USSR

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 […]

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 […]

Vladimir Morozov24.08.2026

The other day, during a discussion about protecting Crimea from cyclones, droughts and floods, scientists proposed revisiting what is commonly known as Stalin’s Plan for the Transformation of Nature. Stalin’s Plan It is not entirely clear why Soviet media gave this name to the October 20, 1948, decree of the Council of Ministers of the […]

Yuri Chekalin20.08.2026

On August 19, 1991, an event began that would enter history under a dry bureaucratic acronym: the GKChP — the State Committee on the State of Emergency. Thirty-five years later, it is easy to look back and see those events as inevitable. The Soviet Union, it seems, was already doomed; the August coup merely added […]

Yaroslav Listov19.08.2026

Why Deng Xiaoping Saved China While Yanaev Lost the Soviet Union History sometimes confronts states with remarkably similar tests. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the two largest socialist states in the world faced crises of their political and economic systems: economic hardship, growing public discontent, factional struggles within the ruling elites, and mounting […]

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 […]

Andrey Vedyaev09.08.2026

On December 5, 2025, Yuri Petrovich Vlasov would have turned 90. To generations of sports fans, he was simply the strongest man on Earth – the 1960 Olympic champion, a four-time world champion, six-time European champion and five-time Soviet champion. He set 29 world records during his career. But Vlasov represented something bigger than physical […]

Andrey Vedyaev07.08.2026

As the Cold War hardened into a global contest, intelligence became one of the principal arenas of confrontation. The Wolf Constellation Markus Wolf belonged to the generation of German anti-fascists who helped build and defend the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the first socialist state established on German soil. For four decades, these men and women […]

Andrey Vedyaev01.08.2026

One day in 1980, a handsome young man walked into the Soviet Embassy in Rome. Introducing himself as a sailor in the United States Navy, he calmly announced that he wished to emigrate to the Soviet Union. The officials in the consular section could scarcely believe what they were hearing. Suspecting that the visitor might […]

Yaroslav Listov30.07.2026

Seventy years ago, in the final days of July 1956, the world changed. How the USSR Defeated Britain and France A former colony delivered a resounding slap in the face to its imperial rulers. Standing before a crowd in Alexandria’s Al-Manshia Square, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal. He […]

The Whirlwind Front

A Hard Landing

Stalin’s Great Plan for Transforming Nature

The GKChP: The Day the Soviet Union’s End Began

The GKChP and the Chinese Lesson

The Andropov Code

Russian Strongmen

Markus Wolf and the Intelligence War of the Cold War

The Cry of the Albatross, or Spy Games

The Last Stand of the Colonial Powers

The Whirlwind Front

Subject to Fits

Royal Navy and Trojan War Heros

Former US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll in Ukraine