[This article was written for the Unz Review]
The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert
by Ron Ridenour
Publisher: Punto Press, LLC
ISBN-10: 0996487069
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Peace-Threat-Pentagon-Alert/dp/0996487069/
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Ron Ridenour’s latest book (this is his 10th book on international relations and politics) takes a direct shot at one of the most prevailing myths in the western political discourse: the thesis that Russia, then the Soviet Union, and, since 1991, Russia again have been uniquely aggressive and generally bellicose states. At a time when rabid russophobia is the order of the day (again – chronic russophobia has been a regular feature of western political culture for many centuries now), this is a very timely and important book which I highly recommend to those interested in history.
The book is separated into three parts. In the first part of the book (The Great Capitalist Socialist Divide), Ridenour looks at the Cuban Missile Crisis in some detail and uses it to debunk the many myths which the “official” US historiography has been presenting as dogma for decades. In this first section, Ridenour also provides many fascinating details about Captain Vasili Arkhipov “the man who prevented WWIII”. He also recounts how the US propaganda machine tried, and still tries, to blame the murder of JFK on the Russians. The second part of the book (Peace, Land, Bread) goes back in history and looks into the ideological and political struggle between the collective West and the Soviet Union from the revolution of 1917 and well into the Cold War. The third part of the book (Russia At the Crossroads – the Putin Era) conclude with very recent events, including the western backed coup d’etat in the Ukraine and the Russian intervention in Syria.
The first and the third parts of the book are extremely well researched and offer a rock-solid, fact-based, and logical analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis and its modern equivalent, the AngloZionist “crusade” against modern Russia. This is a very important and good choice because the two crises have a lot in common. I would even argue that the current crisis is much more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis because of the extremely low personal and intellectual qualities of the current US ruling elites. Ridenour shows that in 1962 it was not the Soviets, but the US which pushed the world to the edge of a nuclear war, and in the third section of his book he shows how, yet again, the Empire is cornering Russia into a situation which, again, very much risks resulting in a nuclear conflict.
For those who would have a knee-jerk rejection of Ridenour’s crimethink, the book, on page 438-444, offers a list of governments the USA has overthrown since WWII (50), countries which the USA has bombed (30), foreign leaders it has murdered (50+), suppressed populist/nationalist movements (20), and subverted democratic elections (30). Ridenour then asks how it is that with a tally like that the US gets to moralize about Russia. He is absolutely right, of course. Compared to the USA, the Soviet Union was a peace-loving, non-interventionist and generally international law respecting country. Oh sure, the USSR had its share of horrors and evil deeds, but compared with the “land of the free and the home of the brave” these are minor, almost petty, transgressions.
The book is not without its faults. Sadly, in the second part of his book Ridenour repeats what I can only call the “standard list of western clichés” about the 1917 Revolution, it’s causes and effects. Truth be told, Ridenour is most certainly not to be singled out for making such a mistake: most of the books written in English and many of those written in Russian about this period of Russian history are basically worthless because they are all written by folks (from all sides of the political spectrum) with a vested ideological interest in presenting a completely counter-factual chronology of what actually took place (Russian author Ivan Solonevich wrote at length about this phenomenon in his books). Furthermore, such a process is inevitable: after decades of over-the-top demonization of everything and anything Soviet, there is now a “return of the pendulum” (both in Russia and outside) to whitewash the Soviet regime and explain away all its crimes and atrocities (of which there were plenty). For these reasons I would recommend that readers skip chapter 7 entirely (the description of the 1905 and 1917 revolutions are particularly bad and sound like a rehash of Soviet propaganda clichés of the early 1980s).
This weakness of this historical analysis of the two Russian revolutions is, of course, rather disappointing, but it in no way affects the pertinence of the fundamental thesis of this book: that, for all its very real faults, the “Evil Empire” was a gentle and timid regime when compared to the AngloZionist “Axis of Kindness” and its never-ending violent rampages all over the world (literally) and its orgy of subversion and violence in the name of democracy, freedom, human rights and all the rest of the western propaganda buzzwords.
The book’s afterworld begins with the following words “WAITING AND WAITING! Waiting for the end of the world! Waiting for Godot! Although, unlike in Samuel Beckett’s Theater of the Absurd play, in which Godot never arrives, the mad men and mad women leaders of the US, France and UK (and Israel) are bringing us their bombs”. Having been warning about the very risks of war for at least 4 years now, and having, along with others, posted a special “Russian Warning” to warn about this danger, I can only wholeheartedly welcome the publication of an entire book aimed at averting such a cataclysmic outcome.
My other big regret with this book is that it does not have an index. This is particularly frustrating since the book is packed with over 500 pages of very interesting information and can be used as a very good reference book.
Still, these criticisms should not distract from the very real value of this book. One of the most frightening phenomena today is that the Empire and Russia are currently headed directly for war and that, unlike what took place during the Cuban Missile Crisis, almost nobody today speaks about this. The western corporate media is especially guilty in this regard, as it encourages a constant escalation of rabid anti-Russian rhetoric (and actions) without ever mentioning that if brought to its logical conclusion such policies will result in a devastating war which the West cannot win (neither can Russia, of course, but that is hardly much of a consolation, is it?).
There have been courageous voices in the West trying to stop this crazy slide towards a nuclear apocalypse (I especially think of Professor Stephen Cohen and Paul Craig Roberts) but their’s were truly “cries in the wilderness”. And it doesn’t matter one bit whether somebody identifies himself as a conservative, liberal, progressive, libertarian, socialist, anarcho-capitalist or by another other (mostly meaningless) political label. What matters is as simple as it is crucial: preventing the Neocons from triggering a war with Russia or with China, or with Iran, or with the DPRK, or with Venezuela, or with… (fill in the blank). The list of countries the US is in conflict with is very long (just remember Nikki Haley berating and threatening the entire UN General Assembly because the vast majority of its members dared to disagree with the US position on Jerusalem), but Russia is (yet again) the designated arch-villian, the Evil Empire, Mordor – you name it! Russia is the country which wants to murder everybody with poison gas, from the Skripals in the UK, to the innocent children of Syria. Russia is the country which shoots down airliners and prepares to invade all her western neighbors. Finally, Russia is the place which hacks every computer in the “Free World” and interferes with every single election. The longer that list of idiotic accusations stretches, the bigger the risk of war becomes, because words have their weight and you cannot have normal, civilized relations with the Evil Empire of Mordor which is “highly likely” to invade, nuke or otherwise subvert the peace-loving peoples of the West.
Except that there never was any such thing as a “peace loving West” – that is truly a self-serving and 100% false myth. The historical record shows that in reality the collective West has engaged in a 1000 year long murderous rampage all over the planet and that each time it designated its victim as the culprit and itself as the defender of lofty ideals. Ridenour’s The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert (alongside with Guy Mettan’s “Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria”, whose original French edition I reviewed here) does a long way towards debunking this myth.
With the few caveats mentioned above, I highly recommend this book.
The Saker
The pease loving West is really a myth, but the warlike nature of the west can be followed at least 4000 years, it is a bit older then a millenium only. The Protoceltic tribes that swamped the whole of the west Europe beginning somewhere with 4500 years ago, brought with them their nomad herder set of mind. Their horse riding neighbors could steal their cattle and their whole subsistence in a turn of a hand, just like they could do to to them. And they both did. The consequence werw the blood feuds and trusting a dead neighbor only. The feuds were led genocidally, to the extermination of the enemies.
This was not unlike what other herdsmen did, later in history, but genetic says, as they came to west Europe, they exterminated the old dwellers completely. Similar happened later to the Indians and many others. Anglossxons never hsd much restraint in killing civillians, like the Japanese, Vietnamede and many other examples show.
The very phrase “Anglo-saxon” points to this happening in the past.
England was invaded twice, once by the Vikings in about the 8th century, then by the French in 1066. The phrase Anglo-saxon refers to the status of the country after the French took it over. The “anglo” upper-class was French nobility. The “saxon” lower class was the conquered English. And actually that could be “saxon-viking” since several hundred years had passed since the Vikings came and never left.
The story of Robin Hood relates to this time, as the natives struggling to live are the Saxons and they are stealing gold from the French “anglo” aristocracy that ruled them and taxed them. Robin is saxon, Prince John is the French.
England was also invaded and occupied by the Romans, long before the Danelaw and the Norman conquest.
What I wrote relates to the Ancedtors of all western Europeans, nomadic herders who came from the steppe north of the Black Sea approx. 2500 Y. B.C.
They brougt with them a warlike and gold obsessed mindset, usual for the nomads. The closedness into the family, everyone for himself attitude were an expresion of a strongly xenophobic, constantly feuding mind.
A mindset, an emotional basis of a culture seems to be very long living, and it can be tracked across very large timespans.
So there are traces of conflicts led to extermination in the Stonehenge surroundings after the Protocelt arrival, somewhere around 18000 B.C. Rcently a cave has been found with 450 skeletons on a Scottish island, dated 16. century A.D. The whole clan, to the last man, woman and child has been murdered by tnhe neighboring one.
It is 1800 B.C., of course, 18000 is a mistype.
Another point of the western mindset can be followed to the deep past. As the artefacts show, old European farmers had a rather lukewarm intenrest in gold. Varna area in Bulgaria was a branch of the Vinca culture, with very sparse golden objects found. After the nomads took them over, a veritable explosion of gold is documented, showing the western gold passion we know to these days.
The highly mobile horse riding nomads, with wagons and cattle coul move their reserves in a pouch, their safety against cattle theft, for hiring mercensries, etc. Farmers grain heaps were basically immobile compared.
The same love of gold coul ve been seen later by the Mongols, Wild West, or in the Old Testament. The Old Jews were the herders as well.
Is there a recent balanced scholarly account of the Russian revolution available in English?
I of course would also be interested.
I would share the title of a first-person historical account called “Ten Days That Shook the World.” It was written by an American socialist by the name of John Reed. It is not a scholarly over-view, but instead an account of his time in St. Petersberg during the revolution. Warren Beatty plays Reed in the movie “Reds”, which includes a sequence from this time.
First person history, ie something written by people who were there and written shortly after it happened, has the advantage that the later propaganda spins on a subject had not yet been applied. It has the weakness in that it does not attempt to provide an over-view and reflects one person’s experience of the events.
The Wall St. And The Bolshevik Revolution, Anthony Sutton
The comments in the review were scathing (given the books in our bookshops on current affairs no doubt justifiably) – this implies, I think, that there are more reliable sources for the history of the revolution, and I was hoping that some at least might be available in English.
(John Reed is a great read, but you neatly summarised why it can’t fulfil the need for a balanced history.)
I very much enjoyed October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
by China Miéville
Thank you. I missed this one. It’s going on my wish list. It sounds a bit like a modern complement to John Reed – sympathetic to the revolutionaries. Another good recent book on how the revolution felt to ordinary people at the time is by Mark Steinberg, imaginatively entitled The Russian Revolution. I doubt any of these is what the Saker draws on to condemn all the histories produced in the West, and some in Russia.
Thank you for this information. I’ve added the book to my reading list and will try it at some point. Another book that seemed promising to me is: Year One of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge. I say ‘seemed promising’ because I moved homes while about 150 pages into the book and lost it along the way somehow. I plan on giving it another stab at some point (when I find it) as well.
Here is an article that looks at how Russians feel about the impact of American sanctions:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-impact-of-anti-russia-sanctions-on.html
Thanks to the imbalance of reporting in the Western media, we rarely hear what Russians think about the key issues that are impacting their lives in this time of anti-Putin/anti-Russia sanctions and how they feel about their new geopolitical reality.
I have the impression that real (non-invasion) hostility and sanctions towards a country tends to keep the establishment in power.
Cuba is a case in point. Roughly 60 years of sanctions, the loss of Soviet support and subsidies, etc., and Cuba is still standing.
The west now effectively has a state media system that is just as restrictive of true and needful information as the Soviet system at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Prof Chomsky, in his key work “Manufacturing Consent” took the idea of a ‘free’ media and turned it on its head by asking simply the question of … if it were a state censorship system, would the result be any different from this.
And that was in the 1980’s before the Reagan process of media consolodation had come anywhere near the current state. I forget how many corporations control what most people see. The number keeps shrinking and I’m not up to date on how low its gotten. IIRC, it was at one point 6, but I think that’s old information and its now lower still.
At this point it seems abundently clear that what the right refers to as the MSM is nothing but a propaganda system that tells you what the state wants you to hear and which does not tell you what the state does not want you to hear.
One of the dangers of this age is that I can not think of a single, unbiased, uncensored news source I could point anyone towards. Everything is propaganda. The very best anyone can do is to try to avoid the obvious and proven liars and also to try to read a lot to at least see the propaganda from several points of view and possible be able to derive some understanding of reality from those differening perspectives.
The Greanville Post website, which cross posts some Saker articles is reliable in my opinion. Also,
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info, which recently posted a saker article.
Globalresearch.ca and informationclearinghouse both challenged 911 and the Iraq wars, as well as much of the Syrian war and Ukraine.
This does not mean to accept anything uncritically, however, including such sites and balancing them against mainstream sources will provide a sharp contrast.
Moon of Alabama’s blog is good, too. Just go to the Propornot website if it still exists and see what sites it accuses of being fake news, and you get a number of good sources. If the MSM says it’s fake, that means it’s worth checking, since Truth is anathema to the MSM.
+1 for Moon of Alabama, a very good source with equally good comments.
Very interesting! Thanks!
“One of the most frightening phenomena today is that the Empire and Russia are currently headed directly for war and that, unlike what took place during the Cuban Missile Crisis, almost nobody today speaks about this.”
Well, there are some people speaking about it: Take a look at this comment underneath Prof. Stephen Cohen’s interview with the Nation which :
https://www.thenation.com/article/what-the-brennan-affair-really-reveals/
Commentator called “Stephen Sack” : “The Russian intelligence operation which attacked our election and even may have been instrumental in Trump’s election is not something that can be ignored. No one wants a conflict with Russia BUT conflict appears to have morphed into these cyber-intelligence operations and when a foreign nation attacks the integrity of your election, there must be a credible response and a price paid.”
So Russia needs to “pay a price” for their (unproven) intervention into the American election.. irrational, mafioso-style thuggery. What is the profile of the readers of The Nation? White collar workers who consider themselves well-educated, and “civilised” ?
In other comments, Prof Cohen, a leading expert on Russian studies, is derided as a “pro-Russia clown” and Trump’s revocation of Brennan’s security clearance seems “petty and personal”…
Daniel Ellsberg’s recent book is called “The Doomsday Machine.” The title is a reference to Dr. Strangelove, where the Soviets have built a deterence device that destroys the world should they be attacked. The book correctly ties that to the current situation where no matter the outcome of (in my best Slim Pickens voice) “Glo-bal Nuc-Leee-ar War” results in a nuclear winter where we all die. Thus, we are faced with a real and present danger of such a Doomsday Machine.
The book is of course not promoted by the Pentagon nor the MSM, so I hope people don’t mind me pointing out a book that currently has me fascinated, written by a proven, long-time rebel who could probably use a couple of book sales. For those who don’t recognize the name, Ellsberg is the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers about the lies concerning the Vietnam War. He was a RAND consultant on the inside of the Pentagon from the late 50’s to when he leaked those papers and was tried for treason.
this guy?
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Daniel+Ellsberg%22&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22
i could not find the book you mentioned, so im not sure if im researching the right guy..
Yep, this guy
http://www.ellsberg.net/
Unsurprisingly, there is a link to the book on his website. Click on the picture of the cover on the front page, and the next page will have links to where to buy it. Unfortunately, Amazon is the first, but I see one for something called “IndieBound” so there is at least an alternative. Or, having found the book, you should have other options.
That archive.org page has an interesting list of background materials to the book. So, its a good link and I’ll need to bookmark it. Thanks!
The link to the Summary of a book in progress in 2017 would appear to refer to the same book.
Those of us with grey in our hair know the name. The guy was an early version of Snowdon. Except, he was a consultant for the very top levels of the Pentagon with the appropriate access. He’d been tasked with compiling a secret history within the Pentagon of the Vietnam War. I suppose they were having trouble keeping their lies straight so they needed a reference to what had really happened. In 1959, as America was rebelling against the Vietnam War, Ellsberg decided to photocopy and release this secret history, what became known as The Pentagon Papers. Thus all the lies were exposed.
Nixon hated him. Nixon wanted him tried for treason. Nixon probably wanted much worse, but he got his treason trial. However, a mistrial occurred and Ellsberg released when it became known as a part of Watergate that Nixon had his “Plumbers”, aka his black-bag team, break into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist office in a search to get dirt on Ellsberg. Back then there was still some rule of law, so when the judge found out the prosecutors were working with knowledge stolen from Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, he ruled a mistrial. Thus, Nixon’s crimes caused a mistrial and spared Ellsberg spending the rest of his life in prison. That was back when the deep state couldn’t so easily get away with such things. And geesh, we thought those days were bad.
Thus some of us with grey in our hair remember the name and have considered him a hero for a long time. He certainly has some interesting stories to tell.
I’m reading now the books of Nikolai Starikov, the one about 1917, and the one about Hitler. It seems to me as a very strange idea that anglosaxons are, presumably, behind both 1917, and behind Hitler. I would be glad to know what The Saker’s opinion is about the Starikov’s assertions.
I don’t always agree with Starikov, especially not with his views on Stalin, but here he is 100% correct, both on 1917 and on Hitler.
Kind regards,
The Saker
At least how Hitler and Bolsheviks came to power is somewhat similar.
WW1 – both
Monarchy replaced with progreasive liberal bourgeous – both
Economic collapse – different mechanics but both nations.
In Russia that was totally inept Provisional Government first and then the extreme wing of Bolsheviks before New Economic Policy backpedalling. In Germany it was crazy pillaging of Weimar Republic by “civilized” victors.
Then both nation responded by supporting emergent – thus blunt and brutal but very powerful – new governments. Bolsheviks in Russia and Hitler in Germany.
Then both Hitler and Stalin took a lot of resources from the west, providing kind of stable “safe haven” during the international Great Depression uncertainty.
To which degree those events were natural and to which they were aided or even manufactured by some conspiracy everyone is free to guess.
In a sense that is the same topic with EuroMaidan – were there domestic forces in Ukraine angry at Yanukovich? Definitely. Were there multiple “helping hands” from EU and USA and even Russia (the media service of EuroMaidan was set by a volunteer from SPb for example)? Absolutely.
So to whicj extent you see that coup natural and to which – synthetic is your choice.
There are constant mergers or aquisitions, past and present between tech and media:
News Corp buying Myspace
MSNBC Miscrosoft and NBC http://www.msnbc.com/ very liberal indeed
ITV buying Friends Reunited (UK)
Amazon owner buying Washington Post
Times Warner (CNN) and AOL
This is true with european food purchase and production too, destroying agriculture and using Roundup etc- these mega corporations Carrefour, Tesco, Aldi, Lidl are destroying Europe food security, they could make us starve if they wanted to . They are buying so much from outside Europe to cut costs, fertile europe cannot feed itself now, 50% of European farmers are on limit of bankrupt. The corporations make them sign exclusive contracts so they can only sell to that company and have to accept what they pay for the crops, or they will be closed. Big Irony -this is effective the same as during Communist times, accept what the Agriculture Bureau of the State paid you, you cannot negotiate! We are back in the days of de Kulakisation again.
MSNBC has changed its stripes at times in trying to find a successful business model.
MSNBC was at one point very anti-Clinton, beating on the impeachment scandal.
MSNBC was pro-war and pro-Dubya at the time of the Iraq War. They even fired the host of their highest rated, prime-time show because he was against the wars and they were afraid of antagonizing the pro-war set.
It was when Obama came to power that their previous suck-up to whomever is in power stance became the pro-Obama, pro-Democrat version that still persists to today.
Given MSNBC’s history, the only wonder is that they didn’t decide to suck up to the pro-Trump movement when they won, but I guess that only shows that they are making money with their pro-Democrat conspiracy theories.
> This weakness of this historical analysis of the two Russian revolutions is
Kind of funny.
There were three revolutions, not two.
If there was a digit, one could say it was just a mistyping.
But since the number was spelled out…
The reader is left to guess which of the revolutions are being disappeared, the white guards liberal anti-czarism revolution, or the soon to follow bolshevik anti-bourgeois revolution
Funny, I’d actually say there were four.
–The Saker listed 1905 as one of his two.
–Then there were the two revolutions in 1917. The spring revolution got rid of the czar and the royal court and their intriques revolving around Rasputin. The Nov revolution was the Peace, Land, Bread revolution of the people against the upper class that tried to hold power after the czar.
–And, it doesn’t seem to be recognized as a revolution, but when Stalin took power would seem to count. Something sure changed from “all power to the soviets” which was essentially a town-hall democracy where everyone had a voice, to the totalitarianism of Stalin where to raise a voice risked execution.
Or, maybe it should be a count of five, as the Red-White Russian civil war would count as an attempted revolution.
The October/November Revolution h ad nothing to do with the “the people” against “the bourgeois” or whatever the misunderstanding is. In fact, I always call the Bolshevik treasonous overthrow of the elected government during wartime the “Anti-Russian Revolution”. Lenin had previously said if it took killing 3/4 of the people in Russia to establish Communism, he would do it. Every single decision the Bolsheviks instituted was deliberately to destroy the Russian economy, Russian property rights, Russian traditional faith (Orthodoxy), Russian language, Russian civic identity, and Russian nationality. The very fact that almost everyone I have ever met in my life here in America confuses “Russian” with “Soviet” and “Communist” just shows the victory of that genocidal mindset in the minds of the West.
”The very fact that almost everyone I have ever met in my life here in America confuses ’Russian’ with ’Soviet’ and ’Communist’ just shows the victory of that genocidal mindset in the minds of the West.”
Western intellectual tenacity never ceases to amaze me. To Pindos, everything is brought down to them from On High. It’s just a nice little frill on your part trying to speak for the Russian people in trashing the (yes) Russian revolution. To your dear US compatriots, this isn’t necessary at all. They are, for the most part, fanaticized by US National Socialism, firmly rooted in settler genocide and African slavery, and further reinforced by violently insane corporate fascist misculture. Russia has very little to do with your Pindo ’folklore’ except that the latter’s anti-Russian obsessions testify to Russia being a bulwark against Western imperialism, past and present.
An equally funny mirror image of your take would be for me to say that ”The very fact that Putin refers to Russia’s sworn enemies as his ’partners’ just shows the victory of that admirably polite vocabulary in the West”.
> Bolshevik treasonous overthrow of the elected government
Of what? Of elected government? Elected by whom? Self-elected treasonous gang that just overthrown legal czar government in the middle of World War?
> Lenin had previously said if it took killing 3/4 of the people in Russia to establish Communism
Maybe he did, his wingman Trotsky definitely would do it.
But would you bother to bring the specific quotation and attribution?
Lenin also said few people bother to check pleasant quotes in internet and he nailed it.
> destroy the Russian economy,
What was there to destroy in 1917 ?
Actually the economy was never as strong, as under communists. Never Russia was superpower bossing half the Earth before. Granted, they also exhaustes and ruined the economy in 1970-s, but the credit for building it was their also.
> Russian property rights,
That is what revolution it.
Bourgeous revolution in France also preyed upon feudal landlords property rights. That is the point of making revolution afterall.
> almost everyone I have ever met in my life here in America confuses “Russian” with “Soviet”
I wonder if this was just a handy lazy way to morph pre-1917 rusophobic propaganda into anti-Soviet one without loosing momentum, or it was the opposite and they were already thinking far ahead when USSR would be slayed and they would need to aim their propaganda back at Russia…
Stalin accepted a land with wood ploughs and left it with spaceships. Brought truly monumental defeat to ’European values’ (Nazism followed by Anglo-American nuclear blackmail). That qualifies as a revolution, to say the very least.
Consequently, Stalin is forever damned in the West while highly esteemed in Russia. The reverse applies to Trotsky, who is the guru of the upper class neocons as well as to the fabulous ’anti-authoritarians’ forever high on Cultural Marxism. They firmly stand together making all sorts of funny noises, proudly defending Western imperialist privilege.
Bottom line: Western ideology = Mental illness, as the Soviets noted.
> Consequently, Stalin is forever damned in the West
This pattern goes further with Yeltsin/Putin comparison for example.
And it stretches backwards too, with czar Nicholas II and Provisional Government that topped his one compared to Bolsheviks and right SRs after them.
Stalin vs Trotsky was more of the “court coup”, like when some royal offsprings get killed to clear oath for another. But without challenging structure of prosperity and powrr – the monarchcy itself.
Should we say ever king murder was a revolution?
Murder of czar Pavel the First was a coup that dramatically changed domestic and foreign policies of Russia?
But was it a revolution?
And, by the way, should we blame Russian aristocracy for murdering the god-chosen miro-painted czar Pavel and we are demanded to do about Bolsheviks and ex-czar Nicolas?
Yeah, i am flogging that cursed “moral equivalence” Kremlin propaganda tool here.
”Stalin vs Trotsky was more of the ’court coup’, like when some royal offsprings get killed to clear oath for another.”
Dead wrong, sweetheart. Stalin’s defeat of Trotsky marked a tremendous setback for the fifth column at home and for Zionism/Fascism internationally. Somewhat conspicuously, the Nazis, when they attacked the USSR, were not welcomed by their fifth column, unlike everywhere else they went. The US ambassador took note of that: ‘Maybe those trials were no circus after all?’ Nope.
Worse still, Stalin wouldn’t even be intimidated by Western nuclear blackmail in the years 1945 – 1949. Stalin, like Putin, was a remarkably cool man; both very far from the psychotic monsters the West keeps smearing them as. A clear case of what is being called projection.
Totally correct. I commend you for your lucidity and intellectual courage. Stalin’s name has been blackened by western propaganda for generations. To this we can add quite a few fifth columnists at home and those with liberal sensibilities. Just think how many putrid lies these same forces have thrown at Putin In just a few years and multiply that by a factor of almost a century and you get an idea of the astronomical level of distortion and falsification used to make Westerners the people of Russia. Lately, the unkindest cut in the West’s vile propaganda has been the denial of Russia contribution to the defeat of the Nazi machine. Most Westerners, even those who saw war in their own homes cannot wrap their minds around the dimensions of the Russian heroic sacrifice. It’s mind boggling.
Thank you, Patrice!
Particularly the following assessment of yours is absolutely spot-on:
”Just think how many putrid lies these same forces have thrown at Putin in just a few years and multiply that by a factor of almost a century and you get an idea of the astronomical level of distortion and falsification used /…/ ”
Exactly. And I feel disposed to believe that this abject lack of any talent/intelligence in their propaganda — just lies and imbecilities all along the line — testifies to what the Zionazi Western Elite really thinks of their Western subjects. Here, I tend to agree with the Elite.
Well, today’s US situation does begin to remind on Stalin’s times in the USSR, but that does not make Stalin more likeable. US has 2.6 mil. People in jail, and most of them got there without a proper trieal, confessing to the prosecutpr in exchange for a milder sentence. Stalin reached that number in a short period only.
I dont think, even, any other if the revolutionaries would have been better in his place. His rule was a logical consequence of the revolution, where power has been grabbed at any price, with Lenin saying the loss of the three quarters of population would have not been to high for him.
Accordingly, the human and economic loss was enormous. While the Russian economy had a perspective of becoming one of the leading European economies in two decades, the revolution financed by the western banking oligarchy brought tje GDP in 1923 to just 20 percent of the one from1913. The economy needed another 16 years just to reach the 1913 level.
This enormous backlagging was a deadly danger for the state, and that is where the slave work and other extraordinary measures came from. So, who came to power by all means, stayed in power in the same manner. The same goes for the execution of some 230 from 260 Soviet generals 1937. As the captains commanded the regiments in 1941, is it a wonder the Russian losses went up to such terrifying numbers like 30 mil.?
The west has reached most of its goals with the october revolution. Russia was essentialy knocked down, they aimed for the dismemberment which stayed just out of reach, but nevertheless. The 20th century was marked by the anglosaxon domination, and a prolonged Russian crisis which ended first now, as the anglisaxons reached their decadence.
That is how the great revolutionary modernization of Russia really looked like.
Sure. To hell with Russian public opinion.
Public opinion.. Well, you know, I learned history in school, and after decades of interest in modern history, thanks to the internet, some ten years ago, I had to conclude that vital pieces of information have been missing, and that I knew nothing, actually. So much about the public opinion anywhere.
Some key actors in the international politics do not want to be seen, and even the historians have to respect that. Most of them, that is. These few that do not would have stayed hidden in the heaps of books in the libraries, not to be accessed easily without the net.
I do not have to even mention the outright lying of the MSM regarding the daily info. And, to that, winners write the history. So we have all been fed with the myth of the deep backwardness of the Imperial Russia, and the building of the modern industry there that the revolutionaries undertook.
In reality, during the civil war the revolutionaries would not destroy the factories, the ‘people’ needed them. But they would shoot the ‘enemies of the people’ read the owner and the staff, and the factories remained the empty shells without anyone to run them. Other places the Russian elite, hearing about this, would not wait for the Bolsheviks but un away from the country. That was the reason Russian industry, which was capable of building the world’s first four-engine airplane for example, needed 16 years to reach the 1913 level. The Russian friends, the Serbs got the Russian architects, ballet, doctors, painters that way as their citizens, but the Russian damage of losing it’s intellectual elite, and what an elite it was, has been terrible.
In 1913 a leading French economist prophecied a leading place in Europe to the Russian economy in 20 years. French economy was deeply interconnected with the Russian at that time, and he certainly could have the insight.
The price for this 16 year lag has been the terrible exploiting of the agriculture in favour of the industry, with enormous hunger outbreaks and millions of dead. Likewise, the gulag used the slave labor for the same reason.
This is how the modernization of the country looked like. I am sorry if it conflicts with the popular myths and the ‘public opinion’, which is something created everywhere. Whoever thinks the truth is what the most people think it is, cannot be more wrong.
You cannot know how happy I am, to see the Russia of today, a modern country making great strides forward in all fields. There is no doubt the Bolsheviks modernized the country making that possible, but the price has been terrible and not only in the sense of the number of people that paid for it with their lives. The social and human direction has been retrograde, or reactionary as they would have termed it, against the positive sides of the human nature and in favour of the fears and of our destructive side. That brought the end of the USSR, finally.
I think Putin recognizes very well that what really happened in 1917 was the foreigners trying to create the chaos in the country in order to knock it out. Like in the Syria today.
And I don’t think it a chance, that the Russia begun it’s magical recovery right after that enlightment, which brought the values of the old Russia back. It seemingly could not be before the destiny of the Nicholas II and his family was grieved and repented upon. That put the heart of Russia back in place, and turned it’s compass again from the hatred to the direction of love – and progress.
And just another thought. The Russian Empire ‘s elite had it’s own sins, no doubt, as any of us. Their conservativism brought the country into the dire position, where the external enemies, with the help of likes of Lenin could bring it down. The enemies of Russia were powerful.
As the Tsar Alexander II took the serious modernization effort, he has been murdered by the terrorists of ‘Narodnaya Volya’ in 1881, a day before a law which would put Russia in direction of a constitutional monarchy. The murdrer’s connections to the overseas could not be proven, but no one doubted them in the Imperial Court.
To the following Tsars, that was a lesson, a wrong one, where does the loosening of the reins lead. The country was not modernized further.
One of the murder accomplices was the Lenin’s brother, punished by death by hanging.
Lenin’s hatred of the authority was such that he once said, ‘Even if 3/4 of the Russian population dies in the revolution, I would do it.’
Could such a person be a good alternative for any country?
I was, of course, referring to the February and November 1917 Revolutions.
1905 failed and thus did not bring about the downfall of the Empire.
The Saker
”Russia is the country which shoots down airliners and prepares to invade all her western neighbors. Finally, Russia is the place which hacks every computer in the ’Free World’ and interferes with every single election.”
But, for the umpteenth time: Isn’t this well beyond the abilities — although not the fantasies — of Asiatic brutal savages? Regarding the internet, web porn could possibly be within their intellectual reach but hacking is out, period. Hollywood and the MSM told me so.
Seriously, quite a few of the quoted slanders would mean vast improvements if they materialised, LOL.
You neglected on your prescribed therapy of russophrenia and doublethink if you keep seeing those discrepancies in the thin air!
Care to put that in layman’s terms, please?
Probably no hypocrisy has excelled that of the Anglo-Saxon countries. They specialize in it and it permeates their entire culture. Ortega y Gasset famously called attention to this trait. It may be a negative spin-off of Protestant moralism, which also permeates it, sometimes insufferably and to the detriment of the deeper and more essential aspects of the Christian religion.
On current Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, see this:
http://www.stalkerzone.org/highest-level-anglosaxon-hypocrisy/
Something that is often overlooked, injury is added to insult: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/02/14/the-united-states-used-depleted-uranium-in-syria/
Thanks for pointing this out. This horrible weapon, DU, has been used in how many places around the world? If a person was to add up the total amount of DU that has been expended, it would equal how many Hiroshima’s and Nagasaki’s? Nuclear war, by any other name — a very long drawn out one. The reason they use this awful stuff is to cause birth defects, and genocide among the civilian population, and it is harming the health of our own returning soldiers and their children as well. And insane people keep using it! — unbelievable.
The supreme irony (or imperial hypocrisy) is that the United States is by far the world’s leader in terms of waging wars around the world
The idea that America is a “peace-loving” nation is Orwellian, given the USA’s aggressive and militaristic behavior for most of its history.
America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – 222 Out of 239 Years – Since 1776
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41086.htm
”The book is not without its faults. Sadly, in the second part of his book Ridenour repeats what I can only call the ’standard list of western clichés’ about the 1917 Revolution, its causes and effects.”
Just ordered the book. Can barely wait to read it in one go — especially chapter 7 !
Russian lawmaker suggests deploying nuclear weapons in Syria to respond to US sanctions
“I believe that now Russia has to draw its own ‘red lines,’” Vladimir Gutenev said
More:
http://tass.com/politics/1018605
I tend to believe that wherever Russia “outposts”, it brings tactical nukes.
Kaliningrad, Crimea, and probably at Tartus for some of the ships in the Eastern Med.
The military doctrine of Russia now is to go to tactical nukes if its borders or bases are overrun or attacked in an overwhelming way.
Thus, Syria would qualify for tactical nukes as backups.
Certainly, where Iskanders are based, there are nukes.
Kaliningrad now has them, and Crimea certainly has them.
The Russians have been crystal clear with the US military. Maybe some fuzzyheaded NATO folks don’t understand, but CENTCOM does most certainly.
The Saker: In his very thought provoking essay, Alastair Crooke proposes that The Enlightenment and Protestant Revolution came about as reactions to The Renaissance and were thus Counter-Revolutionary as they acted to mostly restore the previous order. What do you make of that and his metaphysical argument being the basis for Neocon/Neoliberal actions?
Thanks for this book review. I’ll need to build an annex to house all the additional books I ought to read!
Link above didn’t work for me. A mirror of the link: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-20/former-mi6-spy-alastair-crooke-metaphysics-our-present-global-anguish
I will take a stab at it– though I am more of a reader than a writer. I see Crookes missive as a great “how did we get to this point.” Looking back in time there are bound to be omissions, aporias apparent and real, and blind spots, and outright mistakes so I beg your indulgence. When one talks about the Renaissance, one needs to address Hermeticism. It has been argued that both the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation were as much about opposing this nascent third force, as about fighting each other. Pico della Mirandola was protected by the Church hierarchy and to this day is lauded as a great humanist. Giordano Bruno merely quoted Pico, Ficcino (also protected) et al. and was burnt as a heretic. So already back then there were hints of“deep secrets’ and by implication breakaway civilization. To bring in Michael Hoffman, there appears the pattern of papal pronouncement promoting sound doctrine, while papal actions not so much.
.
(Shrug) How did things ever get so far? I don’t know… It’s so unfortunate, so unnecessary… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jpwqWPKAUc
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Thanks for your reply!
IMO, the volk within the Outlaw US Empire are too fragmented to be taken in by the Neocon/Neoliberal Millenarian Mythos thanks to the atomizing affects of the Deep States Machiavellian identity politics, all of which are experiencing dramatic if unreported pushback.
Or, “every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?” Matt 12:25-26 nkjv
To be sure the mythos is foisted on the the masses. I do not, however, see the adepts abandoning the great work.
Peace, Land, Bread.
The notion of the slaves having any of these three things scares the capitalists to death.
Fascinating. I’ll have to definitely read the part on the Cuban Missile Crisis. As it turns out, I’m within a chapter or two of that section of Daniel Ellsberg’s book. Ellsberg was at that time a RAND consultant with the very top levels of the US military and government. He wrote the Kennedy administration’s policy guidance to the military on general nuclear war. He had the level of access where he’s already talked to Sec. McNamara and Gen. LeMay. The book has teased so far that he was still there during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I haven’t reached that chapter yet.
I’m fascinated by the American obsession of someone else ‘meddling’ with its elections, while America at the same time has invaded Syria with the expressed objective of regime change. Don’t boots on the ground, air strikes that kill civilians, and handing out weapons to jihadists count as ‘meddling’?
Of course, unmentioned in the American propaganda system is that Hillary tried to interfere with Putin’s previous election. The usual NED and NGO’s suspects carrying out state department wishes. They were backing and providing resources to the usual pro-western candidates. I even remember a bit of the color revolutions script of trying to claim fraud after Putin won, but a very small crowd of Russians would come out for the protests, thus Hillary never got her chance to deliver a plate of cookies in Moscow.
The only extraordinary thing about the American government is that it thinks that what it has done to other countries, and some suspect what it has done in internal American elections, like say the one where a former CIA director got elected to be vice-president, is a horrible and offensive crime when someone else does the same thing.
I don’t understand why RF does not open his own ‘Mueller psyop’ about US/zio meddlings since 1917?
There are real proffs here,and a lot of them.
Welcome to the upside-down unreality of the American Empire.
Do as America says–not as it does.
This is a global American tyranny in everything but name.
”I’m fascinated by the American obsession of someone else ‘meddling’ with its elections /…/ ”
I tend to see this (incredibly stupid) obsession as just another plain case of deluded Western self-worship. The bottom line here is that anything the West keeps boasting about is assumed to be:
a) a colossal Western achievement (which it usually is not — either due to misappropriation or to idiotic vainglory)
and, therefore,
b) feverishly hated/coveted by envious losers
That being said, the fiction garbage about Russia’s election meddling in Pindoland still comes across as silly beyond laughable. The Exceptionals’ and Indispensables’ God-awful election circuses don’t even impress the Euro-trash these days, and that’s quite an achievement.
It of course began with Hillary.
One day, Hillary got some very bad news. It was such bad news that it put into doubt whether she could win the Presidency, which had been her obsession to one up Bill. The bad news was that it had leaked that the DNC and the top of the Democratic Party had colluded to rig the elections to Hillary and to make dang sure Bernie never had a chance. The reason this was bad news was because Hillary had to have those Bernie voters to beat Trump. If all those Bernie voters had gotten angry about Hillary stealing the nomination from them and they’d decided to vote Green, then Hillary had nowhere near the votes to win the Presidency, her obsession.
What to do? Quick, its an emergency! Hold a meeting. come up with a strategy? How are we going to save the day for Hillary? We have to take over the news cycle and not let everyone get riled up about Hillary rigging and stealing the Presidency for herself! What do we do?
We blame the Russians! Brilliant! Its not a leak, its Russian Hacking!
Send an operative after Seth Rich, to make sure he never tells a different story. Call up CNN and tell them that its 24/7 Russians, Russians, Russians! Get the New York Times onboard! Anyone who says differently is a traitor. There, problem solved, now we are sure to beat Trump.
We are where we are today because Hillary chose to push the world to the brink of nuclear war just for her own personal quest for power and the wealth that corruption brings with power.
On August 24, 1991, Marshal Sergei Fyodorovich Akhromeyev committed suicide. He had returned from his holiday at Sochi responding to the attempted removal of Mikhail Gorbachev from power. According to the reports of the time, he hanged himself in his Kremlin office, leaving behind a note. One version of what it said was: “I cannot live when my fatherland is dying and everything that has been the meaning of my life is crumbling. Age and the life that I have lived give me the right to step out of this life. I struggled until the end.”
http://johnhelmer.net/
Times change,does Putin has any honor left?
It is about time to retaliate to the US dozens rounds of neverending sanctions.
It is very tempting to attack you personally, but we have rules here.
Let it be said that your comment about Putin having no honor left is the product of ignorance, profound ignorance.
Brilliant reply,Larch.
The poster is either profoundly ignorant about issues,and Putin,or has a childish need for responses with mere optical value.
Putin is not a person who will put his honor above the interests of Russian people and RF.
Rest in peace, Sergei Fyodorovich.
If he came back to life, he would certainly be moved to tears watching the stunning progress Russia has made right from the brink of utter destruction 27 years ago.
This is what brings the ”our partners policy”…
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, militants arriving in Syria’s Idlib after undergoing training by UK private military company Olive.
The Russian Defense Ministry has accused the United States, the United Kingdom and France of preparing to carry out new strikes against Syria under the pretext of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government forces.
According to ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, militants in the Idlib province are preparing to stage the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the government.
“To carry out the alleged “chemical attack” in the city of Jisr al-Shughur in the province of Idlib, the Tahrir al-Sham militants had delivered 8 tankers with chlorine… to a village a few kilometers from Jisr al-Shughur,” the general stated.
USS The Sullivans destroyer has arrived in the Persian Gulf, US B-1B bomber is deployed at Qatari air base getting ready to carry out a strike on Syria, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
A group of militants trained under the guidance by British private military company Olive to work with poisonous substances has arrived in Idlib, the ministry said.
“The militants are tasked with imitating the rescue of the of chemical weapons victims in the vestments of the notorious White Helmets,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov noted.
https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201808251067461189-us-uk-france-syria-new-strike-russia/
Dear Saker, With all the due respect we all have for you, but saying that “, the “Evil Empire” was a gentle and timid regime when compared to the AngloZionist “Axis of Kindness” ” is something that I do not agree with, Communists killed hundreds of millions all over the world. Let us just say that the Nuremberg Trials are a good example of what really went on. The parties to the Nuremberg Trials closing WWII were equally guilty: Two victorious genocidal powers (USA & allies and the USSR) were posing as a moral power with regards to the Nazis.
The Communists did, indeed, kill millions of people. But if you tally all the millions of people murdered by the British Empire during its entire history, then add to it the millons of Africans murdered during the slave trade, then add to that the genocide of the vast majority of Indians (Native Americans) over an entire continent, then add to that the millions of people murdered worldwide by the USA and it’s allies and then add to that all those who were murdered by the Zionists (either directly by Israel or by Zionist agents, such as the 1-2 million Iraqis murdered after the 9/11 false flag), I think that you would get a MUCH higher figure. Finally, besides direct murder, you could also add all those who died from poverty, starvation, disease, etc. due to the imposition of a ruthless system of capitalist exploitation. That would further dramatically increase that figure to even higher numbers. I know that this sounds counter-intuitive to you and many others, so may I please ask you to think about the issues I raised in these articles:
/letter-to-my-american-friends/
/the-controversy-about-stalin-a-basket-of-preliminary-considerations/
Kind regards,
The Saker
It is proper to say that the ‘political establishment’ suffers from russophobia. I do not know a single person, in private, life that fears the Rus. That said, none of the people I hang with are stakeholders in the arms trade.
This has now entered the realm of ridiculous. Acne? Russians. It’s raining? Russians. Foiling USUK plans in Syria? Ok, that one you CAN *blame* the Rus for. Russian warships transit the English Channel, and the UK establishment craps their collective nappies.
Russia is showing a better way forward. That is their real crime.
In the Land of the Free, a US Senator says that “Anybody who tarnishes the reputation of John McCain deserves a whipping,” (Isakson-GA).
A Senator of course has a large say in making the laws of the land, and before they are given that power they take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
So much for Freedom of Speech. If anyone dares to utter the words “Keating Five”, the scandal where Sen. McCain helped a personal friend rip off the taxpayers of America, then we take them off and tie them to the Whipping Post and get out the old cat o nine tails. Of course the list of things we can’t say about Sen McCain will be rather long. But of course, we can’t say that either. In true Kafka fashion, they won’t actually publish a list of the things you can’t say. I suppose publish that list would get a government official tied to the Whipping Post, so you are on your own to understand all of the things that you can not say about Sen. McCain.
Remember of course that the NSA listens to everything, so be careful what you say. Don’t want to see you tied to the whipping post.
Welcome to the land of the free.
And still remember to stand and hold your hand over your heart whenever the national anthem is played at a football game. America has a lot of surveilence cameras, and the President says that anyone who doesn’t pay proper respect to a sacred cloth and a sacred song should lose their jobs.