Yuri Chekalin

Yuri Chekalin08.05.2023

History has a funny habit of repeating itself on a new coil of its spiral. As the classics said, first as a tragedy, then as a farce. History often surprises us with such zigzags. Let’s take a look at the times of Peter the Great. To persuade Mazepa to treason, Charles XII of Sweden sent […]

Yuri Chekalin13.04.2023

“Where does all this madness about hara-kiri, bushido come from…” /From one Russian radio broadcast./ “… We must win honestly, We must live in the bright light, They will compose songs about us, Heaven will be hot…” “Sport Heroes” “…Who knows what awaits us? Who knows what will happen? And will be strong And […]

Yuri Chekalin23.02.2023

The first serial killer in the Soviet Union. In late 1922 – early 1923, corpses began to float in the Moscow River, frightening the fishermen. In the abandoned wasteland, passers-by also began to find bodies, tied and packed in bags. Rumors spread around Moscow about a terrible maniac and about people who went to the […]

Yuri Chekalin10.01.2023

By 1908, the time was right for a new kind of agency to protect America. The United States was, well, united, with its borders stretching from coast to coast and only two landlocked states left to officially join the union. Inventions like the telephone, the telegraph, and the railroad had seemed to shrink its vast […]

Yuri Chekalin04.01.2023

Emilio Kosterlitzky was one of the most colorful characters to ever serve as a special agent. A cultured, Russian-born man of the world, he spent four decades in the Russian and Mexican militaries, rising to the rank of brigadier general in Mexico. To avoid the dangerous tribulations of the ongoing Mexican Revolution, he settled down […]

Yuri Chekalin18.10.2022

Pyongyang’s nuclear capability is increasing, but international capacity or interest in dealing with them is limited. The details vary, but the picture is immediately recognizable: a salvo of missiles followed by chilling new rhetoric. This time, North Korean state media claimed that the recent flurry of tests simulated strikes against targets in South Korea and […]

Yuri Chekalin27.09.2022

A rare state funeral for Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister who was assassinated in July, has split Japan. The hawkish Abe was one of the nation’s most divisive postwar leaders, but it is the ruling party’s cozy ties with the ultra-conservative Unification Church that has fired up much of the opposition to the funeral. […]

Yuri Chekalin26.08.2022

Chapter 1 “In the cold, in the cold From familiar places Others call us cities … “ V. Vysotsky In 1854 under the muzzles of the guns, the American Commodore Matthew Perry forced the Japanese to sign the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with the United States and “open” to the world. This event, like […]

Yuri Chekalin08.08.2022

For a long time I wanted to talk about little-studied events like conspiracies in the army, terrorism and the like, so I decided to publish several essays on the history of Japan in the 1920s and 30s. Of course, this will affect politics, economics, sociology, and even culture. I thought for a long time where […]

Yuri Chekalin23.06.2022

The romantic love story of a Russian prisoner of war and a Japanese nurse served as the plot for the musical Oath on a Coin (Chikai no Koin) by the Japanese Botchan Theater (坊っちゃん劇場, Botchan Theater) from Ehime Prefecture (愛媛県, Ehime-ken). For almost 30 years, every second Saturday of the month, about a hundred students […]

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Yuri Chekalin

Zigzag of History

Seppuku and Death in Japan

Scary stories for adults

The Birth of the FBI

The Russian Cossack Turned Special Agent

Armageddon and North Korea

Abe’s Funeral and Japanese Society

Japanese in America: A Brief Overview

The First Wave of Russian Emigration to Japan

Love Oath on Gold Coin

Perestroika Architect Yakovlev And H-Bomb’s Father Sakharov

Melor Sturua As a Mirror of Soviet Elite’s Evolution: Part II

Exodus from Syria

Melor Sturua As a Mirror of Soviet Elite’s Evolution: Part I