Podcasts about ussr

Send us Fan MailToday, we finish up the series on the heads of the Soviet secret police.Support the show

The break-up of the USSR was a tough one for Russia, being the jilted republic. For the entire decade after, the country plunged into a type of controlled chaos, with a rampantly corrupt kleptocracy taking the place of the toppled socialist society.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s rare that the downfall of an empire can be chalked up to the decisions of just one person. It’s even rarer, when the empire falls over the course of a year. That’s pretty much what happened with the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I bought my kids some of the greatest Superman omnibuses because I found out they didn't even know who Lois Lane was. But reading through these again reminded me why these stories hit different. Two recommendations here: Absolute All-Star Superman, which asks "what if Superman knows he's about to die and has 12 things left to do?" It's moving in ways I didn't expect from a comic. And Superman: Red Son, which asks "what if the rocket landed in the USSR instead of Kansas?" As someone raised in the '80s where every bad guy was a communist, Superman as the champion of the Soviet Union felt almost violating. But the ending caught me completely off guard.If you want be more creative and think outside your box, fiction might be your missing superpower.---Superman: Red Son:        https://amzn.to/3TJCeJjAll Star Superman:        https://amzn.to/3lvUkSb---Sign up to have Scott email you a weekly idea, story or cool tool. This is original content, not a repost of the podcast. You can find the sign-up section at the bottom of www.ScottWozniak.com  Learn how Scott and his team of consultants can help you build a legendary brand at www.SwozConsulting.com  You can connect with Scott on social media:  linkedin.com/in/scottwozniak/https://www.facebook.com/scottewozniak ------  Bonus: check out his other podcast (Make Your Brand Legendary): https://plnk.to/make-your-brand-legendaryIf you like this podcast you will probably like that one, too. Who knows, you might even like it better! :)Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

1 Hour and 52 MinutesPG-13Dr. J. Otto Pohl received his PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has taught at the American University Iraq Sulaimani, University of Ghana, and American University of Central Asia. He is the author of Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949 (Greenwood, 1999), The Stalinist Penal System (McFarland & Co., 1997), and The Years of Great Silence The Deportation, Special Settlement, and Mobilization into the Labor Army of Ethnic Germans in the USSR, 1941–1955 (Columbia University Press, 2022). His articles have appeared in, among other journals, The Russian Review, Journal of Genocide Research, Human Rights Review, and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism.This is a combination of two episodes:Episode 1062: Who Was the Most Persecuted Group Under the Soviet Regime? w/ J. Otto PohlEpisode 1166: An Overview of the Soviet Regime Pre- and Post-War w/ J. Otto PohlThe Years of Great SilenceDr. Pohl's SubstackDr. Pohl's PatreonDr. Pohl's TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

In the past months, the world has watched as the people of New York City elected Zohran Mamdani to office as mayor of the largest city in the United States, with over 8 million residents and international cultural and economic centers such as the financial sector and performing arts realm. Youthful, charismatic, and bold, he won the election by over 50% in a 3-way race. Mayor Mamdani started making changes from his first day in office. His political philosophy, however, is the same old package the world has seen fail in socialist countries around the world, including Cuba and Venezuela in our own hemisphere. In the name of fairness, Mamdani planned to pay for the universal daycare, the subsidized housing, the price-controlled groceries, the public transportation through various taxes and other fees, especially on the very rich, the celebrities and billionaires who call New York City home, or own property there. Despite being targeted as the cash cows that would pay for the party, the wealthy did not just pack up and leave on the day that Mayor Mamdani was sworn in. They appeared to be holding their breath, waiting to see if they could afford to stay. Then Taylor Swift posted two short social media items, neither one long and neither one declaring she was leaving New York City, but containing an air of wistfulness and a hint that leaving might be an option. Within 48 hours, there was a surge unlike any seen in living memory in new listings of high-end residences for sale. Values of the listings totaled $2.3 billion. Should even a portion of those owners who are listing depart from the city, the financial repercussions for New York City and for New York State will be enormous. Meanwhile, on the heels of the Mamdani victory, new political hopefuls who are declared far-left socialists, many under the banner of Democrat Socialists of America(DSA) are running in primaries around the US. The DSA party and the DSA National Election Commission are hip, excited, and trying hard to be fun. But all the charisma, the self-declared desire to be kind, to be fair, and all the taxes in the world will not create a more productive, liberty-oriented, vibrant environment able to nurture ingenuity, growth, and opportunity for all. The Democratic Socialists of America have totalitarian goals that they share with their sibling revolutionaries, Communists, Socialists, and the Woke Left Under all the hype and the slogans of the Democratic Socialists of America and other far-left groups is a desire to tear down the America we grew up in. They want another American revolution. Like basic Communist tenants the far left wants to abolish private property (or tax it to death), put religion in a closet or abolish it altogether, make everyone “equal” – not in opportunity, but in outcome, and embrace the policies promoted by globalist entities such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization which have lots of goals and targets aiming at fairness and equality on an international scale and at the expense especially of the United States. We have tried in the West to be so kind, so tolerant, so darn nice in the face of destructive policies and hate-filled rhetoric and actions that we have allowed the destruction of our own culture. So, we invited a genuine survivor of the totalitarian communist USSR who was born in Moscow and immigrated with his family as a young child to Canada. Our guest brought his memories of long food lines, the fear that sits like a stone in a family of dissidents, and his awareness that those who make trouble can be shipped off to Siberia. We met with Jamie Glazov for an episode of The Breggin Hour. It was one of those rare conversations that feels less like an interview and more like speaking with family. Jamie's presence, his clarity, and the depth of his lifelong study of totalitarianism left us both strengthened and sobered. The perspectives Jamie shares are fresh, straight from the news headlines. Jamie is the Russian-born Canadian author, historian, and managing editor of FrontPage Magazine. His updated and expanded book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas, is not merely a must-read. It is a work of truth-telling that explains phenomena many of us have watched with growing alarm but struggled to fully name. The Left's Romance with Murderous Regimes and Movements In United in Hate, Jamie traces a continuous thread through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: the Western Left's repeated romance with the most murderous regimes and movements of their time. The first half of the book examines the “political pilgrims” and fellow travelers who traveled to Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba, and the killing fields of Cambodia and Vietnam, returning to praise the very systems that produced mass graves. The second half shows how that same psychological and ideological pattern transferred, almost seamlessly, to embracing radical Islam and groups such as Hamas. After the collapse of Soviet communism, the Left did not abandon its hunger for a totalitarian alternative to the West. It found a new object of adoration. October 7, 2023, became the catalyst for the revised edition of United in Hate. Jamie told us that the moment he saw the celebrations and justifications erupting across Western campuses, streets, and media, he knew the book had to be updated and expanded. The ecstasy some on the Left displayed at the rape, mutilation, and murder of Jews was not an aberration. It was the logical continuation of a long romance with tyranny and terror. A Profound Alienation from the West Jamie does not stop at documentation. He examines the inner life of what he calls “the Believer.” The hard Left, he argues, is driven by a profound alienation from the West, a self-hatred that seeks external enemies to destroy, and a quasi-religious need for a purifying utopia that requires blood sacrifice. Communism once supplied that vision. When it failed, radical Islam offered a new version: a death cult that openly rejects the Judeo-Christian foundations of the civilization the Left already despises. In our conversation, he described two layers of the problem. There are the malicious actors who knowingly work to dismantle Western civilization. And there are the many more who simply cannot emotionally bear the truth. To acknowledge what radical Islam teaches and practices would shatter the comforting narrative that “everything will be okay if we just show more tolerance.” So, they choose willful blindness. They sacrifice Jewish and Christian victims on the altar of their own psychological comfort. Peter, who has spent decades studying the psychology of power and vulnerability, was particularly struck by how accurately Jamie captures the leftist mindset of alienation turning into passionate identification with those who attack the West. A Spiritual Battle Jamie spoke openly about the spiritual dimension of what we face. He reminded us that we are in a battle that cannot be reduced to politics alone. The hatred directed at Jews and at the Christian West has a demonic quality. The same forces that once celebrated Stalin and Mao now celebrate those who butchered families on October 7 and who openly seek the destruction of Israel, Christianity, and, ultimately, Western civilization. Peter and I felt an immediate kinship with Jamie. He is the son of Soviet dissidents. His heart has always been with the persecuted. That same impulse—the refusal to look away from suffering—has driven our own work for decades. When Jamie said he felt he was among family while speaking with us, we felt the same. Listen and Read I urge you to listen to the full interview. Jamie's passion, his refusal to soft-pedal, and his moral clarity come through powerfully. Then get the book. United in Hate will equip you to understand not only the present moment but the deeper currents that have brought us here. We are living in a time when large portions of our cultural and institutional elite have chosen sides against the civilization that produced them. Jamie Glazov has given us a map of that betrayal. The least we can do is study it carefully and refuse to look away. Order United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas by Jamie Glazov.

In this episode of Battleground: The Big Picture, host Roger Moorhouse sits down with renowned historian and author Robert Service to dissect the historical threads connecting the fall of the Soviet Union to Vladimir Putin's present-day Russia. Drawing from his recent work on the August 1991 coup, Bob reflects on his first-hand experiences in Moscow, the sudden collapse of Soviet institutions, and the complex legacies left behind by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Together, they explore how the political and economic missteps of the 1990s shaped today's authoritarian landscape, the mounting internal pressures on Putin's regime amid the war in Ukraine, Russia's shifting geopolitical reliance on China, and whether historical parallels suggest a breaking point is near.Join the Conversation: If you have a question about the war in Ukraine or any of the conflicts we cover, email us at podbattleground@gmail.comFollow us on:X - @PodBattlegroundInstagram - podbattlegroundProducer: James HodgsonA Goalhanger Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Superlative, aBlogtoWatch founder Ariel Adams is joined by author and journalist Gabe Oppenheim to discuss his book Borrowed Time and the complicated history behind the modern watch industry. Gabe explains how his research into intellectual property led him deep into the history of Swiss watchmaking, including the relationship between watch companies and the Swiss government, the decline of American watch manufacturing, and the origins of what consumers understand as “Swiss Made.” He and Ariel explore how politics, competition, and industry cooperation helped shape the watch world we know today.The conversation also turns to Chinese watchmaking and counterfeiting, the importance of independent watchmakers, and the information gap between luxury brands and consumers. Gabe argues that understanding where watches come from, how they are made, and who actually contributed to their creation can make collectors more informed without taking away from their appreciation of watches. Together Ariel and Gabe discuss looking beyond marketing, celebrity ambassadors, and prestige to better understand the history, mechanics, and people behind the products collectors love.Learn more about Gabe and his newest book:- Website - https://www.gabeoppenheim.com/ - Check out his book: Borrowed Time - https://a.co/d/02tvLSO0 SUPERLATIVE IS NOW ON YOUTUBE! To check out Superlative on Youtube as well as other ABTW content:- YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@ablogtowatch To check out the ABTW Shop where you can see our products inspired by our love of Horology:- Shop ABTW - https://store.ablogtowatch.com/To keep updated with everything Superlative, aBlogtoWatch Weekly, and aBlogtoWatch, check us out on:- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ablogtowatch/- Twitter/X - https://twitter.com/ABLOGTOWATCH- Website - https://www.ablogtowatch.com/If you enjoy the show please Subscribe, Rate, and Review!Key Timestamps:[00:35] Introduction & Gabe Oppenheim's Borrowed Time[02:31] Why We Justify Buying Watches[05:03] Watches, Happiness & The Watch Community[11:52] Borrowed Time, IP Theft & Swiss Watchmaking[13:52] Creators, Credit & Consumer Advocacy[24:14] How The Swiss Industry Gutted American Watchmaking[31:20] Rolex, Regulation & Swiss Protectionism[38:48] The Real Origins Of “Swiss Made”[41:42] The Quartz Crisis, USSR & Chinese Watchmaking[45:00] Is “Swiss Made” Worth The Premium?[46:11] Looking Beyond Luxury Watch Marketing[48:32] Why Independent Watchmakers Matter[56:11] Counterfeit Watches & Chinese Clone Movements[58:23] Longines, Anarchism & The Hidden Side Of Watch History[1:03:34] Where To Find Gabe Oppenheim & Borrowed Time

Sponsored by Wycliffe: There are still people whose Bibles are blank, while millions of others have incomplete stories. Help make God's Word accessible. Give today at: https://bit.ly/3Thk8SHTop headlines for Tuesday, August 18, 2026A televangelist who vowed he'd never see jail begins a nine-month sentence for tax obstruction. The Babylon Bee sues New Mexico over AI satire warning labels. Christian relief groups rush aid to earthquake-shattered Colombia. Plus, a Wenzhou house church pastor vanishes after a police raid.0:11 Brian Carn is imprisoned after declaring he'd never go to jail1:07 Adam Hamilton campaign responds to 'universalism' claims1:56 Babylon Bee sues New Mexico over law requiring AI satire warning3:46 Christian aid groups helping earthquake survivors in Colombia4:43 Pastor from 'Jerusalem of China' disappeared after police raid5:40 Man given life sentence for crucifixion-style murder of pastor6:29 'The Brink of War': Reagan's fight for religious freedom in USSRSubscribe to this PodcastApple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsOvercastFollow Us on Social Media@ChristianPost on TwitterChristian Post on Facebook@ChristianPostIntl on InstagramSubscribe on YouTubeGet the Edifi AppDownload for iPhoneDownload for AndroidSubscribe to Our NewsletterSubscribe to the Freedom Post, delivered every Monday and ThursdayClick here to get the top headlines delivered to your inbox every morning!Links to the NewsBrian Carn is imprisoned after declaring he'd never go to jail | U.S.Adam Hamilton campaign responds to 'universalism' claims | PoliticsBabylon Bee sues New Mexico over law requiring AI satire warning | U.S.Christian aid groups helping earthquake survivors in Colombia | Church & MinistriesPastor from ‘Jerusalem of China' disappeared after police raid | WorldMan given life sentence for crucifixion-style murder of pastor | U.S.'The Brink of War': Reagan's fight for religious freedom is USSR

In 2025, Voice of America was thrust into the spotlight when the bulk of its funding was taken away. But in an era shaped by the internet and social media revolutions and with the West's funding priorities changing, it was not the first international broadcaster to go quiet. The soft power war of the airwaves has now moved to a decisive phase.Josephine McDermott traces the start of international radio and its heyday through World War Two and the Cold War as a tool of soft power. Hear the hosts of shortwave radio, from the Nazi propagandists Lord Haw Haw and Mildred Gillars to Doris Maxina, the presenter of Soviet radio's Moscow Mailbag, plus June Taylor, the New Zealander who became the global voice of communist Albania.Tune in to the sounds lost to time from Radio Netherlands' Happy Station Show to Radio Berlin International, and the Russian version of the British institution, The Archers, which came about following the collapse of the USSR.Featuring Thomas Witherspoon, creator of the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive; Jamie Shea, Nato spokesperson from 1993 to 2000; Sir John Tusa, managing director of the BBC World Service from 1986 to 1992; Ivana Stradner, research fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies in the United States and Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, UK. With archive from the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive, including recordings from Thomas Witherspoon, Paul Watson, Greg Shoom, Mark Hirst, Tom Gavaras and Keith Perron. Moscow Mailbag recording from KSN's Tech Topics on YouTube.

Send us Fan MailToday, we cover the men who would lead the brutal Soviet Secret Police from its beginnings in 1917 as the Cheka. Support the show

In this episode of Now I've Heard Everything, host Bill Thompson interviews Merryl Goldberg (saxophonist, educator, and activist) and Vince Houghton (NSA Intelligence Historian and author) about their remarkable book, Notes of Deception. In 1985, four young American klezmer musicians from Boston traveled into the Soviet Union on tourist visas. Their covert goal: meet with refusniks—dissidents, activists, and marginalized religious minorities denied emigration—and bring their stories, addresses, and urgent petitions back to the Western world. To bypass strict KGB surveillance and prevent retaliation against the dissidents, Goldberg created a brilliant steganographic music cipher. By encoding Cyrillic and English letters directly into sheet music that visually resembled 12-tone modern classical compositions (such as Bartók or Schoenberg), the team successfully smuggled volumes of vital human rights intelligence past Soviet border control right under the noses of the KGB. Get your copy of Notes of Deception by Merryl Goldberg & Vince HoughtonAs an Amazon Associate, Now I've Heard Everything may earn a commission from qualifying purchases.Chapters:00:00 Introduction to the covert musical operation 02:06 What is a refusnik and why they sought to leave the USSR 03:54 The idea of using music as a secret code 06:13 Creating and disguising the cipher in musical notation 07:57 The security and risks of embedding messages in music 10:00 The story of the Phantom Orchestra and their mission 11:55 The role of the KGB and how the cipher was hidden 14:00 The emotional impact and bravery of the musicians 16:00 Post-mission reflections and the fate of refusniks 18:05 The debate over publicity and safety for refusniks 20:07 The influence of family history and activism 21:47 The story of Pavel and the legacy of the mission 24:07 The mysterious Kevin, the KGB officer 26:10 The enduring importance of trust and human connection 28:01 Conclusion and the legacy of covert art in espionageGuest InformationMerryl Goldberg & Vince HoughtonWebsiteSocial:InstagramDr. Vince HoughtonNational cryptologic Museum Social:X

#russianlanguage​ #русскийязык Бесплатные квартиры, самый вкусный в мире пломбир и дружные соседи или бесконечные очереди, дефицит, жизнь «по блату» и закрытые границы?

Chuck Heinz and Jamie Lent talk about Rangers building for something, Regan bombing USSR joke, Space Jam, top receiver for Texas Tech Football, and comments from Chuck Heinz.

Nights' resident screen critic Dan Slevin joins Emile Donovan to review: Savage House, a scabrous 18th-century comedy starring Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy; Deep Water, a shark survival thriller; and 1979 sci-fi epic Meteor, streaming free on Tubi.Nights' resident screen critic joins Dan Slevin Emile Donovan to review:IN CINEMASSavage House (directed by Peter Glanz). Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy star in a scabrous comedy set in the 18th century as a social climbing couple prepare to host an important dinner.PAID STREAMING - AroVisionDeep Water (Directed by Renny Harlin). Survival thriller in which an airliner en route from Los Angeles to Shanghai is forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean where the survivors must contend with another danger - hungry sharks. Starring Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley.FREE STREAMING - TubiMeteor (directed by Ronald Neame, 1979). A star-studded affair about a joint USA and USSR effort to save Earth from an imminent extra-terrestrial threat.Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Last time we spoke about the ending of the Second Battle of Changsha. In late September and early October 1941, Chinese commander Chen Cheng planned an operation to retake Yichang, a strategic Yangtze River city whose control was essential for protecting the approach to Chongqing. Japanese forces were pulling back from Changsha, weakened by supply problems and casualties, which created an opportunity for Chen to intensify his campaign. Yichang had been captured by Japan in 1940, a defeat that Chen carried as a personal and political burden. He therefore moved to encircle the Japanese 13th Division inside Yichang and drive it to collapse. Although the Chinese held a clear manpower advantage—fourteen divisions against the encircled Japanese—progress was slowed by stubborn fighting from prepared, entrenched positions. The battle inside the city produced desperate close-quarters combat and heavy casualties, showing how the fate of Yichang and the wider defense of Chongqing were tightly linked.    #214 War hits the Pacific 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.   The guns fell silent on October 9, 1941, as the Ninth War Zone's forces restored their pre-battle positions, marking the end of the Second Battle of Changsha. The balance sheet was grim on both sides, but it was China that bore the heavier cost. The Ninth Military Front suffered 70,672 killed, wounded, or missing. The concurrent Yichang offensive added a further 21,368 casualties to the Sixth Military Front, a force that outnumbered its Japanese opponents ten to one yet still failed to retake the city. By the time the dust settled, the Chinese army had lost nearly 100,000 men across both theatres. The Chinese command was frank, at least in private, about what had gone wrong. The Japanese had moved with a speed that recalled Blitzkrieg, advancing 130 kilometres in eleven days and withdrawing at twelve kilometres a day, catching the defenders perpetually off-balance. The 26th, 37th, 10th, and 74th Corps had been picked apart piecemeal rather than fighting in concert, the original plan to destroy the Japanese south of the Miluo River coming to nothing. Elite formations had paid a disproportionate price: the 74th Corps suffered 14,521 casualties, the 37th Corps 14,015, and the 58th Division alone lost 6,192 of its 11,907 men, nearly its entire fighting strength.   Yet none of this was the story the public would hear. On October 10th, China's National Day, radio stations announced the "Second Great Victory in Northern Hunan", the annihilation of over 40,000 enemy troops. Newspapers rushed out special editions. Congratulatory telegrams flooded in from government ministries and civic organizations. Senior officials seized on the moment: Sun Ke, Premier of the Executive Yuan, declared that the victory "laid the foundation for the counter-offensive and the recapture of Hankou and Guangzhou," while General Bai Chongxi called it "the pivotal moment for us to turn defeat into victory." Chiang Kai-shek, reading through the pages of triumphant commentary produced overnight by his propagandists, was reportedly impressed by their industry, if not convinced by their content. He had not wanted to call it a victory at all, but the political calculus was unavoidable: after four years of war, an exhausted nation needed the psychological sustenance that only "victory" could provide.   The gap between public performance and private reality was nowhere more visible than in the arrival of a twenty-two-member international press delegation on October 13th. Journalists from Britain, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Hong Kong, and major Chinese newspapers were flown to Changsha and carefully guided through selected battlefields, where they inspected mountains of war trophies and heard testimony from soldiers and civilians. They left satisfied, presenting their war souvenirs—swords, binoculars, Japanese military flags—to their audiences back home as proof of Chinese heroism and Japanese defeat. Both China and Japan were claiming victory simultaneously. The only conclusion the foreign press could draw was that one side was lying, and it was not the side that had shown them the evidence.   Chiang Kai-shek's real verdict came at the Third Nanyue Military Conference, held from October 16 to 21. His anger was withering. He condemned his generals for their obsession with defending sprawling outer perimeter lines while leaving city centres barely fortified, a mentality so rigid, he said, that the Japanese could announce the exact time of their advance and withdrawal in advance and still execute it on schedule without interference. "Generals, what a disgrace this is!" On the failure to capture prisoners, only 263 prisoners were claimed across the entire front, of whom only 16 names were actually published, he was almost incredulous: "We can definitely defeat the enemy, capture many enemy prisoners, and seize countless enemy weapons! Even if we cannot capture ten thousand prisoners, we should at least capture a thousand! If not a thousand, then at least a hundred! But now, you don't even have ten!" The conference handed down punishments to match the rhetoric. Liao Lingqi, commander of the shattered 58th Division, was sentenced to death for desertion and shot on October 22nd. His men were so outraged that three regimental commanders resigned in protest; the division was pulled from the order of battle entirely and given three months to rebuild. Li Yutang, commander of the 10th Corps, was dismissed—though the Third Battle of Changsha would begin before his replacement could take post, and he would be reinstated to play a key role in the city's defence.   On the Japanese side, the 11th Army acknowledged 1,670 killed, 5,184 wounded, and 14 missing, far fewer than Chinese claims, though post-war regimental histories suggest the true figure was higher. Lieutenant General Anami, who had championed the operation, found himself stung by the charge that the battle had served mainly as material for Chinese propaganda. On November 23rd, he reportedly reacted with visible displeasure when someone in his headquarters said as much aloud.  Anami's annoyance was easy enough to understand, but the accusation carried a troubling degree of accuracy. The Second Battle of Changsha had yielded no decisive strategic gain and no substantial alteration in the military balance. What it did generate, rather effectively, was a story and by the autumn of 1941, stories were one of the few things China still had in plentiful supply. The most consequential struggles were taking place not along the Miluo River, but in foreign ministries and embassies, in Washington and Moscow, in the messages passing between Chongqing and London, and in the increasingly strained calculations of statesmen trying to determine, amid rapidly changing circumstances, whom to support and for how long.   For Chiang Kai-shek, the challenge was never merely military. It was structural, and had been so from the outset. He had always seen clearly, precisely because he understood China's weakness, that Japan could not be defeated by China alone. The country lacked the industrial base, the logistical reach, and after four years of relentless attrition more and more the manpower needed to force a decisive result on the battlefield. China's survival depended on making its war inseparable from the wars of other powers. Since 1937, Chiang's diplomacy had pursued that single objective: convincing enough great powers that their interests were aligned with China's, and holding that coalition together long enough for Japan to be subdued. That effort turned out to be vastly more difficult than it ought to have been.   The problem started with the international order in which the war emerged. Chiang had hoped to assemble a concert of allies willing to help defend China against Japanese aggression. He was blocked not just by the reluctance of neutral states to aid China, but by the speed with which alliances shifted in the opening years of the Second World War. He had never welcomed the prospect of a general European conflict, correctly fearing that it would push China even further to the margins of world attention. Even so, he recognized that once the lines had hardened between the imperial democracies and fascism, new alignments might become possible. From his perspective, the growing amity between Berlin and Moscow was therefore disastrous. He had been eager to draw the USSR into war against Japan. Instead, the Soviets were now effectively aligned with the Nazis, who were themselves allied with Tokyo.   The world created after Versailles had already enraged many Chinese. After all, the May Fourth demonstrations of 1919 had arisen directly from the settlement reached at the Paris Peace Conference. Yet that older order had at least possessed recognizable anchors, especially the dominance of the two great European empires and the United States. Now those empires were weakening, and no one could say with confidence what the new geopolitical order would be. For all Chiang knew, Germany might emerge as Europe's new dominant power. The early years of the European war produced a bewildering spectacle of diplomatic realignment.   The Nationalist government had previously enjoyed a short-lived flirtation with Nazi Germany. In fact, Hitler's regime continued supplying Chiang with munitions in the first months of China's war against Japan. The Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 had theoretically joined Germany, Italy, and Japan into the Axis, but mutual distrust prevented them from forming anything like a fully coherent alliance. Chiang found it useful to imply to Western powers that he might be pushed into closer alignment with Germany, a particularly disturbing possibility for the USSR, which faced enemies in both Europe and Asia. But eventually the contradictions in German policy toward East Asia became too severe. In April 1938, Germany yielded to Japanese pressure and ended its support for China.   Britain offered little meaningful help. Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in May 1937 at the head of a Conservative-led National Government, and was quickly overwhelmed by the deteriorating European situation. If Czechoslovakia was for him a "far-off country of which we know nothing," China's fate was even more distant and obscure to many,  perhaps most  policymakers in London. The Nationalists had more success in cultivating the United States. At the Nine-Power Conference in Brussels in November 1937, the Chinese delegation failed to persuade Washington to impose sanctions on Japan and confront it directly. By the middle of 1938, however, American views were beginning to shift. As Japan pushed deeper into southern China, it became increasingly obvious that the occupied territory would be closed to foreign trade. In December 1938, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau arranged a private American loan of $25 million to China, to be repaid through shipments of tung oil, a varnish product whose real importance lay not in itself, but in what the arrangement signified: a quiet American expression of faith that Chongqing would survive. Chiang also held on to the hope of an even less likely partnership. He had become fiercely anti-Communist during the 1920s, yet in the early years of the anti-Japanese war his greatest hope still rested on Soviet entry into the conflict. Soviet advisers and pilots had aided China from 1937 to 1939, but the USSR never formally declared war on Japan. Still, as Japanese aggression in northern Asia intensified, it remained possible that the Soviets would eventually be drawn in.   Then, as so often happened whenever Chiang tried to impose some control over the course of the war, events beyond China's borders altered the struggle in fundamental ways. While Western attention remained fixed on Europe's darkening horizon, a battle with major consequences for East Asia unfolded on the frontiers of Outer Mongolia, Manchukuo, and the eastern Soviet Union. Throughout much of 1938 and early 1939, one faction within the Japanese Imperial Army sought to pressure the Soviets along their eastern frontier. The USSR appeared vulnerable; Stalin's paranoid purges had executed or exiled many of the Red Army's best officers. In May 1939, fighting broke out near Nomonhan between forces from Soviet-backed Mongolia and Japanese troops from Manchukuo. Within days, both sides had reinforced heavily, until nearly 60,000 Soviet troops faced about 40,000 soldiers from the Kwantung Army. Over the next four months, until mid-September, they fought a major battle ending in a decisive Japanese defeat and establishing the reputation of General Georgi Zhukov, who would later become one of Stalin's most celebrated wartime commanders. The much-derided Soviet Army had fought with formidable effectiveness, and the result was not only a ceasefire but also a nonaggression pact between the two sides, extinguishing, in one stroke, Chiang's hopes for a Chinese-Soviet military alliance. The final blow came after developments in northern Europe. In the Winter War of 1939–1940, the Soviet invasion of Finland led Britain and France to back a motion expelling the USSR from the League of Nations. China, then a member of the League Council, declined to use its veto to block the resolution. Stalin was enraged by Chiang's failure to prevent Soviet expulsion, and mutual suspicion thereafter poisoned relations between the two leaders for the rest of the war against Japan. China would now have to continue without further major Soviet backing.   By the spring of 1940, China's position had become deeply precarious. In March, senior Japanese negotiators sought an agreement with Chiang in Chongqing, while Wang Jingwei was trying to formalize his rival Nationalist government in Nanjing. This effort, known in Chinese as the Tong Operation, and in Japanese as Operation Kiri, led to talks in Hong Kong from March 7 to 10, 1940. Militarily, the Nationalists were in grave danger: the United States remained neutral, and Europe was in chaos. Indeed, that same spring, with France seemingly near collapse, the British government also sent out discreet feelers to explore the possibility of a negotiated peace with Germany. For China, Western assistance was nowhere in sight. The Japanese judged the moment favorable for pressing Chiang toward concessions. Faced with serious danger to his regime, Chiang allowed the door to negotiation to open just slightly.   As a consequence, the Japanese delayed full recognition of Wang Jingwei's new government. Through the summer and autumn of 1940, Tokyo remained uncertain about the defector. Prominent Japanese figures such as Count Arima Yoriyasu of the Privy Council said Wang's conduct demonstrated his untrustworthiness, and Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yōsuke continued to express interest in an agreement with Chongqing. Zhou Fohai captured the defectors' frustration, men who believed they had made the highest patriotic sacrifice when he wrote: "Chongqing sees us as collaborators, we see ourselves as heroes. We think only peace can save the country — that's why we think of ourselves as heroes. If we end up classed as heroes, then China and Japan will be at peace. If we end up classed as collaborators, then China and Japan will never be at peace."That formulation conveyed something genuine about the moral dizziness of the period. Most of the defectors were not men devoid of principles; they were men whose principles had carried them to a place that history would find exceptionally hard to pardon.   The "New Fourth Army Incident" brought to a close one of the most consequential years in modern Chinese political history. The battle of ideas unfolding in 1940 was already visible to informed contemporaries. Early in 1941, US Ambassador Nelson Johnson sent Washington a detailed assessment of the Chinese political situation in reply to another report passed along by Major Evans Carlson, an American officer who had made an extensive journey through the Chinese interior. The contrast between the two documents revealed a widening split in American views of China. Carlson, together with his travelling companion, the New Zealander Rewi Alley, had become increasingly sympathetic to the Communists after visiting their territories in 1938 and admiring their discipline. Carlson described the Nationalists as moving toward "fascism," and argued that American aid should be conditioned on Chiang's government being compelled to adopt more "democratic" institutions.   Johnson strongly disagreed. It was "only normal and natural," he wrote, that the Nationalists wanted to retain power, but during the war they had established the National Political Consultative Council, in which multiple parties, including the Communists, were represented. He also noted that the CCP could publish its own newspaper in Chongqing in a way that would have been impossible before the war. One might have expected the Nationalists to use the war as a justification "to extinguish . . . all political opposition," yet instead they had chosen to "muddle along." Johnson further thought that the influence of competing cliques inside the Nationalist Party had been overstated. Chiang Kai-shek, by contrast, had "grown in stature, as he has come to be recognized as the symbol of united resistance to Japanese encroachment"; ultimately, "it is he who makes the final decisions." Johnson did agree with Carlson that Chiang's regime was hesitant to encourage a broad-based popular movement animated by anything beyond anti-Japanese feeling, though he also pointed to Nationalist cooperative programs and county-level reforms. But he rejected the idea that American support should depend on sweeping political transformation. Chiang was committed to continuing the war against Japan, and Washington should back him in that effort. In a notably farsighted passage, Johnson wrote: "It is my view that since the fall of the Manchu dynasty and the collapse of the traditional Chinese concept of government the Chinese people have been feeling their way along toward a new evolving form of government. A definitive form of government has not yet been established and may not be established for decades; it may or may not be in the form of a democracy, but it will be a type of government that will be adapted to the needs of China and its people." The tension between these two American interpretations,  Carlson's idealized belief in the Communists and Johnson's pragmatic support for Chiang was more than a minor bureaucratic dispute. It foreshadowed a debate that would dominate American foreign policy for the next decade, and would still echo when the People's Republic was proclaimed in 1949.   The disastrous experience of 1940 seemed to cast doubt on whether any future for China existed outside the Japanese Empire. As 1941 wore on, another dreadful event shook the exhausted wartime capital. On June 5, Chongqing endured roughly five hours of bombing, driving the population into air-raid shelters. In one tunnel in the Shibati district, the conditions were even worse than usual. The large shelter was supposed to have lights and electric fans, but the generators had never been connected. Inside, the air was dark, hot, and suffocating. Around ten that evening, people began emerging from the tunnel when rumors spread that the Japanese were returning with poison-gas bombs. Air-raid wardens forced people back inside, even as others were still trying to come out. Bodies toppled over one another, and panic spread as people realized they could not breathe. Over the next few hours, hundreds died underground in the darkness. The exact number was never definitively established: the official figure was 461, though a contemporary police report placed it far higher, at 1,527. What rescuers remembered most vividly were the tortured expressions of the dead, people tangled together in each other's arms as they lost consciousness, clothing ripped to shreds by desperate hands clawing at one another, and bodies so drenched in sweat that they looked as though they had been soaked in water. One survivor, Tang Zhengchang, remembered a hand reaching out from a pile of corpses and pleading, "Sir, please help me . . ." The grip on Tang's shorts was so tight that it pulled them off; he escaped the tunnel naked from the waist down. Official descriptions of the disaster were softened. Even so, the tragedy deepened the city's gloom and in a place already saturated with grief, an added layer of darkness mattered a great deal.   Yet events elsewhere would soon offer the National Government a narrow margin of hope. Late in 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt won re-election as president of the United States. "I am not going to send your boys into any foreign wars," he had proclaimed during the campaign against Wendell Willkie. But Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull both understood that Nazi domination of Europe posed a grave challenge to American influence there. And with China's "Open Door" to trade effectively shut by Japanese occupation, it was becoming increasingly clear that strict neutrality might not remain viable. In a 1941 report on China's domestic and foreign situation, Ambassador Johnson noted that during Germany's sweeping victories across Europe in mid-1940, the Chinese had become anxious about whether the Allies would remain committed to their cause. Britain's refusal to surrender, however, together with continuing Soviet goodwill, lifted public morale in China. People now looked toward the United States and Britain for support and felt that "victory" was "virtually theirs."   Then, on June 22, 1941, the world awoke to news that roughly three million German soldiers were advancing into the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa, Hitler's invasion of the USSR, dramatically overturned the nonaggression that had governed relations between the two major European dictatorships for the previous two years. It transformed the war in Europe entirely. Less obviously, it also transformed the war in Asia. Thanks to intelligence leaks, Chiang Kai-shek had already realized that war between Germany and the USSR was likely. After the neutrality treaty between the USSR and Japan was signed on April 13, 1941, Chiang predicted that the United States would be drawn into the Asian war, and even that Japan might eventually reverse course and strike the Soviet Union. If that happened, China would become the critical Asian ally of both Washington and Moscow. Stalin had been caught off guard by the German assault — largely because he ignored increasingly urgent warnings from senior colleagues receiving intelligence from well-placed spies in Germany and the Comintern, eager to preserve its alliances, now pressed the Chinese Communists to cooperate more closely with the Nationalists. On June 23, 1941, the CCP Central Committee responded with a declaration that it would "persevere in the Anti-Japanese United Front, persevere in Nationalist-Communist cooperation," and would align itself with the British, the Americans, and others resisting the "fascist rulers" of the Axis.   In Chongqing and Yan'an, the German attack on the Soviet Union was interpreted as a hopeful sign that Japan's fortunes might be beginning to turn. In Nanjing, the reaction was different. On June 22, Zhou Fohai recorded in his diary that, although the outcome "cannot be predicted," members of the Nanjing regime "all believe Germany will win and will take Moscow within two months." Zhou speculated that Japan could not easily reconcile its neutrality treaty with the USSR and its membership in the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was supposed to unite the Axis against Soviet expansionism. Still, because Germany had struck first, Japan was under no formal obligation to help. Zhou also continued to view events through a lens he had never abandoned: that of Chinese nationalism. "If Chongqing joins the Allies and they win," he wrote, "then this is good for China." If they lost, it would be disastrous for Chiang Kai-shek; but because Wang Jingwei had established a government in Nanjing under Japanese sponsorship, China now had "a foot in both boats." It was a ruthless calculation, but not a wholly dishonorable one. Zhou was not merely advancing Japanese interests. He was hedging, wagering on multiple futures in the name of a China he believed would endure beyond whatever constellation of powers happened to dominate at the moment. Whether posterity would judge that conduct prudent or collaborative was a question he could neither settle nor live to see resolved to his satisfaction.   The summer of 1941 marked a major geopolitical turning point in the war. Until then, the conflicts in China and Europe had remained separate, if desperate, struggles on the Eurasian continent. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union now forced Japan to decide whether it too would enter war against the USSR. Debate in Tokyo was brief. Although some officials, including Foreign Minister Matsuoka, favored striking north before moving south, both the Kwantung Army and the Navy advised against helping Germany at least until Germany had succeeded in drawing substantial Soviet forces away from Siberia and into Europe. Konoye, once again prime minister, agreed. With the northern option set aside, Japanese leaders turned toward another great power instead: the United States. Japan's failure to gain further decisive momentum in China had fueled demands for broader regional expansion, especially into Southeast Asia, with its abundant oil, rubber, and other strategic resources. From 1940 onward, measures such as the pressure to close the Burma Road made it increasingly obvious that Tokyo had adopted a more aggressive posture in Asia. Unable to subdue China, Japanese policymakers chose instead to escalate the conflict still further.   Japanese political life had become ever more dominated by the unresolved war in China. As early as 1938, military expenditures consumed about 70 percent of the national budget, and that same year a National Mobilization Bill granted the government "total war control" over the zaibatsu, Japan's major industrial conglomerates. By 1940, the New Order was making itself felt throughout everyday life, with campaigns against luxury and extravagant consumption taking on new prominence. In February 1940, a parliamentarian was expelled from the Diet simply for daring to criticize the "holy war" in China. In such an atmosphere, retreat from imperial ambitions became increasingly unthinkable. That figure, 70 percent of the national budget devoted to the military is worth dwelling on, because it reveals something essential about the trap in which Japanese strategists had placed themselves. The war in China had not been won, yet abandoning it would have meant admitting a failure so severe that it would have shaken the ideological and institutional foundations of military supremacy in Japanese politics. The only apparent ways out required pushing further in: more conquest, more extraction, more expansion. The logic was brutally clear, and profoundly destructive.   The Roosevelt administration watched these developments with growing alarm. Though still formally neutral, the United States was already using Lend-Lease to provide major assistance to Britain and the Soviet Union in their struggles against Germany. It now expanded aid to China as well. On February 10, Roosevelt's representative Lauchlin Currie visited Chongqing to inform Chiang Kai-shek that the United States would soon provide $45 million in military equipment. General John Magruder, head of the small AMMISCA mission,  the American Military Mission in China had been sent to Chongqing in September 1941, as part of quiet preparation for possible Chinese entry into an alliance against Japan. The China branch of the OSS, precursor to the CIA, was led by General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, whom Roosevelt had dispatched to China in early 1941.   The Americans repeatedly tried to discourage Japan from moving south into Southeast Asia, but relations only grew more confrontational. Japan occupied the southern part of French Indochina, and in response the United States imposed an oil embargo in July 1941. The consequences were immense. Japan imported around 80 percent of its oil from the United States. Without that supply, its navy, the essential instrument for southern expansion  had reserves for perhaps eighteen months. The real question facing Tokyo, then, was not whether it must act, but how soon. Unable any longer to resist mounting military pressure for war, Konoye resigned on October 16 and was replaced as premier by General Tōjō Hideki. Tokyo accelerated its preparations for conflict with the Western powers. Planned targets included Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaya, the Netherlands East Indies, and the Philippines. I should note, if you want to learn about all of this history in more detail, you can go check out the pacific war channel on youtube. I have a chronological series that is just now talking about events like the Japanese invasion of french indochina and the road to pearl harbor.   Throughout the autumn of 1941, increasingly desperate negotiations took place between Japan and the United States. Washington insisted that Japan withdraw from China; Tokyo was equally firm that it would do no such thing. From the Japanese point of view, the demand to leave China was not a serious negotiating position but a demand for national humiliation a call to repudiate four years of war, vast casualties, and the ideological basis of Japanese militarism in a single diplomatic act. In the end, the gulf between the two positions could not be bridged.   While civilian and military leaders in Tokyo argued over the pace at which they should move toward war, few among Japan's rulers doubted that war was coming. At the imperial conference of November 5, it was formally agreed that if no satisfactory diplomatic solution had been reached by December 1, war would follow soon after. Talks in Washington between Ambassador Nomura Kichisaburō, diplomat Kurusu Saburō, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull led nowhere. On November 26, Hull delivered a note repeating the American position that Japan must withdraw from both China and Indochina. On December 1, the imperial conference resolved to go to war; the following day, the date of attack was fixed as December 8, December 7 by American time. In one sense, this was the culmination toward which the entire previous decade had been moving. The war in China had started as a localized conflict, then expanded into a continental one, and was now about to become something larger still: a truly global war, stretching from the North Atlantic to the western Pacific. China's long, lonely resistance would suddenly gain new dimensions and new allies,  though not the ones Chiang had spent four years trying to cultivate, and not under circumstances he would have chosen.   In the early morning of December 7, 1941, the US Pacific Fleet lay anchored at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, its sailors and officers still largely asleep as dawn crept across the Pacific. The attack did not come without warning signs,  American and Japanese diplomats had been locked in increasingly desperate negotiations throughout the autumn, each side hardening its position until no room remained to maneuver. Washington had demanded that Japan withdraw from China, a condition Tokyo viewed not as a serious opening offer but as a demand for national humiliation: a call to repudiate four years of brutal war, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and the entire ideological foundation upon which Japanese militarism rested. No agreement was possible on those terms, and both sides privately knew it.   The strike force assembled in secret was formidable. Six aircraft carriers,  the Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, and Zuikaku had sailed under strict radio silence across the North Pacific, launching their aircraft in two successive waves before the American base had any meaningful chance to respond. The first wave of approximately 183 planes swept in just before 8 a.m., targeting the rows of battleships moored along Battleship Row and the military airfields at Wheeler, Hickam, and Ford Island simultaneously, ensuring that American aircraft could not scramble in time to mount an effective defense. A second wave of roughly 170 planes followed less than an hour later, pressing the attack on damaged ships and harbor installations.   The destruction was staggering. The battleship Arizona suffered a catastrophic magazine explosion after a armor-piercing bomb penetrated her forward decks, killing nearly 1,177 of her crew in minutes, almost half of the total American dead from the entire attack. The Oklahoma capsized after being struck by multiple torpedoes. The West Virginia and California sank at their moorings. In total, seventeen vessels were damaged or destroyed, and the vast majority of military aircraft at the nearby airfields were caught on the ground and obliterated before they could take flight. Around 2,400 Americans were killed and another 1,100 wounded, making it the deadliest single attack on American soil or territory in the nation's history to that point.   Yet the attack was not a complete strategic success for Japan. The US Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers, the vessels that would ultimately decide the naval war in the Pacific happened to be at sea that morning and escaped unharmed. The harbor's fuel storage and repair facilities were also left largely intact, allowing the fleet to reconstitute faster than Japanese planners had anticipated. What Japan achieved in tactical devastation, it partly squandered in strategic miscalculation. The attack ended American neutrality instantly and irrevocably. The following day, President Roosevelt addressed Congress, calling December 7 "a date which will live in infamy," and within hours the United States declared war on Japan. For China, after more than four years of fighting alone, the blow that devastated Pearl Harbor paradoxically carried a thread of desperate hope at last, the great power Chiang Kai-shek had spent years trying to draw into the conflict had arrived, not under circumstances he would have chosen, but arrived nonetheless. 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. After years of fighting, China's situation darkened in 1941 with intense bombing of Chongqing and fears of poison-gas attacks. Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June shifted alliances and pressured Japan toward wider war. Japan escalated plans for Southeast Asia, suffered an oil embargo, and negotiations with the United States broke down over withdrawing from China and Indochina. Then the Pearl Harbor attack began the Pacific War.

By 1944, a German defeat seemed inevitable. In August, Romania defected from the Axis and joined the Allies. Within weeks, Bulgaria followed suit, while Finland agreed to an armistice with the USSR. This left Hungary as Germany's sole remaining ally in Europe, and Hungary only stayed loyal because of German military intervention.

Join Rob and Doug as they do the epic Quick Hits Podcast LIVE at 10 A.M. EST!Hosts Rob and Doug will be discussing CIA asset and FPCC Vice President Richard T. Gibson, the enigmatic Ralph Schoenman, what is LBJ gonna do after he' is President, and the strangeand twisted tale of James Murphy. JOIN US! Shall you! Get your emails in promptly to be read live on the air!Send emails to quickhitsjfk@gmail.comSee you there !A Loose Moose & Drop D ProductionBBB & DOUGBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/quick-hits-the-jfk-assassination--3682240/support.

#russianlanguage​ #русскийязык Почему многие до сих пор скучают по Советскому Союзу?

Julia Ioffe left the USSR as a child and came back as an adult journalist to find that the confident, credentialed women she remembered from her Soviet childhood had largely been supplanted by those chasing marriage and domesticity instead. That disorienting reversal is the engine of her book Motherland, a National Book Award finalist that reconstructs modern Russian history almost entirely through its women. Her account, drawn from her own family's history as well as the archives, keeps returning to one plain observation: Soviet policy pushed women into the workforce, the medical schools, and even into combat, while asking so little of men that low expectations became self-fulfilling—and Russia is still living with the results. Julia joined Tyler to discuss why so many of Russia's great constructivist painters were women, why the tsarist government established women's medical courses in 1872, changing attitudes towards abortion and birth control in the 20th century, why the Soviet regime turned prudish, how Khrushchev's plan to "replace the dead" institutionalized single motherhood, Russian superwomen, why Jewish men were a prized commodity amid rampant antisemitism, the cultural significance of flowers, why a few Russian names still dominate, why Russian women think Western feminists have their priorities backwards, how gender attitudes and autocracy feed into each other, three underrated Russian novels, what she wants to write about next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on YouTube.  Recorded April 7th, 2026. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Julia on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:06:38 - Bolshevik feminism 00:08:41 - Birth control, abortion, and prudery 00:14:48 - The Russian mating market 00:23:06 - Russian superwomen 00:32:02 - The importance of flowers 00:37:35 - Common Russian names 00:39:51 - Russian vs. American feminism 00:44:23 - Gender attitudes and Russian politics 00:49:54 - Russian novels 00:54:33 - Outro Photo credit: Max Avdeev

Filmed in November 2024. Adéla's first-ever podast interview. WATCH THE "SUPERSCAR" MUSIC VIDEO HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn6ey6HOkP4 In this episode of "Middle Row w Coco Mocoe", we are joined by Adéla as she breaks down her music video for "Superscar". This was her second single, ever, and it already has over 1 million views on YouTube and she is building a cult-like fandom, as a result. We discuss her background growing up Slovakia, her USSR ballet training, her time on "Pop Star Academy" on Netflix, her current relationships with castmates (including the KATSEYE girls), how she found her producer, Liam Benayon, how Grimes discovered her and more. Adéla is going to be a huge star! I am so lucky to say that I got the first-ever, sit down interview with her. Her music, vision, athleticism and artistry is something huge labels would pay for even their biggest artists to have even a slice of. Recently, she put out "Aint in LA", toured with Demi Lovato and performed at Lollapalooza 2026, and gearing up to release her debut album, PRIMA. To make it an easier viewing experience for you, here are the time stamps for the episode:0:00 - Introduction0:51 - Snacks4:00 - How Adela learned English 6:41 - The storyline of “SuperScar” music video7:40 - The executive auditioning symbolism 8:51 - The Ashley O hair9:49 - Little sister in the video 12:20 - Adela's favorite shot of the video 12:57 - How she decided on pink hair 15:06 - How Adela came up with the title “Superscar” 17:45 - How she came up with the scar imagery for the cover art18:22 - “I'm not in the business of being liked” 19:30 - Adela's background & USSR ballet growing up 21:20 - What it was like appearing on “Pop Star Academy” on Netflix24:30 - How she handles online hate 26:40 - Who Adela is still close to from the show & KATSEYE group28:16 - The filming schedule of “Pop Star Academy” over the course of two years 31:26 - How she met her producer, Liam Benayon32:00 - “Homewrecked” storyline34:00 - Adela's next song “Machine Girl” 34:50 - Industry interest in Adela since her first singles as an independent artist36:05 - How Grimes discovered Adela and reached out to her37:40 - Adela's big three in astrology Where you can find more of Adéla: Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/2qanRMyA5bNuTvz1dK45OP⁠Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/adelajergova/⁠YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@AD%C3%89LAJERGOV%C3%81⁠TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@adelajergova?lang=en⁠Where you can find more of Coco Mocoe:Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/cocomocoe/⁠TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@cocomocoe⁠Follow the official "Middle Row" playlist on Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/playlist/19x3n1ZRyN4eeikwSy8sL9?si=e4dc55829d754ad0&nd=1&dlsi=d97fc2d2e8c64f95⁠Executive Producers: Coco Mocoe & Trinna Tracy Videographer: Operation PodcastEditor: Coco MocoeCreator: Coco MocoeFilming Location: Spotify LAEmail: cocomocoe@gmail.com

We are joined by Dr. Benjamin R. Young to discuss his TNSR article, "Saving Socialism: What North Korea Learned from the Collapse of the Soviet Union." Dr. Young argues that the fall of the USSR profoundly influenced Pyongyang's grand strategy. Rather than embracing reform, he explains that North Korea interpreted the Soviet collapse as a failure of ideological fervor and leadership. He contends that this historical turning point catalyzed North Korea's shift toward "military first" politics (Songun), stricter information blockades, and the accelerated development of its nuclear weapons program. Join us for a fascinating conversation on regime survival, Stalinism, and the historical drivers of North Korea's modern security posture. Guest: Dr. Benjamin R. Young (Assistant Professor of Intelligence Studies at Fayetteville State University) Hosts: Sheena Chestnut Greitens Ryan Vest, PhD Producer: Jordan Morning

 This is the 301st episode of my podcast, 'Soccernostalgia Talk Podcast'.  For this episode, I interview Northern Irish Author Mr. Conor Kenny as we discuss his book ‘Sbornaya: The Mixed Fortunes of the USSR Football Teams' (2026).   For any questions/comments, you may contact us: You may also contact me on this blog, on twitter @sp1873 and on facebook under Soccernostalgia. https://linktr.ee/sp1873  Mr. Paul Whittle, @real1888letter on twitter and https://the1888letter.com/contact/ https://linktr.ee/BeforeThePremierLeague  You may also follow the podcast on spotify and Apple podcasts all under ‘Soccernostalgia Talk Podcast' Please leave a review, rate and subscribe if you like the podcast. Mr. Kenny's contact info: Twitter (X): @BRTD1989 Bluesky: @betterredthandead.bsky.social Substack: https://substack.com/@betterredthandead Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/better_red_than_dead/ Links to Mr. Kenny's book:  https://www.amazon.com/-/he/Conor-Kenny/dp/183680265X  Listen on Spotify / Apple Podcasts:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/65kQrh0iSVUwhgXE8AdqKw?si=DbXJNk7dRHSCBYRZeDUlPA&utm_source=copy-link&nd=1&dlsi=df32e4d4c79f438ahttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/soccernostalgia-talk-podcast-episode-301-interview/id1601074369?i=1000779571895  Youtube Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-EMOV0JeXo Blog Link: https://soccernostalgia.blogspot.com/2026/08/soccernostalgia-talk-podcast-episode.htmlSupport the show

Welcome back! Our Spy Series continues with an 80s classic, Spies Like Us. This hit film stars Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase as halfwit spies who find themselves pawns in a potential nuclear war with the USSR. How does it age? We have...differing opinions. Enjoy!

Can anyone under the age of 40 recall the USSR? Have we forgotten the haunting spectre of communism and the toll that was paid just decades ago? We begin fact-finding mission to retell the real story of Karl Marx and the rise of communism this week on The Public Square®. Please join in the conversation and bring a friend Topic: Communism The Public Square® Long Format Program with hosts Wayne Shepherd and Dave Zanotti.  thepublicsquare.com Release Date: Friday, July 31st, 2026  

Is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey actually a masterpiece or just empty spectacle? Two military history experts dive deep into Nolan's most polarizing film yet, breaking down what critics are missing and what the director actually achieved in adapting one of literature's greatest epics. In this episode of Echoes of War from the Pacific War channel, hosts Craig and Gaurav tackle Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey—a film that's become surprisingly political and divisive across the internet. They discuss the movie's historical portrayal, stunning cinematic elements, and the clever ways Nolan adapted Homer's timeless narrative for a modern audience. More importantly, they separate the legitimate criticism from the noise surrounding this film. From the terrifying presence of the Sea People to Nolan's exploration of trauma-stricken war veterans returning home, Craig and Gaurav analyze what works brilliantly in the film and what missed the mark. They examine the deeper themes of memory, history, and the psychological toll of war—elements that many critics claim are absent but the hosts argue are woven throughout the story. One thing becomes clear: Nolan made bold creative choices that opened him up to significant criticism, but perhaps for reasons worth exploring. Whether you're a Christopher Nolan fan, a history buff, or someone interested in thoughtful film analysis, this episode offers a nuanced take on what The Odyssey actually accomplishes as both a war epic and an intimate character study. You'll hear perspectives you haven't seen elsewhere, backed by genuine expertise in both military history and cinema. Don't forget I have a Youtube Membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbp8JMZizR4zak9wpM3Fvrw/join or my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel where you can get exclusive content like "What if Japan invaded the USSR during WW2?"

A major thank you to Robert for sponsoring today's stream, in it I die deep into the history and persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church during the communist era of the Soviet Union. Make sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think. God Bless Join Logos Cinema Here: https://www.logoscinema.com/cotel

The deranged sociopath and chief played "the big room" as he did 60 minutes during the Correspondent's Dinner. He brought the coma back into comedy. Kash Patel is flying to the former USSR to compare notes with Donny's boss before the midterms. Meanwhile the feds are doing everything possible to make us vulnerable to Russian hacking. As a former security specialist has said, “Holy hell, that is strategic malpractice.We are heading into the midterms partially blind to foreign influence.” Stephen Miller states plainly that YOU are the problem. We also have a sing along and activities! Pull up a chair folks for show #364!

Our hosts take off for one week for Tisha B'av and suddenly New York City has turned into Moscow circa 1985! Covering the many horrible decisions made by Mamdani and co. including the taxpayer funded grocery, doxing of residents, and of course, his "attempt" to arrest Netanyahu and the consequences of his PR stunt. Also this week a mini-dive into the sources of some popular Jewish songs, Trump speaks at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and AI is inching closer to world domination. ________ ** Medical weight loss made simple and affordable! Skip the waiting rooms and start losing today with SlimRxCenter.com !** Featuring personalized plans with medical providers, and a team that understands the frum community and its unique lifestyle challenges. Visit: https://slimrxcenter.com/ Call: 845-414-6499 ________ ** Town Appliance - For All Of Your Appliance Needs! ** No matter the budget, Town Appliance will get you the right appliance for your needs and give you the most value for your money. Visit: https://www.townappliance.com/ Call/Text/Whatsapp: 732-364-5195 ________ We have a call-in number where you can hear the cast! Tell your friends and family who may not have internet access! 605-417-0303 To Call In From Israel: +079-579-5087 To Call In From UK: +03-333-66-0768 Also! Subscribe for our bonus content by phone! Available at the same number. ________ Get official KC swag and show your support to the world! https://kiddushclubmerch.com ________ Subscribe now to keep us going and access bonus content! https://buymeacoffee.com/kiddushclub/membership   Follow us: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiddushclubpodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/kiddushclubcast Join our WhatsApp chat: https://whatsapp.kccast.com Send us you thoughts comments and suggestions via email: hock@kiddushclubpodcast.com  

The 2026 World Cup has finished and the final two teams, Spain and Argentina, have stirred up old notions of what we call soft power. Sports play a large role in how countries display their soft power, but it can often be confused for cooperation. Indeed all power is contested and soft power is no exception, and the contest is clear when two national teams meet in a sports contest. Examples of soft power interactions in sports include the US beating the USSR in hockey in the 1980 Winter Games or the Soviets defeating the US in basketball at the 1972 Olympics during the height of the Cold War. No sport, however, garners more international interest than soccer (or what the rest of the world calls football). Our guests have written a new book that defines the Cold War rivalry through the lens of ten historic soccer matches. The book is called Cold War Football: A history in Ten matches. [ dur: 33mins. ] Tony Shaw is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Hertfordshire. He is the co-author of The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds and Hollywood and Israel: a History. Alan McDougall is Professor of History at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Contested Fields; A Global History of Modern Football and Dreams and Songs to Sing: A People's History of Liverpool FC from Shankly to Klopp. We revisit the September 11th, 1973 coup in Chile that toppled democratically elected Salvador Allende and installed the dictator Augustin Pinochet. We'll hear what happened, explore the latest revelations and how Chileans are dealing with their past now.  [ dur: 25mins. ] For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ This interview was recorded September, 2014. John Dingus is Professor of Journalism at Columbia University. He is the author of The Condor Years: How Pinochet And His Allies Brought Terrorism To Three Continents and Our Man in Panama: How General Noriega Used the United States- And Made Millions in Drugs and Arms Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project and the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archives. He is the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, co-author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana and  The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History. This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker, Sudd Dongre, and Anna Lapin. Politics and Activism, Diplomacy, Social Sciences, Organized Sports

Alan Philps profiles A.T. Cholerton, the "grand old man" of Moscow correspondents, who lived in a shambolic apartment and possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Soviet experiment. Having witnessed the show trials and purges, he was eventually barred from returning to the USSR after a trip to Britain because he "knew too much" and briefed inexperienced reporters on the grim reality behind the scenes. His translator and mistress, Natalia, paid the price for their association; she was arrested and sentenced to ten years in the Gulag on fabricated espionage charges involving her husband, a factory engineer. Cholerton, fearing that any public statement would further endanger her, remained silenced for the rest of his life. Although Natalia survived her sentence, the two never spoke again to ensure her safety in post-Stalin Russia. Philps notes that under the NKVD, an arrest almost inevitably led to a conviction without a fair trial. (1)1902

Dimitri and Khalid continue wading through the Caribbean shell companies and Swiss bank accounts of Bruce Rappaport in Alan Block's “All Is Clouded By Desire”, specifically his network's activities in and around the late Soviet Union/new Russian economy starting in the late 1980s. Topics include: The Iran-Contra “Brunei money” that Rappaport stole with the help of neocon superstars Elliot Abrams, Richard Secord, Oliver North, Albert Hakim, and Michael Ledeen, Lake Resources Inc., Rappaport's “odd reputation” among lawyers in the late 80s and penchant for “deals” where he'd screw his partners, his involvement in a dispute over MINE Liberia and bauxite mining projects on the Guinea-Liberia border… The Bank of New York (now BNY-Mellon) and Rappaport's Inter-Maritime Bank together at last, the LITCO-Bill Casey assist, Western Holdings Limited, BONY chairman J. Carter Bacot's hostile takeover of Irving Trust in 1985 and their Micro-Ca$h Register securities processing software, Burt Kanter putting together the Deal… BONY and Rappaport using Irving Trust's long-established correspondent accounts with eastern bloc banks to penetrate Warsaw Pact economies, establishing joint ventures in the Soviet Union, Rappaport meeting personally with Gorbachev in August 1990 about the Soviet cruise/shipping industries, the ill-fated Sudopromimpex, Soviet Inter-Ship Builders, and Global Sovcruise, speculating about why China survived its capitalist turn and the USSR didn't… Burt Kanter & Co. marketing the MoneyFacts magazine in the USSR to facilitate capital flight, the rise of the spetsbank or “zero bank”, the function of American Depository Receipts (ADRs) in international money laundering, Rappaport's “literary man” Matthew Stevenson, BCCI/Keating associate Alfred Hartman, Riggs National Bank, Valmet-Riggs and Menatep Bank, Mikhail Khodorkhovsky's meteoric rise from Komsomol computer nerd to Russian mega-oligarch, WACL libertarian Christian Michel and the cult of Friedrich von Hayek in the New Russia, Alton G. Keel, and more… Original air date: 10/01/24 For access to weekly premium SJ episodes, upcoming installments of DEMON FORCES, and the Grotto of Truth Discord, subscribe at https://patreon.com/subliminaljihad.

Anatoly Yakovenko is the co-founder of Solana, the fastest scaled blockchain in the world.We start by talking about how non-US residents were trading SpaceX on Solana pre-IPO, and which parlayed into the last 130 years of US financial markets.We then get into how Solana is removing eight layers of middlemen that make-up the legacy financial system, whether you actually need to use blockchain to do this, the 4am inspiration to start Solana, how Solana was 10,000x faster than Bitcoin, why a16z passed on investing then paid a 1,000x higher price, how launching Solana at the bottom of the market right as COVID hit led to their success, why AI won't take your job, growing up sharing one toilet with four families in the USSR, and playing competitive underwater hockey.Thanks to this episodes sponsors!Numeral: Sales tax on autopilot https://www.numeral.comFlex: Premium banking, 60-day credit, 0% APR https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapitalAmplitude: AI analytics https://www.amplitude.comMerge: Every model, one API https://www.merge.dev/turnerMonaco: The revenue engine for startups https://www.monaco.com/Timestamps:(0:00) Trading SpaceX on Solana(3:02) Why Wall Street runs on 100 year old tech(10:51) US dominance created demand for tokenized stocks(13:58) Complexity reduces risk of the financial system(15:51) Do you need to use blockchain?(18:34) Privacy tradeoffs of public ledgers(23:45) Making a 10,000x faster blockchain(30:05) A new data structure based on time(32:54) Trading was Solana's first use case(37:41) Advice from his wife that led to Solana(40:05) Why a16z passed (then paid up 1,000x)(43:50) Rejection and COVID led to Solana's fast adoption(48:30) Best time to launch is the bottom of a market(52:56) Why Bitcoin and Ethereum were so slow(57:38) Rebuilding Solana with Alpenglow(1:01:23) 35% of all stablecoin volume runs on Solana(1:04:26) Motors replaced 200 billion jobs, AI will replace 100 billion(1:08:17) It's selfish to protest data centers(1:10:11) Growing up in the USSR: one toilet, four families(1:12:27) Culture shock moving to the US(1:13:23) Government spending is fake GDP(1:15:49) Playing competitive underwater hockey(1:18:01) Armani at Backpack(1:19:23) How Solana survived the FTX collapse(1:22:47) There won't be massive AI job lossReferencedSolana: https://solana.com/Jobs at Solana: https://jobs.solana.com/companies/solana-foundation-2Slow Ventures: https://slow.co/Foundation Capital: https://foundationcapital.com/Multicoin: https://multicoin.capital/Follow AnatolyTwitter: https://x.com/toly?lang=enLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anatoly-yakovenkoFollow TurnerTwitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovakLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovakSubscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/

Thanks to a US-led boycott, the first Olympics hosted by a communist country has long been a big black hole in our knowledge of the Olympics -- until now.  On this episode, we're joined by author Tommy Phillips, who wrote The 1980 Moscow Olympics: A Day-by-Day History. His book captures all of the major happenings at these Olympics, which were dominated by the USSR and East Germany. These countries' athletes dominated with skill and athleticism....and also maybe thanks to doping and some clever help along the way.  We talk with Tommy about some of the wilder hijinks at play during the Games, as well as which nations benefitted from the US and its boycott allies not being at these Olympics. Get your own copy of Tommy's book at our bookshop.org storefront (affiliate link).   For a transcript of this episode, please visit http://flamealivepod.com.   Thanks so much for listening, and until next time, keep the flame alive!     *** Keep the Flame Alive: Obsessed with the Olympics and Paralympics? Just curious about how Olympic and Paralympic sports work? You've found your people! Join your hosts, Olympic aunties Alison Brown and Jill Jaracz for smart, fun, and down-to-earth interviews with athletes coaches, and the unsung heroes behind the Games. Get the stories you don't find anywhere else. Tun in weekly all year-round, and daily during the Olympics and Paralympics. We're your cure for your Olympic Fever! Call us: (208) FLAME-IT. ***     Support the show: http://flamealivepod.com/support Bookshop.org store: https://bookshop.org/shop/flamealivepod Become a patron and get bonus content: http://www.patreon.com/flamealivepod Buy merch here: https://flamealivepod.dashery.com Hang out with us online: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flamealivepod Insta: http://www.instagram.com/flamealivepod Facebook Group: hhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/flamealivepod Newsletter: Sign up at https://flamealivepod.substack.com/subscribe VM/Text: (208) FLAME-IT / (208) 352-6348      

1 Hour and 52 MinutesPG-13Dr. J. Otto Pohl received his PhD in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has taught at the American University Iraq Sulaimani, University of Ghana, and American University of Central Asia. He is the author of Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937–1949 (Greenwood, 1999), The Stalinist Penal System (McFarland & Co., 1997), and The Years of Great Silence The Deportation, Special Settlement, and Mobilization into the Labor Army of Ethnic Germans in the USSR, 1941–1955 (Columbia University Press, 2022). His articles have appeared in, among other journals, The Russian Review, Journal of Genocide Research, Human Rights Review, and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism.This is a combination of two episodes:Episode 1062: Who Was the Most Persecuted Group Under the Soviet Regime? w/ J. Otto PohlEpisode 1166: An Overview of the Soviet Regime Pre- and Post-War w/ J. Otto PohlThe Years of Great SilenceDr. Pohl's SubstackDr. Pohl's PatreonDr. Pohl's TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

The CIA handed a retired cop two coordinates off a map—no name, no country. He shut his eyes and read back the secret site's classified code name—from his couch.For 23 years the CIA really trained psychic spies—but when two scientists graded the work, did the data say remote viewing worked, or fall apart?I dig through declassified CIA files from Stanford Research Institute, where physicists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ trained Pat Price, Ingo Swann, and Joe McMoneagle.I follow a cop who named a secret Soviet base from a map coordinate, an artist who swore Jupiter had a ring, and a viewer who drew a submarine the agency said couldn't exist.Topics (among others):The Believer and the Skeptic: A statistician and the man who exposed Uri Geller graded twenty years of data — and agreed on everything but one word.The Physics of It: Why distance didn't matter, and whether the real answer is precognition.The Honest Reckoning: What survives when you go back and actually read the files.

Everyone has an opinion about the late Russian historian Richard Pipes. Some loved him. Many hated him. He was a conservative and anti-communist. A hardliner on American policy toward the Soviet Union. Some would even say he was a Russophobe and cultural essentialist. But Pipes was a far more complicated figure. A Polish Jew whose family fled before the Nazis arrived, Pipes possessed a strong moral center that stood at the heart of his rejection of the USSR. He eventually applied his vision to his work as a Russian historian at Harvard. Pipes was also at the ground floor of a new academic discipline. He studied under Michael Karpovich, the founder of Russian studies in the US, and was part of a grad cohort that included Russian history Brahmins Leopold Haimson, Marc Raeff, Martian Malia, and Nicholas Raisonovsky. All these men would staff history departments at Berkeley, Harvard, and Columbia, and train a generation of scholars. Pipes knew his stuff, and eventually applied his knowledge in public debate and advice to the Reagan Administration. Pipes was a man of the 20th century, and in my opinion, one of the last serious intellectual conservatives. So who was he? How did he “know” Russia? And in what ways does his historical analysis of Russia, which spanned centuries, echo today? The Eurasian Knot spoke to Jonathan Daly, a former Pipes student, about his new biography of Pipes, The Man Who Knew Russia, and what drove this self-identified perennial outsider. Also, check out my article “Richard Pipes, the Historian as Essentialist” published in Jacobin in 2018.Guest:Jonathan Daly teaches Russian, European, and world history at the University of Illinois Chicago. He's the author of several books, most recently he edited Pillars of the Profession: The Correspondence of Richard Pipes and Marc Raeff and wrote The Man Who Knew Russia: Richard Pipes, Humanist and Cold Warrior published by Stanford University Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Liza Libes is defending literature like it's under siege, and after this conversation, you will understand why. Liza went to Columbia wanting to study Tolstoy and came out having read more Edward Said and Sartre she signed up for. We got into how her English degree turned into a theory degree overnight, why Anna Karenina isn't the feminist manifesto her professors taught it as, and why so much of what gets published now has had the backstory and the beauty edited right out of it by agents chasing a formula. Liza's family fled the Soviet Union, and her grandfather was imprisoned for being Jewish. Watching that same ideology resurface in new packaging on American campuses is terrifying. Find Liza at PensandPoison.org She also runs Advictus Prep and is shopping her first novel, which is basically a love letter to beauty written in spite of a literary world that's decided beauty is suspect. If you've been meaning to finally pick up that classic on your shelf, this is your sign! Memorable Quotes: "I don't think I met anyone in the English department who had the same reaction... A lot of people I think were actively trying to push this agenda because it had been sold to them." — Liza "Good fiction is inherently moral. That's not to say moral in one specific restricted sense, but good fiction should teach us something about the way to live our lives." — Liza "A lot of our art today is ironic, nihilistic, cynical, and just downright amoral." — Liza "If your response to [boredom in a marriage] is I'm just going to abandon this whole thing that gives everyone meaning, then that is going to lead you to a dark place." — Liza, on Anna Karenina "People will hold onto their identity more than the truth." — Polina, paraphrasing Chase Hughes "My family kind of went through horrific examples of antisemitism twice, just in our personal lives... and it's horrific that it's happening again." — Liza "If you're going to make one change in your life to lead a more full and fulfilling life, read classic literature." — Liza Follow us on Instagram  @thecuriousmiddlepod Our Website: https://curiousmiddlepod.com Email us: thecuriousmiddlepod@gmail.com Substack: https://curiousmiddle.substack.com Episode Time Stamps 04:32 — Arriving at Columbia expecting to study literature, getting Edward Said and postcolonial theory on Jane Austen instead 06:36 — Same pattern outside the English department — a philosophy class teaching Hegel through the lens of BLM, and why she eventually stepped back from academia 08:46 — How Pens and Poison started, and the slow, stuck-at-20K-followers climb before it took off 11:05 — The daily messages from silenced students and aspiring writers — and how the same ideological capture spread into publishing 13:15 — Columbia's Core Curriculum as a partial exception, and why STEM friends noticed the politicization more than English majors did 15:29 — Pausing to unpack just how deep this runs — you can't study literature today without studying Marx 17:39 — Edward Said and the "settler colonist" framing; Sartre's introduction to The Wretched of the Earth 19:57 — More on Sartre's radicalization, Simone de Beauvoir, and the ideas of theirs still taught as fact 22:10 — Derrida, deconstruction, and the postmodern claim that literature has no objective meaning 24:21 — Paulo Freire and how "social justice as the point of education" filtered into every subject, not just humanities 28:55 — Why you don't need to be a humanities major to benefit from literature — it as a stand-in for religious meaning 31:19 — Anna Karenina as a case study: Tolstoy's actual argument vs. balancing tradition with modern life 33:37 — T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the cost of losing ritual, and the case for reading fiction (not just nonfiction) 38:12 — My Year of Rest and Relaxation as an example of fiction that critiques without offering anything — the retreat from beauty and sincerity in "serious" art 40:14 — Does bleak fiction reflect a bleak culture or create one? Introducing her novel-in-progress, inspired by Mann's Doctor Faustus 44:44 — The same pattern in music, art, and publishing; does fiction need a moral lesson, or is beauty enough? 47:06 — Noticing beauty as the theme of her novel, and the one contemporary book she's excited to read — Theo of Golden, rejected by publishers, self-published, then sold millions 49:12 — Why contemporary fiction gets rejected or forced into a formula: word counts, no backstory, action on page one 51:37 — What's lost without backstory or physical description — fiction that never lets you rest with an idea 53:39 — Her own reading habits: rereading Dostoevsky in the original Russian, and why she's wary of new bestsellers 55:44 — Life-changing book #1: Mann's The Magic Mountain and how it reshaped her sense of time 58:06 — Life-changing book #2: Zweig's The World of Yesterday and the loss of creative freedom 1:00:29 — Why so many young people can't name their own values 1:02:41 — How literature classrooms swap out "morality" for ideology without saying so (Anna Karenina as "anti-feminism") 1:04:58 — Othello and The Merchant of Venice taught through one narrow lens instead of the whole picture 1:07:08 — Social justice as a stand-in religion, and the Columbia encampments 1:09:25 — Her family's history: fleeing the USSR on political asylum, her father imprisoned and her great-grandfather killed for being Jewish, and where to find her — Pens and Poison (pensandpoison.org)

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Diana Cucuz about her book, Winning Women's Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (University of Toronto Press, 2023) and also asks her for advice to beginner scholars studying gender and the Cold War. A bit about Dr. Cucuz's book: throughout the Cold War, Soviet citizens had limited access to US life and culture. Amerika, a glossy Russian-language magazine similar to Life, provided a rare exception. Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA), America's first peacetime propaganda organization, Amerika was used to influence the Soviet public and convince women in particular that an American-style consumer culture and conservative gender norms could better their lives. Winning Women's Hearts and Minds relies on USIA archives, issues of Amerika, and American women's magazines such as the Ladies' Home Journal to show how, during the postwar period, USIA officials deployed idealized images of American women as happy, fulfilled, and feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers. 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

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Diana Cucuz about her book, Winning Women's Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (University of Toronto Press, 2023) and also asks her for advice to beginner scholars studying gender and the Cold War. A bit about Dr. Cucuz's book: throughout the Cold War, Soviet citizens had limited access to US life and culture. Amerika, a glossy Russian-language magazine similar to Life, provided a rare exception. Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA), America's first peacetime propaganda organization, Amerika was used to influence the Soviet public and convince women in particular that an American-style consumer culture and conservative gender norms could better their lives. Winning Women's Hearts and Minds relies on USIA archives, issues of Amerika, and American women's magazines such as the Ladies' Home Journal to show how, during the postwar period, USIA officials deployed idealized images of American women as happy, fulfilled, and feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

These series explore the answers to "Where did mr.Putin come from?" What defines his ideology and regime? Why such a specific form of authoritarianism? Some are looking for its roots in the USSR, in Soviet KGB, others - in the criminal world. This third video in the series looks at early life of Putin and changes his regime brought to Russian language thesaurus. Chapter 1: BRIEF THESAURUS OF “PUTINISM”Chapter 2: GANGSTER SWAGGERPutin's young days, gangster influence, explosions in Moscow in 1999 (Gurianova & Kashirka)Chapter 3: ARGENTINE COKERussian embassy to Argentine diplomatic mail cocaine scandal.Chapter 4: RUSSIAN BRANCH OF THE SINALOA CARTELRussian diplomatic organized criminal network. Ambassador Viktor Kelly, deaths in ministry of Foreign Affairs. "Baron von Bossner" & Ivan Bliznyuk of Organization of Russian Orthodox Patrons of Fine Arts in Latin America.Chapter 5: A "NOVICHOK" FOR EVERY KOVALCHUKSkripals Novichok poisoning in Britain.Chapter 6: SKRIPAL AND THE STEELE DOSSIERWhat could make Skripal a target for Putin's regime?Death of FSB General Oleg Erovinkin.Chapter 7: PUTIN'S HOPES FOR TRUMPWhat was driving these failed aspirations?Chapter 8: OFF-SCALE READINGSPoisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London, Polonium and deputy Lugovoi's visit. Not the first time polonium was used.Chapter 9: THE YELLOW FLOWERGelsemium Elegans and death of  Alexander Perepelichny - main witness in Magnitsky case;Putin's traces in Panama Papers scandal.Chapter 10: THE "DOUSHESS" COCKTAIL.Perepelichny was not the first to die of gelsemium. After Winter Olympics in Sochi  there were also Nikita Kamaev (Director of Russian Anti-Doping Agency) and Vyacheslav Sinyugin (chairman of the executive board of RUSADA). Both deaths happened shortly after Rodchenkov fled to US and unveiled the Sochi corruption scheme.Chapter 10: EPILOGUEWhen will the world understand what they are dealing with in face of Putin's regime?Original video created by "Acute Angle": https://youtu.be/KqXM1OCwxDU---------------------------------------------------------------Acute Angle on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/%D0%9E%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%B9%D0%A3%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BB

On this day, 11 July 1989, a huge strike began of miners in the Soviet Union demanding better food supplies, cleaner working conditions, adequate housing, better care of the environment in mining areas, and rights to share management of the mines.In March, two brief strikes occurred at the Lidiieka and Kirov mines in Donbass, Ukraine. In July a much bigger strike began in both the Donbass and the Kuznetsky basin in Western Siberia. Within a few days, the strike had grown to 100,000 workers, and threatened to become a general strike when sympathy strikes began.Most miners had returned to work by July 25, after officials agreed to most of their demands. These included more meat and soap, rights to share management and profits in the industry, and increases to pay, vacation time and other benefits.More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7730/soviet-miners-strikeOur work is only possible because of support from you, our listeners on patreon. If you appreciate our work, please join us and access exclusive content and benefits at patreon.com/workingclasshistory.See all of our anniversaries each day, alongside sources and maps on the On This Day section of our Stories app: stories.workingclasshistory.com/date/todayBrowse all Stories by Date here on the Date index: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/dateCheck out our Map of historical Stories: https://map.workingclasshistory.comCheck out books, posters, clothing and more in our online store, here: https://shop.workingclasshistory.comIf you enjoy this podcast, make sure to check out our flagship longform podcast, Working Class History

https://youtu.be/1Fjm6P43i8k Anastasia Golovko, President and CEO of Tino Digital Agency, is helping businesses build user experiences that work by creating intuitive digital experiences that simplify complex systems and improve the way people interact with technology. By combining strategy, design, and engineering, she helps startups, enterprises, and organizations in highly regulated industries deliver products that people actually enjoy using.  In this conversation, Anastasia introduces the Agency Growth Framework: Build Relationships, Find What’s Broken, Help Your Team Flourish, Nurture Creativity, and Offer Your Customers Relief. She explains why trust is the foundation of lasting client relationships, how identifying user friction creates immediate value, and why empowering creative teams leads to better products and stronger business outcomes. Anastasia also shares how eliminating user friction through live UX audits accelerates business growth, improves customer satisfaction and conversion rates, and demonstrates the importance of user experience in government digital services. — Build User Experiences That Work with Anastasia Golovko  Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Anastasia Golovko, President and CEO of Tino Digital Agency, a team of experts specializing in helping companies and startups achieve their goals by providing comprehensive solutions in strategy, design, and engineering. Anastasia, welcome to the show.  Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.  Well, it’s very interesting that you combine strategy, design, and engineering. I have not seen this combination before. So where does this come from?  The foundation for all of this is user experience and the connection to the user that we’re trying to build for many companies. As soon as you start thinking about the user and their experience, they get to enjoy the product more and more, and they get to find the buttons that the clients want them to find in their product.  Okay. So basically, you have to have a strategy first, then you come up with a design, and then you engineer it. Yeah.  The design supports the strategy, and then you have a good product.  Exactly. We also work with startups, and we work with established companies. With startups, we encourage them to reach the market as fast as possible so that they get to prove their hypothesis. Because up until it reaches the customer and starts getting feedback from the customer, it’s all in numbers. It’s all in the… But it’s still a hypothesis of how it will perform. The sooner we’re there—with as few features as possible, while still being valuable—the better. Some clients call it an MVP, and some clients call it a Minimum Lovable Product. Then they can start getting feedback, and those relationships start building between the final user and the product. Yeah, that makes sense. And Lovable is actually also a vibe coding platform, isn’t it? Yeah.  Yeah. That’s right. Maybe that’s where it comes from—that you can get a lovable MVP very fast with vibe coding. So let me start by asking you, what is your personal “why,” and how are you manifesting it in Tino Digital Agency? I recalled such a wonderful story that I want to share with everyone from my childhood. I was born when it was still the USSR. I’m originally from Ukraine, and when the USSR fell apart, everyone was poor. When I was 13 years old, I remember talking to my friends and saying, “When I grow up, I’m going to drive a Jeep Grand Cherokee.” They completely mocked me. They said, “That’s impossible.” I remember that question to this day: “Do you even know how much money that costs? Have you ever seen that much money?” My brain just flipped a switch. I thought to myself, “That’s just money.  It can be made.” Money is there to be made. That mindset, I think, separated me from my childhood friends by giving myself permission to dream big without limitations. Just like somebody dreamed about sending a car to space, they gave themselves permission to think that up. So, ironically, I ended up owning a Jeep Grand Cherokee. We had it for 10 years. A while ago, there were floods in Houston, and the Jeep Grand Cherokee has very good ground clearance, so we were able to get through them.  After I got that car, I remembered this conversation from back in the day. So we started our agency with zero capital and zero connections. Without growing into connections here, that created a set of blocks. So we were attracted to subcontracting for top agencies in LA, Silicon Valley, and Switzerland. Eventually, we landed a massive contract with one of the top Swiss banks, modernizing their digital products as well as rethinking their strategy toward the younger generation. That was my wake-up call. I realized, “Wow, we’re incredibly good at this.” The Swiss bank had such high standards that we had to fit within their branding. They couldn’t rebrand just because we thought something up.  We had to fit into their tight branding and produce a good product within those guidelines. It made me look around the States and realize that—I had already lived here for more than half of my life—we have so much anxiety around finance and healthcare. After that moment, I decided to move our company in those two directions. Maybe our team can actually reduce that anxiety and make a real dent in the well-being of the nation—the well-being of the people who interact with products that are convenient, don't add to the problem, but instead resolve it and make it intuitive.Share on X  Yeah. That’s great. I never heard the combination of finance and healthcare phrased this way—that both of them are a big source of anxiety for people. And if you can fix their problems in these areas, then you can actually reduce their anxiety and increase their well-being. That makes perfect sense. I also love the example of, you know, “what the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve” kind of thing. Visualization is very powerful. It worked in my life as well.  So this is a podcast about frameworks. It’s called Management Blueprint, and what I’m looking for is some kind of, it could be a mental model. It could be some kind of process. Something that simplifies the world and allows you to see things more clearly, make better decisions, or create a bigger impact. So what comes to mind?  I love this question. I love this question, and I love viewing the answers from your other guests to this question, and how everybody approaches it differently. For different people, it is their own world that they built. So, in our world, first, we build relationships. No cold calls. We build these relationships with our clients and with our team.Share on X The digital agency market is oversaturated with low-quality providers who sign the client, then disappear for four weeks, come back, and drop a product that doesn’t relate at all.  Then they come to us. Some of our clients come to us and say that the agency disappears. It’s really important for us to stay in contact. So our first step is building these in-person relationships. That also means visiting conferences, visiting events, showing up wherever it’s needed—before, during, and after the process as well. So I think what we do by building relationships is that we sell trust, not just the code or the design.  Of course. Yeah, that makes sense. In this AI age, when there’s so much noise. When you’re online, you don’t know what’s real and what’s not. But when you meet someone in person at a conference, then you know they’re a flesh-and-blood human being. Yes. And also, describing to a person that user experience is important, that I can do it, and that I do it really well doesn’t really give them value. Rather than just telling them, I can look through the site face to face and find certain things that are broken right there on the spot. It’s not a simple presentation. It’s already proof of my value. So that helps. So that’s first. The next one is the human element. The human element of the team. Our designers and developers are not machines. Each of those teams needs its own approach. They need their own conditions to flourish.  They need their own conditions to be successful. If we keep a creative person locked into FinTech, compliance-driven products for too long, they’ll burn out. It’s two-faced. We try to avoid that as much as possible, but we consider what they’re telling us. We listen. If a designer tells us something isn’t working out, or they’ve hit a creative block, we try to rotate them, give them different exercises, give them a break, and so on. So, listening and rotating. Rotating between different types of projects. But whenever the FinTech project comes back, we need the FinTech team to work on it.  So at this point… Sorry, I have a clarifying question. The previous point was helping your team flourish, basically. By rotating them, is it about helping them gain more experience, not burn out, or create more ideas? So what’s behind this idea of rotating?  It’s the creativity that for it to exist, it needs different challenges. Let’s imagine a FinTech dashboard. It’s tables. It’s tabular. It’s a similar task that they’re solving. They’re solving how to convert tabular formats into digestible formats. Converting tabular formats into something that the user can comprehend quickly. With a food delivery app or a calorie-tracking app, they get to add more colors, use different styles, and solve a different problem. So I think that when they get to solve different problems, they keep their full creative potential.Share on X  Yeah. You’re not allowing them to fall into a rut and just go on autopilot, basically.  Not everyone. Not everyone. We mainly listen. We listen, and whenever we hear the signs that a person is asking for something more creative, we do that. Happy humans build great products.  Yeah, that’s true.  And we’re a service company. Our team is our main advantage.  All right. So you build relationships, you find what’s broken, you help your team flourish, you stimulate or nurture their creativity. So what’s next? What’s the last piece of the puzzle? Is there another piece of the puzzle, or is that it?  Yes. The next step is to provide relief. We could be building everything for everyone, but over time—my company is 10 years old now—and over those 10 years, we became really good at turning something that is complex or heavily regulated. For some reason, clients know that it has to be intuitive. To be competitive, it has to be convenient. Sometimes it’s in industries where they have a lot of competition. Whoever is more convenient for the client will move forward. Not for the client—I mean, for the final user.  Apple philosophy. Yeah. So, to be a relief, to be their right hand, we need to be looking for companies that are undergoing some changes. Maybe it’s a digital transformation. Once, we completed a merger for companies that were providing hosting and security. They merged into one. They needed all of that infrastructure to be brought together. Their internal teams were too busy doing their internal tasks. So for that overhaul, that digital transformation, we come in as a relief squad with the skill to make it intuitive. So we can call it becoming a reliefShare on X Offering relief.  Yeah.  Yeah. It’s a mindset, really. It’s thinking about, “How can I make these people’s lives easier? can I help them do their work better, with less mental strain and less cognitive load?”  And for them, in the end, it’s for their users as well. I often say that we build experiences that work. Every business owner comes up with an idea of what they want their end users to do, but they don’t always find it. They don’t always find it because, somewhere along that chain, there was a UX designer, a UI designer, and a developer who all worked together on that user experience, and something didn’t go right. Typically, with a little bit of data, or just complaints, or just suggestions, the owners and the product owners know what’s not working.  They can see that some registrations aren’t happening, some sign-ups aren’t happening, some applications aren’t being filled out completely, and so on. Some tickets aren’t getting booked. Marketing worked fine, but somehow the carts are being abandoned. Why is my cart being abandoned at the moment when we spend so much money on marketing? We don’t do marketing. We know what marketing is trying to do, but what happened then? So you’re treating the client’s effort as a complex system, and you want to optimize that system so that everything serves the same purpose, it’s simple, and you have a team that keeps improving it.  Yeah. If they have some kind of Google Analytics or Hotjar analytics, it’s always easier to put a number to the words. We can say that this user experience is broken because the consumer is overloaded at the cart. Maybe you’ve seen those shopping carts where there’s a timer, additional upsells, and also some additional decisions they have to make, whether they want insurance or not, and so on. It becomes very overloaded. Sometimes people just close it. It’s too much. So we look at the cart and see how it can be improved to be more pleasant.  Yeah. That’s great. That’s fantastic. So, switching gears here a little bit, what drives growth in your particular business?  That’s what I actually started to talk about. I now realize that this friction audit, UX review, UX evaluation—that gives immediate value. It is the foundation of our business growth.Share on X The thing is how it’s delivered. If I present it in a room and talk about user experience, how it’s important, and how to lay things out, the perceived value is hard to communicate. It can sound abstract unless we’re talking about something specific. Our real growth driver is a live, maybe casual, friction audit.  For example, at a recent conference, a business owner asked me to look at her website. Right there on my phone, I pointed out a few specific UX blocks that were delaying the purchase. I was like, “Look here. Every second user is delayed. They’re drifting away. They have to make two extra clicks to get where they need to be. This click is not necessary. You can remove it. You can place it here instead.” Control dropped. She said, “That’s exactly what I needed.” When business owners see exactly where they’re losing money in real time, that value is undeniable. So you go to these conferences, then you talk to people, they show you their website, and you point out a couple of friction points. Immediately they see, “Wow, you guys could fix that.” That already is value. Then, probably, if you found two friction points in two minutes, if you dive deeper, then you’ll find a lot more, right?  Yeah. That is the ultimate path, which we don’t always take. We can only go to so many conferences and have so many of these conversations. But the opportunity to have that conversation is where the most growth comes from. That’s the optimal way to grow—by showing, not just telling. We definitely have a good presence on the platform for designers called Dribbble. If you search on Dribbble for finance or FinTech products, you'll find me. That already speaks to our experience.Share on X  But this kind of conversion of experience into value for our clients, for those business owners, that’s an add-on. That doesn’t come from a pretty picture. I have many pretty layouts, and those who understand user experience can see it, but that’s not always the case. To understand user experience, you have to have experience. You have to be in that area. Typically, that’s for repeat entrepreneurs. A part of our clients are serial entrepreneurs who keep opening businesses. They can’t stop opening businesses. I think when you’re in that mindset, it’s hard to stop.  Yeah. Some people are good at starting companies, and other people are good at building companies and growing them.  Yeah.  So what’s one thing, Anastasia, that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business right now? I’m actively trying to figure out how to get into the government space—government contracting. That’s a whole different animal. To get a government contract, one of the rating criteria is previous government experience. Today, it’s 2026. Every agency has a website. It means they have a vendor. It means they’ve had a vendor, or somebody has a preferred group of vendors, and so on. Large companies are taking a big part of that market. The market is oversaturated.  Somebody comes in and does a website for dirt cheap, and it’s not good. Not always, but we’ve seen it. We’ve been trying to break into our local market in the city near where I used to live. They had an RFP for a website. I thought, “Oh, I wish I could do that. I know them so well.” But another company came in with a lower offer. I think the website became worse than it was before.  You know, there’s a big gap between commercial company websites and government websites. You try to pay a bill to the government, like taxes, and there are a million clicks. It’s so complicated, and it doesn’t have to be. I can totally relate to this. I say, “Why don’t these people fix this up?”  And I think it partially comes from one of the points that I was making before. It’s that understanding user experience and understanding the value of it isn’t a given. It’s not something that existed a while ago.  That was not one part of the rubric when they evaluated the offers. Exactly. It has to match the existing system. It has to transmit data. It has to be ADA compliant. But nowhere does it say that it has to be convenient for the users.  Yeah.  And we can quantify it. We can gather a user group, gather their feedback, and so on. So right now, on Monday, I’m doing a demo for our first nearly completed government contract. That client actually prioritizes user experience, and she asked, “Could we possibly do user testing with my actual users?” I cannot tell you how much I love that question. Just the fact that she prioritizes that is exactly what we do.  Yeah. Well, you bring a lot of passion to solving problems, and I love that. So if you had a magic wand to fix one thing inside your company in the next 12 months, what would that be?  Being the person who’s always trying to fix something—and in my family, it’s great that I have my business, because otherwise I’d be going around fixing them. Yeah. Yes. My husband would be just enough. So I think the first thing would be to focus on our team and make sure they're always heard. That they get the time they need. That they get their problems resolved on time by senior leadership, by HR, or by whoever is needed.Share on X I’ve noticed several situations where that’s been postponed, or the person doesn’t speak up, or they see that I’m busy, someone else is busy, and they just think, “We didn’t want to bother you.”  Then there comes a point where they’re not happy. That’s too late. We don’t want them to become unhappy. So if I had a magic wand, I would make sure that my team is heard. That’s the most important thing. Once they’re heard, then we can see if it’s solvable, if it’s not solvable, and so on.  Yeah. That’s very important because, ultimately, you said that you want a happy team. Because a happy team does great work. If people feel heard, they’re going to be happier and deliver.  And if somebody’s selling widgets, it’s the equivalent of saying, “I want my widget to be perfect.” For my widget to be perfect… Because we test for skill before we hire, so they already have the skill. They already have good teamwork. I think the environment that we’ve built is already there. We have those foundations for them to be able to apply themselves properly. But then, what if something happens along the way?  Yeah. Love it. I love this human-centric approach that you take—not just for your team, but also how you look at the human user experience, the people, to improve the lives of your customers by designing good products.  Yeah.  So if someone would like to take advantage of your services, or they have some friction that they want to alleviate, or they’re a government agency and they figure, “Well, maybe these guys down in Houston can help us,” where can they reach you, and how can they connect with you personally? It’s very easy. Tino.design is our website. There, you can schedule a call with me. Just choose any time on my calendar and speak with me or my right-hand person. Alexander is also available. Whichever time is more convenient, we can just have a conversation and see whether we can help or not. Okay. So you heard Anastasia Golovko, President and CEO of Tino Digital Agency, down in Houston. She really cares about your company, your user experience, and making sure your people aren’t frustrated using your technology. If you liked what you heard, reach out to them. Check out Tino.design. Book a call. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow us on YouTube, give us a review on Apple Podcasts, and stay tuned because every week we have an exciting entrepreneur come and share their best-kept secret framework with us. So thanks, Anastasia, for coming, and thank you for listening. Thank you, Steve. Important Links: Anastasia's  LinkedIn Anastasia's  website

The Cambridge Five did more damage to the Western Bloc than any other intelligence outfit of the Cold War. They were five Cambridge graduates who drank gin at the right clubs, moved through the right corridors of British intelligence at the height of WW2, and quietly handed Stalin the keys to post-war Europe. Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and John Cairncross were recruited for their sympathies to communism because they were radicalized by the wreckage of World War I and the Great Depression. They believed that Soviet communism was the only serious answer. The Five each quickly took up a place in the British government, granting them access to top-secret intelligence that they shared with the USSR, whether decrypted German intelligence obtained from Alan Turing’s Bletchley Park and the Wehrmacht’s latest troop movements, or nuclear designs fresh from Manhattan Project labs. What followed was decades of betrayal so consequential it shaped the entire postwar map of Eastern Europe. They did this not just by passing secrets, but by condemning millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Albanians, and Baltic peoples to Soviet repression when their underground resistance networks were quietly handed over to Moscow. Today’s guest is Antonia Senior, author of Stalin's Apostles, and she explains how she pieced together a story that was designed never to be found, because moles don't leave paper trails, and the Cambridge Five made sure their communications rarely entered any correspondence at all. We see that they did more to cause the Iron Curtain to descend deep into Europe than any other intelligence group.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During the Cold War all eyes were on the Space Race between the US and USSR. But there was another, overlooked race too and it went in the opposite direction. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The war in Ukraine is very close to exploding into Europe, including the cities where your kids are taking a semester abroad. No one in the West seems to be paying any attention at all. A warning from Viktor Bout in Moscow. (00:00) The Escalation in Ukraine (15:27) What Is the Motive for a War With Russia? (26:05) Is This a Religious Conflict? Why Are Civilians Sent to the Frontlines? (31:27) Why Does Zelensky Not Want an Election? (50:08) How Many Have Died in This War? Viktor Bout is a Russian entrepreneur and public figure. He was born on January 13, 1967, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, which was then part of the USSR. After serving in the Soviet Army, he trained as a military interpreter specializing in Portuguese. He worked in his field in Mozambique, Southern Africa. Since 1992, he has been engaged in business activities related to intercontinental air transportation. In 2008, he was arrested and extradited to the United States, where he was held until 2022. With the assistance of the Russian diplomatic mission, he was returned to his homeland. He later became involved in public service and was elected as a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Ulyanovsk Region. He is married and has a daughter. Paid partnerships with: Ethos: Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/TUCKER American Financing: NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 800-685-5696 for details about credit costs and terms. Visit http://www.AmericanFinancing.net/Tucker. Defend: Enter code "Tucker" for 20% off your purchase at https://defendcellcam.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last time we spoke about the battle of Zhongtiao Mountain. On 7 May 1941, Japan launched a three-front assault on the Zhongtiao Mountains, striking multiple axes and using paratroopers to disrupt Chinese command. On the northeastern front, Wu Shimin's 98th Army scored a success at Wangcun, routing about 2,000 attackers. Elsewhere, three-pronged Japanese forces drove south toward Yuanqu with overwhelming artillery, armor, and coordinated movement. During the first night, paratroopers found the Chinese headquarters already disordered: orders were unclear and communications with most units collapsed. By 8 May, the First War Zone could no longer coordinate; armies fought alone. From mid-May into June, Japanese units swept the mountains, manning river crossings to block retreat and eliminating pockets. Surviving Chinese formations escaped or regrouped south of the Yellow River, but the three-year Zhongtiao defensive system was destroyed in about twenty days, sharply worsening Japan's strategic situation in northern China.   #208 Operation Plus: The Road to the Second Battle of Changsha 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. In the autumn of 1939, Japanese forces under General Yasuji Okamura launched a major offensive aimed at capturing Changsha — the gateway to China's interior and one of the most important cities still under Nationalist control. The First Battle of Changsha ended without a decisive Japanese victory. Chinese forces, anchored by the Ninth War Zone under General Xue Yue, managed to repel the advance, inflicting significant casualties and preserving the city. It was a notable achievement at a time when Japanese arms had swept across vast swathes of Chinese territory, and it reverberated through both the Chinese military establishment and the watching international community. Following the Japanese withdrawal, Chiang Kai-shek convened the Second Nanyue Military Conference to carry out a thorough assessment of the battle and to plan for the period of relative calm that would follow. The conference sought to answer several pressing questions: What had worked in the defense? Where had coordination broken down? How could the period of Japanese inactivity be used most productively? Chiang made it clear that this respite was not to be wasted. Commanders of all the major war zones were simultaneously expected to serve as governors of their respective provinces, ensuring unity of military and civilian command. Chiang himself set an example by personally assuming the governorship of Sichuan Province and focusing attention on that province's production and reconstruction efforts. The conference produced broad directives for the reconstruction of war-zone provinces and the intensification of military training. For Hunan, responsibility for implementing these directives fell on the shoulders of General Xue Yue, who had emerged from the First Battle of Changsha with greatly enhanced prestige and authority. The reason Changsha and Hunan more broadly attracted such persistent Japanese attention was geographical and logistical. The Yuehan Railway — running from Yueyang in northern Hunan down through Changsha and south toward Guangzhou — was one of the most important transportation arteries in China. Whoever controlled it could move troops, equipment, and supplies across vast distances with speed and reliability. Opening up the Yuehan line would, in Japanese strategic thinking, effectively connect their forces in Central China with those in South China, allowing for a gradual tightening of the strategic noose around Chiang Kai-shek's wartime capital at Chongqing in Sichuan Province. Hunan was therefore not merely a defensive problem for the Chinese; it was a strategic prize that Japan would inevitably seek to take. Xue Yue, whose headquarters were in Changsha, was well aware of this logic. With the First Battle of Changsha behind him and the province in need of recovery, Xue Yue turned his attention to governance. He was not content to wait passively for the next Japanese offensive. He believed that a province that was economically productive, administratively disciplined, and politically stable would provide a far more durable foundation for military resistance than one that was disorganized and demoralized. At the beginning of his tenure as effective governor of Hunan, Xue conducted a thorough survey of the province's situation and then articulated a philosophical framework for his administration in the form of a "three-character policy," consisting of three guiding principles: "Peace"  (an), "Convenience" (bian), and "Sufficiency" ( zu). In Xue's formulation, "Peace" meant that the population should be able to live, work, and conduct their daily affairs free from fear and disruption. "Convenience" meant that policies should benefit the people, the nation, and the war effort simultaneously — eliminating bureaucratic obstacles and inefficiencies. "Sufficiency" meant achieving adequate levels in all essential areas: enough soldiers, enough food, and enough wisdom in leadership. These seemingly simple principles were elaborated into extensive implementation guidelines. The announcement of this framework immediately sparked debate across Hunan's intellectual and administrative community. Veteran officials and scholars were divided. Some praised the policy as a clear and practical framework for wartime governance. Others dismissed it as hollow wordplay, offering nothing new or substantive. A minority was more sharply critical, warning that if such superficial philosophizing was all Xue could offer, the province would decay into warlordism. Undeterred by the criticism, Xue Yue built upon the three-character framework with a set of "Six Policies" for governing the people of Hunan: "Benefiting the People, Raising the People, Educating the People, Protecting the People, Managing the People, and Utilizing the People." Each of these six principles came with specific implementation targets and performance metrics, designed to be measurable rather than aspirational. This second round of policy announcements generated yet another wave of debate, but Xue pressed forward with implementation regardless. From the beginning of 1940, Xue vigorously pushed for the expansion of agricultural and industrial production across the province. His approach was comprehensive and at times uncompromising. He approved funds for the reconstruction of the Zhongshan Road National Goods Exhibition Hall in Changsha — which had been destroyed in the catastrophic Changsha Fire of 1938 — and by February 1940, 114 shops had reopened there. In March, he approved the "Eight Measures for the Construction of Sheds in Changsha," drafted by the Changsha Municipal Police Bureau, which relaxed housing regulations and helped address the severe shortage of accommodation for the city's residents, who had largely fled or been displaced during the fire and the Japanese offensive. One of the more creative initiatives of this period was the Ninth War Zone's order requiring all troops stationed in Hunan to cultivate a certain amount of farmland in their spare time, growing grain to supplement military rations. Local residents came to refer to the plots tended by soldiers as "soldier's fields" (bing tian). This policy served a dual purpose: it reduced the logistical burden of feeding the garrison forces from civilian stocks while keeping soldiers productively occupied during lulls in fighting. It also served to maintain a degree of goodwill between the military and the rural communities on which any prolonged resistance ultimately depended. One of the most consequential steps Xue Yue took to stabilize Hunan's governance was an aggressive campaign against corruption. On April 15, 1940, he ordered the execution of Tian Weizheng, the county magistrate of Changsha, and Wang Lun, the county magistrate of Xiangtan, both on charges of corruption and abuse of office. The proclamation accompanying the executions was blunt: "This serves as a warning against corruption and establishes the authority of the law in upholding discipline." The message was not lost on officials across the province. In the months that followed, a sweep of investigations led to the punishment of numerous corrupt officials and illegal businessmen. The effect on public confidence in the provincial government was significant. Citizens and soldiers alike perceived that there was now a leadership willing to hold its own accountable — a stark contrast to the corruption and self-dealing that had plagued Chinese provincial governance throughout the war. Xue was also attentive to the ideological dimension of the war effort. On May Fourth Youth Day — itself laden with nationalist significance, commemorating the great student movement of 1919 — Xue attended the provincial capital's sports meet and delivered a speech before thousands of young people entitled "Iron Youth, Iron Spirit, Sacred Labor, Sacred Survival." The speech was aimed at galvanizing the younger generation, connecting their personal futures to the fate of the nation and the resistance against Japan. That same month, in May 1940, the 110th executive meeting of the Hunan Provincial Government revised and approved the "Hunan Province County Heads Performance Evaluation Method," a document that formalized military service and support for the war effort as the primary criterion in the evaluation of local officials' political performance. Throughout 1940, the provincial government and the Ninth War Zone organized a series of training courses for officials, including courses specifically designed for guerrilla cadres, women cadres, and village chiefs — an indication that preparations for sustained, decentralized resistance were underway. Xue himself addressed the cadre training group with a speech on "The Conditions That a Well-Rounded Cadre Should Possess." By the end of 1940, after more than a year of sustained effort, Hunan had broadly recovered to the administrative and economic condition it had enjoyed before the Changsha Fire, when the reformist official Zhang Zhizhong had governed the province. Agriculture, industry, and commerce all showed measurable improvement over their wartime lows. The government's accounts for the year reflected growth across all sectors. This recovery was not merely statistical; it represented a genuine rebuilding of the province's capacity to sustain a prolonged defense. Soldiers were better fed and equipped, local officials were more disciplined, and the civilian population had a functioning, if still imperfect, relationship with the wartime state. Early in 1941, Xue Yue's reputation had grown to the point where local gentry and public figures jointly petitioned for a bustling street in Changsha to be named after his courtesy name — a mark of genuine popular esteem unusual for a military governor in wartime China. While Xue Yue was rebuilding Hunan, events at the geopolitical level were reshaping the strategic environment in ways that would directly precipitate the Second Battle of Changsha. On September 27, 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, formally joining the Axis powers. The pact alarmed the Western democracies and accelerated their support for China. On December 2, 1940, the United States Congress passed a bill approving a one-hundred-million-dollar loan to China. On December 10, 1940, Britain followed suit, approving a ten-million-pound loan. Both measures were explicitly understood — by all parties — as responses to Japanese expansion and Japan's recognition of Wang Jingwei's collaborationist puppet government in Nanjing. For the Japanese military leadership, these loans signaled that the international community was not prepared to accept Japan's fait accompli in China, and that the war of attrition against the Nationalist government could not be allowed to continue indefinitely. The imperative to resolve the "China Incident" — as Japanese officials euphemistically called the war — before the international situation deteriorated further became more urgent than ever. On January 16, 1941, the Japanese Army adopted the "Long-Term Operational Guidance Plan for China." The document acknowledged a painful internal contradiction: Japan could only sustain a protracted war in China, yet it simultaneously demanded a swift resolution to the conflict through strong military pressure. The plan's solution to this contradiction was to intensify operations while "taking note of the international situation" — meaning that military actions should be calibrated to avoid triggering direct American or British intervention. The plan called for large-scale offensive operations in the summer and autumn of 1941. The companion document, the "Annual Plan for Showa 16 (1941)," was more specific. It required Japanese troops stationed in China to conduct a major operation in the summer and autumn of that year with the aim of dealing a heavy blow to the main force of the "Whampoa Military Academy" — the term used by Japanese planners to describe the core of Chiang Kai-shek's professional officer corps, trained at the Whampoa (Huangpu) Military Academy and regarded as the backbone of the Nationalist army. The stated goal was to destroy the Chongqing government's will to continue resistance and thereby force a resolution to the China Incident. Xue Yue himself read translated summaries of both these documents when he traveled to Chongqing to report on his work in early 1941. He returned to Hunan in a reflective, and determined, frame of mind. For much of the period between the two Battles of Changsha, the Japanese Eleventh Army — the primary force facing Xue Yue's Ninth War Zone — had been commanded by General Yasuji Okamura, a seasoned officer with whom Xue had developed a degree of familiarity through combat. By early 1941, it became known that Okamura was to be transferred to the Military Advisory Council at Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo — a prestigious but more removed role. Xue Yue reflected on this change with a mixture of relief and characteristic self-confidence, reasoning that whoever replaced Okamura would be a new adversary to be dealt with on the battlefield, and that there was no reason to lose to him regardless. Korechika Anami received his appointment as commander of the Eleventh Army on February 15, 1941. From the first day of his appointment, he carried a detailed battle map of the three provinces facing his command — Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi — along with comprehensive intelligence files on both sides' troop dispositions and strengths. He studied these materials constantly, on trains, in waiting rooms, wherever he had a free moment. By the time he formally took up his post on March 10, 1941, he already had a clear operational vision for the coming campaign. Before reaching the front, Anami stopped in Nanjing to meet with General Hata Shunroku, the Commander-in-Chief of the China Expeditionary Army. Hata had himself arrived in China in early 1941, having been summoned by the Emperor before his departure and entrusted with what the Emperor called the sacred mission of resolving the China Incident. The two men talked through the night, their conversation returning repeatedly to the planned summer-autumn offensive. Hata urged Anami to annihilate the main force of the Ninth War Zone in the area south of the Miluo River — to destroy, once and for all, the core of Chiang Kai-shek's best troops. "If this battle is fought well," Hata told him, "the entire war situation in China will undergo a huge change." Anami listened and agreed, though he had his own reasons to want the battle to go well. He had voluntarily relinquished the prominent position of Vice Minister of the Army at General Headquarters in Tokyo to take this field command — a significant personal sacrifice that reflected his deep desire for battlefield achievement. There was a personal dimension to Anami's motivations as well. His second son, a bright and lively boy to whom he was deeply attached, had died in combat in China. Anami carried a photograph of his son wherever he went, and had resolved to transform his grief into a consuming commitment to military excellence, whatever the human cost. At the Eleventh Army's headquarters in Yueyang, Anami found the war game board and operational plans that Okamura had left behind. He did not immediately begin issuing orders. Instead, for weeks he immersed himself in the problem, traveling between divisional headquarters and subordinate commands to gather ground-level perspectives, or sitting alone for hours before the great map, motionless and in deep concentration. His new chief of staff, Kinoshita Isamu, who had come from a divisional unit and was unfamiliar with his commander's temperament, could only keep silent company during these long sessions. When Anami eventually convened his headquarters personnel to explain his operational intentions, he made a pointed critique of the First Battle of Changsha. "The reason why the last battle in Changsha did not achieve great results," he said, "was that the troops were too dispersed and the main direction of attack was not highlighted, so they could not form a strong impact and lethality." He named the new operation "Operation Plus" — a deliberate contrast with what he saw as the subtracted, diluted efforts of the previous campaign. His concept was one of radical concentration: rather than dispersing the attack across multiple fronts in Hubei and Jiangxi while simultaneously advancing on Changsha, Anami proposed pulling the forces from southern Hubei and northern Jiangxi and massing them in front of northern Hunan. The effect on his staff officers when he demonstrated this redeployment on the map was electric; one of them involuntarily exclaimed aloud at the sudden clarity of the advantageous position that mass concentration would create. Anami's personality was, in the judgment of those who worked with him, fundamentally different from Okamura's. A commander's fighting style is shaped by his character, and Anami's character was defined by intensity, focus, and a willingness to commit fully. These traits would shape "Operation Plus" from conception to execution. On June 22, 1941, five and a half million German troops launched Operation Barbarossa — the largest military invasion in history — against the Soviet Union. The news reached the Japanese military establishment with a degree of surprise, since such a momentous operation should, under the terms of the Tripartite Pact, have been communicated in advance. Beyond the procedural slight, German strategists had placed themselves in the position of fighting a two-front war, something Japanese generals found strategically bewildering. The outbreak of the Soviet-German War forced a serious debate within the Japanese General Staff. One faction argued for a "northward advance" — seizing the opportunity to strike the Soviet Union from the east while its military was fully committed in the west. Another faction argued for a "southward advance" — moving into Southeast Asia and the Pacific to secure the oil and raw materials that Japan desperately needed. Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe adopted a wait-and-see compromise, authorizing secret preparations for war in the north known as Operation Kantokuen while continuing to monitor developments. Now it just so happens I released a Patreon/Youtube Members exclusive episode covering Operation Kantokuen the previous month. I highly recommend it, fascinating what if piece of history. For just a teaser I can briefly summarize it: Operation Kantokuen — officially designated "Kwantung Army Special Maneuvers" — was Japan's plan for a large-scale invasion of the Soviet Far East, developed in the summer of 1941 following Germany's launch of Operation Barbarossa. When news of the German invasion reached Tokyo, Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka and senior Kwantung Army officers argued Japan should abandon its neutrality pact with the USSR and strike in coordination with Germany. An Army-Navy compromise on June 24th allowed preparations to proceed so long as they did not interfere with Japan's concurrent southern ambitions. On July 5th, Matsuoka and Major General Shin'ichi Tanaka convinced War Minister Hideki Tojo to back a more ambitious scheme, and the two men then bypassed the War Ministry entirely, securing Emperor Hirohito's personal authorization. The plan was structured in two stages — a buildup and readiness phase followed by an offensive phase — during which the Kwantung Army would await an explicit order to attack. The Army General Staff calculated that any campaign had to conclude by mid-October before Siberian winter conditions made logistics impossible. Their ideal force requirement was 16 to 22 divisions supported by 800,000 tons of shipping, though this assumed the Soviets would first redeploy half their Far Eastern infantry and two-thirds of their armor westward against Germany. The planned order of battle ultimately settled on 24 divisions — 17 committed to the eastern front and 5 concentrated near Mutanchiang. The opening blow was designed to fall on the Primorye (Maritime Province) front. The 1st Area Army, commanding the 3rd and 20th Armies along with elements of the Korea Army, would cross the border south of Lake Khanka to shatter Soviet defensive lines and menace Vladivostok. Simultaneously, the 5th Army would strike south of Iman to cut the Trans-Siberian Railway and isolate the Maritime Province from northern reinforcements. In the north, the 4th Army would hold the Amur River line before pivoting to attack Blagoveshchensk, while two additional reinforced divisions would invade Northern Sakhalin in a land-and-sea pincer. A second phase envisioned capturing Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk, and Sovetskaya Gavan, with amphibious operations considered against Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Kamchatka itself. The operation was to be supported by a massive air assault — between 1,800 and 2,700 aircraft combining Army and Navy aviation — aimed at annihilating the Soviet Far East Air Force in the opening hours, after which Japanese air power would shift to tactical ground support and interdiction of Soviet supply lines. Armored assets included roughly 800–900 tanks, mostly Type 97 Chi-Has and Type 95 Ha-Gos. Kantokuen was also allocated chemical weapons stockpiled in Manchuria and biological agents produced by Unit 731, intended for deployment against Soviet rear areas and supply lines. Despite the scale of planning, the operation was already fatally compromised before it could be launched. Japan's industry and logistics could not sustain a two-front war while remaining bogged down in China. On August 1st, 1941, the United States enacted a total oil embargo that cut off 80% of Japan's fuel supply, and the Dutch East Indies followed. With oil reserves sufficient for only 12–18 months of peacetime consumption, a Siberian offensive that would consume an estimated one to two million barrels per month was no longer tenable. By August 9th, the Army General Staff conceded that seizing the oil-rich territories of Southeast Asia was the overriding strategic priority. The Kantokuen buildup was formally terminated, and Japan turned south — setting the course toward Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War. Now Kantokuen held some practical consequences for the China Expeditionary Army was disruptive. Serious consideration was given to redeploying units of the Eleventh Army away from their positions facing Hunan and northward toward Manchuria, in anticipation of a possible war with the Soviet Union. This threatened to derail Anami's planning entirely. The cloud of uncertainty hung over the Changsha operation for several weeks. Despite the disruption, Anami refused to let the operation be indefinitely deferred. On June 24, 1941 — just two days after Barbarossa began — he formally approved the operational guidance outline for the Changsha offensive and set a planned launch date of September 15. This was an act of deliberate institutional pressure: by formalizing the plan so quickly in the wake of Barbarossa, Anami made it harder for higher authorities to redirect his forces northward without explicitly cancelling a plan already in motion. The gamble worked. The northward deployment option was ultimately shelved, and the Eleventh Army remained in place to conduct its summer-autumn offensive. While Anami and his staff at Yueyang bent over their map of Hunan, so too did Xue Yue and his staff at Changsha. Two nearly identical colored military maps were laid out on large tables in two different command centers — one in Chinese, one in Japanese — showing the same terrain of Hunan, southern Hubei, and western Jiangxi. The Xiang River appeared on both as a green ribbon; Dongting Lake as a blue maple leaf. For those responsible for commanding the impending battle, the war game was the battle, played out in simulation before blood was shed. Xue Yue, his Chief of Staff Wu Yizhi, Chief of Staff Zhao Zili, and the intelligence and operations officers of the Ninth War Zone Command engaged in extensive map exercises throughout the summer of 1941. Wargaming pieces bearing unit designations moved across the terrain as staff officers reported troop strengths, timings, and geographic objectives. The summer heat was intense, and there was nowhere cool in Changsha; Xue and his staff worked in the heat, sweating heavily as they played out scenario after scenario. It was during these sessions that Xue came to believe he had grasped the essential shape of the Japanese plan. Reasoning from the known Japanese strategic posture and the pattern of the first battle, he concluded that the enemy would again advance roughly the same way. His counter-strategy was as follows: in northern Jiangxi and southern Hubei, the war zone would launch pincer attacks on Japanese forces that were not part of the main offensive, targeting the area north of Chongren and Xingan, east of Yichun, Wanzai, Tonggu, and Xiushui, to defeat them in detail. In northern Hunan — the main theater — the war zone would deliberately allow the Japanese to advance, luring their main force south of the Miluo River into the area north of Jinjing, Fulinpu, and Sanjieqiao, and then launch a devastating counterattack to encircle and annihilate them. After a successful counterattack, Xue imagined pursuing the broken Japanese forces all the way back to Yueyang, and beyond — even, in his more expansive moments, recapturing the great cities of Jiujiang and Wuhan, lost in 1938. This was the "lure and annihilate" strategy, and it was not merely a hope — it was the formal operational order issued to the forces of the Ninth War Zone. In August 1941, the Ninth Military Front officially assessed that Japan intended to capture Changsha and obtain supplies, and the lure-and-annihilate plan was formalized accordingly. What Xue Yue did not know — and could not know through his intelligence network alone — was that Anami's operational philosophy was fundamentally different from Okamura's. The critical assumption underlying the lure-and-annihilate plan was that the Japanese would attack in roughly the same dispersed, multi-front pattern as the first battle. Anami's "Operation Plus" invalidated this assumption entirely. By concentrating his forces in front of northern Hunan rather than dispersing them, Anami would strike with an impact Xue's cordon defenses were not designed to absorb. Xue was, unknowingly, planning to fight a replay of the first battle against an opponent who had studied that first battle as a case study in what not to do. Despite this fundamental intelligence gap, the Chinese were not without information. From mid-August 1941 onward, residents of mountain villages and riverside communities in northern Jiangxi and southern Hubei began reporting unusual nighttime activity. Faint sounds of motor engines and the footsteps of large columns moving on main roads were heard after dark. On moonlit nights, fleets of motorboats were seen moving without lights on the rivers, visible only as dark shadows on the water. The local population was puzzled and unsettled: what kind of unit was this, and what were they doing? The answer was that Anami's forces were conducting their pre-offensive assembly under cover of darkness and strict light discipline, moving four divisions totaling approximately 120,000 troops into position for the attack on Hunan. Military and civilian intelligence agents operating in these areas crouched in the bushes, enduring insect bites through long nights, watching and recording everything they witnessed. The information was relayed by human chain, passed from one agent to another across a network stretching back to Changsha, until it was collated and placed on Xue Yue's desk by staff officers from the Ninth War Zone Command's Intelligence Department. Xue studied the reports carefully, comparing them against his map. The evidence of a large Japanese build-up in northern Hunan was unambiguous. But Xue was suspicious of its implications. "Mobilize troops? All the troops are moved to northern Hunan. What about Tongcheng? What about Yueyang? Impossible! Feint? What does that mean? You want me to concentrate my troops in northern Hunan so you can attack from both sides?" His staff officers were similarly uncertain how to read the intelligence. The scale of the Japanese concentration defied the pattern of previous operations, and Xue's trained instincts — calibrated against years of dealing with Okamura — led him to doubt what his intelligence was plainly showing. He concluded, without firm evidence, that the concentration must be a feint or a deception. On August 26, 1941, Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo issued Mainland Order No. 538, which authorized the Commander-in-Chief of the China Expeditionary Army to "temporarily conduct operations beyond the designated operational area in Central China during the summer and autumn." This order provided the formal imperial sanction for the Changsha offensive, lifting any remaining bureaucratic constraints on Anami's operational plan. It represented the final piece of institutional authorization, completing a chain that stretched from Anami's June 24 approval of the operational outline through Hata's advocacy at the China Expeditionary Army level to the formal imprimatur of the Imperial General Headquarters. With Mainland Order No. 538 in hand, the Eleventh Army's final preparations could proceed without ambiguity. The original planned launch date of September 15 would in practice be moved forward, with combat beginning on September 7 — itself a date chosen partly to maximize the advantage of late-summer weather conditions in the Hunan river-crossing terrain. By the time Anami's forces were assembled, the operational force was formidable. Estimating that the enemy facing them comprised fifteen divisions from the Chinese 4th, 37th, 99th, 74th, and 26th Corps, Japanese planners calculated — somewhat optimistically — that two infantry battalions would suffice to handle one enemy division. To provide a margin for error and to ensure decisive striking power, the Eleventh Army committed forty-one infantry battalions distributed across four full divisions and three specialized task forces, supported by twenty-nine artillery battalions. This represented a massive concentration of firepower and manpower along a relatively narrow axis of advance, precisely as Anami had intended. The objective was clearly stated: "to deal a major blow to the Ninth Military Front in order to thwart the enemy's plan for resistance." Japanese senior leadership reiterated at every briefing that the mission was emphatically not territorial — the army was not to occupy Changsha or secure it for long-term administration, and it was not to forage for supplies. The goal was destruction of Chinese combat power. On the Chinese side, the Ninth Military Front had not been idle. Since the Battle of Shanggao in March 1941 — a significant Chinese defensive victory in Jiangxi that had inflicted heavy casualties on Japanese forces attempting to advance into the province — the Ninth Military Front had ordered its troops to cooperate with guerrilla units operating in the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi border region, conducting harassment operations against Japanese logistics and communications. This cooperation served both to maintain offensive pressure and to train the irregular forces that would prove invaluable in a war of attrition. By August 1941, Xue Yue had assembled a force of thirty-five divisions organized into thirteen armies across three army groups, totaling 378,307 troops. The headquarters of the Ninth Military Front remained in Changsha. Xue had also assessed his forces' combat readiness with some confidence: in the summer of 1940, the Ninth War Zone had dispatched one corps from each army group and one division from each corps on summer offensive operations against Japanese positions, explicitly testing their readiness in real combat. Although no major victories had been achieved in those operations, the exercise confirmed that troop morale was high and that combat effectiveness had recovered to the level of the First Battle of Changsha. If anything, Xue thought, after another full year of training, they should be better. 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. Operation Plus, emphasized concentrating forces and creating a decisive breakthrough rather than dispersing attacks across multiple fronts like in earlier battles. On the Chinese side, commander Xue Yue developed a "lure and annihilate" strategy, expecting the Japanese to fight like before; however, Anami's concentrated approach undermined these assumptions, making a Chinese counteroffensive far harder to execute.

June 26, 1948. After the USSR closes off road, rail, and water routes to West Berlin, the Western Allies begin an ambitious operation to deliver supplies by air. Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free listening and more. History Daily is a co-production of Airship and Noiser.Go to HistoryDaily.com for more history, daily.

In the middle of the twentieth century, the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons seemed inevitable. The number of countries with nukes was climbing rapidly, and the idea of stopping the nuclear arms race seemed like a pipe dream.  But that's exactly what happened. Over the course of 60 years, nations around the world agreed to nuclear red lines, slowdowns, and even disarmament. How did this happen? Largely because of technology.  The biggest obstacle to agreeing on nuclear red lines was that adversaries couldn't trust any promise the other made. They needed to know the number of warheads, the amount of enriched uranium, or whether a nuclear device was for a weapon or a power plant. None of that was possible until we built the tech needed to verify those things.  Today, we're in a similar situation with AI. For adversaries like the United States and China to agree on reasonable AI red lines on issues like bioweapons, cyber hacking, or the risk of recursive self-improvement, they first need to be able to trust each other. We urgently need to build the verification technology that would make that trust possible.  In this episode, Tristan sits down with two experts in this field to discuss the kinds of verification technology we need for AI, the challenges of building it, and the world it could unlock if we do. Tim Fist is the Director of Emerging Technology Policy at the Institute for Progress, and Janet Egan is Senior Fellow and Deputy Director for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for New American Security. Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. You can find a transcript of this episode on our Substack. RECOMMENDED MEDIA Anthropic's open letter warning about recursive self-improvement and calling for a pause in development. The website for the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) Further reading on the different mechanisms of verification for international AI governance.   RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES America and China Are Racing to Different AI Futures Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake The Crisis That United Humanity—and Why It Matters for AI Daniel Kokotajlo Forecasts the End of Human DominanceCorrection: Tim referred to the CargoScan technology as being jointly developed by the US and the USSR. It was actually developed solely in the US and administered in Soviet nuclear facilities.    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Serhii Plokhy details that Khrushchev's decision was driven by the USSR having only five or six ICBMs capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. By deploying medium-range R-12 and R-14 missiles to Cuba, he sought to balance the threat from American Minutemen. He appointed General Pliyev, despite the general's poor health, because he needed a commander capable of defending the island from a potential ground invasion. Newly tapped KGB records reveal the inhuman secrecy of the transit. Soviet units, unfamiliar with the tropics, faced significant technical obstacles, like mismatched electrical frequencies, making their survival a "heroic deed." (3)1915