History & Persons

Klim Zhukov25.10.2025

Pedro Téllez-Girón y Velasco, 3rd Duke of Osuna, was a true hooligan and aristocrat from Andalusia (just look at his mustache). He was born in 1574 into a wildly talented family, a branch of the wealthy de Guzmán family, Dukes of Medina Sidonia. His mother was also very talented — from the family of the […]

Tony Rocchi20.10.2025

In his own way, Vladimir Lenin had to rebel against his own Bolshevik Party to lead the Bolsheviks to overthrow the Provisional Government in the October Revolution of 1917. Beginning with his April theses almost immediately after his return to Russia from Switzerland, Lenin’s calls to launch a socialist revolution left many Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and […]

Klim Zhukov13.10.2025

On October 12, 1771, Mikhail Miloradovich was born. He was a Russian infantry general (1809), one of the heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812, the military governor-general of St. Petersburg, and a member of the State Council since 1818. He participated in the Italian and Swiss campaigns, always leading his regiment into battle, and […]

Yuri Chekalin06.10.2025

The story of peasant girl Roza Shanina from the Arkhangelsk village of Yedma foreshadowed nothing great. The daughter of a milkmaid and a lumberjack, Rosa grew up in a modest village surrounded by forests. Little did her fellow villagers know that their young Rosa would go on to become known as the “Invisible Terror of […]

Klim Zhukov05.10.2025

On October 2, 1452, Richard III of York was born, the last representative of the male Plantagenet line on the English throne. Richard III was the brother of Edward IV. He assumed the throne after the illegitimacy of the young Edward V was proven. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field […]

Tony Rocchi04.10.2025

From Multi-Party State to One-Party State: the disintegration and collapse of non-Bolshevik parties and movements in the Russian Revolution. The former Russian Empire was the most multi-party country in Europe. However, by the early 1920s, the Soviet Union, its successor state, had become Europe’s biggest one-party state. The history of how the Bolsheviks or Communists […]

Andrey Vedyaev25.09.2025

September 19 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov, whose name is associated with an entire era in the history of the KGB’s underground intelligence service. It was under his leadership that the Vympel special forces group was created, and the first Heroes of the Soviet Union emerged among the KGB’s […]

Tony Rocchi22.09.2025

Nobody really ruled Russia between the February and October Revolutions of 1917. A governmental and legal vacuum opened in Russia in 1917 with the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II in the February Revolution. Neither the Provisional Government nor the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies showed much enthusiasm in establishing themselves as rulers of […]

Andrey Vedyaev20.09.2025

On December 5, 2024, Colonel Ivan Pavlovich Evtodyev, a veteran of the illegal special purpose intelligence service, an honorary employee of the state Security Service, celebrated his 100th birthday. The last of the surviving employees of General Sudoplatov. Ivan Pavlovich was born in 1924 in the village of Subbottsy in the very center of Ukraine […]

Yuri Chekalin10.09.2025

The famine of the early 1920s affected about 40 provinces of Soviet Russia. In the summer of 1921, the ARA (American Relief Administration) and other international public organizations responded to the appeal of the RSFSR government for assistance. The ARA staff (300 employees from America and about 10,000 from the local population) worked from September […]

The Glory of the World

Lenin—Rebel Against the Bolshevik Party in 1917

Life and Death of Mikhail Andreyevich Miloradovich

Invisible Terror of East Prussia

Life and Legacy of Richard III of York

From Multi-Party Russia to One-Party State

Illegal Anniversary

Reluctant Rulers in Russia, February to October 1917

One of the Last Intelligence Officer Survivors

The ARA and Espionage

The Glory of the World

The Paradox of Russian Central Bank

The Tragedy of “Not-Having-Any”

Spy Games