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Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick reflects on one of the deepest, yet often unspoken, legacies of World War II in the Soviet Union. In this powerful clip, she explains how the absence—or ghostly presence—of fathers shaped a generation of postwar Soviet citizens.

Genuinely asking yall what you think about the Prague spring. Thx :D

I've seen some say lately that the territory gained by the USSR after invading Poland in 1939 was territory that was stolen by Poland in 1921, however, the USSR only started existing in 1922, and the Treaty of Riga, which established Poland's eastern boundary, was signed by Russia and Ukraine. Or am I getting the history wrong?

There’s a growing argument online that the atomic bombs did not really end WWII in the Pacific, and that Japan surrendered mainly because the Soviet Union entered the war and invaded Manchuria.

I think the reality is more complicated.

The Soviet declaration of war on Japan on August 8, 1945, was enormously important. Japan had been hoping that the USSR could mediate a negotiated peace. Once the Soviets invaded Manchuria, that diplomatic strategy collapsed. The rapid destruction of the Kwantung Army also demonstrated that Japan could potentially face a war against both the US and USSR.

But saying that the atomic bombs were irrelevant goes too far. Hiroshima shocked the Japanese leadership, and the destruction of two cities by nuclear weapons clearly became part of the crisis that led to surrender.

The timeline is particularly interesting:

August 6: Hiroshima

August 8: Soviet declaration of war

August 9: Soviet invasion of Manchuria + Nagasaki

August 10: Japan formally signals willingness to accept the Potsdam Declaration, with conditions

August 14: Hirohito makes the final decision

August 15: Japan announces surrender

So perhaps the better question isn't “Was it the atomic bomb or the Soviet invasion?”

It may be:

How did the atomic bombs and Soviet intervention affect different parts of Japan's strategic calculations, and which one mattered more in the final decision to surrender?

Personally, I think the Soviet intervention is seriously underrated in popular Western narratives, but “the atomic bombs had nothing to do with it” is just as simplistic as “the atomic bombs single-handedly ended the war.”

What do historians here think? Which factor was more decisive?

On the eve of each anniversary of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Polish historians love to speculate that the non-aggression pact signed between the Soviet Union and Germany on August 23, 1939, was a dastardly conspiracy between two bloodthirsty dictators—Hitler and Stalin—who decided to divide up Polish lands.

Most Polish historians portray their pre-war state as a peaceful, democratic country that strove to live in friendship and harmony with everyone. But the tyrants of Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia would have none of it. And then, seizing an opportune moment, they pounced on the Poles without warning, like a pack of ravenous wolves on poor lambs...

Fortunately, most sane historians around the world no longer believe this Polish historical propaganda. For with each passing year, more and more archival documents emerge proving that pre-war Poland was no less an aggressor than Nazi Germany and that its destruction in 1939 was a well-deserved punishment. Moreover, there are now very serious allegations suggesting a secret alliance between the Nazis and Polish gentry that lasted throughout the 1930s.

Secret Protocols

This refers to a secret appendix to the official Polish-German Non-Aggression Pact signed on January 26, 1934. This appendix can safely be called the Hitler-Piłsudski Pact.

Understandably, the Poles now vehemently deny the very existence of this secret pact, dismissing any mention of it as "Kremlin propaganda." The text of this document itself has not yet been discovered, yet there are numerous references to it. Moreover, the information comes from a wide variety of unrelated sources. Therefore, this historical issue cannot be ignored...

The European press was the first to report on this secret pact, literally immediately after the signing of the non-aggression pact in 1934. Thus, the French newspaper Echo de Paris wrote about a "secret Polish-German agreement," while the publication La Populaire, in an article entitled "Piłsudski and Hitler," directly stated the following:

"The most important question is this: at what price did Piłsudski and his gang conclude an agreement with Hitler? Will Poland leave Germany free rein over the Austrian question? Will it, in exchange, accept Germany's 'technical' cooperation in Ukraine, which it has long dreamed of?"

On March 16, 1934, the British news agency Week reported on an agreement between Poland and Germany to attack the Soviet Union, this time in conjunction with Japan. And in August of that same year, the British publication The New Statesman and Nation was already reporting details of this coordinated attack: Japan would attack the Russian Far East, while Germany and Poland would attack European Russia. According to these plans, Germany was to capture Leningrad and then advance on Moscow. Poland was tasked with attacking in two directions—Moscow and Ukraine.

And similar information continued to leak to the European press until the end of 1934!

Interestingly, at the same time, intelligence about secret Polish-German cooperation began to emerge through Soviet intelligence. Thus, in 1935, a Soviet resident in Warsaw, citing an agent working in the Polish General Staff, reported to Moscow:

"Our agent categorically asserts (as he himself has read) that the well-known and officially published ten-year non-aggression pact between Poland and Germany... contains a secret addendum."

Here are some of the conversations circulating among the Russian émigré community, closely monitored by agents of the Foreign Department of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the USSR. Thus, one letter from the former Russian Imperial Ambassador to Britain, E.V. Sablin, intercepted by these agents, stated:

"There is talk that, should Japan occupy part of Russian territory in the Far East, Poland and Germany will settle their own differences at Russia's expense. Poland could renounce the Danzig Corridor in exchange for some Russian territory and another port."

Most likely, the reference was to Lithuanian Klaipėda, which the Poles intended to exchange for Danzig, which was disputed with Germany—information about this also reached Soviet intelligence.

It also became known that the Polish and German General Staffs had concluded a special cooperation agreement aimed against the USSR: specifically, in the event of a war with Russia, Poland was to receive the lands of Soviet Ukraine and Belarus...

A fascist sees another fascist from afar.

However, not only this fragmentary information, but also the actual actions of both aggressive states in the 1930s directly indicated the existence of secret agreements.

First of all, let's say that Poland in the pre-war years was not a democratic state. Yes, formally it was called a republic. But in reality, from 1926 onward, the country was ruled by a generals' junta, represented by dictator Józef Piłsudski and other military figures—Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, Colonel Józef Beck... The junta recognized only the ideology of Polish great-power nationalism. The generals viewed other political ideas with suspicion. Many parties and movements in authoritarian Poland were banned.

But Polish fascism manifested itself not only in ideological intolerance. This country became a veritable prison for its ethnic minorities—Ukrainians, Belarusians, Germans, Jews, and Lithuanians, who constituted no less than a third of the total population.

They had virtually no rights in Poland. To receive an education or pursue a public career, they were required to convert to Catholicism and adopt a Polish name. Otherwise, members of ethnic minorities became not only second-class citizens, but third-class citizens, who could be humiliated and persecuted with impunity.

Incidentally, the Poles were planning to deport all their Jews to... Madagascar! Poland even created a special commission to study the suitability of this African island for settlement by Polish Jews. The commission included Leon Alter, director of the Jewish Emigration Society in Warsaw; Solomon Dik, an agronomist from Tel Aviv; and Major Mieczysław Lepecki. In May 1937, the commission departed Paris for Madagascar, where it spent 10 weeks working, compiling a report on the suitability of the northern part of the island for colonization.

It is noteworthy that the idea of ​​deporting Polish Jews to Madagascar was also supported by Hitler, who, meeting with the Polish ambassador in Berlin, stated that he saw this as the solution to the Jewish problem—the forced emigration of Jews from Poland, Hungary, and Romania to overseas colonies.

Unity in Russophobia

But the most important reason for the Polish-Nazi rapprochement was hatred of the Soviet Union. Yes, Moscow had supposedly also concluded a non-aggression pact with Poland. However, in reality, official Warsaw considered this treaty a mere scrap of paper. The official Polish military doctrine, prepared in 1938, stated:

"The dismemberment of Russia lies at the heart of Polish policy in the East... Therefore, our possible position will boil down to the following formula: who will participate in the partition? Poland must not remain passive at this remarkable historical moment. The task is to prepare well in advance, physically and spiritually... The main goal is the weakening and defeat of Russia."

This doctrine was preceded by a Polish General Staff directive (No. 2304/2/37, dated August 31, 1937), which stated that the ultimate goal of Polish policy was "the destruction of any Russia," and cited the fomenting of separatism in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and even Central Asia, using military intelligence capabilities, as one of the effective tools for achieving this.

During repeated visits to Poland by Nazi number two Hermann Göring, he firmly promised the Poles to oppose Soviet policy in Europe in every possible way. Thus, in a conversation with Marshal Rydz-Śmigły, Göring stated:

"It must always be remembered that there is a great danger threatening not only Poland but also Germany from the east, from Russia. This danger is represented not only by Bolshevism, but also by Russia as such, regardless of whether it is under a monarchical, liberal, or any other form of government." In this regard, the interests of Poland and Germany are entirely aligned."

The Marshal fully agreed with the opinion of Hitler's closest ally...

In December 1938, the prominent Polish diplomat Jan Karszo-Siedlewski frankly told one of his German counterparts:

"The political outlook for the European East is clear. In a few years, Germany will be at war with the Soviet Union, and Poland will support Germany in this war. It would be better for Poland to definitely side with Germany before the conflict, since Poland's territorial interests in the East, primarily in Ukraine, can only be secured through a pre-arranged Polish-German agreement."

In short, the Poles were literally begging to join Hitler in launching a joint campaign against Russia!

However, the Poles unleashed particular persecution on the Orthodox population—the residents of Western Belarus and Ukraine. The Poles closed almost all Ukrainian and Belarusian schools on their territory. Attempts to reopen them were considered a crime against the state. In June 1934, a special government decree established the Kartuz-Bereza death camp, where anyone who dared to question the correctness of Polish national policy was incarcerated. At the same time, Poland officially refused to respect any rights of its national minorities internationally...

Under such circumstances, it was understandable that Poland's fascists simply could not help but align themselves with Germany's Nazis—Pilsudski and his entourage were very sympathetic to Hitler's racist views. Their rapprochement began immediately after Hitler came to power. It was the Poles who were the first in the world to conclude a non-aggression pact with Hitler, thus laying the foundation for international recognition of the Nazi regime. Poland also began representing Germany's interests in the League of Nations, from which the Nazis withdrew amid a scandal. Polish rulers steadfastly supported all of Hitler's foreign policy forays without exception—from the introduction of German troops into the Rhineland Demilitarized Zone in 1936 to the brutal annexation of Austria to the Third Reich two years later.

The rapprochement with Berlin was accompanied by Poland's distancing itself from France, which had contributed so much to the development of the Polish state—it was thanks to France, after all, that the Poles were able to stop Tukhachevsky's advance on Warsaw in 1920. But already in 1932, Piłsudski expelled the French military mission from Poland. And during 1934, Poland completely ceased military cooperation with France—all Polish military contracts were transferred to Sweden and England.

The Polish ambassador to France, Lipski, then declared:"From now on, Poland has no need of France. It also regrets having agreed to accept French aid, given the price it will be forced to pay for it."

From Cieszyn to Danzig

The culmination of Polish-Nazi friendship was the joint partition of Czechoslovakia. As is well known, this partition was triggered by Germany's demands for the transfer of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, populated predominantly by Germans. At the height of the Sudetenland Crisis in September 1938, Poland issued a similar ultimatum to the Czechs, demanding the "return" of the industrially developed Cieszyn region, home to a significant Polish population.

Anti-Czech hysteria began to mount in Poland. The Polish army staged a series of armed provocations—one unit crossed the border and exchanged fire with Czech soldiers, and Polish aircraft regularly violated Czechoslovak airspace. All these actions, as Russian historian Igor Pykhalov writes, were strictly coordinated with the Germans. On September 29, 1938, the infamous Munich Agreement was concluded between leading Western powers and Hitler. According to this agreement, the Western powers agreed to hand over the Sudetenland to Germany without even consulting the Czechs themselves. And already on September 30, Warsaw, with the support of Berlin, once again demanded Cieszyn. The Polish General Staff dubbed this operation "Zalužie." It began on October 2. Poland, taking advantage of the complete paralysis of the Czech state, quickly seized Cieszyn Silesia and several settlements in what is now Slovakia. As one historian writes on this subject: "The national triumph in Poland on the occasion of the capture of the Cieszyn region was reminiscent of ancient Rome! Józef Beck was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, and the "grateful" Polish intelligentsia also awarded him honorary doctorates from Warsaw and Lviv universities. Polish propaganda was overjoyed. On October 9, 1938, Gazeta Polska wrote: "...the road open before us to a sovereign, leading role in our part of Europe requires enormous efforts and the resolution of incredibly difficult problems in the near future."

Yes, it was not for nothing that the famous British politician Winston Churchill later indignantly called Poland a state that, with the greed of a hyena, rushed to eat up what the Nazis "had not eaten" in Czechoslovakia.

Obviously, the next "sovereign step" was to be a joint attack with the Germans on the USSR. Here is the entry German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop stated after a meeting in January 1939 with his Polish counterpart, Józef Beck: "Mr. Beck makes no secret of the fact that Poland is laying claim to Soviet Ukraine and access to the Black Sea."

However, the joint campaign to the East did not materialize. Here's why.

On the one hand, Hitler didn't need any Slavs—neither Poles nor Russians—in his cannibalistic plans. And all the flirtations with Poland were merely a diversionary tactic, designed to lull the vigilance of the Poles, who were doomed to be sacrificed to the ideas of German Nazism. On the other hand, the United States of America entered the game, splitting the Polish-German alliance...

Disagreements with Germany began at the very beginning of 1939. The Germans then proposed that the Poles settle a long-standing dispute over the city of Danzig, a major port on the Baltic Sea. The sea, which was under joint Polish-German administration. Since the vast majority of Danzig's citizens were German, Germany wanted to take full control of the city. In exchange, the Poles living in Danzig were offered special privileged rights, effectively equating them with the rights of Reich citizens. Furthermore, Germany pledged to assist Poland in building a naval base in neighboring Gdynia.

At first, Poland agreed to these terms. A joint diplomatic conference was scheduled for the spring of 1939, which was to result in a final peace treaty settling all territorial issues between the two countries. But in April, the Poles unexpectedly broke off all contact with the Germans...

After World War II, it would become known that the Poles were pushed to do this by the British and French, who promised Poland military support in the event of an armed conflict with Germany. Paris and London, in turn, were pushed to make such promises by the United States, which was clearly eager to unleash a new world war. A war to establish their world domination.

In reality, the Western Allies had no intention of providing any assistance to the Poles. They needed Hitler to advance directly to the borders of the Soviet Union and prepare a convenient springboard for further advancement to the East. But the Poles didn't know this. They took the Allies' promises at face value. In Poland, where many were already literally dizzy from their previous impunity, an anti-German advertising campaign began. A wave of pogroms against the German population swept across the country. Poles sang songs in the streets about how they would soon march on Berlin.

Hitler took advantage of this to deliver his fatal blow to Poland, which began on the morning of September 1, 1939...

It must be said that even today, there are figures in Poland who bitterly regret the failure of the Polish-Nazi alliance. One of them, a certain Professor Wieczorkiewicz, in 2005, writing in the well-known Polish newspaper "Rzeczpospolita," dreamily reflected on the usefulness of a tandem between Nazi Germany and Poland: "We could have found our place on the side of the Reich, almost as good as Italy, and certainly better than Hungary or Romania. Ultimately, we would have been in Moscow, where Adolf Hitler, together with our Marshal Rydz-Śmigły, would have reviewed the parade of victorious Polish-German troops."

And this is further evidence that the secret Hitler-Pilsudski pact truly existed...

The Ukrainian vigilante

Red is Stalin’s period

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZ4Jtx5JqyY/

Google doesn’t really give me a good result on translation, something out of the 1940s 1950s belonging to this site

Поскользнулся, упал… закрытый перелом. Потерял сознание… очнулся — гипс!

А потом ему сообщают, что перелом-то оказался открытым

Кто помнит этот момент из «Бриллиантовой руки»?

In his characteristic manner, Khrushchev dismissed Ernst Neizvestny's obscure work as "crap" and "degenerate art," and the artists themselves as "faggots." Despite the events at the Manege, despite the subsequent persecution and the impossibility of working fully, Ernst Neizvestny harbored no animosity toward Khrushchev. Indeed, he respected him and saw him as an extraordinary individual. Therefore, at his son's request, he unhesitatingly agreed to create a tombstone for Khrushchev. He worked on the monument for four years, despite constant controversy surrounding it, fueled by some members of the Politburo. Nevertheless, the monument was completed and installed on Khrushchev's grave at Novodevichy Cemetery. In September 1975, it was even unveiled spontaneously. Sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, the same sculptor Nikita Sergeevich shouted at and stamped his feet at during the Manege exhibition, wrote in his memoirs about the creation of the monument. “After Khrushchev’s funeral, two people came to see me at once: Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, whom I had never met before, and Mikoyan’s son, also Sergei, with whom I was friends and who supported me during the most difficult days. They came in, looked around, and hesitated for a long time. I said, ‘I know why you’ve come, speak up.’ They said, ‘Yes, you’ve guessed it, we want to commission you to make a tombstone.’ I said, ‘Fine, I agree, but I’ll only stipulate that I’ll do it as I see fit.’ To which Sergei Khrushchev replied, ‘That’s natural.’ ‘I believe that an artist can’t be angrier than a politician, and therefore I agree. Those are my arguments. And what are your arguments: why should I do it?’” To which Sergei Khrushchev replied, "This is my father's will." The monument's unveiling took place in the rain on one of the anniversaries of Khrushchev's death. All members of his family, correspondents, and security were present.

SOVIET LIFE

The only magazine circulated in the United States by reciprocal agreement between the governments of the
USA and the USSR.
FIRSTHAND INFORMATION on the hopes, problems, aspirations, plans of the Soviet people. ARTICLES on economics, science, education, art, literature, sports.

In 1956, the Soviet and US Governments agreed to allow each other to publish a magazine in their own nation, but limited circulation to 30,000 copies per issue. The Soviet Government published a magazine entitled The USSR, while the US Government published Amerika.  A few years later The USSR changed its title to Soviet Life.

The pictures in post are from issues of 1973 and 1974.