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Putin: Latter Day Stalin, or Hitler? I asked in my last column what Russia's true intent might be regarding its invasion of Georgia, appropriating portions of that country, taking over at least one port city, then allowing looting and murder of civilians, all based on trumped-up claims of protecting its citizens from rampaging Georgians. Other than using Georgia as a military practice round for its next expansion effort, it seems that Russia didn't really get much from the invasion, unless it was a prelude to something larger. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer had an answer right away: the next target is the Ukraine, the gateway to western Europe. Since Krauthammer is one of America's premier commentators on both foreign and domestic affairs, his ability to discern where Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is headed next is well worth considering. (Yes, I know that Putin has a title other than dictator, but we're dealing in reality here. Putin and Putin alone is in charge in Russia which makes him a dictator. Argue with Putin, the former head of the communist secret police and you'll end up dead, which pretty much defines him.) The Ukraine is an historic target of Russian communists. An estimated 10 million residents of that country were starved to death in the 1930s in late communist murderer Joseph Stalin's drive to take over all of Europe. Stalin created a fake famine by drastically increasing the amount of grain the Ukraine farmers were required to donate to the Soviet system, insuring that there would not be sufficient food stores to feed the Ukrainian populace. He enforced that decree using troops and secret police to ferret all who attempted to horde enough to feed their families, killing them when they were discovered. It even was a crime to not be losing weight. Russian communists downplayed the results of the famine, maintaining that "only" six to seven million people died slow, horrible deaths from starvation in 1932-1933, but independent sources have put the ultimate death toll at 10 million. Regardless of the extent of the holocaust that engulfed the Ukraine, the communists gloried in its effects on the population, because it ended resistance to communism. Western news organizations at the time all but ignored the famine in their unceasing drive to portray communism as the one form of government that would truly make everyone equal. The comparison to journalists today is obvious, since many of them are trying to portray the Russian invasion of Georgia as analogous to the US response to Saddam Hussein supporting terrorists building bases in Iraq from which to attack the US. The comments in the mainstream media are so ludicrous they would be laughable if it wasn't for the fact that people are dying. Here are a few comparisons to consider. Georgia did not invade a neighboring country as Iraq did when it attacked Kuwait and subjected its citizens to pillage, rape and murder until driven out by an international coalition. Georgia did not attack its own indigenous population with guns, armor and poison gas as Saddam did to his own people. Georgia did not invite known terrorists into its country to build training camps to attack Russia. Georgia did not provide sanctuary, security and assistance to known terrorist mass murderers such as Abu Nidal and Abu Al Zarqawi as Saddam Hussein did. Georgia did not violate dozens of United Nations resolutions aimed at preventing development of a nuclear weapons program, nor did it violate an oil-for-food program by paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to heads of state and high level officials in countries across the world - including Russia! The truth is, except for those of the communist mindset, there is very little real comparison between Russia's invasion of Georgia and the United States' intervention in Iraq. Not that the truth stops Barack Hussein Obama's spokespeople from again claiming the US was wrong in Iraq - the war we are winning, which he also said was not possible - not does the truth have any relevance to many in the mainstream media. But for all the talk in the past eight years about Vladimir Putin and his goals for Russia under his dominance, the truth is in his actions, which thus far are mimicking Stalin - or Hitler for that matter, who attacked the same eastern European countries from his base in Germany. Rather than being a devout nationalist who merely wants Russia to take is rightful place on the world stage following the fall of the Soviet empire, it is obvious that Putin wants to re-establish that empire, with him in charge. To the people of Eastern Europe who have suffered under both Nazi and communist systems in the recent past, it probably doesn't make much difference which political system's label most appropriately defines their attackers. The differences between Nazi and communist philosophies are hard to discern anywhere except in a classroom. In practice, they both rely on murder, forced labor, mind control, propaganda and concentration camps to enforce their will on the populace. Putin's lies are no different from Stalin's lies that were no different from Hitler's lies or Mao Tse Tung's lies or Ho Chi Minh's lies or Pol Pot's lies or Fidel Castro's lies or Hugo Chavez's lies. They all claim they are going to change the status quo for the benefit of the weak, the poor and the downtrodden. But all they really do is take control by force of arms, renege on the promises they made to their supporters, and then murder those who object to being used as dupes and puppets. That is not opinion. That is historically documented fact. So, what are we going to do about this? The world stood by and did nothing when Stalin's communist armies took over the countries of Eastern Europe one by one. Journalists of that time lied and produced propaganda for the communists, who murdered millions upon millions of innocents, just as today's alleged journalists are producing propaganda for Islamo-fascist terrorists and Putin's thugs. Are we going to stand by and let history repeat itself? Are we soon going to be in another cold war with millions of people once again subjected to the excesses of communist debauchery as we were from the 1930s to 1990? So far we've seen little in the way of direct response to the Russians except for some relief shipments. There has been a lot of talk from various world leaders, but that is eerily reminiscent of the talks that European leaders had with Hitler in the 1930s. Back then entire countries were swallowed up first by the Nazis and then by the communists as the fortunes of war shifted away from Hitler. Listening to the commentary from that time and comparing it to the modern commentary reveals that both have a similar definition: appeasement. Vladimir Putin knows this and is milking it for all it is worth. When he went fishing with his shirt off a while back he was sending a message to the other leaders on the world stage - they are golfers and country club members, he is a street fighter. They may look down on Putin and think he has no means of effectively hurting them, but he knows better. He was flexing his muscles to let them know he believes he can beat them, but they just smirked and saw him as a classless, ineffective buffoon. Nonetheless, Putin will land a series of shots that individually don't amount to much, but as they continue to pile up will hobble the west and bring its leaders down to his level. Then, just as the realization dawns that they are hurting and in danger of losing to him, Putin will hit them low and dirty with a shot that effectively will take the prima donna western countries right out of the fight. And as the west grovels in pain, its effete diplomats bad mouthing Putin for being "a dirty fighter," he'll stare down at them from the winner's circle, his face the picture of contempt, and sneer "Da! But I won!" |
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Contributed by Ron Winter on August 14, 2008 at 08:46 PM in , , | | | |
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McCain Was Right About Putin; When President Bush met Vladimir Putin for the first time in 2001, Bush said, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. Initial reports from China said Bush and (Ras)Putin had a very testy exchange of words before Putin headed home to cheer on his troops as they smashed through Georgia's outer defenses. The mad Russian initially claimed he was sending in troops to support people in Georgian provinces who really wanted to be part of Russia but were being restricted by the Georgian government. |
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Contributed by Ron Winter on August 12, 2008 at 07:44 AM in , , , | | | |
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A Giant Passes
Go read it . My apoligies for not posting this last night but I didn't have internet access. *** (I do have internet access tonight but it's showing signs of not being 100% reliable and I don't have a very comfortable place to work. I'm about half way home from my daughter's place and should be able to resume normal blogging tomorrow night or Wednesday morning.) |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 4, 2008 at 09:26 PM in , | | | |
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An Old War Dog in Moscow
, for it is worthy. |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on September 6, 2007 at 08:05 PM in , | | | |
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Another Good Man Tells the Truth About Another Bad Man.
One of the bravest and most intransigent of the Cold War Russian dissidents was Vladimir Bukovsky. Among his experiences he spent over a decade in prison or confined to the Serbsky Institute for the (Politically) Mentally Ill. His diagnosis was "Sluggish Schizophrenia", a mental disorder confirmed by the total lack of any symptoms other than disliking Soviet reality. In December 1976 he was ransomed in exchange for the Chilean communist Luis Corvalan. Settling in England he gained an advanced degree in Zoology while continuing as a teller of truth about the Soviet Union. He memoir To Build a Castle is one of the classic dissident works of the Twentieth Century, and a book which has strengthened Rurik's backbone in political bad times. Now Vladimir Bukovsky again tells the truth about Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy.
But this is not an old story, of interest only to antiquarians; the results remain relevant even into the present. Remember that the Kennedy mob still runs Crassachusetts, and who are Ted's' political clients. The article is long, so go fetch yourself a beer and then read . A tip of the helmet to "Cap'n Fergie" -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on December 30, 2006 at 09:06 PM in , , , , | | | |
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A Postmortem Stalin Gift
One of the Dogs sent me a private email - "I would think that the liberal far left has no problem equating Conservatives and Pres. Bush to Hitler. Perhaps they wouldn't mind if we equate Pelosi and far lefties to stalin. Naturally, we already know the answer to that." A tip of the helmet to Skul. This reminds me to mention one more of Stalin’s particular achievements, the development and use of Psychological Projection as a political strategy. Since his first days struggling against Trotsky for the Lenin succession, Stalin favored this tactic. Very early Stalin accused Trotsky of plotting to assassinate him. Throughout the rest of the purge years Stalin always projected his own malevolent designs onto his intended victims, not only in his domestic political struggles, but also internationally. Remember that in 1939 he worried that little Finland was planning to invade the Soviet Union. and he repeatedly accused France and Britain of seeking an alliance with Hitler for a joint conquest of the land of the Soviets. Throughout the Cold War years, containment was merely a mask for the planned conquest of the USSR. Even down to 1991 when the Emergency Committee, claimed their action was to head off a planned coup against Soviet power. Over the years, I’ve found this an excellent key to unlock the mysteries, not only of the Soviet Communists, but also of the American Left. Thus, I was truly alarmed when I heard Tom Hayden and the SDS warn of Nixon’s plans to set up a network of concentration camps in the American southwestern desert. Subsequently, I have found that DEMOcrat accusations are always a tip off to their own agenda, and the smokescreen they will use to hide their actions. It intimidates the Republicans and discredits their future complaints before the crimes are even committed. Most recent and notable have been the elections over the last several cycles, when the campaigns have featured ceremonial warnings of Republican plots to "suppress the vote" and steal the elections, immediately followed by the ritual stuffing of the ballot boxes with hanging chads, and the processional bussing of the green cards from poll to poll. What's the new Shrieker of the House warning of today? suppression of Muslim rights perhaps? -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on December 23, 2006 at 03:09 PM in , , | | | |
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The Worst Day of the Year
Monday will be a day for contemplating all that is best, most noble and perfect in our world. But today is the day to contemplate all that is ugly, criminal and thoroughly demonic. It behooves us to remember from time to time all the worst of which we are capable, and today is the most fitting day of all. On December 22, 1879, in the Georgian village of Gori was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin. Born into a seriously dysfunctional family, and preserved from conscription by a withered arm, Stalin cast his lot with Lenin’s Bolsheviks, but did little of significance beyond a few bank robberies for the cause in prewar Tbilisi. In 1917, he was metaphorically absent during the Bolshevik coup, being one of those Bolsheviks who initially argued against the coup and in favor of cooperating with the "bourgeois" Provisional Government. During the civil war he began to compensate for his slow beginning by exemplary cruelty to prisoners and class enemies. By the end of the civil war, Stalin was still a footnote and a piker at crimes against humanity, but already showed traits which led to Lenin including in his will a warning to the Communist Party Central Committee that they should "remove Comrade Stalin from positions of power". But since Lenin also warned that Comrade Trotsky should be removed too, Stalin and Trotsky cooperated for the first and last time in their lives to suppress Lenin’s Testament. Besides, all the other Bolsheviks thought Stalin thuggish but harmless. He did not ask for a position of prominence and importance. he took the seemingly unimportant post of Commissar of Nationalities (i.e. minority groups) and volunteered for the thankless and boring task of General Secretary. It would take only a few years to turn that unglamorous and insignificant job into a position of unprecedented power. He who controls the records controls the agenda; he who controls the agenda controls everything. Stalin leveraged this modest position to become the greatest mass murder probably of all time, at least of the last five hundred years. Yes, Mao Ze Dong killed more in terms of sheer numbers, but he had so much larger a potential victim base to work upon. And Pol Pot’s one third of Cambodians is a larger percentage, but of a very smaller group, and thus a lower total. And in any case, they were both conscious acolytes of Stalin, as were all the other Marxist tyrants following him. Even Hitler, who comes close, must yield place, and was also inspired in his methods by Stalin’s example. If Stalin is to be topped by anyone, it could only be by his mentor, Lenin. Lenin deserves recognition for having invented the concepts of mass extermination and the death camp. And late in his life, Molotov, himself another leading practitioner of pure evil, proclaimed that next to the tiger Lenin, Stalin was just a pussycat. But Lenin lived only briefly, and never had time to establish what sort of a peacetime murderer he might have become. Stalin has a dramatic record. Stalin slew for about 25 years. The total number of his victims is still under dispute, but still gradually growing. When Robert Conquest wrote his book "The Great Terror" in 1967, he estimated the death toll of the 1930s as probably about 20 million, and perhaps as high as thirty million. During the 1980s, when I referenced these figures in lecturing undergraduate classes, I marked myself as a fascist. Many of the tenured, popular revisionist historians asserted that not more than a few thousand, at most, were ever killed. In a classic example of kettle pleading, they argued that the killings were the fault of local officials, and were minimal in number and justified by their resistance to collectivization, and that Stalin had done it to strengthen the country. After 1990 the mass grave began to be discovered. Outside most of the major, and some minor cities. Mass graves containing the remains of several hundred thousand victims each. Each and every mass grave containing several times the number of victims the revisionists were willing to admit for the entire USSR. These "Soviet Holocaust" deniers continue to enjoy tenure and perks at American universities. Even today, people considering the losses need to consider the circumstances. Different authoritative sources give different figures for those executed. One figure I recall seeing quoted is 865 thousand tried by tribunals and executed. But that is only the beginning of the story. Such a figure does not include the numerous untabulated thousands (?) who died under interrogation. Nor those who committed suicide when they heard the early morning knock on the door. Yan Gamarnik, chief of the Red Army Main Political Administration was one of these; and Molotov has testified that he slept with a revolver under his pillow every night. Nor does the figure include those victims who were executed without even the pretense of a formal trial; that group would include anyone who would not confess. Nor does it include the millions who were sentenced only to terms in the labor camps which they failed to survive. Shot while escaping, or falling over into a snowbank during a forced march does not count as "execution". Nor do prisoners retried in the camps and sentenced to death by GULag officials. There was a an incident of surpassing evil which occurred in the late 1940s. The Communist Party decided the numerous disabled veterans littering Leningrad were most unsightly and a poor face for socialism. So these disabled, armless or legless veterans were all arrested on charges of "parasitism" and sentenced to five years in a labor camp. But upon arrival in camp, it was found that they were no more capable of productive work there than in a city, so they were all re-arrested, re-tried, and shot. Perhaps the largest category of GULag deaths may have been those who died of hunger, exhaustion, cold, or disease. Scholars such as Conquest have tired to calculate from the general size and population of the camps, from the volume of transports, to the number of prisoners and their annual turn-over. Some estimates are that there was a one third turn-over per year in the camps - and considering that the sort sentences were "fivers", that indicates a lot of deaths. A Soviet statisticial, Iosif Dyadkin, has tried to use seeming inconsistencies in census data to calculate the USSR's "missing population", and arrives at a figure of maybe 70 million, though that also included wartime losses as well, and is unsatisfying for other methodological questions. Then there were the other losses of the collectivization campaigns. In 1932 Stalin unleashed the campaign to collectivize Soviet agriculture. the peasants resisted across the Soviet Union, but particularly in Ukraine and in South Russia north of the Caucasus Mountains. School kids from the Komsomol (Young Communist League) and the army were called in to use force. Some peasants even killed their livestock and burned their farms rather than submit. Sometimes the resistance was so stout that the party used artillery, tanks and bombers to crush resistance. The next year there was a famine, and not only because of the devastation and disruption of collectivization. Stalin was also trying to fund his Five Year Plans, and confiscated the crops to support his efforts, partly to feed the new city workers, but mainly to sell abroad for credits for industrial machinery. And also, to punish the Ukrainians and break their spirit. Police patrols surrounded all pats in or out of Ukraine, and between eight to ten million Ukrainians died of starvation during the period of about two years. In many cases, entire villages died. While Ukraine suffered worst, many areas in south Russia, near Rostov on Don, Maikop, and the North Caucasus region suffered nearly as badly, losing more millions. This was the first occasion when the Western Progressive intelligentsia disgraced itself. George Bernard Shaw was given a trip through Ukraine sponsored by the Soviet government, and returned to report that since he had dined regularly on caviar and champagne, the famine must be a myth. Walter Duranty ace correspondent of the New York Times confided to friends that he knew better, but still lied to discredit reports of the famine, in order to help the Soviet cause. Seventy-five years later, the assholes still have not changed! During the 1930s there also continued a number of low-intensity "bandit campaigns" in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Many of these campaigns were against minority peoples, and are on of the roots of today’s Chechen problem. Some of these campaigns involved using airpower against the resistance. In 1939-1940 the USSR reclaimed chunks of Poland, Romania, and the Three Baltic Republics. In each case, the first Soviet order of business was to round up and shoot or send to the camps all "class enemies", followed by the "political enemies", in each country, this constituted about ten percent of the population. In the Baltic Republics, they arrested everyone listed in the phone books on the presumption that anyone with a telephone was a bourgeois. During the war there was yet another great wave of losses. Numerous ethnic nationalities in the southern USSR were accused of collective treason for collaborating with the Germans. In truth, some individuals from these groups did welcome the Germans as liberators from the plagues of atheism and collectivization and famine and mass murder. But many other member resisted. And many ethnic Russians also collaborated fro the same reasons. But certain nationalities were punished, even before the war ended. In 1944 the entire population of Crimean Tatars was rounded up and exiled to Central Asia. Men, women and children separated and loaded onto railroad boxcars and shipped off to the deserts of Kazakhstan with no provisions for food or anything else. Several hundreds of the luckiest were shot immediately. Of the others, about a third of the population died of bad conditions in about two to three months. Nor was it just the traditionally hated Tatars. other nationalities suffering the same exile and genocide included the Kalmyks, Karachai, Kabardians, Balkars, Ingush, and significantly, the Chechens, each of which suffered equivalent losses. Incidentally, this huge task engulfed vast numbers of troops and railroad resources which otherwise could have been used against the Germans at the front. The people of German descent brought by Catherine the Great in the 1760s, or the ancestors of Baltic Germans in Russia since the middle ages suffered most of all. Though population losses are not given, it must involve a couple more millions. Also during the war there were needless losses among returned prisoners. According to Soviet military law, being taken prisoner for any reason constituted treason and could be punished by death - and death or imprisonment of the surviving family. And while there were instances when prisoners escaped and returned and were cleared of blame and returned to their units, the great majority of such individuals either went to labor camps or to penal battalions (so lethal that one month’s service therein was officially equivalent to three years in the GULag.) At the end of the war prisoners returned by the western Allies were shipped directly to the camps - or shot. And civilians taken away by the Germans as slave labor were given no greater consideration - traitors too. After the war there was a further round of purges beginning in 1948. It is true that Jews had suffered less than other Soviet groups during the 1930s, but now it was to be their turn. Anti-Semitism ceased to be unfashionable. Also, many of the greatest wartime heroes were marked for take-down lest they outshine Stalin, the Great Coryphaeus, Greatest Genius of All Times, Father of Nations. the only saving grace was that Stalin died on March 5, 1953 just before the latest round of killings reached its stride. This is the way it was, a million here, a hundred thousand there, and another couple hundred thousand, a big ten million...eventually it adds up. Guessing the toll is difficult, but I figure between 30-40 million is approximate, mainly in the 1930s, but also including wartime purges and postwar murders. In recent years I have heard several Russians place the figure at 70 million. That may be a little excessive, but who am I to blame their bitterness? This short history also helps explain a lot of the bitterness and controversy remaining in the ex-Soviet republics, where some people can still remember personally the Stalin years. And it may help explain why some of us right-wingers do not think that Marxism is cute, trendy or fashionable, and have so little patience with its apologists. And also why some of us are alarmed when we see the Soviet apologists’ intellectual descendants making such similar excuses for the bloodthirsty Islamists of today, several of whom appear to have set their hopes to challenge Stalin’s record. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on December 22, 2006 at 04:23 PM in , | | | |
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Death of a Shark
About three years ago, I prepared an essay about the Russian air Force based on my translation of an article in a Russian aviation journal and my commentary upon it. Due to recent developments, I believe this essay has once again become timely. Though the Russians are have begun using the profits of their oil revenues to begin rebuilding their military after a decade and a half of neglect, in my opinion the rebuilding process cannot be accomplished overnight. The condition of their air force, the VVS, has not yet had time for significant change. "Death of a Shark" and VVS Operational Standards an Article by V. Markovskii, with translation and commentary by George Mellinger
There remains much speculation about the current state of the Russian Air Force, particularly regarding the capabilities and training of its pilots, and its implications for readiness. For reasons that are evident, there have been few, if any, Russian official pronouncements on this topic and virtually no hard statistics. Most of the information remains anecdotal. On my visits to Russia, when inquiring about pilot flying hours, I have generally heard the figures of an "average of 40 hours a year" and/or 20 hours a year quoted. This has been the case from the mid-1990s to the present. Reasons include a shortage of fuel, lack of funds for maintenance and operating expenses, lack of new equipment, and even lack of spare and regalement parts for older aircraft, in spite of the numerous examples which ought to be available for cannibalization. Of course this average figure needs interpretation, since it involves the entire VVS establishment. Ignoring a couple of special situations for a moment, let us reason out some distinctions. First, the transport pilots of the 61 Air Army, the former VTA (Military Transport Aviation), are known to fly far more than their share of the average. In contrast to the combat aircraft, their Ilyushins and Antonovs can provide considerable support to the civilian economy, and in doing so, bring in some revenue for the VVS. Also, by very nature, almost every and any flight is bound to consume multiple flying hours, times two pilots. Next come the pilots of Long Range Aviation in the 37 Air Army. While a small proportion of the VVS resources, they also receive a middling share of the flying hours, since their flights, too, tend to be long duration and also contribute flying hours for two pilots per flight. With these pilots tending to raise the averages, it is obvious that the pilots of the fighters and tactical aircraft must be getting less than the average. There are two exceptional situations. First, the pilots of the 237 Guards Regiment at Kubinka undoubtedly get a lot of flying time. They are the show and demonstration regiment, including the Russkie Vityazy (Su-27) and Strizhi (MiG-29) aerobatics teams. They perform at all the major air shows and serve as a facade of prestige for the VVS, Russia itself, and most important of all, the Russian aviation industry (along with the famous factory test and show pilots such as Pugachyov, Frolov, Menitskii, Kvotchur, etc., whose flying hours probably are logged to the factories rather than any VVS totals), which hopes to make money selling airplanes abroad. Second, we must presume that the units of the 4 Air Army taking part in combat operations over Chechnya and the other North Caucasus hot spots also do quite a bit of regular flying. So this must serve to reduce even further the average flying hours of the ordinary tactical units based in quiet zones like northern and central Russia, and Far East. Though precision is impossible, they must get very few flight hours a year. In such a situation we may also tentatively presume that within the regiments these flight hours are not communistically shared. Such flying as is done is almost certainly parceled out to a few selected senior pilots, those in positions of command or who had managed to obtain their Pilot 1st Class ratings before the implosion. (This is probably true to an extent for the North Caucasian combat units as well.) Therefore, we can guess that for the ordinary line pilot, his main opportunity to fly will come, briefly, whenever he falls off of a footstool. Complicating matters is the aging and worn condition of much of the VVS inventory. Though the earlier generations single-engine MiGs and Sukhois have all been retired, even the MiG-29s are now approaching or exceeding the twenty-year mark, and even with careful maintenance, must become increasingly prone to developing problems, and with serious budget problems, maintenance is almost certainly one of the first places for economizing. Thus this combination of old aircraft, and sporadic maintenance must be an even greater potential challenge for rusty pilots. I recently found circumstantial confirmation in the following article which I have translated The article reports an incident at the 120 IAP based in Domna in the Transbaikal Military District. The 120 IAP (sometimes identified as the 120 Guards IAP - Russians have become careless about the distinction) flew the MiG-23 in Afghanistan and claimed several aerial kills against infiltrating Iranian helicopters. They also became famous for painting sharkmouths and individual side art on their fighters, first the MiG-23 and after their return home and re-equipment, the MiG-29. At the time of the Soviet collapse, the 120 GIAP was probably amongst the best units, in the VVS, with some of the best morale. Markovskii, the author, served with the 120 GIAP in Afghanistan and has written before about this unit, and about Soviet air operations in Afghanistan. This translation was personally difficult due to the presence of numerous technical words unknown either to me or to my dictionaries. In truth, as a non-mechanic, I would have found some passages scarcely more clear even if in English. So the mechanical passages in the translation should be read with caution. Technical analysts will be justifiably disappointed, but I still believe that even with some inaccuracies, this document contains a number of indications about the general state of the VVS and its pilots. "On the Trail of Aviation Incidents: Death of a Shark" by Viktor Markovskii, Aviamaster 5-2001 The share of aviation incidents which are the fault of equipment construction defects appears very small, accounting for about 10-15% of aviation accidents and catastrophes. (According to Russian definition an avariya is a non-fatal accident, while a katastrofa involves fatalities-GMM). The great mass are attributed to pilot error and violations of flight parameters - the notorious human factor which remains the weakest link, accounting for up to 70% of all incidents. The very same advanced aviation technology which provides the most technically advanced features, redundant systems and advanced controls, also minimizes the possibility of sudden failures. And still sometimes even aircraft of the latest generation present dangerous surprises, previously undiscovered defects which reveal themselves at the most inopportune time. To this last category belongs a MiG-29 catastrophe which occurred in the fall of 1998 in the Transbaikal. In the 23 VA (Air Army-GMM) of the Transbaikal Military District, during the preceding five years eight aircraft and helicopters have been destroyed in accidents and catastrophes. This quantity appears quite moderate against the background of the previous period. But now, in connection with a decrease to 15-20 flying hours pe year, the figure becomes entirely more notable. Even more, three of the eight losses fell to the lot of a single regiment, the 120 IAP at Domna, equipped with the MiG-29 and providing air defense for a wide segment of the Russian-Chinese border. By September 1998 the regiment had already been operating the MiG-29 for five years, and was on operational duty on the rolls of the 50 Guards Independent Corps VVS i PVO. The aircraft were MiG-29 izdelie 9-12 and 9-13 (Fulcrum-A & Fulcrum-C, "fatback"-GMM), most of which had been received from other units, having already served successfully, and the flying personnel were well accustomed to them. During the entire period of service not one MiG-29 had been written off on account of damage or irremediable defects. One such machine was Aircraft No.36, which a half year before this incident had been transferred from the Far Eastern airbase of Orlovka. The aircraft was not new. MAPO (the Moscow MiG factory-GMM) had built it 17 years before, in September 1983. (If this incident is placed to 1998, then an aircraft built in 1983 would have been only 15 and not 17 years old. Which of Markovskii’s figures is wrong, I do not know.-GMM) The aircraft had flown 585 hours and undergone midterm overhaul at the Kubinka ARP. Taken off the register of its regiment, for a long time the aircraft sat in storage, and after three years was delivered to Domna. On September 25, the regiment was conducting planned flights. After a long interval fuel finally appeared and after three months in a row of inactivity, the pilots were using any opportunity to take to the sky. Military Pilot 3rd Class, Captain Vladimir Egorov was scheduled to execute the exercise "Flight to accelerate to supersonic speed and ceiling of the aircraft". the assignment was of short duration and not complicated, even considering the little experience of the pilot in controlling the MiG-29. The well-known poverty degrading our aviation in the 1990s (absence of fuel, money, and spare parts), led to the situation that during the last five and a half years Egorov had only flown a total of 74 hours, averaging out to a little more than an hour a month in the cabin. During the first months of 1998 he had managed to "grab" only 20 minutes of flying time. The pilot clearly was unable to train, even on the KTS-4 simulator which was standing, as the inspection report discovered "in inoperable condition due to lack of funding to call for a manufacturer’s representative". Aircraft No.36 was prepared without anything notable. The engine was tested and all preflight procedures were completed, and the pilot took to the air at 19 hours 13 minutes. The air was clear, the sun was only beginning to set in the west, and the aircraft had not managed to vanish from view, when there was a change to the smokey trail characteristic of the RD-33 working to maximum. At that very moment neither the mechanics of the newly launched aircraft nor the flight operations officer paid this any attention (if they had noticed, they could have decided that the pilot should simply turn back). During the second minute of flight the pilot noticed that the machine began to gain altitude less energetically and speed began to fall. The aircraft lowered its nose, but speed continued to fall. The reason turned out to be the turbine revolutions of the left engine, and the controls for it were switched to the reserve system, although the temperature, according to the instruments, remained normal. None the less, the eight tons of thrust remained sufficient to gain another 600 m of altitude. Acting according to the instructions and commands of the flight operations officer, Egorov reduced the turbine revolutions of the misbehaving engine and began to turn back in the direction of the aerodrome. But the problems grew. The turbine speed of the left RD-33 not responding to the thrust lever, continued to fall. A possible reason might have been either a failure of the electronic engine controls, or a rupture of the fuel supply. Neither the pilot nor the flight operations officer surmised that the situation had developed according to the second scenario, leading to an even worse situation. Already at take-off the fuel pipe had begun to rupture near the combustion chamber and then began to spray around a powerful stream of kerosene directly into the red hot engine. In just seconds a fire broke out, fanned by the rushing air and the spray of highly inflammable fuel. The Duralumin blazed, the control cable burned through, and even the fire resistant steel body of the engine combustion chamber burned. But the pilot still remained unaware - the right engine worked normally and the temperature gauge showed "normal", and the fire alarm was silent. On early series MiG-29s the fire alarm was not distinguished for its reliability, and on this occasion it simply did not work. The pilot did not know until the very last moment what was going on behind his back - in his transmissions there was heard not one word about fire! And if the fire alarm remained silent, so too, the fire extinguisher system failed to work. None the less it would not have been within its power to cope with the volcano erupting in the engine bay. Only a few seconds were necessary for the flames to burn through the electrical cables and pipes including the steel armatures of the hydraulic system. At 3 minutes 24 seconds of flight, the hydraulic pipes under pressure ruptured, leading to the ruin of the main hydraulic system, about which the pilot, unaware of the fire situation reported "Main hydraulics system failed". Losing speed and altitude the airplane continued to struggle toward the airfield. It had managed to turn around and was already on a course for the runway. The flight operations officer gave it the shortest maneuvers onto the return course, not wasting a precious second with standard procedures. The pilot managed to report the falling pressure in the main hydraulic system, after which there was no further communication as he fought to control his machine. The control rods began to melt in the fire and soon the linkage to the left stabilizer burned through completely. The aircraft turned over on its left wing and fell into a spin. It began to fall out of control. The MiG-29 lost more than a thousand meters of altitude, but the pilot continued to try to control his machine. It was already beyond hope. The machine tossed from side to side from the uncoordinated movements of the stabilizer surfaces (While the right stabilizer continued to function, the left was unresponsive, flapping like laundry in the wind. The remaining seconds and hundreds of meters of altitude were still sufficient to eject, but the strong lateral g-load deprived Egorov of his last chance of salvation. (Such g-loads are extremely dangerous, they negatively effect an organism and often lead to loss of consciousness.) At 19 hours, 17 minutes the fighter disappeared from the radar screen. The entire flight of aircraft No.36 lasted barely more than four minutes. It did not take long to find the place of impact; the aircraft fell 9 km from the aerodrome. At impact the motors were driven into the earth and the pilot in the cabin was killed instantaneously. The steppe around the burning fighter was scattered with fragments and cannon shells. After an accident, every effort is made to restore the data preserved on the aircraft’s "Tester-UZL" data recorder. From its recordings , in addition to flight parameters, it was possible to determine the meaning of the pressure on engine manifolds., and from this it was possible to establish the moment of the fatal rupture of the fuel line. The commission which investigated the catastrophe had the services of the engineers and the NII operational and maintenance flight laboratory at Lyubertsy. The specialists gave particular attention to the fact that the cause of the catastrophe was an engine defect. Yet one more serious defect was concealed in the fire warning system, which in the opinion of the commission did not meet the requirements of reliability for operating under high temperatures. Not rarely through investigation of the causes of catastrophes, the blame rests on the deceased, but this time, again and again when evaluating the actions of the pilot during the short minutes of his flight, the commission found that there were no deficiencies or omissions. To the very end, Captain V. V. Egorov attempted to save his aircraft. He crashed with his field already in sight. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on December 20, 2006 at 04:38 PM in , | | | |
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Putin and Poison
Elsewhere I have written about Russia’s grievances and its plight. And how does Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin fit in here? and what about poisons? Yes, Putin was a career KGB man. And I have heard some Western pseudo-sophisticates solemnly proclaim "Once KGB, always KGB." Case closed end of the issue. That is nonsense. Were it true, how to explain poor Litvinenko? He was KGB. And so was Peter Deriabin, Stanislav Levchenko, Vasilii Mitrokhin, Oleg Kalugin, etc. etc. etc., the scores or even hundreds of KGB who changed sides or broke with The Organs. Some KGB keep their loyalties in retirement to the grave. Others change and evolve with new situations and responsibilities. I do believe that even after leaving, they retain their general personal attitudes and ways of looking at the world, just as does the member of any other profession, be he an engineer, a historian, a physician, policeman, or anything else. This is the matter of basic personality. It is said that even as a little boy little Vladka wanted to be KGB. So far, no problem. Every little boy at some point has dreams of a heroic profession, soldier, policeman, spy, fighter pilot. And during the 1950s and 1960s, that is the way KGB was presented to Russian boys. And some boys actually go all the way, like Putka did. KGB was always a multi-faceted organization with multiple responsibilities - in the USSR even including the firemen and travel agents. Putin was never one of the internal security leg-breakers enforcing conformity on domestic dissidents. Not even one of the domestic counter intelligence types. No. With an aggressive disposition and rare intelligence, he went to the First Chief Directorate, the real spies. He worked in East Germany where he supposedly ran several agents in the West; but not much is publicly known about this (no surprise). It seems that he had nothing to do with the "Active Measures" directorate, the ones who sponsored and trained terrorists. But he certainly had to be aware of them and what they were doing, even if only to avoid crossing up each other’s operations. It seems safe to presume that Putin never did it but knew about it. Putin is known to be near-native fluent in German, and since 1999 has been studying English. He is also genuinely a tough guy. Bush may have the swagger, but Putin does not need to swagger. He was interested in Judo, and Sambo (the Russian form of Judo) from an early age, and has continued to develop his proficiency as his form of exercise. It is notable that the poplar form of unarmed combat in America today seems to be Karate or one of its similarly named variants, a fighting sport based on delivering powerful kicks and punches. Judo is based on the different principle of avoiding the opponent’s blows and redirecting his force against him. This implies a strong element of trickery and indirection. This, too, relates to Putin’s intelligence. Putin is probably not an ideological Communist. He was able to see both East Germany and almost certainly West Germany (though again, we know little of this, and should believe even less.), and he certainly had better information than his masters back at the Politburo. Plus, like so many others, he has seen Communism make a mess of his own country. He is a nationalist, and if nationalism can be best served by Marxism-Leninism, so be it; if it can better be served by some other system, so be that instead. Besides, too many of his supporters and friends have gained capitalist wealth, and would be expropriating themselves. Putin is reliably reported to have become a believing Christian. The account is that during the early 1990s, when he was an official in Sankt Petersburg, there was a fire at his dacha, and his young daughter was miraculously rescued from the flames; Putin taking the known as a miracle and a revelation to convert. I first heard that account from a personal friend who was friendly with Putin at that time. But whether the story is a convenient political myth or true, Putin’s Christianity would not hinder him from taking the most extreme political measures. Renaissance Italy was Catholic, and still notorious for its politics by assassination. Russian history is equally rich in "unfortunate accidents, such as the young Grand Prince Dmitrii, who "cut his own throat with a knife with which he was playing when he had a seizure", making way for Boris Godunov. Or Tsar Paul, who was strangled in 1801 by his own bodyguards (the official account said he died of "hemorrhoidal colic") Or all the hundreds of rival princes who were assassinated during the centuries before the Mongols arrived, and afterward in the struggle to unify Russia; all done by good Christians. For evaluating Russia’s future, perhaps we should begin to give a bit more attention to Russia’s fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, their first age of "gathering in the Russian lands". But as for Putin today, though he began his term as president relatively mildly, it seems that there has been a growing number of assassinations. some of these murders might be blamed on rival criminal factions, but increasingly they seem to serve the interests of Putin and his supporters. It is also significant that many of Putin’s appointments have backgrounds in the KGB. Let us allow, for a moment, the benefit of the doubt. Any of us would be inclined to appoint not strangers, but friends, men whom we know and trust. And we would be inclined to appoint those who are known to be competent, and efficient. And in general, competence and efficiency tend to have concentrated in the KGB. Unfortunately, ruthlessness is the third member of that triad. And again that seems to fit too well with Putin’s personal inclinations. The KGB has a history of using poison. During the 1950s they carried out assassinations in Western Europe using a pistol which sprayed sodium cyanide into the face of the victim; by the time the body would be discovered, the remaining poison would have evaporated, an death would appear to be heart attack. This technique was revealed when an assassin defected together with his weapon. Then during the 1980s, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was killed with a small pellet of ricin, injected into his leg by a specially rigged umbrella. Even during the 1930s the then, NKVD liked poisons for disposing of prominent people, including perhaps maxim Gorky. It has even been suggested, probably falsely, that Stalin himself could have been done in by KGB poison. The latest poisoning of Litvinenko is unique only in the unprecedented use of polonium 210 as the means. This is also a tip-off that the murder must trace back to the Federal Security Service, only a governmental agency of a major power such as Russia would have had the resources to prepare and administer the poison. And here is the demonic beauty of the whole operation. Everyone knows and understands, but nobody can prove anything. The particularly clever part is that everyone knows, because this enhances the intimidation effect, particularly if nobody dares say it. It proclaims to all, "We can get you, and nobody can stop us, or even pin it on us afterward". As the Chinese say, "Kill the chicken to frighten the monkey". I expect that a lot of people in Russia, and even far abroad are going to become much more discrete. There remains one question. Did Putin himself give the order or did one of his subordinates take the initiative for him? We hear that Putin had previously complained to Britain about Litvinenko, so it suggests high level interest. Regardless of the answer though, we can be certain that Putin was at least aware, almost certainly before the plot progressed to actual delivery. And as other innocent bystanders are also contaminated, this assassination has reached an alarming new low. Can Western leaders even afford to meet with Russian officials under such hazardous circumstances? Dare they even engage in a diplomatic formal toast? At one time it appeared that Putin had a number of attractive qualities. Putin had promise. Now he is a threat and that's a promise. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on December 3, 2006 at 10:24 PM in , , | | | |
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Who is to blame? What is to be Done?
For 160 years Russian affairs have been summarized by two questions "Who is to Blame?" and "What is to be Done".In that sense, nothing has changed. Even as this week ends, we are again asking those same questions. Trying to make sense of the most recent poisonings, points us to look at history. The easy answer is to proclaim "Commies, they’re all still commies! Nothing is different!" Sorry but this is misleadingly wrong, and suggests both a misunderstanding of what is going on, and a misunderstanding of communism. Communism was/is evil, but it never was the sole manifestation of evil. And like a physician, the good political pathologist should try to identify the disease correctly. And poor Russia seems to be God’s petri dish for experimenting with bad governance. The collapse of Soviet Communism and the Soviet Union surprised the Russians as much as us, or even more so. Already discredited by military humiliation and a host of domestic failures, by 1990 it was obvious to all but a few of the senior bosses that the Soviet government was terminal, and the August coup discredited the Communist Party and its bosses in the eyes of almost everyone else. Except in the West, where the true believers still enjoy tenured teaching appointments. Even before the coup daring souls were quitting the party, and afterward, there was a rush for the exits. When the first small Baltic republics declared their sovereignty and got away with it, all the other "Soviet Socialist Republics also split away, and by the end of 1991, the USSR was dumped on Trotsky’s "ashheap of history". Similar processes had bee happening in Eastern Europe for a couple of years previous. The failed Gorbachev was replaced by the soon to fail Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin, a fairly successful governor in Siberia had been one of the energetic leaders of the opposition before the coup, and was the soul of the resistance to the Emergency Committee that August. Without Yeltsin, the coup would have succeeded, leaving the Soviet Union to continue sinking ever deeper into chaos and "centralized anarchy". But once in power he was a disaster as a leader. Let me compare him to his American contemporary, Bill Clinton, who was widely appreciated abroad as an amusing, fun-lovin’, good-ol’-boy, a Bubba with polish. Of course Clinton was surrounded by many corrupt and sleazy friends and associates, and became a very polarizing figure at home. Yeltsin was the Russian equivalent; a fun-loving, populist drunk, who defied decorum and might well act the clown at public ceremonies. It was Clinton’s good fortune that he got to misbehave in a country enjoying unprecedented economic and political success; Yeltisn’s misfortune was that he did it in a country in collapse. It is also true that during the 1990s Russia was flooded by Western Experts, many of them Americans. Graham Allison, Jeffrey Sachs, Anders Aslund, Anatole Lieven, among the best known, and many others. Few of these men had any prior expertise on Russia or the Soviet Union, either politics or history. They were political scientists or economists, and their economic orientation tended to span the gamut from Keynesian to Social Democrat. The advice was bad, and there have been recurring accusations of genuine corruption against some of them. Very large, very low interest rate loans were made to connected individuals who bought up Russia’s industries and resources as they were privatized, and then during the ensuing economic collapse, they paid back their loans at kopeks on the ruble. This is the summarized version of how Russia’s new class made their fortunes, rising from almost nowhere to become billionaires, names like Gusinskii, Berezovskii, Khodarkovskii, and others, who became known as the Oligarchs. The truth is, many of the Russian magnates Putin is pursuing are indeed, true robber barons. While Marxism never accurately described the original American and British "capitalists", it seems that Russia’s new class is indeed living down to their Marxian (mis-)understanding of how kapitalisty are supposed to act. And of course they expropriate the cause of freedom in their war with Putin. During the 1990s, as the new Oligarchs sped around in their limousine motorcades, scattering lowly pedestrians like Politburo members of old, a number of times I heard Russians the muzhiks curse them as "demokraty", and sometimes as "dermokraty" (Dermo is one of the many Russian words meaning shit.). And for all this, the West, and America in particular, is blamed by many Russians. This is a major reason why Putin was so popular at the start of his presidency, and has remained popular. There are other reasons as well. Like it or not, Russia, in the form of the Soviet Union, was one of the world’s greatest powers, and they took great pride in that fact. The attitude was something along the line of "We may not have reliable tap water, and we have to sand on line to buy soap, but at least we are so powerful that everyone must pay us heed." And during the 1990s they lost their last shreds of self-regard. The fact that they should take pride in their near-bloodless, self liberation in August 1990 seems lost on them because of what followed. And that the cities have become more prosperous and cleaner, seems taken for granted with the passage of time. Their ruling elite aspires to regain that self pride. In this, they are evocative of the French, still longing for Bonaparte. And like any country which has lost power, and perceives itself as defeated, it wishes to even up the score. Again we may remember France after Bonaparte. or Weimar Germany. Or Imperial Russia after the Crimean and Russo-Japanese wars. Perhaps there may be a bit of this spirit seeping to the top in the new Germany today. There was certainly an element of this in the United States among Conservatives after Vietnam. And the Soviet Union was far more defeated than were we; America never broke apart nor lost large homeland territories. With the departure of the new republics, Russia lost almost half its population, though land loss was considerably smaller, due to the vastness of Siberia. Like France longing for Alsace and Lorraine, or Germany for the Sudeten or any of the world’s other revanchisms. the Russian leaders dream of restoration. And the Russian rulers are very concerned about America in this regard because we have played such an active role encouraging several of the new republics to distance themselves, particularly in the Baltic, in Ukraine’s "Orange Revolution" and our support for the Republic of Georgia. or our military presence in several of the Central Asian republics. All of this can very reasonably appear threatening to a Russian, even to one who did not grow up imbibing fears of "capitalist encirclement" with his mother’s milk. I do not consider such fears legitimate, but they are understandable. The fact that America has been preaching to Russia about the shortcomings of its internal democracy and sometimes advocating more active measures to bring the desired reforms can only deepen Russian suspicions. Might a Russian with some justice respond, "Why make us become the first perfect democracy before everyone else? Are there not irregularities elsewhere among your closer allies, even amongst yourselves?" In an era of charges of stolen elections, of massive illegal voting by the unentitled, of ballot stuffing, of hanging chads, and all the other problems we have heard over the last decade, who would blame them? In fact, a Russian might well point to the antics of Elliot Spitzer, and of the other miscarriages of both criminal and civil justice to ask what gives us the right to preach to them about legal matters? And here, I must admit to a certain bitter sympathy with such a retort. So Russia seeks both to recover its former size and "glory", to prevent American meddling in its domestic affairs, and to reverse its humiliation by seeing us humiliated in turn. And what is the role of "Communism"? In my opinion, not much and that, mainly sentimental. As stated above, the Communist Party discredited itself by bringing defeat on Russia both in the Cold War in general, and in Afghanistan in particular. And this is particularly true for the military and the ex-KGB. During the Cold War Western experts never tired of telling us that the USSR did not take Communism seriously, that it was only a slogan to justify National Interest. Now, all of a sudden, they tell us communist ideology is at the bottom of it all. This is not the stopped clock which is correct twice a day, but a working clock which is misset by nine hours and is always out of whack. Now nationalism has arrived as the cause of Russia. And it is the Russian Church which has become the new legitimizer. Holy Russia, Moscow as the "Third Rome and a fourth there cannot be". The new universalism is a much older universal Faith returned and Arisen. Christ the Savior Cathedra in Moscow has been rebuilt, after having been demolished during the 1930s. In Moscow and everywhere else churches are being rebuilt and refurbished and restored to service. Totally new churches are being built. Near the giant statue of Mother Russia atop Mamaev Kurgan in Volgograd (Stalingrad) there is being built a new Church of All Saints. Just inside the gates of the Kubinka Armored Forces Museum and proving ground there is a small chapel to Saint Georgii Pobedonosets. The body of General Denikin, most effective of the White generals of the civil war, has been returned to Russia for burial with honors. The remains of Tsar Nikolai II and his family have been brought to the Sankt Peterburg Peter and Paul Cathedral for proper burial along with the other Romanov Tsars and Tsaritsas, his sarcophagus now sits in a special chapel of the cathedral. In the cities you may find monks begging alms on the streets. Orthodox chaplains are being introduced into Russian military units. There has been report, as yet unfulfilled, that the red stars are to be removed from the spires of the Kremlin and from Red Square. And though the Russian air force retains its traditional red star, this is, after all, at least in part a tradition, and many of the aircraft I have seen, bear also a doble-headed eagle and a blue, red, white Russian tricolor. No, this is not to dispute that Russia may be a rival, even dangerous. Revanchist nationalism has often led to very unpleasant results. And yes, Russia may well become an enemy, though it need not be. I would welcome a responsible and sensible Russian nationalism, were it directed toward true Russian greatness and pursuit of its true national interests instead of pursuing false dreams of revenge. In my opinion, those most important interests are four. Measures to develop the rest of Russia beyond the borders of maybe four metropolitan areas. Reversing the demographic catastrophe which is reducing Russia to the size, eventually, of Estonia. Recognizing the genuine and near threats from Islam and China - in that order. And establishing a stable domestic political system, whether democratic or not, which offers security and legal guarantees for ordinary Russians. Whether this will happen or not, we can only wait and see. Sadly, History teaches us that "In Russia all roads lead to ruin". -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on December 3, 2006 at 10:13 PM in , , | | | |
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Russia selling advanced SAMs to Iran
OWD's resident expert on Russian aviation sent me quite a bit of information on the Tor-M1 system when rumors of this sale first leaked several months ago. To save you an extra jump to a site I need to do some repairs on, I'm reproducing below the jump. []: Iran's Main SAM Threat (Updated & Bumped) *** Update 2: Don't miss Rurik's and Eric's additional thoughts at the end of this post. ***
I originally everything from here down [Update: Insert "with the exception of Rurik's and Eric's comments" here] on Jan 15, 2006. Since the matter's back in the news I think it makes sense to move it up where some new people can see it. With the whole world wondering if we're going to have to end up using military force to end Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's delusions of grandeur, it's about time I posted some information I set aside earlier about the one of the main threats our pilots will encounter if we launch an aerial attack on Iran.
Thanks go to friend, fellow 'Nam vet, student of Russian history and published aviation author George "Rurik" Mellinger for the following pictures, which he took at a Russian air show last summer:
(I've moved the picture that was here in my original post to the top of this one.) George sends the following information with the photos:
Click for a little more information on the Tor-M1/SA-15 system and here for a demo video of the system. Let's all hope our interest in the system turns out to be purely academic, but personally I'm not optimistic. *** Don't miss Mudville's latest . *** Update 2: Two promotions from the comments: George "Rurik" Mellinger, the source for most of my original information, comments:
Eric B., who and has, naturally, a keen interest in the current situation, comments:
Eric, I hope you're wrong but I'll concede that you and George are both much more qualified than I am to predict where this is headed. It all has the potential to be very interesting. |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on November 24, 2006 at 01:05 PM in , , , , | | | |
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Sunday Musings
RINOS, DINOS, NEOCONS and Leprechauns. You just can’t survive today’s political scene without an appropriate tag. Each party is in search of the perfect description, the ideal candidate and the winning platform, yet if Jesus Christ himself signaled his second coming, I’m sure the extremists in both parties would find him objectionable. What is conservative enough? Where is the dividing line that separates Conservatives and RINOs? Is the extreme right of the Republican Party hell bent on imitating the failed practices of the George Soros wing of the Democrats? Joe Lieberman is the perfect demonstration of what happens when the extreme wing of either party demands perfection. On the other hand, a Democratic majority in the House and Senate is what happens when the Conservatives take their ball and stay home. Democracy is not black or white. It is a fluid system that demands weighing principles against pragmatism, convictions against realities. Extremism on the other hand is a denial of reality. The “my way or the highway” attitude often leads extremists to being stranded on the shoulder of the road. It doesn’t matter what form extremism takes, Conservative extremism, Liberal extremism and Islamic extremism share the same short sighted vision which will cause them to fail. |
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Contributed by The Gray Dog on November 12, 2006 at 07:03 PM in , , , , , , , , , , , | | | |
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A Rhapsody to the Hungarians
Yesterday was a special anniversary, and today is almost as special. Yesterday fifty years ago the Hungarian Revolt began.
Read it all . Today was almost as special, the anniversary of the outbreak of fighting. In October 1956 there were two Soviet divisions in Hungary, the 2 and the 17 Guards Mechanized Divisions, each with a strength of 3 Mechanized Rifle Regiments, a Tank Regiment, a Assault Gun Regiment (an armored fighting vehicle with heavier armament and armor than a tank, but lacking the ability to swivel its main weapon, since it was amounted in the hull and not a turret), an Artillery Regiment, an Anti-Aircraft Regiment and supporting battalions, roughly 15,000 men. In the initial fighting on October 25, the 2 Guards Mechanized Division lost 4 tanks and 4 armored troop carriers. Soon afterward they withdrew. On November 4, 1956, the Soviet Army returned including the 31 Tank Division, and the 11, 13, and 32 Guards and 27 Mechanized Divisions from the Carpathian Military District, the 33 Guards Mechanized from Romania, the 35 Guards Mechanized from the Odessa Military District, plus additional units drawn from other divisions. There were also elements of the 7 and 31 Guards Airborne divisions. The 2 and 33 Guards Divisions, plus the paratroops led the main assault on Budapest, under the command of marshal Konev, one the Soviets more brutal World War commanders. This was Operation Vikhr (whirlwind) According to Colonel-General G. F. Krivosheev's Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, a study based on soviet archival sources, and accepted as authoritative by Western military scholars, during the Hungarian operations the Soviet forces lost 669 killed, 51 missing, and 1540 wounded, a total of 2260 casualties. During the assault to reclaim Budapest, the main units lost 14 tanks and armored vehicles, 9 armored troop carriers, 13 artillery pieces, 4 multiple-rocket launchers, 31 trucks and automobiles, and 5 motorcycles. I have also been able to confirm that the Hungarians shot down a Soviet helicopter, killing three and wounding two, and even shot down from the ground a Soviet jet bomber (Ilyushin Il-28 Beagle, killing its crew) From another source I have discovered that the Soviets awarded 17 of their soldiers the Hero of the Soviet Union, their highest medal, equivalent to the Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross. Nine of those awards were posthumous. this is testimony to the Hungarian resistance. Least known is the fact that the Soviets executed some 200 of their own soldiers for refusing to take part in suppressing the Hungarian revolt. These soldiers may have been the soldiers of October 24, mentioned by Peter Nadas in his article. According to Soviet sources, in Budapest 2000 Hungarians wre killed and 12,000 wounded. Anothr 200,000 fled to the West. All honor to those who stood.
-Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on October 24, 2006 at 07:50 PM in , | | | |
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The Secret of Ramona
One of the benefits of the collapse of the Soviet Union has been a tremendous opening of information, as thousands of Russians devote themselves to "filling in the white pages" of their past. Much of this concerns the remoter period of Lenin and Stalin. Sometimes the revelations extend into the very recent past. There have also been a small host of independent military analysts and reporters who take their inspiration from the independent commentators and organizations in the U.S.A. Some of these men, such as Pavel Felgengauer have gained a certain following in the West, while others such as the appropriately named Andrei Soldatov remain relatively unknown. My non-OWD life is devoted to the history of Soviet military aviation, particularly its pilots. But sometimes I find other materials which just seem too interesting, or too important to let them slide past me. The following article is one such. I found it on a Russian website a couple years ago, translated it, and shared it with friends A couple of days ago, I went back and found that in the interim, the Russian webmaster seems to have made his own English language translation, but both the original article and his translation seem to have vanished from his . All the more reason that I should make my translation available to the wider public. Georgii Pobedonosets (George the Victory Bringer) is the Russian name for Saint George The article in its original form begins beneath the fold. -Rurik The Empire’s Last Secret: The Existence of a Russian Radio-espionage Base in North Korea was hidden for 10 Years. by Andrei Soldatov, 1/28/02, translated by “Georgii Pobedonosets”
(Note: The Russian word razvedka, generally translated as reconnaissance, in Russian has a much broader usage, including everything from classical tactical reconnaissance by armed and unformed soldiers, to the gathering of electronic signals and space satellite intelligence, to information gathered by spies operating illegally under cover, to military attaches, to purposeful open-sources research. Including the preparation of documents such as this one, their posting to the internet, or downloading and translating. You and I are doing razvedka right now. Shpionazh is a non-technical, emotive term. The author uses both words in his essay, and I have chosen to follow his usage in context. I have likewise tried to remain true to the author’s choices in alternating between “North Korea” and “PDRK”- G.P.)
A year ago readers brought me a collection of GRU commemorative badges. Badges like any other - the number of the military unit, a motto and one more figure signifying the number of years the unit existed. On each a known symbol, a small boat if the reconnaissance unit belonged to the fleet, or a sputnik for space reconnaissance. In the collection we come across a number of more informative badges, for example the Roman number 4 and the African continent. It is immediately clear that the this badge was issued for the jubilee of the Fourth Department of the GRU, responsible for reconnaissance in Africa. Or for example, against a background of a silhouette of Cuba the inscription RETs MO RF 35 Years, that is the Radioespionage center at Lourdes -35 years. Among these badges there was one which was very unusual. On it was portrayed a map of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and a sputnik antenna, which in theory should symbolize a radio-espionage base.
Loose ends in the water It is generally known that the USSR and Russia had deployed two radio-espionage bases beyond its borders in Cuba (Lourdes) and in Vietnam (Cam Ranh). Both bases traditionally elicited the strongest displeasure from the USA and their immediate neighbors, accompanied by a sustained sensation in the SMI (?) and in Congressional hearings. Not long ago, Russia decided to close both bases so that nothing could detract from our foreign political success. The real significance of such bases was more important than the maneuvers of enemy fleets on the coasts of the country. Even in 1993 the Cuban Minister of Defense, Raul Castro declared that about 75% of Russia’s reconnaissance information was obtained with the help of Lourdes. This was an exaggeration of course, but none the less, the Americans were always extremely sensitive regarding the Cuban center. However, at first, neither I, nor my friends were able to discover any information about a Russian base in the PDRK, or even any mention of one. Discussions with those who were professionally obliged to know about our reconnaissance in this region also led to nothing. But after a couple of months, information arrived which plunged me into complete despondency. The situation was, as a final measure I raised the question about a Russian base in Korea with friends from the worldwide club of radio enthusiasts “Spooks”. Their hobby is to use homemade radio receivers to listen in on military and special frequencies (in distinction from Russia this is not forbidden in other countries), and also to collect and to catalog publications about electronic espionage around the world. Learning that there are members of this club in very different countries and that for a long time they have exchanged information, the club commanded a very suitable base of information in the area of electronic espionage. At least, except for Spooks, I have nowhere else encountered charts of the activity of the radio transmitters at Lourdes. But Eri[1] Bonder the leader of this club could not help at all. “I have never heard anything about a Soviet or Russian base for radio-technical reconnaissance in North Korea. Could it possibly have been only just opened? But I strongly doubt that Russia would do this after the decision to close Lourdes and Cam Ranh”, was the not very comforting response I received from Eri. The anniversary badge continued to be a bother, and it gave me no peace that a Soviet radio-espionage base might exist secretly in such an explosively dangerous region, when information about its existing now would be reason for a major international scandal. But except for the badge in my hands there was nothing. I mostly forgot about the base for a while. Until the news of the sentencing of diplomat Valentin Moiseev of working in South Korean intelligence.
The Judge reveals the secret On 14 August 2001 the Moscow city court handed down its sentence in the case of Valentin Moiseev, the former deputy director of the 1st Department Asia, of the MID (Ministry For Foreign Affairs) of Russia. The ex-diplomat was found guilty of spying in behalf of South Korea and was sentenced to 4.5 years deprivation of liberty with the sentence to be served in a strict regime settlement. In the hall of the presiding judge was published sensational information about the Russian base in the PDRK. Here is the citation from the sentence:
“The court...established...fulfilling the conditions of APNB (spying for South Korea – A.S.), Moiseev V.I. ...handed over... in the fall of 1997 secretly compiled state secrets in the area of military cooperation and content from secure information of the Korean Department of the 1 DA MID RF about military cooperation between Russia and the PDRK, in part concerning the fulfillment of the contract between the RF and PDRK for the MiG-29 and the completion of the functioning in the PDRK of the Russian radio-technical reconnaissance complex “Ramona”.
This was the first time that any of the listeners had heard name of the secret electronic espionage base operating, judging by the text, in the interests of our special services at the very least until 1997.
Birth of “Ramona” True, it is not clear what was done at this base, nor in whose interests. From the judgement of the court one might draw the conclusion that the base was responsible for radio technical reconnaissance. As defined by the Voenizdat[2] book “Radioelectronic Reconnaissance”, Radio technical reconnaissance (RTR) is a form of radio electronic reconnaissance for discovery and location of radio location stations (RLS), radio navigation and radio technical systems using methods of radio reception, and directional and signal analysis of radio signals. Translated into Russian (or English - G.P.) this means that RTR does not listen to the secret discussion of the enemy but “only” provides enemy activity in the radio band consisting of patterns of the transmissions of the discovered radio stations. How this is useful, is explained best of all by Viktor Suvorov in “the Aquarium”:
“And thus, as a result of a multi-year analysis it appears possible to say “if RB-7665-1 appears in the ether, it means that four days later a massive flight to Ramstein will be executed”. It is an inviolable rule. And if suddenly the station which we call Ts-1000 begins to work, then it is obvious to a child that military readiness of American forces in Europe will be increased....”.
In the system of the Russian special services there are two organizations which are concerned with radio intelligence, the GRU and the so-called Third Glavk FAPSI - Main Administration of Radioelectronic Reconnaissance by Means of Signals (GURRSS). Information which might be obtained by means of radio technical reconnaissance has clear military significance. And most the top secret “Ramona” belongs likely to the department of military reconnaissance, and all things considered, specifically with the help of this base our reconnaissance kept track of US aviation in Japan. I found one more argument in favor of our interpretation that the “Ramona” base worked against Japan and the USA in the book “Kim Chen Ir” which quickly was provided to me. The book was written by two defectors from North Korea, Kim Han Sik and Son Kwan Du and published in 1998 in a limited tirage by “Shartarap” publishing in Alma Ata. (In South Korea the book was printed in October 1997).
Defectors remember that “till 1995 (This is what the downloaded text says; I suspect a typo, and that it should read till 1985 - G.P.) relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union were chilly. But from 1985 there was an expansion of military contacts because North Korea undertook the task of modernizing its army. After the visit of a Soviet military delegation to Pyongyang in honor of the fortieth anniversary of liberation, in the following year, 1986 a large group of generals, to the number of 470 individuals went to the USSR for study....In Ansan, Hwanghae Province, the reconnaissance base “Ramona” was fitted out for collection of reconnaissance information about the American army deployed on Okinawa. .In connection with this the number of military specialists was increased by and additional 80 men.
And the inglorious conclusion According to the words of knowledgeable sources, by the summer of 1996 discussions were held about the closing of our base in North Korea. And on 11 June 1996 the MID RF (Foreign Ministry-RF) received a document from the PDRK embassy concerning discontinuation of activity under the Russian-North Korean agreements in the area of military reconnaissance. Thus ended the history of our most secret Radioespionage base beyond the borders. However, perhaps it might not have concluded. In April 2001 a PDRK military delegation came to Moscow for the first time in ten years. On the Russian side discussions were led by Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov, and on the North Korean side by Minister of the Peoples Armed Forces of the PDRK, Vice-Marshal Kim Ir Cher. The result was a signed agreement on the development of cooperation in the military area. Nothing is known about the substance of this document. Perhaps there is a point about the resumed functioning of “Ramona”...
Okinawa - the object of reconnaissanceAfter the second world (war) Okinawa was separated from Japan and for a long time was under the administration of the USA, and on its territory was constructed a whole complex of American military bases. It was a complicated situation summarized by one journalist as “No American bases are located on Okinawa, but Okinawa on the bases”. On 15 May 1972 in accordance with an Japanese-American intergovernmental agreement Okinawa was returned to Japan and again became one of its 47 prefectures. However, the US military bases remained. At the present time thee are 11 US bases located on Okinawa, taking up 20% of the island’s territory. This is 75% of all American bases in Japan. |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on September 26, 2006 at 01:21 PM in , , | | | |
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Not Only Our Own Heroes
How American warriors honor the memories of other brave men, even those who were on the other side. In 1987, Soviet pilots of the 378 ShAP (Assault Aviation Regiment), based at Bagram and flying the Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot, built a memorial to five of their comrades who had fallen in battle. After the Soviets departed, the monument was destroyed. Most recently the remains of the monument was to be cleared for airfield construction, until some American Airmen decided it should be preserved
The Americans began work to gain permission to restore the monument. Here is And here, in the forum of one of the websites I visit regularly, is . At the top of the first page is a photo of the original monument. Unfortunately the text on the first page is all in Russian, however, if you scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "2" to get to the second page, you will find David contacting them in English and much of the discussion now posted in both languages. Then continue to pages 3 and 4 for more discussion and photos from Bagram. It is fascinating to see the interaction of David Keeley and the assorted Russians. And it is heart-warming to see the gratitude of these Russians as well. "SSS" posts:
And "Airwolf":
And , one of Russia's major newspapers, has written an article calling him "Hero of Russia", a significant term since that is also the name of Russia's highest award, replacing the Hero of the Soviet Union, though that is still quite unofficial. I wish David Keeley and his colleagues all success. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on September 22, 2006 at 01:31 PM in , , , | | | |
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Saudi Arabia no longer largest oil producer
. This has major long term implications on a wide variety of fronts, both political and for energy production. I've been saying for some time that we've been focusing our anger and angst upon the Saudis in error. For the foreseeable future we're going to have to deal with the fact that Russia likes high oil prices. Russia will do their best to keep the price of oil high, as high as they can manage, for the foreseeable future. This may have something to do with their leaders' resentment of our global status and a desire to see us cut back in size. It also has a lot to do with their own economic interest. Essentially, oil and modern weapons are, have been, and will be Russia's two major exports and sources of foreign currency. For about 15 years the Russian military has been unable to buy new military equipment, except for testing purposes, and unable to train its troops. Pilots got almost no flying time and were leaving the air forces. Last year for the first time, really, in its existence, the Russian Republic was able to start buying tanks, aircraft and other weapons for field units. And I don't think they're likely to stop just so we can operate our jet skis. One of the problems which has negatively influenced Russia's evolution since 1991 is the fact that they have never understood enlightened, modern free enterprise. They have adopted Marxian-style capitalism instead of Western free enterprise. Capitalism is a fantasy misinterpretation of free enterprise as misunderstood by Marx and Lenin, something inherently rapacious and dissimulating. Unfortunately, in 1991 the Russians, with a very few exceptions knew nothing about Western economic systems, save what they'd inadvertently absorbed while dozing through their political indoctrination classes. So suddenly, when they rejected Marxism, and decided to adopt the opposite, they adopted a caricature version instead of the real thing. In an analogous way, when their gangsters emerged as "Russian Mafiya" initially they decided to be Mafia, and they did their best to dress and look the part, as garnered from movies. During my first visits, I saw a lot of guys dressed in heavy pinstripe suits, with black shirts and wide hats, stubble and all the rest. Gradually, they seemed to have learned that real mafia do not look like mafia. And so Russian Mafiya began to dress a bit less obviously. Or similarly, imagine some guy from new York's East Village who goes out to Wyoming to become a cowboy - you can guess what he's going to look like upon arrival - Hopalong! Bottom line is, We have to deal with Russia differently than with the Saudis... or for that matter than we dealt with the Soviets. IMHO, one of the best ways to start would be to start exploiting all our capacities. ANWR and coastal drilling, oil sands, the works. If a few Watermelons (green on the outside but red on the inside) can't deal with it, then we'd better deal with them. Conservation? Cease wasting gas on frivolities? Definitely. Even recognizing that "what is frivolous" is open to debate. But conserve is the core of conservatism. And I am as much against waste as I am in favor of careful use. But that also implies using. As for Russia and its new wealth. What they will choose to do with their wealth remains to be seen. Some of it will gratingly go to their military, but not all. A lot is already going to refurbishing of national landmarks and treasures; something for which I am grateful. Some of it may be used on solving other problems. But on what? -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on August 24, 2006 at 02:37 PM in , , , | | | |
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The Russian Market Blast - Updated
As some of you may have heard, today there was a bombing at the Cherkizovskii Market on Moscow's northeast side. Not much seems to have made it into our news. form a Russian, English language website. This version should not be taken as definitive, as some details are contradicted by a couple of other Russian-language sites. One report suggests the explosion might have been caused by gas cylinders, though that seems to me to be at odds with details here about two Slavic men seen running from the area, who were pursued and arrested. It sounds as if the majority of the casualties may have been non-Russians from the "former republics". Officials are correct to keep their options open, but this does not sound like Muslim terrorism to me. They would have picked some more prominent site for one thing, and a place not so populated by non-Slavs. To me this sounds like ordinary domestic terrorism. Probably a mob action against somebody who failed to pay his protection money, or otherwise fell afoul of the unofficial powers. As an outside chance, perhaps Russian racists striking a blow against the Central Asians. For those of you reading the story, the exchange rate is about 30-31 Russian Rubles to the dollar. -Rurik. Updated: it seems my "outside chance" was the correct guess. According to two suspects captured yesterday while fleeing the scene chose to bomb that perticular location in the market because they objected to the presence of too many merchants who were natives of Asia. Russians do not share the Western inhibition about expressing their ethnic animosities. East Asians tend to be particularly disdained, and are frequently called such things as Zhopomord (arse face). Animosities are growing on account of increasing numbers of "unoffical immigrants" from China and Central Asia, both in the Far East and in the cities of European Russia. |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on August 22, 2006 at 08:05 PM in , | | | |
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The Beginning of the End
Today, August 19 is the sixteenth anniversary of one of the twentieth century’s great events. On this day began the coup against Gorbachev, which collapsed on August 22, now celebrated in Russia as Russian Flag Day. It is an event almost forgotten here, obscured by all that has happened since. And most of what is remembered, is distorted by myth and error. I was watching and I remember. I speak of the death of the Soviet Union. And even if this latest revolution has failed to live completely up to all its promise, in my opinion, Russia, and the world are better than when Brezhnev and Andropov ran things. On August 19, 1990, I was undressing for a shower when my phone rang. It was a friend from Grad school calling. "George you gotta turn on the TV now! CNN is reporting that Gorbachev has been taken ill and has been temporarily relieved of his duties!" Immediately I replied "Gorby’s illness is political, and he won’t recover. And this means the death of the Soviet Union." And I went to put on my pants and TV, thoughts of a well-needed shower delayed. By the next day, I’d heard of the so-called State Committee for the State of Emergency headed by a formerly little know Yanaev, learned that Boris Yeltsin was still at large and speaking out. And I learned he had even climbed atop a T-72B tank outside what came to be known as the Russian White House, and I knew I was dead right and Communism was just dead. As it turned out, I wasn’t quite as right as I thought. I gave the coup perhaps a month or so, six months at most, and suggested there would be civil war, with most of the army in revolt, and only the paratroops and perhaps the internal troops of the KGB and MVD backing the Committee. As it turned out, even the loyal troops failed to support the plotters. Even the KGB Alpha Group, their closest approximation to our Delta Force, temporized and evaded orders to take down Yeltsin. Within four days the army was withdrawing from Moscow back to their bases in the suburbs and the plotters had fled to the republics, soon to commit suicide or surrender. Only four citizens had been killed, accidentally run over by an armored vehicle which was trying to back out of the crowd underneath one of the bridges. Has there ever been so major and so bloodless a revolution? As I said, I was not really surprised, except by the stunning success. Yes, I know, it is part of the myth that everyone was surprised. Well, some people were. Certainly the idiots of our establishment media, and some of the renowned talking head Television Sovietologists. But for many of us the surprise was only tactical. Of course Gorbachev was surprised. That is the nature of coups. If a coup is not a surprise it tends not to happen. You’d think even a reporter could figure that one out. And every Western toady idiot who insisted on seeing the world through Gorby’s eyes, was also bound to be fooled, about this as about everything else. There were a great many others who were not surprised. For years I had been attending almost every year the annual conference of our American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, a multidisciplinary scholarly organization. Different from other academic groups such as the Modern Language Association, and various Historian, Sociologist and other academic groups. the AAASS includes members of all disciplines relating to the Soviet Union and other Slavic countries. Historians, literature and language specialists, economists, political science, etc. It also included not only academics, but also scholars from private institutions, think tanks and government. Attending these meetings and choosing my panels carefully, I regularly encountered, and became friendly with analysts from the CIA, State Department, and various military agencies as well as academics. Among the academics, there was also still a strong contingent of senior scholars opposed to Communism and Leftist blather. Of course, media representatives did not attend these meetings, nor have the patience to sit through dry presentations. They were busy flocking to the self-promoters, while I listened to the real experts, and learned whose books I should be reading. Steven Rosefielde Jake Kipp, Murray Feshbach, William T. Lee, Bruce Mennning and Robert Bauman, Stephen Blank, Michael Rwykin, and many others. All of them names famous to their peers, but unknown to the general media. And I was listening to them to their discussions of military developments, of foreign policy problems, and demographics. I distinctly remember one panel on the Future of the Soviet Army in Transition which painted a picture of the Soviet Army in collapse. At the end of the discussion, in summation the panel chair summarized that the Soviet Union was in trouble and there were several possibilities. There might be a crackdown to restore discipline, or radical liberalization beyond what had already been discussed (meaning de-communization), or there might be a revolution or a coup, but that the most likely future was that the Soviet Union "would continue to muddle on downward", that is to sink ever deeper into ineptitude and social failure, without making any dramatic attempt to change course. Though these scholars, and I, presumed there would be only a worsening crisis of Soviet failure and social turmoil, we recognized that the USSR was in a "pre-revolutionary condition", and that none of the other more dramatic alternatives could be ruled out. And the longer the situation festered, the more likely something would snap. So what were some of the specifics that my mentors and I noticed? Basically, the Soviet Union had lost its confidence and its legitimacy. Afghanistan had destroyed the prestige of the army and there was massive resistance both within the army and without. A Soldiers Union had formed and a young Major Lopatin had actually challenged the Colonel General Commanding the Warsaw pact forces for his seat in the Supreme Soviet - and then won! A Soldiers Mothers’ Committee was stirring up trouble demanding their sons be treated more humanely. And then there was conscription. The authorities expected about 10 percent compliance with the Fall call-up; but in several of the republics and cities, the compliance was between 1.5 and 4.5 percent compliance. That is, about 95 percent draft dodging! In the republics there was massive disorder and resistance both to the army and to Soviet Rule in general. There had been a demonstration in Tbilisi, Georgia which had beep put down by Soviet Troops using a supposedly non-lethal gas and entrenching tools. Twenty are killed, officially, and maybe more unofficially, 14 of them by the non-lethal gas. The local commander is scapegoated, even as evidence suggests that Gorby himself must have given the approval. Elsewhere various ethnic minorities are already engaging in civil war in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Some of the republics were even talking about splitting from the USSR. The Warsaw pact had collapsed in 1989 beginning when the Hungarians opened their borders, and culminating in December 1989 with the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaucescu, setting a threatening precedent for other Communist rulers. Prices on everything had suddenly risen by about 300 percent. And Gorbachev was opposing none of it. There had been an attempt in the Central Committee to remove him in April, an attempt which he had defeated only with the assistance of Boris Yeltsin, a charismatic new figure on the Moscow scene, who had previously been a successful regional manager in Siberia. The final straw may have been the planned new Union Treaty which would have devolved more rights on the individual republics at the expense of the central authority. Even in early August this new Union Treaty was seen as a challenge which the old guard would have to derail. So while I did not expect a coup at that particular time (but then as Monty Python reminds us No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!) I was hardly surprised either. This is what I got wrong. I knew things were bad in the Soviet Army, but I did not understand how bad. I presumed that the Taman Guards Motor Rifle and the Kantemirovka Guards Tank Divisions would prove loyal. What propelled me to this conclusion I cannot now remember. Just being assigned to a Kremlin Show Division should not a loyal trooper make. With somewhat more reason, even if still wrong, I also presumed that the Soviet Parachute Divisions would have higher morale, and prove mainly loyal. I forgot that they also were conscripts arbitrarily assigned. I learned later that the KGB Alpha Group had been ordered to seize Yeltsin, but their commander stalled and temporized while waiting to see which side was winning. Similarly, Air Force Air Transport Commanders stalled before turning their transports to the service of the plotters. I have also heard from reliable sources, that at the bases of the Pacific Ocean Fleet, the sailors held rallies and discussion groups to decide whom to support, and this led to the surface fleet deciding to support the plotters of the Special Committee, while the Submarine Flotilla, including their missile boats, opted for Yeltsin and began to put out to sea! The moment the coup was decided was when the mechanized troops surrounded the White House instead of moving in directly for a bloody attack. It forfeited the opportunity, and showed hesitation and weakness, and gave the crowds a chance to mingle near the unhappy and confused conscript soldiers, boys not eager to fire on their own people. Then Yeltsin climbed up on the T-72 tank, and stood on its turret to address the crowd. In such a disjointed moment, symbolism can be everything. The tide may be sifted by who captures the symbol. In April 1917, when Lenin returned to Russia, arriving at the Finland Station, the first thing he did was climb up on top of a armored car standing at the station and harangue the crowd from atop its turret, calling for all power to the Soviets and overthrow of the provisional government. The image of Lenin speaking from atop the turret of the armored car is among the most famous of Russian revolutionary icons. When Yeltsin got on top of the tank, the imagery must have been clear to every Russian. the new, anti-Lenin. With a speech from atop an armored turret, Bolshevism ended as it began, with neat symmetry. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on August 20, 2006 at 11:59 AM in , , | | | |
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First Time Into Russia
As a grad student, I had applied in the mid 1980s to participate in a six month academic exchange to the Soviet Union. I was among those not accepted, perhaps because several of the places I asked to go happened to be closed cities. I suspected I might remain one of those Russia scholars who would never get to visit and see for myself. Then, in early 1994, shortly after receiving a bit of unexpected money from an inheritance, I saw an ad for a company conducting military history tours to Russia, now within my resources. The tour involved Peterburg, Moscow, Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad), and Kursk. We would visit battlefield sites and museums, and meet with Soviet veterans. And so, in August 1994, I stepped off the airplane at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. My first of nine (so far) visits. In 1994 the revolution was still fresh and Russia was in the midst of being reborn. There were still signs of the old Union, such as drunks passed out on the street, and a general tattiness of a population only becoming acquainted with style. Russian plumbing and sanitation still lived down to its horrible reputation, and a trip to a public restroom almost always meant wading through raw sewage and waste. Literally. No need for signs or asking directions - just follow your nose. When visiting the original Tupolev design bureau museum in the building on Radio Street, I noticed the whole building smelled like a Viet Nam field pisser; for a reason. In fact, most of the apartment buildings, particularly the elevators smelled the same or worse. There were few places to eat, save the hotel, and food was plain. And the usual drink was warm coca cola. In the morning there was "sok" juice of some generic variety, and tea or coffee. In many ways the conditions were primitive. In the hotels, conditions were plain, and hot water was a sometimes event. And yet there were also hopeful signs. Private venders were out all over all the streets selling souvenirs, tee-shirts, fuzzy hats, and Russian crafts. Russian military souvenirs, not only the pins, but also hats and bits of uniform were very common. Much like Quang Ngai City or Juarez, anything was for sale. And in the hotel lobbies, that meant many young ladies as well. Many of the women, and not only the professionals, were also showing signs of wanting to beautify themselves, and some were already showing spectacular results. Stores, for the most part, were not well stocked, but at least were not bare, and there were no lines. Everywhere I saw olive drab trucks, ex-army, and recently privatized. Gasoline still seemed to be sold out of buckets from olive drab trucks parked by the side of the road. Private enterprise was undeveloped but obviously catching on, in a big way. As was crime. In the old USSR, criminals never messed with foreigners, they dreaded any such mistake, for it would bring down the full weight of the KGB upon them, as if they had poached royal game. If a foreigner were assaulted or robbed, it was clearly done by the KGB itself, and was meant to serve as a warning. Now things were reversed, and State Security was unlikely to bother you, but common criminals considered you the ripest pickings. In Peterburg and Moscow there were also beggars everywhere. Sadly, too many of them wore the blue and white telyashka of the airborne troops, Afghan vets down on their luck. There were also the very old, and the religious panhandlers. Soldiers were everywhere. Some of them were recognizable to me as regular Russian Army, Air Forces, Navy. But many other troops were dressed in fatigues or cammies. And all were armed. Folding stock Kalashnikovs seemed as common as pants. Even in the hotels for foreigners, the lobbies were as full of guards as of whores. I was able to learn many of the uniforms and insignias. The ones in the mouse gray uniforms were the militsiya, the ordinary police, they had rifles. Others were the OMON, the Police Detachments of Special Purpose, the crowd control police, also with AKs. Then there were the MVD troops from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And particularly in Moscow, the special guard troops. And there were several other police agencies, and finally a horde of private security and guard companies, all in full cammies and insignias, and all with Kalashnikovs. Many of these wee the public face of Russian Mafiya, their guards and enforcers. You could also spot from time to time, other Russian Mafiya, dressed in heavy pinstripes, with wide hats, looking for all the world like bad imitations of television caricatures of mafiosi. And that is what they were. The were mafiya, and were going to look the part. Though I never saw any trouble involving any of these "troops", I presumed they were there for a reason, and their presence was one reason we never saw any serious action. Yes, in so many ways, Russia was the Wild East, and along with piss, the second aroma was risk. An exciting time for a war dog who wasn’t yet quite old. Then there were some notable encounters., several of which made lasting impressions. One day our group went out to visit the Piskarevskoye Cemetery where the dead of Leningrad’s siege are buried in mass graves - a million of them. By luck of the draw, the day we went just happened to be the day of remembrance when official ceremonies are held, including a great procession when various public groups and individual citizens lay flowers and wreathes in memory. When we discovered what we had happened into, our group quickly fond some flowers, and was incorporated into the procession at the very end. We were quite dignified, and even moved, as we marched up to the main monument and placed our offering. However, I noted with some disdain that a bunch of young high school age kids seemed unmoved and were horsing around. Evidently they’d had their over fill of patriotic education in school and were turned off by the whole bother. At this ceremony, we were also introduced to Colonel General Vasilii Nikolaevich Kubarev, Hero of the Soviet Union. At that moment, I made my reputation. "I know you!", I burst out , "Vasilii Kubarev, Hero, 65 Guards Regiment, 46 air victories. I have studied about you." On several later trips I have had other occasions to share a toast with Col. Gen. Kubarev, though I fear we will not be with us before I can toast him again. My particular surprise and revelation came when we started to meet with the veterans’ committees, official groups to be sure. Our tour group consisted of about twenty people including a few wives. A few were younger fellows with interest, but no military experience. And several were old World War. II vets, though none of them had actually gotten overseas, and had spent the war stateside. I was the lone Viet Nam vet in our group, and the only one who had actually gone off to war, so despite my limited action, I was the only one who had even heard an incoming round, or an outgoing one either. And when the Russians discovered that I was a veteran, the group veteran, I became something of a celebrity - and a Viet Nam Veteran, not just any celebrity, but someone to be feted and treated with honor! One day, in Volgograd, just as lunch was getting started, someone came in and informed me that there were a couple of Afghantsy, Afghan vets, around the corner form our hotel. Lunch had to wait. I was out to greet them, and to exchange best wishes of veterans for each other. Sadly, they were two in number, playing their guitars, with a hat in front of them. When we met with the Veterans committee at Kursk, one of the old veterans, a former Lieutenant of the 13 Guards Division, summoned me over to him and presented me with his own Guards badge. I plopped it into my vodka glass and "drank the badge". My friend then gave me his wartime photo and a special note to present to customs in case I were hassled trying to bring the gift out through customs. I retired to bed early, and involuntarily, missing the dancing at the hotel, which seemed to be the only night life in town. The next morning, I discovered I’d missed someone else. A pilot from the air force base had come looking for me. He had heard that there was a Viet Nam Veteran in town, and he wanted the meet me. He said he had also served in Viet Nam, at Saigon, (after 1975 I presume). Unable to meet me, he left a message and his Russian Air Force tie and tie pin for me. And I missed that. Damn vodka! But for me the shock was the honor and high regard in which I was held as a Viet. Nam Veteran. More honor than I had received in the previous 24 years in America. This should tell us something. To them we were not air pirates and baby killers. We were soldiers. And for many of them, I suspect we were heroes fighting against a system they did not particularly respect either. Several years later, an active duty captain told me. "You Americans never understood Soviet Army. You always thought number one enemy of Soviet Army was NATO. Wrong. Number one enemy of Soviet Army was Russian people." At Volgograd, when we met the old veterans, after a visit to Mother Russia at Mamaev Kurgan, where I was so moved by the words at the top of this post, I asked the old veterans what they thought about changing he name of Stalingrad to Volgograd, asking if they say a distinction between Stalin and the City. One of the old men got red in the face and went into a rant "You are right. Stalin was a bad man, a terrible man who did many evil things, but the city is not the man, and we fought for Stalingrad. This is the trouble with Russia. The names are always changing, but nothing else ever changes." When I departed, and on each subsequent visit, I have come to believe he was only partly correct. Indeed, much has changed, every year, some of it for the worse, and some for the better. And if some things have changed back, it is, as Lenin would say, "Two steps forward and one step back", though now the old bald bitch would say it grimacing. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on August 13, 2006 at 01:30 PM in , , | | | |
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Inside the Russian Army
Only thousands? The Russian Army must be smaller than I thought.
Of course there is bullying in the Russian Army. It has been documented for at least the last half century, and probably was a feature of Russian Army life even during the Tsarist days. Different from western militaries with their year-round induction of trainees, and elaborate specialized training establishments, the Soviet Army did things differently, in a system which remains little changed. They held conscription call-ups only twice a year, at the beginning of June and December. At that time eligible conscriptees we assembled by the local Military Komandatura, and picked over by the various branches of the military. Vlad may be picked for the Strategic Rocket Forces, Ivan for the Navy, Sergei and Stepan for the army, and poor Oleg may be informed that he has just been selected for the Airborne forces. Sergei and Stepan will be selected by representatives of the specific divisions which will become their new family. And bad news, some branches, such as Navy or Airborne Forces may carry an extra year or two additional service. If Oleg thinks he cannot jump out of an airplane, and does not want to give the extra year for Airborne – bad luck. Once all the warm bodies have been divvied up by the “buyers” from the different military branches and units, the new soldiers are sent directly to their units, where they will receive their training in their units. It is assumed that they received sufficient pre-military training in school, and already know the basics, such as marching, saluting, and such. In fact, this is often not the case, but that is a problem for the regiment, not the Komandatura. A few of the promising bodies, the smarter or fitter ones, may be sent to NCO schools for training as instant NCOs, but these lads have no greater experience or authority than any of the other conscripts. This much like the shake-n-bake NCO schools the US Army used to have, save that in the US Army, the candidates at least completed specialized basic and AIT training first, and not afterwards. Thus the Soviet Army had no real NCO cadre between officers and common soldiers. The regular cycle of discharging completed soldiers and induction of new conscripts at six-moth intervals made for a natural class system. Ant this led to a system of hazing called dedovshchina, or granddadism. The Dedy, the Granddads, are the soldiers completing the last quarter of their military service. And they rule with an iron hand. Beneath them are the others. A Cherpak, or Ladle is in his third quarter, and a Faisan, a Pheasant is in his second quarter. The new soldier, in his first six months is a Salaga, a Minnow, and his life is usually hell. Upon arrival at the barracks he is picked over by the oldtimers, in order of seniority of course. Anything of value will be taken from him, and he will be forced to swap his new uniform and equipment for the old, worn and tattered kit of his seniors. Money too. And in the mess hall, he must yield his rations, or at least the tasty portions. Any attempt to protest will be met with a severe beating, which will likely come eventually anyway, just to establish who’s boss. And all the work is done by the Salagi, including personal care of the senior troops. The Dedy do nothing for themselves, but rather delegate all tasks, including even personal matters such as shining boots and brass to the junior troops, the Cherpaky and Faisany, who of course delegate further to a convenient Salaga. Sexual abuse of the youngsters may not be the norm, but it has not been rare either. Packages from home are expropriated, and often, the new soldiers will be beaten and ordered to write home asking their parents to send money – which is taken by the senior troops upon arrival. Sometimes the abuse gets so severe that soldiers are permanently injured. Sometimes they snap and may commit suicide or go on a rampage. If there is a racial component, because one of the soldiers is a national minority such as a Tatar or an Udmert or Chukchi, the situation is almost certain to be worse. During the 1980s, there were quite a few years in which the Soviet army lost more troops to dedovshchina, injury, murder, suicide, than they lost to operations in Afghanistan. A good question is why nothing has ever changed this system. What is to replace it? The officers do not control the barracks, and in fact find this system is a useful substitute for the non-existent NCO class. As for the troops themselves, the Salaga knows that after six months he will become a Faisan, and then a Cherpak, and will enjoy all the benefits of the system. Besides, to whom can he complain? Even if he were to find an officer willing to listen, he still would have to sleep in the barracks that night, and then he would get it. During the late 1980s; under perestroika, this situation came to light and drew much criticism. There were attempts to abolish the custom, but all seem to have failed. In part this is because today’s offenders were yesterday’s victims, and today’s victim’s tomorrow’s offenders. And also in part, because the Russian Army has no professional NCO class. In part, this story tells us why we should appreciate having been in the American military. But it part is also serves as a metaphor for the problems of trying to change the old system throughout Russia. It is both the system and the people which need to change. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on August 5, 2006 at 03:39 PM in , | | | |
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Resistance is not futile
A "Best of Old War Dogs" featured post. The webmaster is using a bogus timestamp to keep this post near the top of the blog for a while. Please scroll down for newer posts. This item was originally posted 2006.07.27.13:05. This takes me back to the days when I was a grad student, studying Russian history. Among my professors was an English gentleman, named Keith Armes, who was my first Russian language instructor. He was a man who broke our balls learning the language, and broke his own balls in driving us. As a result, I learned Russian. In contrast, my Arabic instructor was interested in "being a nice guy' and being liked by his students. Consequently, though I got better grades in Arabic, I retain almost none of it today. There is a lesson in there for those paying attention. In addition to teaching Russian language, Dr. Armes taught a series of courses in Soviet Literature, both the dissident, unofficial and the official literature. One entire quarter was devoted to Solzhenitsyn. Keith was additionally a rare bird in his overt anti-Communism, but he knew how to appreciate a text on its merits. And though I studied some remarkably obnoxious books, I also found some which were praiseworthy. And one which was unique. Yesterday from the Wall Street Journal brought me back to the past. Evgenii Zamyatin's novel We is about to be republished in a new translation. Evgenii Zamyatin was an engineer and a recognized writer, in the O. Henry mode. He was also an Old Bolshevik, a member of Lenin's party from years prior to World War I. After the revolution he returned to Russia from England, but very quickly became disillusioned with Leninism, and became perhaps the first "ex-Communist". During 1920-21 Zamyatin wrote his distopic novel We as a warning of the mistake of collectivism, and what he saw in the offing. As part of my Master's program, I had to write a paper outside my History major. I chose Russian literature and wrote a 60 page Master's paper on Zamyatin's We. While other literature and language scholars had already published a number of books and journal articles on the artistic merits and symbolism of We, some of it very good, and some not so much so, I did something different, even bold. I focused my paper on the question of the accuracy of Zamyatin's portrayal an forecast. How did his bitter portrayal foreshadow the realities of later, actual socialist systems? The answer was that Zamyatin was indeed a prophet. But then personal problems arose. Before I completed the paper, Keith Armes had moved on to another University and a different professor took over the task of evaluating my paper. The daughter of one of the 1930s Moscow Reproters and a Russian mother who still followed Stalin (I met her) this professor objected strenuously to most of what I wrote, initially refusing to accept my paper. I had to go back and spend months doing further research to support peripheral points. Among other things this led me into a study of the abuses of psychiatry by the Soviets - including "Sluggish Schizophrenia" a mental illness diagnosed by the complete absence of any symptoms, save for dissidence. As it happened, her attempt to stifle my paper backfired and led to my writing a much stronger paper, and expanding my knowledge. On my second submission, she had to accept it, but still tried to get me to change aspects which seemed to offend her. I told her a polite variation of "pack sand". And there is another lesson here. You can stand up to the PC crowd. In fact, their pressure can force you to learn, and to become a better student, even when that is not their intention (and occasionally when it is). But anyway, go read the review,and then read We. If you can find the original translation by Mirra Ginzburg, I would recommend it, but even the new re-translation, is worth the time, and I will certainly read it myself to see what changes can bother me. Among other points of interest, this book disproves the popular claim that nobody foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union. Zamyatin foresaw it in 1920-21, and in a way that eerily foreshadowed the details of what happened in 1990-91. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on July 29, 2006 at 06:00 PM in , , , | | | |
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Russia offered to help N. Korea
*** Hot Air: Russia: |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on July 9, 2006 at 10:57 AM in , , | | | |