Smersh was originally set up to trace German spies in the Soviet Union during the Second World War.
Vigil lanterns at the Bitter Memory of Childhood monument commemorating the Ukrainian famine.
Kirill Chubotin / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Putin’s worldview echoes Russian phrase, ‘Who is not with us, is against us.’
Activist Sair Smedlja stands in front of the Crimean Tatar self-governing assembly (the Mejlis) which was closed down when the Russians occupied Crimea.
DPA/Alamy
A spokesman claims that Crimean Tatars who are arrested by their Russian occupiers are beaten and tortured.
The Washington, D.C., courthouse where Donald Trump’s Jan. 6-related trial will likely take place.
Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Donald Trump’s trial for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election will promote accountability – but could this show trial have a dangerous outcome, too?
A Uighur woman protests before a group of paramilitary police in western China’s Xinjiang region.
Ng Han Guan/AP
China’s Xi Xinping had trialled his COVID lockdown measures on what he callously called the ‘virus’ of the Uighurs, writes Stan Grant. COVID lockdowns are now over, but the trace of tyranny remains.
Russian rhetoric about Ukraine echoes language used in the second world war by the Soviets seeking to stem independence movements. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin insisted on Ukraine getting a separate vote to the USSR at the United Nations, even though it wasn’t an independent state.
Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
A new book argues the war against Ukraine is an escalation of an ongoing hybrid war of ‘Russia’ against ‘the West’ – and that only ‘real and credible force’ will make Putin step back from aggression.
Firefighters extinguish fires in an apartment building after being hit by shelling in Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 15, 2022.
(AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Seizing Kharkiv or Kyiv is going to take time and heavy use of artillery— called ‘the God of War’ by Joseph Stalin — if it happens at all.
Russian traditional wooden matryoshka dolls showing Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin on sale in a street souvenir shop in Moscow.
(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
History always served as a weapon in the former Soviet Union, a way to control the narrative and deny the truth of the past. Vladimir Putin is now attempting to control this narrative through war.
Ukrainian soldiers on the the streets of Kyiv in 1917.
Wikimedia Commons
A historian looks back at a time when Ukrainians battled for control of the capital, but succumbed to a superior Soviet army.
Donetsk residents celebrate recognition of independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics by Russia on Feb. 21, 2022.
Alexander RyuAlexander Ryumin\TASS via Getty Images
History has many uses, and not all of them are noble. That’s very much the case as the public gets a crash course from politicians about Ukrainian history.
Never forgotten: a memorial to the Great Famine of the 1930s in Kyiv, Ukraine.
EPA-EFE/Sergey Dolzhenko
Ukraine was once known as the breadbasket of Europe, yet it suffered a devastating famine as a result of collectivist plans. That and other Soviet-era grievances have bred resentment toward Russia.
Marx, Madison or God? Who said it first…or at all?
Bettmann/Corbis/ Lucas Schifres via Getty Images
Luc Bovens, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
At the height of Reaganism, close to half of Americans believed a phrase popularized by Karl Marx actually derived from the US Constitution. It doesn’t, but scholars have traced it to the Bible.
Winston Churchill giving his final address, during the 1945 election campaign, at Walthamstow Stadium, East London.
Wikipedia, the collections of the Imperial War Museums
Klaus W. Larres, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Even a highly popular and respected leader can lose an election, writes a historian – especially if they don’t have a plan for the future. Churchill was one of them.
Vladimir Putin opens the wall of sorrow in Moscow in 2018.
EPA
Moscow has invested heavily in remembering the Soviet system of terror, while trying to crush those like historian Yuri Dmitriev who contradict the pro-Stalin narrative.
Targeting the families of protestors is highly effective as a means of control.
A damaged Confederate statue lies on a pallet in a warehouse in Durham, N.C. on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017, after protesters yanked it off its pedestal in front of a government building.
AP Photo/Allen Breed
Where do old Confederate statues go when they die? The former Soviet bloc countries could teach the US something about dealing with monuments from a painful past.
Inheritors of an order we did not build, we are now witnesses to a decline we did not see.
Shutterstock