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Soviet Union Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 03, 2011 9 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 21, 2011 2 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on February 15, 2011 6 Comments

..."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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 30, 2010 8 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 16, 2010 47 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 02, 2010 6 Comments

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 of the Russian secret services, and joked about femme fatale Anna Chapman.I...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 03, 2010 11 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 01, 2010 10 Comments

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 the VOLT song is it.If a camel...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 27, 2010 9 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 24, 2010 3 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 07, 2010 12 Comments

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...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 07, 2010 15 Comments

Jim DeMint (R-SC) famously said that health care would be Barack Obama's Waterloo.But Waterloo probably wasn't the best analogy, in hindsight.Waterloo was a short but decisive battle. The health care fight has turned out to be more like the battle of Stalingrad.The battle of...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 09, 2009 5 Comments

What a great day, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. That symbol of tyranny and oppression fell after decades of U.S. and West European refusal to give in to what at the time was proclaimed by the left to be the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 31, 2009 3 Comments

Dan at Gay Patriot has an interesting post on how Ted Kennedy saved a girl from the Soviet medical system, which could not treat her disease. Fair enough, Teddy saved a girl (I'm resisting the urge to mention ...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 20, 2009 0 Comments

Many, including Barack Obama, have dismissed the notion that Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leader of the opposition in Iran, would make any difference to the policy of Iran since Mousavi, among other things, is considered the father of the Iranian nuclear program, and is steeped...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 19, 2009 4 Comments

Is the collapse of the Soviet Union a reasonable analogy for what may happen in Iran? There are certain parallels, including repressive regimes bent on imposing ideology to perpetuate their own rule. In each case, it is hard to imagine how the repression could end,...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 17, 2009 4 Comments

Oh boy, has this administration become unhinged in its efforts to force through Obama's "bet the farm" economic plans.Rahm Emanuel runs anti-opposition campaigns from inside the White House against Rush Limbaugh to take down the leading opponent of Obama's economic plans. The White House coordinates...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 08, 2009 0 Comments

President Barack Obama's proposal to give up the missile shield program for Russia's help on halting Iran's nuclear weapons program ended badly. The Russians rejected any link. Obama then denied there ever was a link.I have a better idea. Let's propose that we give up...

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