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An American political cartoon depicting the Soviet Russian effort to starve the Western half of Berlin. (Tes) On this day in 1948, Soviet officials in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began aggressively holding up and searching supply trains heading to West Berlin. Soviet officials were upset about efforts amongst the Western Allies…
Some of the 12 million Poles on the morning of March 27th. Government officials were alarmed to learn that a huge proportion of Communist Party members took part in the strike. (Teller Report) At 8 AM on this day in 1981, 12 million Poles laid down their tools and walked away from their jobs. Armbands…
Gorbachev (R) meeting with American president George H. W. Bush in 1991. (The Times of Israel) On this day in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Soviet Union (USSR). A former tractor driver, Gorbachev joined the Communist Party in his youth and attained a law degree during the Khrushchev Thaw of the…
Soviet Secretary Nikita Khrushchev "thaws out" in a 1962 cartoon by John Frith. (John Frith/The Herald) On this day in 1956, a speech entitled On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences - AKA the Secret Speech - was delivered to Soviet leadership by Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. The speech, which was not made available to…
A Heinkel HE 111 light bomber like the one Mikhail Devyatayev and his comrades stole in 1945. (Flickr) On this day in 1945, Soviet fighter pilot Mikhail Devyatayev and 9 others escaped from a Nazi labour camp located in the Baltic Sea. Shot down over the Eastern Front in 1944, Devyatayev was captured by German…
Then-president Václav Havel (L) with American Secretary of Defense William Cohen (R) in 1997. (Defense.gov) On this day in 1989, Czech writer and activist Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia (now Czechia) in that country's first free, post-communist election. The Central European country had just recently removed itself from the USSR (Union of Soviet…
Propaganda, a tool that turned Soviet peasantry against kulaks during the 1930s. (Twitter) On this day in 1929, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the annihilation of the kulaks - a class of prosperous peasants in Eastern Europe - as a part of the USSR's first Five Year Plan. The "liquidation of the kulaks as a…
Finns prepare to defend their position against a Soviet advance during the Winter War. (source: Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1939, the Soviet Red Army fired seven artillery shells at Mainila, a Russian village 800 metres from the Russian-Finnish border. Claiming that Finnish units had fired on Russian civilians unprovoked, the Shelling of Mainila…
Leon Trotsky in 1918. (source: Wikimedia Commons) On this day in 1927 Ukrainian politician Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Communist Party. Trotsky and a colleague, Ukrainian Grigory Zinoviev, had attempted to stage a commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik victory during the October Revolution in November 1917; Joseph Stalin and Trotsky's…
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