History & Persons

Andrey Vedyaev30.07.2025

Hero of the Soviet Union Colonel Stanislav Alekseevich Vaupshasov is one of those people whose lives were spent in campaigns and battles, among forests, hills and mountain passes, behind the front line and, in his own words, at dangerous crossroads. He was born on July 27, 1899 in the town of Gruzdziai, 19 km from […]

Andrey Vedyaev28.07.2025

On July 10, 1900, the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Maria Aleksandrovna Fortus was born into the family of a Kherson banker. She had to look death in the eye more than once, but still stayed alive — it seemed that Fortune herself was on her side. At the age of 16, Maria, carried away by […]

Alexander Palladin08.07.2025

During the Great Patriotic War, a total of 649 signals about enemy air raids and 3,087 reports of artillery shelling were transmitted by Leningrad Radio station, managed by Pyotr Aleksandrovich Palladin. On such occasions, the city radio used to be disconnected from the broadcast network. Instead, the metronome beating was put on the air. For […]

Klim Zhukov20.06.2025

The 1st rank cruiser was ordered from the William Crump and Sons shipyard in the USA. 129 meters, excellent armored deck, 12 guns 152 mm. Kane system, speed 23.2 knots. By the way, the speed made it absolutely inaccessible for any Japanese cruisers at sea — you can’t catch up (and you can’t run away […]

Klim Zhukov19.06.2025

In 1898, the far-sighted politicians of Nicholas II and the Tsar himself cleverly squeezed the Liaodong Peninsula with the port of Luyoshun (aka Port Arthur) from the allied China, whose territorial integrity we were supposedly going to protect. A short race to the Russo-Japanese War began. Arthur, as an ice-free harbor, was supposed to be […]

Alexander Palladin31.05.2025

80 years ago, on June 26, 1945, the UN Charter was signed at the final meeting of the United Nations Conference in San Francisco. Ukraine and Belarus, along with the USSR, were among the 50 founding countries of this international organization. My father’s second cousin Alexander Vladimirovich Palladin signed the above mentioned historic document on […]

Alexander Palladin15.05.2025

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this article, in 1973 I started working as a reporter in Canada. There, and later on in USA, I experienced a real shock to find out how little local people knew about other nations, their culture and history. In 1950s my father worked at Goslitizdat, the biggest Soviet […]

Klim Zhukov15.05.2025

Jaroslav Hašek was born on April 30, 1883. He was a Czech satirist, anarchist, playwright, feuilletonist, and journalist. He wrote about 1,500 different short stories, feuilletons, and other works, of which his unfinished novel, The Good Soldier Švejk, gained worldwide fame. Hašek spent his entire life making fun of himself and the world around him. […]

Alexander Palladin12.05.2025

In September 1973, I started working as a Soviet reporter in Canada. That was my first travel to the West as an adult. At the beginning my Canadian acquaintances would often inquire, “Do you feel a cultural shock?” Lots of things, quite understandably, seemed peculiar to me and my wife. However, we took them in […]

Alexander Palladin04.05.2025

During his state visit to Germany on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, on May 5, 1985, Ronald Reagan stopped in Bitburg, where he laid a wreath at the burial site of German soldiers who died in both world wars. US 40th President did just that […]

Star of a Chekist

Maria from Kherson

As It Happened in Sieged Leningrad

The Real Story of Cruiser “Varyag”

Port Arthur And the Strange Economy

He Signed the UN Charter

Cultural Shock: Chingiz Aitmatov

The World of Jaroslav Hašek

Cultural Shock

US President’s Wreath At SS Burial Site

The Michael Jackson Biopic is Missing its Most Controversial Story

Madama Butterfly and the Japan of the Western Imagination

The Spanish Civil War at 90: the Republic’s Response

Terminator Is about 80 Years Old