of the continuing battles over memorials at Babyn Yar.One mythology places what is called the “Great Patriotic War” as an event that was and remains the justification of the entire history of the Soviet period. This Soviet mythology does not accept the exceptional nature of Jewish victims, as the Slavic peoples suffered the greatest losses.Another mythology focuses on the heroic and sacrificial nature of those who fought in the long and bitter struggle for Ukrainian statehood.However, the Jewish community and the world beyond Ukraine view Babyn Yar as exclusively a symbol of the Holocaust. But for Ukraine it is a symbol of many tragedies that took place during the Nazi occupation.For the city of Kyiv, it is also a symbol of its long history before and after World War II. This history includes the burial of victims of the Famine of the 1930s and Soviet terror in the cemeteries adjacent to the ravine, the sacrilegious destruction of a historic necropolis, as well as the mudslide.Nakhmanovich notes that the absence in today’s Ukraine of a shared memory of World War II and the Holocau... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lama Tantrapa is the founder of Academy of Qi Dao – the first and only School Qi Dao Coaching in the world – also the founder of Portland Qigong Clinic – one of just a handful of Qigong clinics in the United States. He is the executive producer and host of his own Internet Radio show “The Secrets of Qigong Masters.” He has authored two books, produced a film, recorded a meditation CD and other multimedia training materials. His unique background is complex enough to include serving in the Soviet Army’s Special Forces, being kidnapped in the Ukraine and going through several near-death experiences. His coaching has inspired many professional athletes, speakers, dancers, singers, writers and actors to open up to the infinite source of intuition that exists within everyone. Learn more about Lama Tantrapa by visiting www.qigongcoaching.com Click here to visit the show notes page!   Like this episode? Please leave an honest rating on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them. P.S: Just takes a minute! :)   SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES  Click here to leave us a rating & review on iTunes Follow us on social media:  | Facebook | Twitter | Join our Facebook Tribe

  Greetings, Tovarischi! This episode is about the Soviet army, it's military might and the trials and tribulations of the common soldier – as heard from those very common soldiers. (And, of course, historical background and information on this as well.) Leave your comments below, and don't forget to tell everyone about this podcast.  Also, I recommend you to go and listen to the Naval History Podcast, by Buckner F. Melton jr. because that podcast really deserves more attention. You can do that here: http://navalhistorypodcast.com/ And to make the lawyers happy: The intro music is a fragment from “My Army” by the Red Army Choir, and the epilogue is from “She thinks herself immortal” by Jim Rooster, used under the Creative Commons licence.

With only 8 moving parts, the AK-47 assault rifle is simple to maintain and its simplicity of use and durability are legendary. It can fire 600 rounds a minute and every single bullet is potentially still lethal at distances of more than a kilometre or two-thirds of a mile. 70+ Million have been produced (over 100 million if you count its variants). Its initial design was submitted as a competition entry after the Soviet Army asked for designs for a reliable weapon capable of withstanding all that the then Russian front could throw at a weapon. Dur: 23mins File: .mp3

The Allies wait for Hitler and Stalin uses the war to attack Finland. But the Soviet Army is far from ready. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices