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Which started in a different country. 1991 was a year of clearance. In March, we had a peak of direct democracy — our referendum on the keeping the USSR. And less than half a year later it was flushed down a toilet, proving that democracy is just a word.

Demography is a bitch. It shows that the cost of the disintegration of the USSR just for the Russian Federation was at least 12 million people — including my Father. He could survive his CRF, and he survived 5 heart attacks (well, the Soviet medicine was not that bad). But his second stroke killed him.

The trouble is, I was old enough to remember the USSR when the country collapsed. And I am educated enough to see and understand, what was good then, and what is bad now (admittedly, and vice versa).

However, for those of the so-called intelligentsia and even more so-called liberals, it’s unacceptable to say good things neither about bad old Soviet Union, not about bad now existing Putinite Russia.

I don’t want my country to lose all those good things achieved at the ‘red’ time; I don’t want my country to lose all those good things that are now.

It’s more than enough (for some) to call me all possible names, including a Stalinite, an old Soviet Fart, a Commie, an Internationalist, a Putinite, a Kremlin troll, etc.

However, being a father myself now (my beautiful sons now are 25 and 19), I don’t feel like keeping silence.

I feel like I have a right to give things names as well. It’s my country; it’s my history (and that of my family); it’s my small world and Earth. Just like yours — and if we want our children to survive us, we must talk and reach agreements. We must remember history so that not to repeat life threatening mistakes, and try to improve things that could lead us to a better life.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

Amen.

English Matters

I was lucky enough to get a decent economy education in the College of Afro-Asian Studies of the Moscow State University, still strengthened by my passion for reading cognitive books.

And not only in Russian; following steps of my Granddad, Dad and Mom, I gained quite a good command of English, supported by a certain level of Afrikaans, German and some others.

I didn’t need much time to understand that Russophobic and anti-Russian propaganda had been reigning across mainstream Western media at least since the 16th century, just like anti-Russian sanctions, which can be traced down to at least 1548.

People in Europe (and later in the USA) got so accustomed to the powerful stream of defamatory misinformation and disinformation about Russia that the media didn’t have to spend much effort trying to pervert the Communist ideology under which Bolsheviks tried to make my country the best one in the world.

But that were not Bolsheviks who made the 20th century the bloodiest for my homeland. It was not they who initiated the bloody Civil War. Neither did they start the foreign intervention of the powers trying to overthrow the Bolshevik rule or at least bite some parts of weakened Russia here or there. The UK (together with Australia, Canada, and India), France, Italy, Greece, Romania, the USA sent their troops to young Soviet Russia. So did Japan. So did countries of the beaten in WWI Central Powers, first of all, Germany. Even newly born Finland used its chance to kill the Red (though, the latter did not bother much dividing the White from the Red; they preferred to kill all Russians. Now some Finnish nationalists say the Princedom of Finland within the Russian Empire was way more independent than now, within the EU; but that’s now).

Then, we were made to face the aggression of the European Union 2.0 (taking the Napoleonic version for the first one). They stupidly say it was Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that allowed Hitler to unleash the WW2 — skillfully disregarding all the efforts of the USSR made since about 1934 (by the way, in that year Poland became the first country to make an agreement with Hitlerite Germany) to build up a system of collective safety in Europe. Stalin sought a safety accord with the UK and France till August 1939 but was literally pissed off by the powers.

Well, it’s a long story of lies, bullshit, betrayals and the stuff, which lasts till now. Just some examples.

Reading the well-known book “A Relation or Memorial Abstracted out of Sir Jerom Horsey’s Travels…” (printed in London first early in the 1600-s) we learn that in 1570 Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) came to Novgorod with an army of 30,000 of Tartars (!) and 10,000 Oprichniki, that killed there 700,000 men, women and children.

A terrible blood-thirsty tyrant, isn’t he? Well, he was not soft and kind, but all the population of Novgorod was 30 to 40 thousand people at the time. And the city was suffering from a plague epidemic. The personal death-bill of Ivan IV counted about 2800 people; the full dead count could reach 5000. Is it much? Yes, it is. Does it make Ivan IV the Terrible? No, in no case; European monarchs of Britain or/and France were WAY more bloodthirsty.

This was about 450 years ago. How does it go now? It goes the same way.

A review at The Guardian[42] (or lies — which for the matter coincides now), regarding the movie “Panfilov’s 28” professes:

“Arguments over the upcoming film and the mythology around the episode, in general, began last spring, when Sergei Mironenko, the director of Russia’s state archive, gave an interview stating that while there had indeed been a bloody battle outside Moscow, it was not as many had understood it.

His words provoked such outrage that over the summer the archive posted online a 1948 internal Soviet military report into the events, which came to the conclusion that a journalist from the Red Army’s newspaper had made up the particulars of the story, inventing quotes and ignoring the fact that some of the soldiers had survived and one was believed to have surrendered to the Germans.

The legend was cooked up to fit in with the Soviet demand that soldiers should fight to the death rather than surrender.

Vladimir Medinsky, the culture minister, reacted furiously to the intervention, saying it was not the job of archivists to make historical evaluations, and if Mironenko wanted to change professions, he should do so. Shortly after, Mironenko was fired.”

One can conclude that the imperial culture minister, a sub of the evil deity of Putin, fired a fair archive officer. No doubt, any non-Russian speaking human being would agree. And faiclass="underline" for 1) Mr. Mironenko many times was caught hot lying about our history, and 2) he was retired for having reached the limit age of a state officer, which is 65 years. Moreover, he remained the scientific administrator of the State Archive, and is that now.

Fuck them all.

Call me names, call me a Kremlin troll or whoever, but so far as I live, I won’t keep silent. I am going to deliver the truth.

And fuck the bullshit.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Samarin

My friend Vladimir Samarin lives not too far from the Kremlin and Red Square. As my friend and a subject in my book he also hints at another real motivation for my own vehement support for Russia. Despite his “Soviet” military past though, Vladimir is one of those “ordinary” citizens who step up to become heroes of a war or movement. He’s another of the fascinating people who came from out of nowhere to do battle with the most expensive media empire the world has ever known. They are ordinary people on the one hand, and extraordinary on the other.

But if any of my Russian friends really “blows” my cover, it’s a real Kremlin operative, my good friend Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Stankevich. Stas, as I refer to him, is a former member of Spetsgruppa “A”, also known as Alpha Group, an elite, stand-alone sub-unit of Russia’s special forces.

вернуться

42

Russian war film set to open amid controversy over accuracy of events, by Shaun Walker, The Guardian, November 23, 2016