USSR

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, […]

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 […]

Egor Yakovlev09.02.2025

Sergio Leone’s ‘900 Days’ — The Story of a Grand Project on the Siege of Leningrad. Sergio Leone, the author of the best Western films in history, was not very popular in the USSR. Soviet film critics criticized the Italian director for the aestheticization of violence, caustic irony and the lack of a moral compass […]

Alexander Palladin01.02.2025

As I mentioned recently in my The End of an Era previous piece, in October of 1990, I got an offer to head the Presidential Information Service (PIS) post, reporting directly to Valery Ivanovich Boldin, Chief of Staff of the USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev. Each morning we would prepare digests of the latest mass media […]

Alexander Palladin28.01.2025

On January 27, 1944, the military blockade of Leningrad, the 2nd largest city in the USSR, by German and Finnish troops was finally broken. It lasted for 872 days and ranks as the longest and most lethal siege in world history, causing an estimated 1.5 million deaths. Some historians speak of the siege operations in […]

Alexander Palladin19.01.2025

On September 11, 1981, the Soviet and Canadian national teams met in the decisive game for the Canada Cup. The tournament organizers were so confident of their countrymen’s triumph that they had alotted every single best player award to Canadians only even before the final match started. The game was won, though, by the USSR […]

Yuri Chekalin15.01.2025

Fyodor Fyodorovich Serpilin, the main character of Konstantin Simonov’s trilogy “The Living and the Dead”, was a composite image. In him, one could guess the features and destinies of the legendary generals-commanders Alexander Gorbatov and Ivan Grishin, but the main prototype was Colonel Semyon Fyodorovich Kutepov, whom the writer Simonov (at that time – a […]

Alexander Palladin13.01.2025

On January 7, 1991, I was discussing current issues with Valery Ivanovich Boldin, Chief of Staff of the USSR President, when a red bulb lit up at his desk signaling a phone call from Mikhail Gorbachev. On such occasions visitors had to leave Boldin’s office immediately but Valery Ivanovich picked up the receiver with one […]

Alexander Palladin25.12.2024

Upon his return to Moscow from Crimea after the well-known events of August 1991, Gorbachev appointed Grigory Revenko as the head of the Presidential Administration instead of Valery Boldin who was arrested for participating in the State Emergency Committee. Revenko brought with him a group of trusted people, including Anatoly Sazonov. He was made the […]

Klim Zhukov21.12.2024

Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was born on December 19, 1906. He is the personification of stability. The people of Rus’-Moscow Kingdom-Russian Empire-USSR have never lived so calmly, well-fed, richly, confidently, but most importantly — calmly. The majority of the population was confident in the future. The other side of memory is the endless jokes about Brezhnev. […]

Alexey Tolstoy In Memoriam

Confession of an Intelligence Officer

Sergio Leone’s ‘900 Days’

Eyewitness Report on August ’91 Events At Kremlin

German and Finnish Siege Could Not Silence The Voice of Leningrad

I Helped the USSR National Team Get People’s Canada Cup

Who Was The Prototype Of Brigade Commander Serplin?

Gorbachev As a Reincarnated Pontius Pilate

The End of an Era

On the Birthday of Leonid Brezhnev

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