History & Persons

Andrey Vedyaev17.09.2026

Colonel Alexei Nikolayevich Botyan did not earn the nickname “Whirlwind” by accident. He was one of the principal real-life models for the legendary “Major Whirlwind,” the Soviet intelligence officer credited with saving the Polish city of Kraków from destruction by the retreating Germans. We discussed those events with him more than once, and each time […]

Yaroslav Listov14.09.2026

On September 11, 2026, the 149th anniversary of Felix Dzerzhinsky’s birth was marked. The Secret War That Shaped Felix Dzerzhinsky Few figures in the history of the Russian Revolution had a closer relationship with the underground world than Dzerzhinsky. Long before he became the head of the Cheka, he had already spent years learning the […]

Yuri Chekalin07.09.2026

Mathias Rust: The Trial of the Man Who Landed a Plane Beside the Kremlin. On September 4, 1987, one of the most extraordinary trials of the late Soviet era came to an end in Moscow. Standing before the court was nineteen-year-old West German citizen Mathias Rust—a young man who, only months earlier, had accomplished something […]

Egor Yakovlev06.09.2026

Mark Twain was among the first American tourists to visit Russia. In 1867, the future literary giant not only traveled across the Russian Empire but also helped compose an official address to Tsar Alexander II—and even met the emperor in person at his Crimean residence in Livadia. It was an encounter between two worlds: a […]

Yaroslav Listov05.09.2026

How Yeltsin Gave Up Crimea: 35 Years Since Crimea’s Declaration of State Sovereignty. Anti-Soviet commentators often repeat the same accusation: “The terrible Communists gave Crimea to Ukraine.” Yet when the conversation turns to Boris Yeltsin and his policies between 1991 and 1996, an extraordinary silence sets in. And yet those were precisely the years when […]

Yaroslav Listov04.09.2026

The founding of the First International coincided with a period of growing democratic and working-class movements across Europe. Yet the organization was dominated by various socialist currents hostile to Marxism, while the workers’ movement itself remained largely under the influence of bourgeois ideology. As Vladimir Lenin later observed, “Marxism was far from establishing its position […]

Yuri Chekalin31.08.2026

The story of Grigori Rasputin has long existed somewhere between history and legend. Hundreds of books have been written about him, countless myths have grown around his name, and “Rasputin” itself has become almost a byword. Far less is known, however, about the lives of his children. Yet the story of his eldest daughter, Maria, […]

Yaroslav Listov17.08.2026

The 130th anniversary of the birth of Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir (1896–1937), a Red Army commander of the 1st rank and one of the most talented military leaders of the Russian Civil War, is being commemorated this year. Yakir was born in Chișinău into the family of a pharmacist. He studied chemistry at the University of […]

Yaroslav Listov14.08.2026

On Aug. 13, 1871, Karl Paul Friedrich August Liebknecht was born in Leipzig—a man whose name would become a symbol of uncompromising struggle for freedom and justice. The son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Karl absorbed socialist ideas from an early age. Trained as a […]

Andrey Vedyaev10.08.2026

June 15, 2026, marks the 112th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, one of the most remarkable figures of the Soviet political elite and the only head of the Soviet security services ever to rise to the leadership of both the Communist Party and the state. The circumstances surrounding the birth of the […]

The Whirlwind Front

The Cheka Was Born Before the Revolution

A Hard Landing

Mark Twain Visits Tsar Alexander II

Yeltsin’s Betrayal of the Residents of Crimea

160 Years Since the Opening of the First Congress of the First International

Rasputin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Maria Rasputin

How a Chemistry Student Defeated the Tsarist Generals

155 Years Since the Birth of Karl Liebknecht

The Andropov Code

Midterm Pandemonium!

Herbert Wells at 160: The Man Who Imagined the 20th Century

Nomophobia And How to Help Yourself

Martin Luther is the Charismatic Leader of the Printing Age