From Gabriella Hoffman, the daughter of Soviet immigrants, two gems.
If they could laugh in the face of Soviet Russia …
This is hilarious! I can totally relate as a daughter of Soviet immigrants – Yakov Smirnoff ~ Very funny: youtu.be/5GK8ewRec7c via @youtube
— Gabriella Hoffman (@Gabby_Hoffman) December 2, 2012
Awww. Miss you, Ronnie!...
Having spent a fair amount of time in the late 1970s and early 1980s studying and traveling in the Soviet Union (where all goods were moved to market on roads paid for by the government, too), I really appreciate both the humor and substance of this post by Karoli, 34 glorious, American years:
In 1977,...
We’ve seen this before, at the celebration of Obama’s victory in 2008, where students unfurled the Soviet flag in celebration. I chalked that up to profound historical ignorance, much like the chic wearing of Che Guevara and Mao t-shirts.
The carrying of the Soviet flag at the Occupy Philadelphia protest, by contrast, more likely...
So e-mails reader and commenter KC_MRBB KC_MRBB, with a link to the video below, referring to my prior post The “Richest 5%” Are The New Kulaks from October 27, 2008.
Related: The Revolt of the Kulaks Has Begun
Today marked the 70th commemoration of the Nazi massacre of 33,771 Jews in September 1941 at the Ukrainian ravine at Babi Yar.
I visited the site in 1978, at which point a monument had been erected at the site.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s 1961 poem, which was not officially published in the Soviet Union for...
It is with sadness that I read of the passing of Yelena Bonner, the wife of Andrei Sakharov, at age 88 in Boston. The story is at CIF Watch, Yelena Bonner – Courageous Jewish Leftist:
I have read several obits for Yelena Bonner, who died in Boston on June 18th at age...
…
“You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the USSR, yeah”
It was just a
song. But to Brian Leiter, a law and philosophy professor
at the University of Chicago who frequently takes swipes and swings
at conservatives, it had a
ring of truth to it:
“I should add, of course,...
That is a name I had not heard in decades.
When I studied in the Soviet Union many of the East European students loved the group Boney M and were surprised that none of the Americans in our group had heard of it. To them, Boney M was supposed to be one of the...
I traveled extensively throughout the Soviet Union during the early 1980s, both with groups and on my own approved itineraries. I also lived in Moscow, and had a chance to slip out of the ring road with Soviet friends into the countryside, which was not permitted for foreigners without official approval.
My assessment...
When the story broke last June about the arrest of 10 Russian sleeper agents, none of whom seemed to be in a position to do any real damage, many people laughed at the supposed ineptitude...
The Stuxnet malware apparently was designed to damage or destroy industrial system controllers of the type used in Iran’s nuclear program.
It is too early to assess what, if any, damage has taken place in Iran because of the secrecy of the Iranian regime. Based on the delay of...
I originally linked to this in the sidebar (via It Don’t Make Sense), but have promoted it front and center because if ever there were a reason to fear government, this creepy video of Chevy VOLT dancers and...
There is a must read article at City Journal by author Claire
Berlinski, A
Hidden History of Evil – Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread
Soviet archives?:
In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic...
One of the perks of being a big time blogger (hah) is that sometimes people send me stuff for free. As in a free copy of Zev Chafets’ biography of Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One.
Which now occupies a hallowed place on my bookshelf next to two of my favorite autobiographies...
In 1940, the Soviet Union executed 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, Russia.
The mass grave was discovered in 1943 by invading German troops,
but the Soviet propaganda machine create the
mythology that the massacre was committed by the Nazis:
In late 1943, as the Red Army began to recapture...
