History & Persons

Alexander Palladin03.04.2025

Less than 120 years ago, on September 5, 1905, the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed in New Hampshire, ending the year-and-a-half-long Russo-Japanese War. According to various estimates, up to 80,000 Japanese and up to 52,000 Russian servicemen died in it, including my great-grandfather Afanasy Reshetnikov. For his role in Portsmouth negotiations U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt […]

Alexander Palladin31.03.2025

US President Donald Trump declassified JFK assassination records, including those confirming that Lee Harvey Oswald was a poor marksman. This was mentioned, for instance, in a report by CIA station chief in Moscow. In November 1991, Vyacheslav Nikonov, the then assistant to the KGB head Vadim Bakatin and grandson of former Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, […]

Alexander Palladin27.03.2025

In-December-1987-Mikhail-Gorbachev-and-Ronald-Reagan.jpg

In December 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan held their 3rd summit meeting in Washington and I covered this event in a group of Soviet reporters. While there, I got a call from CNN. They invited me to take part once again in Crossfire nightly TV program. (I was their regular guest during my stay […]

Alexander Palladin20.03.2025

In June 1905, The Chronicle of the War with Japan weekly, published in Russia’s capital, ran this: “It can be said without any doubt that espionage has never been practiced in previous wars on such a large scale as it is being used now by our enemy in the Far East. The Japanese have flooded […]

Alexander Palladin12.03.2025

Two weeks ago, a new feature movie, called “North Pole”, was released in Russia. Based on real facts, it is dedicated to the crew of the first Soviet nuclear-powered submarine K-3. Nearly 63 years ago, in mid-July of 1962, it became Soviet Navy’s first submarine to surface in the North Pole area. The vessel was […]

Yuri Chekalin03.03.2025

Few people know that the historical consultant on the set of the Russian cult film “17 Moments of Spring” was the real SS Obersturmführer (i.e. Senior Lieutenant) Heinz Felfe, who personally knew Müller and Schellenberg and helped to supplement their images with historical accuracy. Unfortunately, the consultant’s name was not indicated in the credits. But […]

Alexander Palladin28.02.2025

80 years ago, on February 26, 1945, a national mourning was declared in the USSR in memoriam of Alexey Tolstoy, an outstanding writer who passed away just a few months before the Great Victory over Nazi Germany. Official cause of his death was lung cancer, diagnosed a year before. In lots of photos and portraits, […]

Yuri Chekalin24.02.2025

On February 11, 1829, a tragedy occurred in the capital of Persia that still causes controversy among historians. An angry crowd stormed the Russian embassy. As a result, almost all of its employees died, including the head of the mission, Alexander Griboyedov, the author of the immortal “Woe from Wit”. The last hours of the […]

Alexander Palladin21.02.2025

Over 70 years ago, in June 1954, the United States overthrew the first democratically elected president in Guatemala’s history, Jacobo Arbenz, and Washington’s protégé, Colonel Castillo Armas, seized power in Central America’s most populated country. Armas established a military dictatorship, which sparked a civil war that lasted for 36 years and caused genocide of the […]

Andrey Vedyaev19.02.2025

Soviet intelligence officer, Hero of Russia Colonel Alexander Semenovich Feklisov can be counted among the most important witnesses of our atomic age without any exaggeration. He was a participant in Operation Enormous, an operation of the NKVD foreign intelligence service to obtain American atomic secrets. It was to him that the outstanding physicist Klaus Fuchs […]

History & Persons

Russo-Japanese War: Stalin’s Revanche

CIA’s Cent and My Kopeck on JFK Assassination

My TV Duel with Future US Presidential Candidate

Espionage Craft Practiced by Japan in Its War with Russia

Unique Soviet School

Former SS Obersturmführer in the service of the KGB

Alexey Tolstoy In Memoriam

Bloody February in Tehran

Uncle Sam in Banana Republic of Guatemala

Confession of an Intelligence Officer

Russo-Japanese War: Stalin’s Revanche

Is the Threat Gone?

How to Manage State Forests in the Dark?

It Would All Be Comic if Not So Tragic