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#after the war the leaders of the polish 'home army' were executed by the soviets - who are a whole new issue that complicates things - the

marietheran · 1 year

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I think the fundamental problem I have with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is how they completely undermines the ending of RotJ.

In real life, I allow, it absolutely happens that 20 years after one great war there is another. Historical victories aren't clear cut like that. But let's be clear: if Star Wars worked like history does the rebellion wouldn't have won in the first place.

So let our heroes have their happy ending! Let them stay heroes. Don't do that.

#Continuing with the parallels to 20th century history #the resistance movements in german-occupied europe *didn't* achieve victory #the great powers did and the resistance movements only had happy endings in so far as it fitted those powers #after the war the leaders of the polish 'home army' were executed by the soviets - who are a whole new issue that complicates things - the #'good guys' aren't that pure here though for once the 'bad guys' *are* bad - but anyway #this wouldn't have happened if this was a story like the ones movies like star wars tell #long long ago in a galaxy far far away #original post #star wars #star wars sequels #sequel negative #return of the jedi #rotj

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brookstonalmanac · 1 year

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Events 10.14 (before 1950)

#Events

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greatworldwar2 · 4 years

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• Ravensbrück Concentration Camp

Ravensbrück was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel).

Construction of the camp began in November 1938 by the order of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler and was unusual in that it was intended exclusively to hold female inmates. Ravensbrück first housed prisoners in May 1939, when the SS moved 900 women from the Lichtenburg concentration camp in Saxony. Eight months after the start of World War II the camp's maximum capacity was already exceeded. It underwent major expansion following the invasion of Poland. By the summer of 1941 with the launch of Operation Barbarossa an estimated total of 5,000 women were imprisoned, who were fed gradually decreasing hunger rations. By the end of 1942, the inmate population of Ravensbrück had grown to about 10,000. The greatest number of prisoners at one time in Ravensbrück was probably about 45,000. Between 1939 and 1945, some 130,000 to 132,000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, about 50,000 of them perished from disease, starvation, overwork and despair; some 2,200 were killed in the gas chambers. During the first year of their stay in the camp, from August 1940 to August 1941, roughly 47 women died. During the last year of the camp's existence, about 80 inmates died each day from disease or famine-related causes.

Although the inmates came from every country in German-occupied Europe, the largest single national group in the camp were Polish. In the spring of 1941, the SS authorities established a small men's camp adjacent to the main camp. The male inmates built and managed the gas chambers for the camp in 1944. There were children in the camp as well. At first, they arrived with mothers who were Romani or Jews incarcerated in the camp or were born to imprisoned women. There were few children early on, including a few Czech children from Lidice in July 1942. Later the children in the camp represented almost all nations of Europe occupied by Germany. Between April and October 1944 their number increased considerably, consisting of two groups. One group was composed of Romani children with their mothers or sisters brought into the camp after the Romani camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau was closed. The other group included mostly children who were brought with Polish mothers sent to Ravensbrück after the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Most of these children died of starvation.

Ravensbrück had 70 sub-camps used for slave labour that were spread across an area from the Baltic Sea to Bavaria. Among the thousands executed at Ravensbrück were four members of the British World War II organization Special Operations Executive (SOE): Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort, Lilian Rolfe and Violette Szabo. Other victims included the Roman Catholic nun Élise Rivet, Elisabeth de Rothschild (the only member of the Rothschild family to die in the Holocaust), Russian Orthodox nun St. Maria Skobtsova, the 25-year-old French Princess Anne de Bauffremont-Courtenay, Milena Jesenská, lover of Franz Kafka, and Olga Benário, wife of the Brazilian Communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes. Among the survivors of Ravensbrück was author Corrie ten Boom, arrested with her family for harbouring Jews in their home in Haarlem, the Netherlands. SOE agents who survived were Yvonne Baseden and Eileen Nearne, who was a prisoner in 1944 before being transferred to another work camp and escaping. Englishwoman Mary Lindell and American Virginia d'Albert-Lake, both leaders of escape and evasion lines in France, survived. Ravensbrück survivors who wrote memoirs about their experiences include Gemma La Guardia Gluck, sister of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, as well as Germaine Tillion, a Ravensbrück survivor from France who published her own eyewitness account of the camp in 1975. Approximately 500 women from Ravensbrück were transferred to Dachau, where they were assigned as labourers to the Agfa-Commando; the women assembled ignition timing devices for bombs, artillery ammunition and V-1 and V-2 rockets.

Camp commandants included SS-Standartenführer Günther Tamaschke from May 1939 to August 1939, SS-Hauptsturmführer Max Koegel from January 1940 till August 1942, and SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Suhren from August 1942 until the camp's liberation at the end of April 1945. Besides the male Nazi administrators, the camp staff included over 150 female SS guards assigned to oversee the prisoners at some point during the camp's operational period. Ravensbrück also served as a training camp for over 4,000 female overseers. The technical term for a female guard in a Nazi camp was an Aufseherin. The women either stayed in the camp or eventually served in other camps.

When a new prisoner arrived at Ravensbrück she was required to wear a colour-coded triangle (a winkel) that identified her by category, with a letter sewn within the triangle indicating the prisoner's nationality. For example, Polish women wore red triangles, denoting a political prisoner, with a letter "P" (by 1942, Polish women became the largest national component at the camp). Soviet prisoners of war, and German and Austrian Communists wore red triangles; common criminals wore green triangles; and Jehovah's Witnesses were labelled with lavender triangles. Prostitutes, Romani, homosexuals, and women who refused to marry were lumped together, with black triangles. Jewish women wore yellow triangles but sometimes, unlike the other prisoners, they wore a second triangle for the other categories. For example, quite often it was for rassenschande ("racial pollution"). Some detainees had their hair shaved, such as those from Czechoslovakia and Poland, but other transports did not. In 1943, for instance, a group of Norwegian women came to the camp (Norwegians/Scandinavians were ranked by the Nazis as the purest of all Aryans). None of them had their hair shaved. Between 1942 and 1943, almost all Jewish women from the Ravensbrück camp were sent to Auschwitz in several transports, following Nazi policy to make Germany Judenrein (cleansed of Jews). Based on the Nazis' incomplete transport list Zugangsliste, documenting 25,028 names of women sent by Nazis to the camp, it is estimated that the Ravensbrück prisoner population's ethnic structure comprised: Poles 24.9%, Germans 19.9%, Jews 15.1%, Soviets 15.0%, French 7.3%, Romani 5.4%, other 12.4%. The Gestapo further categorised the inmates as: political 83.54%, anti-social 12.35%, criminal 2.02%, Jehovah's Witnesses 1.11%, rassenschande (racial defilement) 0.78%, other 0.20%.

One form of resistance was the secret education programmes organised by prisoners for their fellow inmates. All national groups had some sort of programme. The most extensive were among Polish women, wherein various high school-level classes were taught by experienced teachers. In 1939 and 1940, camp living conditions were acceptable: laundry and bed linen were changed regularly and the food was adequate, although in the first winter of 1939/40, limitations began to be noticeable. Not long after conditions quickly deteriorated. Starting in the summer of 1942, medical experiments were conducted without consent on 86 women; 74 of them were Polish inmates. Two types of experiments were conducted on the Polish political prisoners. The first type tested the efficacy of sulfonamide drugs. These experiments involved deliberate cutting into and infecting of leg bones and muscles with virulent bacteria, cutting nerves, introducing substances like pieces of wood or glass into tissues, and fracturing bones. Out of the 74 Polish victims, called Kaninchen, Króliki, Lapins, or Rabbits by the experimenters, five died as a result of the experiments, six with unhealed wounds were executed, and (with assistance from other inmates) the rest survived with permanent physical damage.

All inmates were required to do heavy labor ranging from strenuous outdoor jobs to building the V-2 rocket parts for Siemens. The SS also built several factories near Ravensbrück for the production of textiles and electrical components. The women forced to work at Ravensbrück concentration camp's industries used their skills in sewing and their access to the factory to make soldiers' socks. They purposely adjusted the machines to make the fabric thin at the heel and the toes, causing the socks to wear prematurely at those places when the German soldiers marched. For the women in the camp, it was important to retain some of their dignity and sense of humanity. Therefore, they made necklaces, bracelets, and other personal items, like small dolls and books, as keepsakes. These personal effects were of great importance to the women and many of them risked their lives to keep these possessions. In January 1945 the SS also transformed a hut near the crematorium into a gas chamber where the Germans gassed several thousand prisoners before the camp's liberation in April 1945; in particular they killed some 3600 prisoners from the Uckermark police camp for "deviant" girls and women, which was taken under the control of the Ravensbrück SS at the start of 1945. In January 1945, prior to the liberation of the remaining camp survivors, an estimated 45,000 female prisoners and over 5,000 male prisoners remained at Ravensbrück, including children and those transported from satellite camps only for gassing, which was being performed in haste.

With the Soviet Red Army's rapid approach in the spring of 1945, the SS leadership decided to remove as many prisoners as they could, in order to avoid leaving live witnesses behind who could testify as to what had occurred in the camp. At the end of March, the SS ordered all physically capable women to form a column and exit the camp in the direction of northern Mecklenburg, forcing over 24,500 prisoners on a death march.Some 2,500 ethnic German prisoners remaining were released, and 500 women were handed over to officials of the Swedish and Danish Red Cross shortly after the evacuation. On April 30th, 1945, fewer than 3,500 malnourished and sickly prisoners were discovered alive at the camp when it was liberated by the Red Army. The survivors of the death march were liberated in the following hours by a Soviet scout unit. The SS guards, female Aufseherinnen guards and former prisoner-functionaries with administrative positions at the camp were arrested at the end of the war by the Allies and tried at the Hamburg Ravensbrück trials from 1946 to 1948. 16 of the accused were found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.

On the site of the former concentration camp there is a memorial today. In 1954, the sculptor Will Lammert was commissioned to design the memorial site between the crematorium, the camp wall, and Schwedtsee Lake. Up to his death in 1957, the artist created a large number of sculpted models of women. Since 1984, the former SS headquarters have housed the Museum des antifaschistischen Widerstandskampfes (Museum of Anti-fascist Resistance). After the withdrawal from Germany of the Soviet Army, which up to 1993 had been using parts of the former camp for military purposes, it became possible to incorporate more areas of the camp into the memorial site. Today, the former accommodation blocks for the female guards are a youth hostel and youth meeting centre.

#second world war #world war 2 #world war ii #history #wwii #german history #holocaust #nazi germany #long post #womens history #women in history

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yngwrthr · 6 years

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“At the beginning the new government treated its opponents very mildly; but it quickly learned the cost of such behaviour. The military cadets that the Bolsheviks had released on parole from the Winter Palace on 26 October (8 November) betrayed their trust two days later and staged an uprising. Similarly mild treatment was shown to General Krasnov, which he also repaid with treason.

Victor Serge, in his book Year One of the Russian Revolution, wrote on the events in Moscow:

The Whites surrendered at 4 p.m. on 2 (15) November. ‘The Committee of Public Safety is dissolved. The White Guard surrenders its arms and is disbanded. The officers may keep the side arms that distinguish their rank. Only such weapons as are necessary for practice may be kept in the military academies ... The MRC [Military Revolutionary Committee] guarantees the liberty and inviolability of all.’ Such were the principal clauses of the armistice signed between Reds and Whites. The fighters of the counter-revolution, butchers of the Kremlin, who in victory would have shown no quarter whatever to the Reds ... went free.

Serge comments:

Foolish clemency. These very Junkers, these officers, these students, these socialists of counter-revolution, dispersed themselves throughout the length and breadth of Russia and there organised the civil war. The revolution was to meet them again, at Iaroslav, on the Don, at Kazan, in the Crimea, in Siberia and in every conspiracy nearer home. [26]

These were the early days of revolutionary innocence. The morning after the October insurrection, on Kamenev’s initiative and in Lenin’s and Trotsky’s absence, the death penalty was abolished. When Lenin learned about this first piece of legislation he was very angry. ‘How can one make a revolution without firing squads? Do you think you will be able to deal with all your enemies by laying down your arms. What other means of repression do you have? Imprisonment? No one attaches any importance to this during a civil war when each side hopes to win.’

‘It is a mistake,’ he went on, ‘an inadmissible weakness, a pacifist illusion’, and much more. ‘Do you really think that we shall come out victorious without any revolutionary terror?’ [27]

Trotsky too had no doubt that the revolution would have to use terror to fight the counter-revolution. ‘We shall not enter the kingdom of socialism in white gloves on a polished floor’, he told the All-Russian Congress of Peasant Deputies on 3 (16) December. [28]

On 28 October (10 November), after the suppression of the revolt of the military cadets, Sovnarkom issued a decree written by Trotsky banning the Kadet Party – the main counter-revolutionary party of the bourgeoisie:

Fully conscious of the enormous responsibility for the destiny of the people and the revolution now being placed on the soldiers of soviet power, the Council of People’s Commissars decided that the Kadet Party, being an organisation for counter-revolutionary rebellion, is a party of enemies of the people. [29]

Trotsky declared:

We have made a modest beginning with the arrest of the Kadet leaders ... In the French Revolution the Jacobins guillotined better men ... for opposing the people’s will. We have executed nobody and are not about to do so. [30]

Alas, this promise did not hold. To organise a struggle against counter-revolution, on 7 (20) December 1917, Sovnarkom established the Cheka, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Fight Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. At first its staff was small, its resources limited, and the few death sentences it passed were on common criminals. M.I. Latsis, a member of the Cheka in 1918, states that during the first six months of its existence the Cheka had 22 people shot. [31]

The revolutionary terror in Russia, like its predecessor during the great French revolution of 1789, was a reaction to foreign invasion and the immensity of the threat to the revolution. The Paris terror of 2 September 1793 followed the Duke of Brunswick’s proclamation threatening foreign invasion and ruthless repression of the revolution. In Russia too it was foreign invasion, starting with the victories of the Czechoslovak troops over the Red Army in 1918, that threatened the greatest danger to the Soviet Republic. On 20 June the popular Bolshevik orator, Volodarsky, was assassinated by counter-revolutionaries. On 30 August an attempt was made on Lenin’s life. He was badly wounded and for a few days was in a critical condition. Another Bolshevik leader, Uritsky, the president of the Petrograd Cheka, was murdered. The Red Terror was unleashed in retaliation. On 2 September 500 hostages were shot in Petrograd.

Whereas between September 1917 and June 1918 the Cheka had executed 22 people, in the second half of 1918 more than 6000 executions took place. [32] In the three years of civil war, 1918-20, 12,737 people were shot. [33]

Compared with the White Terror, however, the Red Terror was mild. Thus in Finland alone, in April 1918, between 10,000 and 20,000 people were slaughtered by the counter-revolutionaries. [34] With complete justification Lenin told the Seventh Congress of Soviets on 5 December 1919:

The terror was forced on us by the terror of the Entente, the terror of mighty world capitalism, which has been throttling the workers and peasants, and is condemning them to death by starvation because they are fighting for their country’s freedom. [35]

Trotsky expressed the same idea in a speech on 11 September 1918:

Now that the workers are being charged with committing cruelties in the civil war we must reply, instructed by our experience: the only unpardonable sin which the Russian working class can commit at this moment is that of indulgence towards its class enemies. We are fighting for the sake of the greatest good of mankind, for the sake of the regeneration of mankind, to drag it out of darkness, out of slavery ... [36]

Marx himself provided his followers with the clearest guide on the subject of terror. In the autumn of 1848, denouncing ‘the cannibalism of the counter-revolution’, he proclaimed that there was ‘only one means to curtail, simplify and localise the bloody agony of the old society and the bloody birthpangs of the new, only one means – the revolutionary terror’. [37]

Trotsky, following the same line of argument, wrote in 1920:

The problem of revolution, as of war, consists in breaking the will of the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the conqueror ...

The degree of ferocity of the struggle depends on a series of internal and international circumstances. The more ferocious and dangerous is the resistance of the class enemy who have been overthrown, the more inevitably does the system of repression take the form of a system of terror. [38]”

#Russian Civil War #Red Terror

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thelastdivide · 8 years

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The Prince of Judah and the Vice-Consul of Japan

In December 1939, an eleven-year-old Jewish boy named Solly Ganor invited a stranger to his family’s Hanukkah celebration at their home in Kaunas, Lithuania– then the capital city. Solly had gone into a little shop owned by his aunt to borrow a couple of coins to see the newest Laurel and Hardy movie. He found his aunt deep in conversation, speaking Russian with a tall, elegantly dressed Japanese man– the first Asian person Solly had ever seen. His aunt introduced him formally as “His Excellency Chiune Sugihara, the Vice-Consul from Japan.” Solly would have been intimidated, but he felt an aura of kindliness around the stranger. He shook hands with Sugihara and then told his aunt he wanted to go to the movies. Before she could move, Sugihara had pulled out his coin purse and given Solly the money. Solly, a little confused but grateful, responded in kind. He invited Sugihara to their Hanukkah dinner. His aunt was embarrassed and assured the diplomat he was under no obligation to attend. But Sugihara cut her off. “Actually,” he said, “I’d love to.”

It was in one of the darkest winters in human history that Chiune Sugihara joined his Jewish neighbors to hear and celebrate the Festival of Lights’ ancient message of hope and perseverance against all odds, a message that Sugihara needed as much as any of them. Just two months prior, the Nazis had invaded Poland. The large and thriving Jewish community in Kaunas had followed Hitler’s rise closely and listened to his hateful rhetoric on the radio, but they assumed that the worst of the rumors were exaggerated, and the Nazi threat would blow over quickly. Now, thousands upon thousands of Polish Jewish refugees were flooding over the western border into Lithuania, bringing with them reports of atrocities too terrible to imagine. Ghettos in the cities. Pogroms in the villages. Wholesale slaughter of their friends, neighbors, and families. Most had escaped with little or nothing, and the Jewish community of Kaunas was stretching its resources to the limit to take them in. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had occupied tiny Lithuania and dissolved its government, building up its “buffer strip” against the inevitable German advance. It wasn’t a matter of if the war would come to Kaunas, but when. By the summer of 1940, all but two foreign diplomats had been evacuated from the city, leaving only Sugihara and a middle-manager from the Phillips corporation who had been made temporary consul for the Netherlands.

By this time, the Jewish refugees in Lithuania and elsewhere had applied to nearly every country in the free world– including the United States– but all had stopped or severely restricted their acceptance of refugees. To our everlasting shame, we ignored the cry of the helpless and turned our backs on the needy. In March 1939, a Congressional bill that would have allowed 20,000 German Jewish children to immigrate was allowed to die in committee. This was just a few months after Kristallnacht; there was no secret about the threat to Jews who remained in Germany. But we had strict immigration quotas to maintain. In June 1939, 907 Jewish refugees aboard the German transatlantic liner St. Louis made it all the way to Miami harbor, only to be sent back to Europe, where nearly a third of them were murdered in the Holocaust. An executive order could have permitted their entry into the U.S., but 83% of the public was against it, and President Roosevelt had a third term to win. Everyone from the FBI to FDR invoked “national security,” suggesting it was possible– likely, even– that some of the ship’s passengers were Nazi spies masquerading as refugees.

With so much of the western world under Nazi control or turning a blind eye, the two diplomats left in Kaunas had a full-blown refugee crisis on their hands. Lithuania’s Baltic ports were blockaded. The only safe escape route was eastward across Russia to Japan, from whence they could safely sail to resettlement. But the Soviet officials refused to let the refugees cross Russia without visas approved by the Japanese government.

So it was that Chiune Sugihara and his family woke up one morning to find a crowd of hundreds outside their door, begging for assistance with this last-ditch escape effort. Sugihara wired his superiors in Tokyo three times. He got three ambiguous refusals. They told him to stop asking. Sugihara was left alone, with the fate of thousands in his hands.

A story: According to a classic midrash, when the Israelites arrived at the shores of the sea after their exodus from slavery in Egypt, the waters didn’t immediately part for them. Actually, no one knew what would happen. With the open ocean ahead and Pharaoh’s army behind, they were trapped. An argument broke out. Some said, “We should surrender. Better to go back into slavery than for all of us to be killed.” Others said, “We should fight. If we’re going to die, we’ll die free.” Even Moses, the fearless miracle worker, was at a loss. The people turned on him. “Have you brought us all the way out here only to die?” they asked. He turned aside from the group and went up on a little hill to pray.

Amid all this, a man named Nachshon stepped forward. He was a prince from the tribe of Judah, a leader. But on this occasion he said nothing. He simply walked, directly into the sea, and began to sing praises to God. The water came up to his knees and soaked his robes. It rose to his waist, then to his chest. The waves washed over his head, but he could still be heard, singing clearly between the swells. Finally, he slipped under and was heard no more. The whole congregation of Israel fell silent. It was then that God turned to Moses and said, “Look! My child, my beloved, is drowning in the sea, and you’re standing here praying? I gave you the power to perform miracles. I gave you your staff. Use it!”

And Moses lifted his staff. The waters of the sea parted, and Nachshon led the way to freedom.

Chiune Sugihara was a career diplomat and a man of strict discipline. He had a family to provide for. He knew that if he acted outside of his orders he risked firing and disgrace. But he later recalled being haunted by a Japanese proverb: “Even a hunter cannot kill the bird that flies to him for refuge.” Refugees were begging at his door, even kneeling to kiss his shoes. “The people in Tokyo were not united,” he said later. “I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply.” The visas would be written.

For the next 30 days Sugihara and his wife, Yukiko, worked 18 to 20 hours a day, until their hands were raw and aching and they were nearly collapsing of exhaustion. They produced upwards of 300 visas– what would typically be a month’s workload– every day. Solly Ganor recalled seeing his friend Sugihara in the last days of his monumental effort– the dignified, elegant vice-consul standing outside in his shirtsleeves, haggard, eyes bloodshot, handing out visas. According to some eyewitnesses he was still writing visas and throwing them out of the train’s windows when he and his family were finally forced to evacuate.

Chiune Sugihara saved over 6,000 Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. It’s estimated that there are over 45,000 people alive today– their descendants– who would not exist had it not been for a mild-mannered diplomat’s extraordinary courage and fidelity to his own conscience. The Talmud tells us, “Whoever saves one life, saves an entire world.” As he expected, Sugihara was fired from the Japanese diplomatic service after the war. He spent the rest of his career working as a translator for various private companies. Ever humble, he did not talk about his heroic deeds. His own neighbors had no idea what he’d done until his death in 1986, when a massive Jewish delegation-- including the Israeli ambassador to Japan-- showed up at his funeral.

Solly Ganor, incidentally, was unable to escape Lithuania and ended up in Dachau concentration camp, where he survived to the end of the war. Ironically, the camp was liberated by a battalion of Japanese-American soldiers– men whose families were interned in their own country.

Since the issuance of last Friday’s abominable executive order I have seen a million and a half moralisms about welcoming the stranger, helping the helpless, and refusing to fear difference. These are indispensable values, foundational to the maintenance of an open and healthy society, and they bear endless repetition.

But that’s not what I want to say here. We already know the ban is wrong. We already know that “national security” is a false flag for the workings of hatred and greed. We already condemn the culture of fear that has turned so much of our country against its own principles– although we can never condemn it loudly enough. But what we need to have constantly before us, now more than ever, is the example of people like Chiune Sugihara. People like Nachshon. People who know that God and public opinion will follow a true act of conscience, not vice versa.

Someday long in the future the descendants of Syrian refugees will not thank us for our political memes or our late-night comedy bits or our private exasperation. They won’t thank us for impotent prayers of the mind without acts of the body and heart. They won’t thank me for writing this.

But they will thank us for our deeds. They will thank us for hounding the authorities, no matter how many times we’re rejected, and defying them if they fail us. They will thank us for protecting our immigrant neighbors, for meeting injustice with ferocious and creative resistance, for showing up, for hitting the streets, for donating, for volunteering, for putting all our strength of arm and heart and brain into every task, no matter how small, that our lives demand of us in the struggle to heal our broken world. There is no such thing as an insignificant action or an insignificant life. You don’t have to be a diplomat. You don’t have to be an immigration lawyer. You don’t have to be the Prince of Judah or the Vice-Consul of Japan. All that is asked of you is to live the life before you, and live it well, with open eyes, a courageous spirit, and an undivided heart. Don’t wait for anyone, human or divine, to light the fire of justice. Your deeds are both the spark and the smoke.

The great second-century Jewish sage Rabbi Tarfon would say, “We are not obligated to complete the task before us, but neither are we free to abandon it.” Do not be daunted by the magnitude of human suffering. Start where you are. Start now.

Sources:

"An Interview with Solly Ganor, September 1998." Interview by Diane Estelle Vicari. Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness. WGBH/PBS, n.d. Web.<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sugihara/readings/ganor.html>

"Chiune Sugihara." The Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017. <http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/chiune-sugihara>.

"Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017 <https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005594>.

"Voyage of the St. Louis." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2017 <https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267>

#chiune sugihara #sempo sugihara #refugees #holocaust #wwii history #writing #long post

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englishchinesetranslations · 5 years

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“Contrary to what so many good people – out of sheer terror of ‘Communism’ – think, Capitalism is not ‘free enterprise,’ an incentive for success, ‘a chance for all.’ Capitalism is trusts, speculation, parasitical usury. Capitalism is J. P. Morgan, Rothschild’s bank, ripping apart the nations like maddened swine. Capitalism is the Jewish frying pan in which culture is rendered down to the grease of money. Following it, as the night to day, is the thrice hotter Jewish fire of ‘Communism.’” William Striker

Jews and Bolshevism

Amongst themselves, the Jews are quite candid about their sympathy for and involvement in Bolshevism.

On 4 April 1919 the Jewish Chronicle: “There is much in the fact of Bolshevism itself, in the fact that so many Jews are Bolshevists, in the fact that the ideals of Bolshevism at many points are consonant with the finest ideals of Judaism.”

(Perhaps this explains why the Red Army uses a Jewish star as its symbol?)

Probably the best-known exposé of the Jewish role in the Bolshevik coup d’état was by Sir Winston Churchill, writing in the Illustrated Sunday Herald of 8 February 1920. Churchill wrote “With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of leading figures are Jews. Moreover the principal inspiration and the driving power comes from Jewish leaders.”

Communism was of course founded by Karl Marx whose grandfather was a rabbi by the name of Mordeccai. Marx was given his initial encouragement by a Communist-Zionist by the name of Moses Hess. As founder and editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, the main organ of leftist thought in Germany, he provided Karl Marx with his first important platform. Later, in Brussels, he collaborated with Marx on The German Ideology. It was Hess too who converted to Communism Friedrich Engels, the wealthy textiles magnate who later subsidised Marx from the profits of sweated labour in Britain and Germany.

When the Bolsheviks overthrew the short-lived democratic government in Moscow and St. Petersburg in October 1917, it was a virtual Jewish coup d’état. The most prominent Jewish Commissar was Trotsky, real name Bronstein. He had been married by a rabbi in 1900, and whilst in exile in New York he had worked for Novy Mir, described in the Church Times (23 January 1925) as a “Yiddish newspaper.”

The various reporters and diplomats who were there at the time of the “Revolution” have given evidence as to its Jewish nature.

The widow of the Guardian’s correspondent Mrs. Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams wrote: “In the Soviet Republic all the committees and commissaries were filled with Jews.”

The most detailed description of Jewish influence in the Bolshevik ‘revolution comes from Robert Wilton, the Russian correspondent of The Times. In 1920 he published a book in French, Les Derniers Jours des Romanofs, which gave the racial background of all the members of the Soviet government. (This does not appear in the later English translation, for some odd reason.) After the publication of this monumental work, Wilton was ostracised by the press, and he died in poverty in 1925. He reported that the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party was made up as follows:

NAME

NATIONALITY

Bronstein (Trotsky)

Jew

Apfelbaum (Zinovief)

Jew

Lourie (Larine)

Jew

Ouritski

Jew

Volodarski

Jew

Rosenfeldt (Kamanef)

Jew

Smidovitch

Jew

Sverdlof (Yankel)

Jew

Nakhamkes (Steklof)

Jew

Ulyanov (Lenin)Russian

KrylenkoRussian

LounatcharskiRussian

“The Council of the People’s Commissars comprises the following:

MINISTRY

NAME

NATIONALITY

PresidentUlyanov (Lenin)Russian

Foreign AffairsTchitcherineRussian

NationalitiesDjugashvili (Stalin)Georgian

AgricultureProtianArmenian

Economic Council

Lourie (Larine)

Jew

Food

Schlichter

Jew

Army & Navy

Bronstein (Trotsky)

Jew

State Control

Lander

Jew

State Lands

Kauffman

Jew

Works

V. Schmidt

Jew

Social Relief

E. Lelina (Knigissen)

Jewess

Public InstructionLounatcharskyRussian

Religions

Spitzberg

Jew

Interior

Apfelbaum (Zinovief)

Jew

Hygiene

Anvelt

Jew

Finance

Isidore Goukovski

Jew

Press

Volodarski

Jew

Elections

Ouritski

Jew

Justice

I. Steinberg

Jew

Refugees

Fenigstein

Jew

Refugees (assist.)

Savitch

Jew

Refugees (assist.)

Zaslovski

Jew

“The following is the list of members of the Central Executive Committee:

NAME

NATIONALITY

Sverdlov

(president)Jew

Avanessof (sec.)Armenian

BrunoLett

Babtchinski

Jew

BukharinRussian

Weinberg

Jew

Gailiss

Jew

Ganzburg

Jew

Danichevski

Jew

StarckGerman

Sachs

Jew

Scheinmann

Jew

Erdling

Jew

Landauer

Jew

Linder

Jew

WolachCzech

Dimanstein

Jew

EncukidzeGeorgian

Ermann

Jew

Joffe

Jew

Karkline

Jew

Knigissen

Jew

Rosenfeldt (Kamenef)

Jew

Apfelbaum (Zinovief)

Jew

Krylenko

Russian

KrassikofSachs

Jew

Kaprik

Jew

KaoulLett

Ulyanov (lenin)Russian

Latsis

Jew

Lander

Jew

LounatcharskiRussian

PetersonLett

PetersLett

Roudzoutas

Jew

Rosine

Jew

Smidovitch

Jew

StoutchkaLett

Nakhamkes (Steklof)

Jew

Sosnovski

Jew

Skrytnik

Jew

Bronstein (Trotsky)

Jew

Teodorovitch

Jew

TerianArmenian

Ouritski

Jew

TelechkineRussian

Feldmann

Jew

Froumkine

Jew

SouriupaUkranian

TchavtchevadzeGeorgian

Scheikmann

Jew

Rosental

Jew

AchkinaziImeretian

Karakhane

Karaim (Jew)

Rose

Jew

Sobelson (Radek)

Jew

Sclichter

Jew

Schikolini

Jew

Chklianski

Jew

Levine (Pravdine)

Jew

“The following is the list of members of the Extraordinary Commission of Moscow:

NAME

NATIONALITY

Dzerjinski (president)Pole

Peters (vice-president)Lett

Chklovski

Jew

Kheifiss

Jew

Zeistine

Jew

Razmirovitch

Jew

Kronberg

Jew

Khaikina

Jewess

KarlsonLett

Schaumann

Jew

Leontovitch

Jew

Jacob Goldine

Jew

Glaperstein

Jew

Kniggisen

Jew

LatzisLett

Schillenkuss

Jew

JansonLett

Rivkine

Jew

AntonofRussian

Delafabre

Jew

Tsitkine

Jew

Roskirovitch

Jew

G. Sverdlof

Jew

Biesenski

Jew

Blioumkine

Jew

AlexandrevitchRussian

I. Model

Jew

Routenberg

Jew

Pines

Jew

Sachs

Jew

DaybolLett

SaissouneArmenian

DeylkenenLett

Liebert

Jew

VogelGerman

ZakissLett

Although Lenin is described as a “Russian,” in fact he was a mixture of various nationalities. It is likely that he was one-quarter Russian, one-quarter German, one-quarter Jewish and at least one-quarter Kalmuck (Mongol), which accounts for his Mongol appearance. Various authorities allege that his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya was a Jewess and that her family spoke Yiddish in the home.

A report sent to the British government in 1918 by Mr. Oudendyke, the Dutch consul in St. Petersburg, said that “Bolshevism is organised and worked by Jews.” The report was included in a pamphlet published as a government White Paper in April 1919 entitled Russia No. 1 (1919) A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia. However, the pamphlet was quickly withdrawn and reissued with various excisions and alterations made.

In the War Records Division of the United States National Archives there is filed a report from an American Intelligence operative in St. Petersburg. Under Record Group 20; Records of the American Expeditionary Forces Capt. Montgomery Schuyler, G2 Intelligence wrote, “The Bolshevik movement is and has been since its beginning, guided and controlled by Russian Jews of the greasiest type.”

Also in the U.S. National Archives are two telegrams sent by American diplomats in Russia. State Department document 861.00/1757 sent on 2 May 1918 by U.S. Consul Summers in Moscow relates, “Jews predominant in local Soviet government, anti-Jewish feeling growing among population.” Document 861.00/2205 from Consul Caldwell in Vladivostock on 5 July 1918 describes, “Fifty per cent of Soviet government in each town consists of Jews of worst type.”

In January, 1924, Lenin died from causes variously described as ‘a heart attack,’ brain hemorrhage’ and ‘syphilis.’ His comrades immediately began fighting amongst themselves to see who was to become his successor.

A relative outsider, Joseph Stalin, came to the fore and purged all competition either by exiling or executing them. Since Stalin was not Jewish, yet nearly all his opponents were, it is often suggested that Stalin was anti-Semitic. This is far from the truth.

Stalin had three wives, all of them Jewesses. The first was Ekaterina Svanidze who bore him one son, Jacob. His second wife was Kadya Allevijah. She bore him a son Vassili and a daughter Svetlana. His second wife died in mysterious circumstances, either by committing suicide or murdered by Stalin. His third wife was Rosa Kaganovich, the sister of Lazar Kaganovich, the head of Soviet industry. Stalin’s daughter (who in 1967 fled to the USA) then married Lazar’s son Mihail i.e. her step-mother’s nephew. Svetlana Stalin had a total of four husbands, three of them Jewish.

Stalin’s vice-president Molotov was also married to a Jewess, whose brother, Sam Karp, runs an export business in Connecticut. Just to complicate things even more, the Molotov’s (half-Jewish) daughter also called Svetlana was engaged to be married to Stalin’s son Vassili.

After the death of Stalin, his successors kept up the tradition, for a report in the B’nai B’rith Messenger relates: “To show that Russia treats its Jews well, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev this week remarked at a reception at the Polish Embassy that not only he himself and Soviet President Klementi Voroshilov, but also half the members of the Praesidium have Jewish wives. Mr. Kruschev made this remark to Israeli Ambassador Joseph Avidar, who was amongst the guests.” (Kruschev’s wife was yet another Kaganovitch.)

According to a report in The Canadian Jewish News of 13 November 1964 the present Soviet boss Leonid Brezhnev is married to a Jewess, and his children are brought up as Jews. There are a number of prominent Jews in the Soviet government, including Dimitri Dymshits in charge of industry, Lev Shapiro regional secretary of Birobidjan, and Yuri Andropov in charge of the secret police, the KGB. In fact, every secret police chief in Soviet history has been a Jew, from the first Uritsky to the most recent, the murderous Beria. A Jew is also in charge of the Soviet economy – Leonid Kantorovich.

It is a well-known fact that the Bolsheviks were and are financed by Jewish interests in the West.

At a Bolshevik celebration rally in New York’s Carnegie Hall on the night of 23 March 1917, a telegram of support from Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was read out. The telegram was reprinted in the next morning’s New York Times. Schiff later tried to deny his involvement, but thirty years later his grandson John admitted in the New York Journal-American (3 February 1949) that the old man had sunk twenty million dollars into the Bolshevik cause.

Another Western bankers who poured funds into Bolshevik Russia was Olaf Ashberg of the Stockholm Nia Banken. He remained the Soviets’ paymaster until the late 1940s. The London Evening Standard of 6 September 1948 reported a visit by Ashberg to Switzerland “for secret meetings with Swiss government officials and banking executives. Diplomatic circles describe Mr. Ashberg as the ‘Soviet banker’ who advanced large sums to Lenin and Trotsky in 1917. At the time of the revolution, Mr. Ashberg gave Trotsky money to form and equip the first unit of the Red Army.”

The Bolsheviks also received assistance from Armand Hammer, who still commutes back and forward between New York and Moscow to take care of his business interests in both communities. Hammer’s Occidental Oil Company is at the moment building a 1,600 mile chemicals pipeline in southern Russia. He is also on such good terms with the Soviets that he personally arranges for Soviet art galleries to lend paintings to America.

Another American-based businessman to help out the Soviet economy is Michael Fribourg, who owns the massive Continental Grain Company. Together with the Louis Dreyfus Corporation, these Jewish speculators were able to buy up vast quantities of cheap American grain in 1972, sell it to the Soviets at a vast profit, and collect an export subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer.

In every other East European country, it is exactly the same story:

In Hungary a Communist revolution was staged in 1919, instigated by the Jew Bela Kun (Cohen). During the three month regime, the country was turned upside down in a reign of murder and terror. Here again, the government was composed almost entirely of Jews. And it was this factor which brought about the regime’s downfall, as the ordinary Hungarians detested Jewish dictatorship. Kun was deposed and fled to the Soviet Union, where he became chief of the secret police, the Cheka, in southern Russia.

It was not until 1945 that the Jews were able to regain control. Three Russian Jews were installed as the ruling triumvirate, Matyas Rakosi (Rosencranz), Erno Gero (Singer) and Zoltan Vas. Both Rakosi and Gero had been members of Kun’s bloody government.

In Germany, the Jews also tried to take over there in the chaos that followed the First World War. Aided by funds from the Soviet Ambassador Joffe, Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartacus Bund attempted to overthrow the government. The revolt was quelled and its leaders Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht executed.

The post-war dictator of Roumania, Anna Pauker, was the daughter of a Bucharest kosher butcher. For a time she earned her living teaching Hebrew. Her father and brother now live in Israel.

Although Tito was the only non-Jewish dictator behind the Iron Curtain in the late 1940s, he was tutored by the Jew Mosa Pijade. According to John Gunther in Behind the Iron Curtain, “He is Tito’s mentor... Whatever ideological structure Tito may have, he got it from the shrewd old man.”

Moscow’s puppet government in Czechoslovakia in the late 1940s was run by another Jew, Rudolph Slansky.

In Poland too, Jews occupied virtually every position of authority in the post-war Communist regime. Prominent among these were Minc, Skryesewski, Modzelewski and Berman. Jacob Berman gradually eclipsed the others until he became supreme dictator by himself. Also, Gomulka’s wife was a Jewess.

Even in China, Soviet Jews were at work helping Mao Tse Tung. High up in the Political Department of the Red Army in China were W. N. Levitschev and J. B. Gamarnik.

From Let My People Go, Empirical Publications, Northern Ireland c. 1976. Authorship unknown. Names of Jews are shown in bold face throughout the publication.

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corkcitylibraries · 6 years

Text

It Seems Like Nothing Changes

Paul Cussen

February 1919

Berehaven naval base is disestablished in February 1919.

Coinciding with a further outbreak of the flu and of ‘septic pneumonia’ Dublin Corporation make influenza and pneumonia ‘notifiable diseases’ that have to be reported to the authorities.

Richmal Crompton's anarchic English schoolboy William Brown is introduced in the first published Just William story, "Rice-Mould", in Home magazine.

1 February - James Down and Michael Cotter are badly assaulted by four men in Patrick Street. Cotter tells the subsequent inquest that he had pointed out the assailants (ex-soldiers) to three policemen. The police, according to Cotter, let the assailants go and told him ‘to go home and wash his face.’

Estonian forces liberate Valga and Võru, expelling the Red Army from the entire territory of Estonia.

2 February - James Down is admitted to The North Fever Hospital ‘suffering from tetanus or lockjaw.’

3 February - Éamon de Valera, the leader of Sinn Féin, John Milroy and John McGarry escape from Lincoln Prison in England in a break arranged by Sinn Féin members including Michael Collins and Harry Boland.

Colour Sergeant David McKay dies of a self-inflicted bullet wound at Rocky Island (near Haulbowline, current site of the Island Crematorium). He was the sole survivor of one of the vessels at the Battle of Jutland and had earned several military decorations including the Croix de Guerre (b. 1879)

Soviet troops occupy Ukraine.

4 February - Pressburg (Bratislava) becomes the capital of Slovakia.

The City of Bremen's Soviet Republic is overthrown by the Freikorps after 25 days existence and at the cost of 80 lives (the Republic’s leaders are executed)

5 February - United Artists (UA) is incorporated by D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

Eight workers from the maintenance department of a Canadian financed hydroelectric plant in Barcelona colloquially known as 'La Canadiense' are laid off causing 140 workers to walk out.

Soviet troops occupy the city of Kiev.

6 February - The Seattle General Strike begins in the United States, affecting over 65,000 workers.

7 February - Sergeant William Roberts dies of influenza in hospital in Cobh.

8 February - The vast majority of plant employees of the Canadian financed hydroelectric plant in Barcelona join the strikers.

11 February - James Down of Belmont, Gardiner’s Hill dies in the North Fever Hospital. His death is caused by exhaustion and heart failure due to tetanus poisoning.

Friedrich Ebert is elected the first President of Germany (Reichspräsident) by the Weimar National Assembly.

The Seattle General Strike ends as the State of Washington's Attorney General summons Federal troops.

The so-called sympathetic Seattle strike was an attempted revolution. That there was no violence does not alter the fact... The intent, openly and covertly announced, was for the overthrow of the industrial system; here first, then everywhere... True, there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings. Revolution, I repeat, doesn't need violence. The general strike, as practised in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community... That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt–no matter how achieved.

- Seattle’s Mayor Ole Hanson

12 February - Petty Officer John Sparling of the Coastguard, dies of illness in Ballycotton (b.1871, St Barnabas, Mauritius)

Ethnic Germans and Hungarian inhabitants of Pressburg start a protest against its incorporation into Czechoslovakia and the Czechoslovak Legions open fire on the unarmed demonstrators.

13 February The deceased gentleman was one of the Assistant County Surveyors under the Cork County Council, and also an earnest and prominent member of the Cork County Board, G.A.A., of which he was chairman for a number of years, and it can therefore be readily understood that he was well and widely known. The late Mr Down had an extremely brilliant collegiate course, winning many distinctions at his examinations, and had Providence spared him, he would undoubtedly have advanced to the front rank of his profession [as an engineer]. The fact has got to be added that, upright and genial, he lived in the esteem and respect of these and the other circles in which he moved. . . .

- Cork Examiner

Driver Harry Martin dies of pneumonia in the Military Hospital Fermoy.

Tennessee Ernie Ford is born in Bristol, Tennessee (d. 1991)

The Kingdom of Portugal otherwise called The Monarchy of the North, based in Porto, comes to an end after less than a month as it fails to gain strong support.

14 February - Corporal William Southgate dies of influenza (b. 1890, Ipswich)

Private Denis Murphy dies of influenza.

Private Arthur Bullock dies of influenza at the Military Hospital in Buttevant.

The Polish–Soviet War begins with the Battle of Bereza Kartuska when at 7 in the morning, 57 Polish soldiers and 5 officers, led by Capt. Mienicki, make a sortie into the township of Bereza capturing 80 soldiers of the Red Army.

15 February - At least 1,500 Jews (mostly women, children and elderly) are murdered by the Ukranian military in the town of Proskurov.

16 February - 432 Albanians are murdered in the Rugova region by the forces of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

16-21 - February Uniformed peasants in Kuivastu on Saaremaa island rebel to "overthrow the power of the landowners" and against the government of Estonia.

17 February - The Cork Examiner reports that the influenza “has again made its appearance in Cork…to an extent that is somewhat disconcerting”. New cases of entire families being affected are recorded and deaths occur “in not a few instances”. The Cork Fever Hospital reports a large number of serious cases and at the Cork District Hospital “upwards of 42 patients affected with the disease have been treated during the week”.

50 new cases of influenza are recorded in Kilmallock Hospital, most of which come from the Charleville district. Three deaths in the same family occur this week in Ballingaddy and two young men from Charleville die in hospital. Medical Officer Dr Thomas Kennedy reports that several influenza cases are admitted to the Youghal Workhouse Hospital.

CSM Joseph Wood dies of influenza (b. 1867, Salford)

80% of workers in the textile industry walk out, striking in support of the laid off workers at La Canadiense. Following this, the railway and tram workers also declare themselves on strike. Through the solidarity of the Barcelona working class, all demands of the strikers are met by the authorities, including the introduction of an 8-hour working day as well as wage increases in some industries.

18 February Sergeant Edwin Weall dies of influenza in Queenstown (b.1888, Preston, Lancs.)

20 February - Gunner Tom Barry sets sail for home from Egypt.

Private William Kennedy dies of TB.

Private Jeremiah O’Shea dies of typhus at Cork Fever Hospital.

Georges Clémenceau is injured by an attempted assassin, Émile Cottin. The Prime Minister supposedly says:

We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target 6 out of 7 times at point-blank range. Of course this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery.

21 February - John O’Connor Power dies in London.

Lieutenant Jaan Klaar leads government forces to crush the Saaremaa rebellion in the battle of Upa near Kuressaare. Altogether 185 people are killed in the uprising, 22 of them at the hands of the rebels; 81 rebels are killed in the fighting and an additional 82 are later executed.

22 February AB Percy Martin dies of influenza at Haulbowline (b. 1896, Gloucestershire)

Seaman Henry Newman dies of illness (b. 1873)

Private John Isaacs dies of influenza and pneumonia in Fermoy.

23 February Private Henry Wright dies of influenza (b. 1897)

Lance Corporal George Parker dies of TB in Central Hospital (b. 1893, Sheffield)

24 February - Shoeing Smith Patrick Hennessy dies of TB.

25 February - Oregon places a one cent per US gallon (0.26¢/litre) tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax.

26 February - Anne Thackeray Ritchie dies in London (b. 1837). She is the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, step-aunt of Virginia Woolf and is believed to have inspired the character of Mrs Hilbery in Woolf's Night and Day. A successful novelist, her 1885 novel Mrs. Dymond contains the earliest English-language use of the proverb "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life."

An act of the United States Congress establishes most of the Grand Canyon as a United States National Park.

28 February - Professional football player and manager John James Carey is born in Dublin (d. 1995)

Stoker 1st Class John Corcoran dies of nephritis.

Stoker Patrick Healy dies of influenza.

Amānullāh Khān becomes King of Afghanistan.

#history to blame #world history #irish history #Cork City Libraries

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article25now · 7 years

Text

Putin’s DNA

I know when I listen to our “so called” President discuss his America First policy, I cringe when I hear these words come out of his mouth. The next sentences usually sounds something like this, “We as a sovereign nation, will follow our national interests, and we expect all other nations to act the same way.” He looks so smug and full of himself, like an elementary school boy after he gets a correct answer from being the only one that raised his hand.

The point I want to make from any International Relations course taken by a college student, Trump's America First message would seem to be idiotic and irrelevant for our nation. I dusted off my old text books for this subject where I discovered (what I had remembered) in the very first sentence, where it states -all nations follow their own self-interests. I assume he spews this drivel for his base of angry people (the reason why I stopped watching CSPAN in the morning). However, our country must look rather small now to the rest of the world, as “Professor” Trump, lectures them on how to deal with their own national interests. I can only assume from this policy speech many if not most foreign diplomats at the United Nations must look at Ambassador Haley with much contempt

Let's stay with that theme of political education. Another course I really liked was Comparative Politics. The subject lets you compare and contrast any nation's current political system. It lets you plot possible future outcomes based on trends in a nation's political history. I once compared Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well Poland to Russia. My major discoveries from both groups, Egypt, would have trouble with democracy. Even after the Arab Spring, because of a number of factors. The first being long term authoritarian military rule usually led by one dictator, think back to King Tut or any other pharaoh whose name you can remember off the top of your head. The Arab nation only had about 60 years of a democratic type of constitutional government with between 6 or 7 new constitutions. The army also currently chokes off the economy where they are responsible for most of the infrastructure construction, that affects the economy for average workers.

I also discovered the other two nations, that up until 1980, Russia always meddled in Polish affairs. The time span was something like five centuries, where the major theme Russian distrust of a free and open Poland. The rulers of Russia wanted to keep a check on these type of nations on its borders. The main reason was the fear of the spread of democracy to the every day Russian. They succeeded for many hundreds of years through the formations of spy systems for intelligence gathering abroad and at home.

What I realized now from Putin's many forays into Western democracy, that we potentially as a nation may lack the drive to conquer and divide our enemies like the Russians.

Please, read the history of the Russian Intelligence Service. You now may see inside the DNA of Putin, what drives him to create chaos around the globe.

It all starts here with the first known intelligence gathering service back in 1565 by Ivan the Terrible. The Oprichnina as it was called had 6,000 horse guards dressed in all-black cavalry clothes, with the “Broom and the Dog” coat of arms emblem. The intention of the symbol was for these defenders to sniff out and sweep up any opposition to the ruler.

These intelligence services all performed low brow duties of intelligence such as open letters, peep through key holes, assassinate threats to the nation and intercept couriers. These early organizations were formed in 1697, by Peter the Great, who created the Probrazhensky Office. 1731, Queen Anne, establishes the Chancellary for Secret Investigations, and Peter III, the Secret Bureau.

Alexander II establishes a secret police force called the Okhrana. They are ruthless in the defense of the Tsar as they act above the law. The organization arrests opposition with no warrants, conducts massive surveillance campaigns and performs random executions. The special group also kill revolutionaries, set up spy networks and eliminate any dissidents in other nations.

In 1917 Lenin's communist revolution overthrows the government of Tsar Nicholas II. Almost immediately forms the anti-royalist counter intelligence group, the All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Revolution and Sabotage and becomes known as the Cheka.

The “God Father” of modern day Russian spy craft was Felix Dzerzhinsky, the architect of Cheka. The agency's focus was organized terror, “as it's needed in times of revolution” or so the legend goes. The philosophy still applies 70 years after the man's death. His philosophy was“We terrorize the enemies of the Soviet Government in order to stop crime at its inception.”

1924, after Lenin's death, Stalin takes over as leader of the nation. His Secret Police murdered an estimated 50 million citizens.

1930 sees the NKVD and later the Administration of Special Tasks. The main focus was to co-opt foreign agents and give support to socialist sympathizers in foreign lands, as well to eliminate any dissenters at home.

In the 1930s successes were the development of British and American spies in universities. One of the most famous being the Cambridge Five Spy Ring, and a number of high level British Secret Service MI6 members.

The early 1940s, sees Lavrenti Beria, expand the NKVD, to “spin off” another organization the NKGB. The responsibilities of this unit were to take care of internal security, conmduct espionage and guerrilla activities during WWII.

After Stalin's death, Beria tried to make himself as Stalin's replacement, but the politburo arrested, prosecuted and executed him in 1953,all in one year.

Nikita Khrushchev, becomes the leader after Stalin. On March 13, 1954. He establishes the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB). The organization becomes Russia's main state security/intelligence agency to wage war against the West and at home.

Ivan Serov was the first KGB Director, as his first task was to wipe out any Beria supporters.

1958, Aleksandr Shelepin, (known as Shelli) becomes the KGB Chairman. He attempts to destabilize the West, and run anti-colonial terrorism programs in hot spots around the globe, such as the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

The longest serving KGB Chairman for 15 years (1967-82) was Yuri Andropov. His leadership during the Golden Years, saw improvements to technology that enhances the organization's effectiveness around the world and at home. He steps down to head the Politburo.

The last chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, led a failed coup to over throw Gorbachev in 1991.

The Soviet Union dissolves on December 25, 1991, but the KGB legacy survives.

After the collapse of the state, the KGB becomes the FSK or Federalnaya Sluzhba Kontrrazvedki or Federal Counterintelligence Service. It was designed to be like Britain's MI5.

In 1995 the FSK becomes the FSB, the “B” stands for Bezopasnost, or the Federal Security Service.

Putin, now as leader of Russia can direct the dark arts of espionage and reap its rewards.

After you read about the head start Russia has on us, in regards to national historical pride for counter intelligence, do we really want to give the current co-opted American President any additional funds for a border security force, forget the wall right now. He requests an extra 15 billion dollars over 10 years. If, you average the workforce at total compensation of $100,000 a year, that equals 15,000 border agents. After you read Putin's nation's history in counter intelligence and how Trump admires Russia as well its leader, we all need to contact our elected officials to push back on his border security personnel needs.

#putinhack #PutinTrump #Russiahack #RussianKGB #RussiaFSB #RussiabIntelligence #RussianhackDNC #RussianColdWar #CozzyBear #RussianBear #politics #uspolitics #worldpolitics

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itsiotrecords-blog · 7 years

Link

http://ift.tt/2s2JBRV

If one thing is for sure it’s that humans are far from perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. Unfortunately for some people, what may have been a small misunderstanding to them, was actually something that caused major problems for many others. Sometimes misunderstandings can have positive effects, other times they can have negative ones. In no particular order, this list focuses on a few simple misunderstandings throughout history that had major consequences.

#1 Michelangelo’s Moses Statue The Moses is a sculpture that was created by the well-known artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. The statue can be found in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Although extremely detailed and impressive beyond compare, as all of Michelangelo’s works were, the statue appears to simply be Moses seated with a serious assertiveness. The crucial part of the statue comes from two subtle details included on Moses’s head. The detail that Michelangelo included was a pair of horns, and it’s these horns that have been the cause of much debate over the statue and how Moses is depicted. The inclusion of horns comes from a description of Moses’ face in the Latin Vulgate translation of a passage in Exodus where Moses returns to the people after his second meeting with God in which he receives the Ten Commandments. The word used to describe the face of Moses was the Hebrew word “???”. Unfortunately this word can be read as either horn or glow, depending on how the word is dotted. It’s possible that the original translation was right, but I like to believe that after an encountering with God over the Ten Commandments, Moses was glowing, not wearing horns. Regrettably this mistranslation didn’t only lead to the inspiration behind one of Michelangelo’s best statues, but also lead to many centuries of “horned Jew” illustrations.

#2 Hemophilia As it will be shown several times throughout this list, mistranslations are the source behind many misunderstandings. This was the case for a Norwegian student staying in Copenhagen. The student’s misunderstanding came during a trip to the emergency room after he was smashed over the head with a glass during a bar fight. At the emergency room the student tried to explain to the medical staff that he suffered from hemophilia, a condition that impairs one’s body to control blood clotting. Now this seems like a reasonable thing to tell a doctor if you are bleeding profusely from your head, but the student was sent home after being told he was fine. You may be scratching your head wondering why this happened, and I’m sure he was too. What happened was that the physician thought the student was saying he was a “homofil” meaning he was gay. Naturally, the physician told him that nothing was wrong and he didn’t need any medical treatment. Due to the small language barrier separating Norway and Denmark, the physician had misunderstood the problem, and due to the same language barrier, the student thought he was being helped for his actual condition and went home. He was found dead two days later.

#3 Atomic Bomb Anybody that’s ever studied history has at some point or another learned about the dropping of the atomic bombs ”Little Boy” and “Fat Man” by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was the first and only time in history that nuclear weapons had ever been used in war. The importance of this event cannot be overstated, especially since it might have been avoided if not for a simple misunderstanding. This misunderstanding came from, you guessed it, a poor translation. When asked if Japan would surrender during World War II, the Japanese ruler used the word “mokusatsu” in response. Now what the Japanese word meant was “we withhold comment – pending discussion”, but when the response was sent to Washington the word was mistranslated to mean “We are treating your message with contempt”. This was picked up by the media and spread like a wildfire around the world. Undoubtedly frustrated by what he thought the response meant, and knowing he needed to respond sternly, President Truman decided that the atomic bombs were a perfect weapon to use. Why this message wasn’t more heavily scrutinized for any possible mistranslation seems very strange, but regardless, this simple mistake led to 150,000-250,000 people being either killed, injured, or exposed to radiation.

#4 Salem Witch Trials The Salem witch trials took place from 1692 to 1693 in colonial Massachusetts. The strange and bizarre action of three young girls led to a series of accusations and executions during this time, the like that had never been experienced before or afterwards in America. The events that took place in Salem are so notable that they are still studied today, so it shouldn’t be hard to believe they happened due to a misunderstanding. It all started from the unusual behavior of three girls. Their symptoms comprised of seizures, throwing objects, making strange sounds, etc. Doctors were called to examine the girls and after being unable to find any physical reasoning to explain the behavior, gave up. At the time colonial America had a strong belief in the existence of the devil and his ability to give supernatural powers to his followers to control the actions of others. The community decided at this point that this was the only plausible solution, because what’s more reasonable when unable to explain a problem than to claim supernatural powers are at work. At this point the girls were forced to name the “witches” that were controlling them. Unfortunately for everybody, one of the accused “witches” confessed and everything spiraled out of control. People were being accused of witchcraft left and right and it grew to the point that the only way to be immune from accusation was to play along and accuse somebody else. This went on until the colonial governor brought an end to the proceedings being carried out by the local court. By the end of the trials over 200 people had been accused of worshipping the devil, 19 people had been hanged, and one person had been executed by being crushed with rocks.

#5 Nikita Khrushchev Another well-known historical misunderstanding came at the hands of communist leader Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet Union, was attending a reception at the Polish Embassy in Moscow. It was at this party on November 18, 1956, that he addressed the Western ambassadors and said “My vas pokhoronim”. News reporters in America immediately began to release the statement but unfortunately mistranslated what he said to mean “we will bury you”. Given the extreme tensions from the Cold War and nuclear arms race, one can understand that Americans believed Khrushchev was threatening the United States. By this time the level of fear over the Cold War was at an all-time high, so it’s not hard to recognize that this comment must have horrified the West. It is known now that this was a misunderstanding, and if anybody would have bothered to delve deeper into the matter they would have found that Khrushchev was actually using a common Russian idiom. A more appropriate translation would have been “I feel bad about your ignorance, but it’s your funeral not mine”, and although that is still scary, it is not threatening. This misunderstanding turned the dial on the Cold War from bad to worse. Fortunately it was only six years later that the West learned Khrushchev didn’t actually intend on starting a nuclear war. It was John F. Kennedy that went horns first (yes horns not glow) and threatened the Soviets that if they didn’t remove their nuclear missiles from Cuba he would personally press the button on the end of the world.

#6 War of the Stray Dog During times of extreme tension it doesn’t take much to trigger a catastrophe and the War of the Stray Dog was no exception. In arguably the strangest war of the 20th century, a dog caused an international crisis. Since the Second Balkan War had ended in 1913, hate and aggression had accumulated drastically between Greece and Bulgaria to the point that very little could set off either side. Not surprisingly, the thing that finally did was a misunderstanding. When a Greek soldier’s dog crossed the border into Bulgaria in October of 1925, the soldier did what any good dog owner would have done and, despite the countless people that wanted to kill him, ran after the dog into Bulgarian territory. The soldier was shot and instantly the Greeks used this as an excuse to invade Bulgaria. The Greek army continued to occupy small villages and planned to shell the city of Petrich until they League of Nations stopped the attack. A ceasefire was eventually declared over the misunderstanding, but not before some 50 Bulgarian citizens had been killed.

#7 Battle of Antietam The Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg) is undoubtedly one of the most recognized battles in American history. It was fought on September 17, 1862, near Antietam Creek in Sharpsburg, Maryland. What most people don’t know is that this iconic battle only happened due to a misunderstanding by the commander of General Robert E. Lee’s rear guard, D.H. Hill. While leading his Army in the North, Lee dispatched movement orders to a few of his generals. The orders detailed how he would maneuver while dividing his forces slightly. Due to a misunderstanding, the orders were accidentally left behind at a campsite. Not long after the troops moved on a Union soldier found the orders and they were passed up to George McClellan, the Union’s top commander. Knowing the Confederate Army’s plans, the Union army was able to move in and attack Lee in the Battle of Antietam. Not only did this misunderstanding result in over 22,000 casualties in the bloodiest single day in the history of America, but it allowed Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the South.

#8 Assassination of Franz Ferdinand Archduke Franz Ferdinand is an example of how one wrong turn can change the course of history. It was the assassination of this man that set off one of the largest wars in the history of mankind. It was June 28th, 1914, and the Archduke and his wife were on a harmless motorcade in Bosnia. The Black Hand, a secret Serbian terrorist society, attempted to assassinate Franz by throwing a grenade at the motorcade but accidentally missed and hit the wrong car. After the botched assassination attempt the group decided to hide in the city. The story goes that the Archduke decided to visit one of the victims at a local hospital, but the driver being unfamiliar with the roads made a wrong turn. What seemed like help came in the form of a young man sitting by the road. Unfortunately for the Archduke, the young man was actually one of the conspirators involved in the assassination attempt. What happened to be the Archduke’s unluckiest day of his life, was also the luckiest day of this man’s life. Seeing that he had a second chance, the man quickly shot the Archduke and his wife. This misunderstanding of directions on the driver’s part not only led to the death of the Archduke and his wife, but the start of World War 1, which claimed nearly 10 million lives.

#9 Wounded Knee Massacre The Wounded Knee Massacre took place on December 29, 1890, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The massacre is commonly used as a representation of the heart-rending treatment inflicted on Native Americans by the United States. What’s even worse than the fact that so many innocent people were killed, is that it could have potentially been avoided if not for a misunderstanding. What happened is that in 1889, Native Americans across the western United States started to perform a harmless “Ghost Dance”. This dance was actually inspired by a holy man from the Paiute tribe named Wovoka. He claimed that by completing the dance the world would be cleansed of evil and the dead would be reunited with the living. As the dance began to spread from tribe to tribe, the original vision began to be distorted like a message in a game of middle school telephone. The new belief was that the dance would also create a world free of whites. One can only imagine the effect this had on soldiers when they learned of this. Although there was no threat linked with the dance, the soldiers misinterpreted its meaning. The soldiers attempt at stopping the dance resulted first in the shooting of Sitting Bull, and in the same month, the massacre of 150 Native Americans.

#10 Jimmy Carter In December of 1977, then President Jimmy Carter planned a trip to Poland to deliver a speech. At this time the Polish nation was struggling under pressure from the Soviet Union. Unfortunately for Carter, what should have been a dull, routine-type speech, turned into a disastrous misunderstanding that wasn’t just politically insulting, but embarrassing as well. The President’s intentions were to tell the nation that he wanted to learn about the Polish people’s desires for the future. What the President meant, and what his translator said, were two things so utterly different that it’s hard to believe a $150 a day experienced translator could have messed it up. The translator told the people that the president “desired the Poles carnally” but it didn’t stop there. Things went from bad to worse to worse-than-worse extremely quickly. Not long after the first humiliating mistake, Carter mentioned how he was glad to be in Poland. Seems like a harmless thing to say, but it was translated as he was happy to grasp Poland’s private parts. Later on Carter spoke of his departure from the United States, which unsurprisingly was translated to mean that he had abandoned the United States forever. The Last glitch came when Carter praised the Polish Constitution of 1791. Somehow this compliment was translated to how the President thought their constitution was to be ridiculed. One can only imagine the reaction of the Polish citizens in attendance. Being told by the most powerful man in the world that he had abandoned his country and desired to fondle their private parts. This incident is arguably the most embarrassing misunderstanding resulting from a Presidential speech.

Source: TopTenz

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teachanarchy · 8 years

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ATAMANSHA

THE LIFE OF MARUSYA NIKIFOROVA

Malcolm Archibald

Introduction

The Ukrainian anarchist Maria Nikiforova (1887–1919) has sometimes been compared to Joan of Arc. Like Joan she started from humble origins and, improbably, became a ferocious military commander who was captured and executed by her sworn enemies. And, like Joan, she was a fanatic who pursued her goals in a violent, ruthless fashion.

But there is no cult of Maria Nikiforova. There are no shelves of books devoted to her life in any language. Although she played a prominent role in the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the subsequent Civil War, she was virtually expunged from Soviet histories of the period. A biographical dictionary of the Russian Revolution published in the Soviet Union which includes hundreds of names does not mention her, indeed mentions only a couple of dozen women. There are entries on the Bolshevik heroines Alexandra Kollontai, Larissa Reissner, and Inessa Armand but none of these women held independent military commands like Nikiforova.

There is no scholarly biography of Maria Nikiforova, no historiography of her life which only needs to be updated and possibly reinterpreted. Partly this is because she spent most of her life in the underground: she joined an anarchist terrorist group at age 16 and was really only "above ground" for two years (1917-1919). So there are very few documents to trace her activities and almost no photos. Recognition can be fatal for a terrorist and so it was for Nikiforova in the end. Such accounts of her life which exist are usually found in memoir literature or fiction. Most of these accounts are hostile to Nikiforova and tend to depict her as repulsive and evil.

Nikiforova was a Ukrainian and her activities in the Russian Revolution and Civil War took place mostly in Ukraine but she has been largely ignored by Ukrainian historians. She was anti-nationalist and, like the Ukrainian anarchist movement in general, she couldn't be assimilated to a nationalist historical perspective.

Even writers sympathetic to anarchism have, as a rule, neglected her. Although she was closely associated with the famous peasant anarchist Nestor Makhno, books about Makhno scarcely mention her. And yet in 1918 Nikiforova was already famous as an anarchist atamansha (military leader) throughout Ukraine, while Makhno was still a rather obscure figure operating in a provincial backwater. She is absent from the works of Peter Arshinov, Volin, and Paul Avrich. Alexandre Skirda's book on Makhno mentions her but only devotes one paragraph to her in a work of 400 pages. Exceptions to the rule are Makhno himself and his former adjutant Victor Belash. In his memoirs (which only cover 22 months of revolution and civil war) Makhno provides eye-witness accounts of a number of dramatic incidents in which Nikiforova played a leading role. Belash, whose work was rescued from the files of the Soviet secret police, also presents primary source material about her.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been tremendous interest in Russia and Ukraine in filling in the "white patches" in their history. Makhno and Nikiforova have benefited from this interest with many books on Makhno being published and a few essays on Nikiforova. The archives have yielded some solid information; for example, Nikiforova's service record exists since she was once a member of the Red Army. Gradually a clearer picture of her life is coming to light and it is possible to establish a reasonably reliable narrative although many ambiguities remain.

The following sketch of Nikiforova's life is based mainly on secondary sources published in Russian and Ukrainian in the last two decades.

The Young Terrorist

According to tradition, Maria Grigorevna Nikiforova was born in the Ukrainian city of Aleksandrovsk in 1885, the daughter of an officer who had been a hero of the last Russo-Turkish War. Although this story might help to explain her later martial ardour, it seems unlikely. For even the daughter of an impoverished officer would be unlikely to leave home at 16 to earn a living on our own as Maria did.

At the turn of the 19th century, Aleksandrovsk was a rapidly industrializing city with a large and militant working class population. Under the conditions of the time there was little paid work for women, but Maria was able to find employment as a baby sitter, sales clerk and, finally, a bottle washer in a vodka distillery.

Around the same time she became a factory worker, Nikiforova also joined a local group of anarcho-communists. This political tendency was distinguished from other left-wing groups, including other anarchists, by the belief that human society had already reached a level that could allow an immediate transition to communism. Anarcho-communist organizers first appeared in Ukraine in 1903 and enjoyed considerable success among the working class youth of industrial centres. During the revolutionary events of 1905-07 there were as many as 90 anarcho-communist groups in Ukraine, more numerous and better-organized than their counterparts in Russia.

Many of these groups, including the one Maria belonged to, espoused motiveless terror (bezmotivnyterror) which advocated the necessity of attacking agents of economic repression based solely on the class position they occupied. This economic terrorism was a change from earlier varieties of Russian terrorism in which the targets of the terrorists were political tyrants. After serving some kind of probation, Maria became a full-fledged militant (boevik), empowered to take part in expropriations (to raise money for the cause) and terrorist acts.

Our age has also not lacked "motiveless terror" but it is important to try to see the Ukrainian anarchist terrorists in the context of their own times, not ours. The early years of the 20th century created pent-up frustrations among the lower classes of the Russian Empire because of the failure of revolutionary activity to change the country's socio-political order in any meaningful way. This was an empire headed by a monarch who was an honorary member of the "Union of the Russian People", an organization roughly equivalent to the Klu Klux Klan. Under prevailing conditions it was not just the anarchists who resorted to terror against the regime. All the socialist groups used terror. In fact, even middle class liberals endorsed the use of terror against tsarist repression. And although the Russian anarchists never numbered more than a few thousand, the ranks of their sympathizers were many times larger.

Maria participated in a bomb attack on a passenger train. No one was hurt but some wealthy passengers were terrified. Another bomb killed a plant manager, causing the plant to shut down for an extended period. An attack on the business office of an agricultural machine plant in Aleksandrovsk resulted in the chief cashier and a guard being killed and 17,000 roubles stolen. When the police finally closed in, Maria tried to kill herself with a bomb, but it didn't explode and she ended up in prison.

At her trial in 1908 she was accused of the murder of a policeman and taking part in armed robberies at four different locations. The court sentenced the young anarchist to death but later, because of her age (in the Russian Empire adulthood began at 21), the sentence was commuted to 20 years at hard labour. She was transferred, first to Petro-Pavlovsk Fortress in the Russian capital and then conveyed to Siberia to serve her sentence.

It's hard to determine exactly when, but at some point in her life Maria Nikiforova began to be known as "Marusya", one of the many Slavic diminutives for "Maria". In folklore she is always referred to as Marusya and she certainly tolerated the name herself, allowing even strangers to address her as Marusya. Therefore we shall use it here.

The Grand Tour

Marusya didn't spend long in Siberia. According to one version, she organized a riot in the Narymsk prison and escaped through the taiga to the Great Siberian Railway. Eventually she reached Vladivostok, and then Japan. There she was helped by Chinese student-anarchists who bought her a ticket to the U.S. She found a temporary home among the large group of anarchist-emigrants from the Russian Empire, mainly of Jewish origin, who had settled in New York and Chicago. Apparently Marusya published propaganda articles in the anarchist Russian language press under various pseudonyms.

Around 1912 Marusya returned to Europe, settling in Paris. In 1913 she paid a visit to Spain where she was able to share her knowledge of "actions" with the Spanish anarchists. While taking part in an anarchist bank robbery in Barcelona, Marusya was wounded and had to undergo treatment secretly at a clinic in France.

In the autumn of 1913 she turned up in Paris again, hanging around the cafes and meeting poets and artists as well as the various Russian politicos, including the Social Democrat Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko who was later to help her out of some sticky situations. She discovered in herself a talent, or at least a predilection, for painting and sculpture and attended a school for artists.

Marusya also acquired a husband, the Polish anarchist Witold Bzhostek. This was surely some sort of marriage of convenience for the couple spent long periods apart and Marusya continued to use her own surname. Nevertheless they seemed devoted to each other and ultimately shared the same fate.

At the end of 1913, Marusya attended a conference of Russian anarcho-communists held in London. She was one of 26 delegates and signed the registration sheet as "Marusya". One of the main concerns of this conference was the lack of anarchist educational and agitational tracts, especially in comparison with their Marxist competitors.

This almost idyllic life came to an abrupt end with World War I. The war split the left-wing groups into pro-war and anti-war factions. The anarchists were no exception with the anarcho-communists close to Kropotkin taking an anti-German position. Marusya seems to have sided with Kropotkin and not just in theory for she enrolled in a French military school and graduated with the rank of an officer. According to her own story, she was eventually posted to the Salonika theatre of the war and was there when revolution broke out in Russia.

Like many left-wing Russian emigrants, Marusya made her way back to Russia in 1917. Reaching Petrograd, she immediately threw herself into revolutionary activity.

Revolutionary Days in Petrograd

Petrograd was the seat of two competing organs of power – the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet. The Provisional Government, lacking in legitimacy since it had never been properly elected, was run by liberal and right-wing socialist politicians. Unwilling and unable to end Russia's participation in the World War and solve the land question in the countryside, the Provisional Government lurched from one crisis to the next. The Petrograd Soviet included more radical groups such as the Bolsheviks who were determined not to stop with destroying the tsarist system but to finish off the bourgeois order as well.

The Russian anarchists, as was often the case in 1917-18, acted as shock troops for the better-organized groups on the extreme left. The revolutionary activities of the anarchists brought down repression from the Provisional Government which arrested 60 of them in June, 1917, in Petrograd. One of those remaining in freedom was the anarcho-communist I. S. Bleikhman, a popular deputy of the Petrograd Soviet. Bleikhman planned a huge anti-government demonstration for July 3 which would involve military personnel as well as militant workers. The participation of sailors from the nearby Kronstadt naval base was crucial and the anarchists put together a team of agitators to persuade the sailors to take part.

Having recently arrived in Russia, Marusya was one of the anarchists who went to Kronstadt. She gave a series of speeches on the huge Anchor Square to crowds as large as 8,000 to 10,000 sailors, urging them not to stand aside from their brothers in the capital. Partly thanks to her efforts many thousands of sailors went to Petrograd to march in the demonstrations of July 3 and 4 which almost toppled the Provisional Government. Although some Bolshevik organizations supported the demonstrations, that Party's leadership rejected the uprising as "premature", dooming it to failure.

The government began hunting down the Bolsheviks and anarchists. Some of the Bolsheviks, including Marusya's friend Alexandra Kollontai, ended up in prison while others escaped to nearby Finland. Bleikhman was given sanctuary by the Kronstadt sailors who protected him from arrest. Marusya decided it was a good time to return to Ukraine and help revive the anarchist movement there. In July 1917 she arrived back in Aleksandrovsk, after an eight-year odyssey which had taken her around the world.

Marusya – the Person and the Activist

At this point in her biography it seems appropriate to take up the perplexing question of Marusya's sexuality. According to some published sources, admittedly written after her death by people who were hostile to her, Marusya was what would now be called an "intersex" person. This view is reflected in several physical descriptions, for example the former Makhnovist Chudnov writes of meeting her in 1918: "This was a woman of 32 – 35, medium height, with an emaciated, prematurely aged face in which there was something of a eunuch or hermaphrodite. Her hair was cropped short in a circle."

The Bolshevik agitator Kiselev writes in his memoirs about meeting her in 1919: "Around 30 years old. Thin with an emaciated face, she produced the impression of an old maid type. Narrow nose. Sunken cheeks. She wore a blouse and skirt and a small revolver hung from her belt." Kiselev goes on to accuse her of being a cocaine addict. Most of the Bolshevik descriptions of Marusya are at this level.

An exception is the Bolshevik Raksha who met Marusya in the spring of 1918:

"I had heard that she was a beautiful woman... Marusya was sitting at a table and had a cigarette in her teeth. This she-devil really was a beauty: about 30, gypsy-type with black hair and a magnificent bosom which filled out her military tunic."

Another description from the summer of 1918:

"A carriage flew down the street at a mad speed. Carelessly sprawled in it was a young brunette wearing a kubanka at a rakish angle. Standing on the footboard was a broad-shouldered chap wearing red cavalry britches. The brunette and her bodyguard had all sorts of weapons hanging from them."

Generally the physical descriptions fall into these two camps, one emphasizing attractiveness, the other repulsiveness. One suspects the Bolshevik memoirists, finding her ideology unattractive, tried to make her external appearance ugly as well. What we do know for certain is that Marusya was a charismatic individual who made a strong impression on people she met and was capable of influencing them purely on the strength of her personality. Her comrades-in-arms were fiercely loyal to her and she returned their loyalty in kind.

Marusya's political views are well known from her numerous speeches. Prison, hard labour, and her global wanderings only strengthened the convictions of her youth. She frequently said: "The anarchists are not promising anything to anyone. The anarchists only want people to be conscious of their own situation and seize freedom for themselves." Her credo, which she expressed over and over again, was that "The workers and peasants must, as quickly as possible, seize everything that was created by them over many centuries and use it for their own interests."

On a tactical level, Marusya was influenced by the veteran anarchist Apollon Karelin whom she met in Petrograd. Karelin represented a tendency known as "Soviet anarchism" which encouraged anarchists to participate in Soviet institutions so long as they were acting to push the Revolution along in the right direction – the direction of more freedom. As soon as the Soviets began to deviate from this path, the anarchists were to rebel against them. Karelin himself became a member of the highest organ of Soviet power in 1918. Many anarchists disapproved of this tactic, especially since they were usually a distinct minority in the organs of Soviet power.

Aleksandrovsk & Gulyai-Pole

Arriving in Aleksandrovsk, Marusya found a local Anarchist Federation had been set up with about 300 members but not much influence on local events. Marusya shook things up – she had an instant following among the factory workers and carried out the successful expropriation of one million roubles from the Badovsky distillery (possibly the one where she had worked). Part of the money was donated to the Aleksandrovsk Soviet.

Aleksandrovsk happened to be the capital of the uyezd in which Gulyai-Pole was situated. This "village" of 17,000 was the home of Nestor Makhno, the leading figure of the local Anarcho-Communist Group which had a membership in the hundreds. Makhno maintained close relations with the Aleksandrovsk Anarchist Federation, visiting it frequently although he was sceptical of its activities (or lack thereof). The Aleksandrovsk anarchists were also critical of Makhno, accusing him of leading a political party striving to seize power.

Marusya took it upon herself to travel to Gulyai-Pole (about 80 km. east of Aleksandrovsk but much farther by train) to straighten out the local anarchists who were not squeezing the bourgeoisie hard enough in her opinion. On August 29, 1917 she addressed a well-attended open-air meeting, chaired by Makhno, in the village's public garden.

Marusya preached the gospel of insurrection – rebel, rebel until all organs of power are eliminated. Carry the Revolution through to the end now, she said, or Capital will revive. Immediate action was also called for because of the assault on the Revolution by state power in Ukraine connected with the appearance of the government of the Central Rada. Not beating around the bush, Marusya called for terrorist action against supporters of the fledgling Ukrainian state.

While Marusya was haranguing the locals, Makhno was suddenly handed two telegrams. Interrupting Marusya, he told the stunned audience "The Revolution is in danger!" Both telegrams were from Petrograd – one from the Provisional Government, the other from the Petrograd Soviet. Both told of General Kornilov's mutiny and his advance on Petrograd to put an end to the Revolution. The Soviet's telegram suggested forming local "Committees for the Salvation of the Revolution".

As the crowd buzzed a voice rang out: "Our brothers' blood is already flowing but here the counter-revolutionaries are walking around laughing." The speaker pointed to a certain Ivanov, a former secret policeman. Marusya immediately jumped down from the platform and "arrested" Ivanov who was now surrounded by an angry mob. But Makhno intervened to save the life of the former cop whom he described as "harmless".

The Gulyai-Pole Peasant Union and the Anarcho-Communist Group followed the advice of the Petrograd Soviet with a slight change: they formed a Committee for the Defence of the Revolution. Its first activity was confiscating all the weapons in the hands of the local bourgeoisie. Marusya had something slightly different in mind. In the nearby town of Orekhov were stationed two regiments of the regular army. Marusya proposed to seize their weapons.

She organized a group of about 200 militants and on September 10 they travelled to Orekhov by train. They were poorly armed having only a couple dozen rifles and a similar number of revolvers confiscated from the Gulyai-Pole police station. Arriving in Orekhov, they surrounded the headquarters of the regiments. The commander succeeded in escaping but some of the junior officers were captured. Marusya dispatched them with her own hand, showing her willingness to kill anyone who belonged to the despised "officers' caste". The rank-and-file soldiers were only too glad to turn in their arms and disperse to their homes. The weapons were taken to Gulyai-Pole and Marusya returned to Aleksandrovsk.

The organs of the Provisional Government in Aleksandrovsk were headed by a chief commissar B. Mikhno (a liberal) and a military commissar S. Popov (an SR). These authorities were disturbed about the goings-on in Gulyai-Pole, in particular, the confiscation of weapons from the property-owning class and the dividing up of large estates among the peasants. The local organs in Gulyai-Pole, thoroughly infiltrated by the anarchists, began to receive threatening orders from the higher authorities.

These orders were ignored in Gulyai-Pole; in fact, Makhno took the offensive by travelling to Aleksandrovsk with another delegate, B. Antonov, to meet directly with workers' groups. The two anarchists were shown around the city by Marusya who took them to a number of workplace meetings. Since Makhno and Antonov had mandates from the Gulyai-Pole Soviet, the authorities didn't dare touch them. With Marusya it was a different story, and after Makhno and Antonov had left the city she was arrested at her apartment and taken to prison by car.

Matters soon took an unpleasant turn for the authorities. Marusya enjoyed great popularity among the workers of Aleksandrovsk and news of her arrest spread like wildfire. On the morning after her arrest a delegation of workers visited the commissars to demand her release. Their demand was refused. But there was also a Soviet in Aleksandrovsk which shared power with the official government. A procession of workers was organized which marched to the Soviet to demand justice. Plants sat idle with their sirens wailing while the march took place. On the way the demonstrators encountered the chairman of the Soviet, Mochalov (a Menshevik), who was literally forced into a horse-drawn cab with some worker delegates and dispatched to the prison. Marusya was released and brought back to the demonstration where she was passed over the heads of the workers to the front of the crowd massed outside the building of the Soviet. Marusya, who possessed a powerful voice used the occasion to make a stirring speech calling for the workers to struggle against the Government and for a society free of all authority.

Meanwhile news of Marusya's arrest was causing havoc in Gulyai-Pole. Makhno managed to reach Commissar Mikhno by telephone; threats were exchanged and Mikhno hung up. The anarchists loaded up a train with militants and set out to attack the government in Aleksandrovsk. En route they received news of Marusya's release and held a celebration instead.

One practical result of all this was new elections to the Aleksandrovsk Soviet which produced a more left-wing body, including some anarchists, which was prepared to tolerate the revolutionary activities in Gulyai-Pole.

The October Revolution in Ukraine

Like most anarchists, Marusya received news of the October Revolution with enthusiasm. The anarchists regarded the coup by the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs (forming the so-called Left Bloc) as a further stage in the withering away of the State. Following the demise of tsardom and the bourgeois state, they thought the Left Bloc government was a temporary phenomenon which would soon disappear.

Marusya spent the fall organizing "Black Guard" detachments in Aleksandrovsk and Elizavetgrad, a central Ukrainian city, which also had a strong anarchist federation. According to one historian, Marusya was responsible for the murder of the chairman of the Elizavetgrad Soviet. After the October Revolution, the soviets in many Ukrainian cities oriented themselves towards the Ukrainian Central Rada in Kiev rather than the Soviet government in Petrograd. In Aleksandrovsk the decision was made on November 22, 1917 and the vote was 147 to 95 in favour of becoming part of the Kiev-based Ukrainian National Republic.

When the nationalist government in Kiev refused to recognize the Left Bloc government in Moscow, the Left Bloc invaded Ukraine with a motley force composed of various Red Guard units. Both sides engaged in an "echelon war", advancing and retreating along the railway lines, much like the contemporaneous Mexican Revolution.

In December 1917 Marusya formed an alliance with the Bolshevik organization in Aleksandrovsk with the aim of overthrowing the local Soviet. The Bolsheviks received a secret shipment of arms while the anarchists were able to arrange the support of a detachment of sailors from the Black Sea Fleet led by M. V. Mokrousov. On December 12, 1917, Mokrousov appeared at a joint meeting of the Aleksandrovsk Soviet and factory committees and demanded the Soviet be re-constituted with members who were Bolsheviks, Left SRs, or anarchists. The members of other parties (Mensheviks and SRs) fled the scene and the new Soviet took over.

On December 25-26, 1917, Marusya's detachment went to Kharkhov and helped the Left Bloc establish soviet power in the city. Her troops engaged in an action there which became her trademark – looting the shops and distributing their goods to the inhabitants. On December 28-29 her Black Guards took part in battles with the haidamaks at Ekaterinoslav, successfully establishing Soviet power in that city as well. According to her own version of events, her detachment was the first to enter the city and she personally disarmed 48 soldiers.

The Left Bloc dismissed the Russian Constituent Assembly at the beginning of January, 1918, making Civil War virtually inevitable. Lacking a strong base in the population, especially in the countryside, the Left Bloc needed allies and only the anarchists shared their implacable hatred of the bourgeoisie. The Left Bloc sought help especially from the anarchists in Ukraine where there were a number of groups like Marusya's and Makhno's which had military capabilities.

Meanwhile in Aleksandrovsk the new regime was under threat by troops of the Central Rada. The forces the Soviet was able to muster were not as numerous or as well armed as the haidamaks (who had armoured cars). The revolutionaries decided not to use Mokrousov's artillery in order to avoid destroying the city. After three days of street fighting, the Bolsheviks and anarchists were forced to withdraw. The balance shifted when Red Guards from Moscow and Petrograd arrived. On January 2, 1918, the haidamaks retreated to the right bank of the Dnepr and power in the city fell to the hands of the newly formed Revolutionary Committee (Revkom). On January 4 Nestor Makhno and his brother Savva showed up with an 800-strong Black Guard detachment from Gulyai-Pole. Nestor was invited to join the Revkom and the Federation of Anarchists was allowed to appoint two delegates, one of whom was Marusya who became the deputy leader of the Revkom.

The Cossack Threat

The haidamaks had retreated, but now a new danger was threatening the revolutionary city. A convoy of echelons loaded with Cossacks (and their horses) was approaching the city from the External Front on their way to the Don to join the counter-revolutionary movement of the reactionary General Kaledin. Realizing the danger the Cossacks represented to the Revolution, the Aleksandrovsk insurgents decided to stop them.

The anarchists led their detachments across the nearby Kichkass suspension bridge over the Dnepr and dug in along the railway tracks. Soon the Cossacks showed up. Contact was established by telephone and a meeting arranged between representatives of the two sides. Makhno and Marusya were part of the delegation which travelled by locomotive to the meeting point. The Cossack officers were in a belligerent mood and claimed they had 18 echelons of Cossacks and another seven echelons of haidamaks and no one was going to stop them. Negotiations were broken off.

The first Cossack train which tried to break through was met with heavy fire and started to back up suddenly, colliding with the train behind and causing a wreck with loss of life to both men and horses. Soon a new truce party of Cossacks arrived which capitulated to the Aleksandrovsk Revkom. They gave up their weapons but insisted on keeping their horses and saddles for "cultural" reasons.

The disarming of the Cossacks was spread over many days and the local politicians took the opportunity to try to win them over to the Revolution. At one outdoor meeting thousands of Cossacks were addressed by a series of socialist orators, with little effect. The Cossacks stood around smoking, occasionally laughing at the speakers.

Then Marusya stepped to the podium and began to speak. Now the Cossacks were paying attention. "Cossacks, I must tell you that you are the butchers of the Russian workers. Will you continue to be so in the future, or will you acknowledge your own wickedness and join the ranks of the oppressed? Up to now you have shown no respect for the poor workers. For one of the tsar's roubles or a glass of wine, you have nailed them living to the cross."

As Marusya continued in this vein many of the Cossacks removed their caps and bowed their heads. Soon some of them were weeping like children.

A knot of Aleksandrovsk intellectuals was standing in the crowd. They told each other: "The speeches of the Left Bloc representatives seem so pale in comparison with the speeches of the anarchists and, in particular, with the speech of M. Nikiforova." One upshot of the meetings, which went on for days, was that a number of Cossacks maintained contact with the Gulyai-Pole anarchists even after they went home to the Kuban and other regions.

After the Cossacks had been disarmed, Marusya and Makhno returned to their duties on the Aleksandrovsk Revkom. Makhno had been assigned the "dirty" job of heading a tribunal which passed sentence on various political prisoners collected by the new political order. Among the prisoners who came before him was Mikhno, the former Provisional Government commissar who had threatened him repeatedly and jailed Marusya. Makhno released him, saying he was an honest man who was only following orders.

Makhno was not inclined to be magnanimous with another prisoner, the former prosecutor Maksimov. When Makhno was a prisoner in the Aleksandrovsk prison many years earlier, Maksimov had made sure his stay was as unpleasant as possible. Considering the evidence against him, Makhno felt justified in sentencing Maksimov to be shot. But the other members of the Revkom, including Marusya, interceded on his behalf. Although they agreed he was a counter-revolutionary, their regime was too shaky to be executing someone who was well regarded in the city. Makhno didn't give in easily and it was only after an all-night meeting that he agreed to remand Maksimov for further review of his case.

Makhno was soon fed up with the Aleksandrovsk Revkom (among other things, they wouldn't let him blow up the prison) and decided to return to Gulyai-Pole with his detachment. The other members of the Revkom came to the train station to see them off – most went there by automobile, Marusya on horseback. At the station the detachment sang the anarchist battle hymn, then embarked.

Marusya was able to hold her Black Guard detachment together and began to act as an independent military commander. It was at this point that Marusya became a player on the national stage rather than just a local figure.

The Free Combat Druzhina

Shortly after Makhno had returned to Gulyai-Pole Marusya proposed a joint action of the Aleksandrovsk Federation with the Gulyai-Pole Anarchist-Communist Group to seize more weapons. The target was a battalion stationed in Orekhov where the anarchists had enjoyed success earlier. The soldiers in the battalion, part of the 48th Berdyansk Regiment, were about evenly divided between supporters of the Ukrainian Central Rada and supporters of General Kaledin. Again the operation was a success. The regional Bolshevik commander, Bogdanov, was ecstatic about the seizure of arms, which included some mortars. Apparently he assumed that since Marusya was still the deputy of the Aleksandrovsk Revkom, the weapons would end up in his hands. Instead all of them went to Gulyai-Pole. This incident marked the end of Marusya's loyalty to the Left Bloc authorities. From now on she acted independently.

The commander of the Soviet forces in Ukraine was Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, one of the few Bolsheviks who had attended a military academy. Marusya enjoyed considerable influence with him as she had helped to establish Soviet power in three important Ukrainian cities. He appointed her "commander of a formation of cavalry detachments in steppe Ukraine" and allocated a significant sum of money to her which she used to equip the so-called "Free Combat Druzhina". She was the only woman commander of a large revolutionary force in Ukraine – an atamansha.

The Free Combat Druzhina was equipped with two large guns and an armoured flatcar. The wagons were loaded with armoured cars, tachankas, and horses as well as troops which meant that the detachment was by no means restricted to railway lines. The trains were festooned with banners reading "The Liberation of the Workers is the Affair of the Workers Themselves", "Long Live Anarchy", "Power Breeds Parasites", and "Anarchy is the Mother of Order."

The soldiers were better fed and equipped than many of the Red Army units. Although there were no official uniforms, the soldiers certainly had a sense of style. Long hair (not common in that era), sheepskin caps, officers' service jackets, red breeches, and ammunition belts were much in evidence. The Druzhina was composed of a core of militants devoted to Marusya and a larger group which came and went on a fairly casual basis. The militants included a fair number of Black Sea sailors, noted for their fighting qualities throughout Ukraine.

With their black flags and cannons, Marusya's echelons resembled pirate ships sailing across the Ukrainian steppe. One observer, the Left-SR I. Z. Steinberg, compared the trains to the Flying Dutchman, liable to appear at any time, anywhere.

Travelling in echelons, the Druzhina advanced to meet the enemy, which in January, 1918, meant the White Guards and the Ukrainian Central Rada.

The anarchists took part in establishing Soviet power in Crimea. The Druzhina and another anarchist detachment captured the resort city of Yalta and pillaged and the Livadia Palace. Several dozen officers were shot. Marusya next headed for Sevastopol where eight anarchists were languishing in prison. The Bolshevik authorities released the prisoners without waiting for the atamansha. Marusya spent some time in the city of Feodosia where she was elected to the executive of the Peasant Soviet and was able to organize more Black Guards.

The Battles of Elizavetgrad

On January 28, 1918, the Druzhina appeared in Elizavetgrad, an important city in south-central Ukraine. Its presence allowed the local Bolshevik organization to take over the city Soviet in a bloodless coup, ousting Ukrainian SRs and Kadets, and set up their own Revkom.

Soon Marusya was engaged in her usual brand of mayhem. Hearing numerous complaints about the local military commissar, Colonel Vladimirov, she went to his quarters and shot him. Then she organized systematic looting of the city's stores, distributing the goods to the poor. Noticing that people were ending up with things they didn't need, she authorized the bartering of goods although this had been expressly forbidden by the Bolshevik Revkom.

Next Marusya met with the Revkom and sharply criticized its activities. She said its members were "tolerant towards the bourgeoisie". She favoured the merciless expropriation of all property acquired through the labour of others and a violent response to any attempt at resistance. Belonging to the class of exploiters was a crime in itself, according to Marusya, and she included even the members of the Revkom in this group. She threatened to disperse the Revkom and shoot its chairman for the Druzhina was opposed to any kind of government organ and had not overthrown the Soviet only to have it replaced by another bureaucratic organ.

The Bolshevik administration in the city was extremely troubled by this kind of talk and responded in typical bureaucratic fashion by setting up a special "Committee for the Regulation of Relations with Marusya". This Committee visited Marusya at her headquarters and asked her politely to leave the city, hinting that the Revkom disposed of significant armed forces. Marusya was hardly impressed with this threat, but did leave a few days later after loading up with weapons from a local officers' college after its student body had joined the haidamaks.

On February 9, 1918 a peace treaty was signed between the Ukrainian Central Rada and the Central Powers. The Central Rada had been losing territory to the armies of the Left Bloc and one of the provisions of the treaty allowed the imperial troops of Germany and Austria-Hungary to establish "order" on Ukrainian soil. German and Austro-Hungarian troops then invaded Ukraine, and, assisted by the haidamaks of the Central Rada, proceeded to push back and mop up the revolutionary forces.

Meanwhile in Elizavetgrad events unfolded tragically. The city was subjected to the full horrors of civil war. With German forces approaching the city the Bolsheviks hurriedly began to evacuate their troops and institutions, leaving a power vacuum. The day after the Revkom left, a new government called the "Provisional Committee of the Revolution" (VKR) suddenly appeared. Its members were drawn from the parties belonging to the previously overthrown Soviet. Any Bolsheviks remaining in the city were arrested and imprisoned. The new authorities, realizing they would need a military force to protect them from retreating Bolshevik troops, recruited officers who had been in hiding and scoured the countryside for returned military personnel. Peasants were conscripted from nearby villages and their wagons requisitioned. Arms were offered to anyone willing to fight the Left Bloc and its allies.

Unexpectedly the Druzhina returned to the city. Marusya's detachment was at full strength and its arsenal included five armoured cars. At first there were several days of peace between the new civic authorities and the anarchists. The Druzhina took over the railway station and annoyed the citizens mainly by singing anarchist songs. The anarchists sent a truck out every day to collect "contributions" from the bourgeoisie. The Bolshevik prisoners remained in jail.

Then a crisis erupted. There was a robbery at the huge Elvorta plant – 40,000 roubles were stolen from the payroll office and the workers could not be paid. Wild rumours circulated that the anarchists were responsible and intended to take their revenge on the city for the imprisoned Bolsheviks. Marusya decided to go to the factory herself and explain the situation to the workers which she evidently regarded as a provocation by right-wing elements.

The meeting hall at the plant was filled to overflowing when Marusya arrived (the plant's workforce numbered around 5,000). Leaving her escort at the door, she entered the hall alone and took the stage. But she wasn't allowed to use her oratorical skills – there was ceaseless shouting and cursing. Frustrated at not being allowed to speak, Marusya pulled two revolvers out of her belt and opened fire over the heads of the audience. Panic ensured. Doors were smashed and people jumped through broken windows. Marusya's companions rushed into the hall and rescued her. On the way back to the station her car was fired on and she was slightly wounded.

The alarm was sounded in the city and the new government's militia advanced on the train station. Street fighting went on for several hours. There were many casualties as the anarchists defended themselves with machine guns and grenades. But they were outnumbered many times over by the attackers and Marusya was forced to make a difficult withdrawal to the steppe, stopping at Kanatovo, the first station on the line. At this point Marusya realized that some of her soldiers had been taken prisoner and she resolved to re-engage the enemy to rescue them.

Finally Bolshevik forces arrived from the Front under Aleksandr Belenkevich, a high ranking officer, and demanded the surrender of the city. His demand being refused, he advanced boldly into the centre of the city where his troops were attacked on all sides. After a three-hour battle, Belenkevich's unit was almost wiped out with many of his troops taken prisoner. Belenkevich himself barely escaped by train. The city authorities began shooting some of the prisoners. Their forces were now led by two retired generals.

Marusya advanced on the city along the railway line from the north but, meeting resistance in the suburbs, she detrained and dug in. The VKR now disposed of thousands of troops under the slogan "Down with Anarchy!" They were armed with both heavy and light artillery, machine guns, and even three airplanes. In order to inflame the population, a story was spread that Marusya looted icons from churches. She was depicted as the leader of a gang of thieves.

A war of attrition went on just outside the city on a front several kilometres long. There was non-stop machine gun and artillery fire. The owner of a distillery, Makeyev, made available unlimited quantities of spirits to the defending troops. To keep up the supply of cannon fodder, the city was scoured for shirkers, who were escorted to the front. There were two lines of trenches: the rear line was manned by officers with machine guns whose job was to block any retreat.

For two days (February 24-25, 1918) the battle see-sawed back and forth. On February 26 Marusya received substantial reinforcements in the form of a Red Guard detachment from the city of Kamensk, one thousand workers with a light battery and machine guns. They advanced to the attack with Marusya's troops.

The Red Guards did not fare well in the battle. They lost their artillery and machine guns to the VKR troops and 65 of them were taken prisoner. Meanwhile the artillery of the defenders had the advantage of reconnaissance by airplanes, which also dropped bombs. The anarchist attack got bogged down short of the enemy trenches. They were forced to retreat still further, to the station of Znamenka. There they gained new strength from another detachment under the Left S-R Colonel Muraviev, who had captured Kiev from the Central Rada a few days earlier for the Left Bloc.

The VRK authorities in the city declared for the Central Rada and sent emissaries to the approaching German-Ukrainian forces requesting immediate help. But it was already too late. In battling Marusya north of the city, the VRK had left the south side unprotected. An armoured train known as "Freedom or Death" steamed into the city under the command of the Bolshevik sailor Polypanov. The guard units in the city fled without giving battle. The sailors went directly to the VRK authorities and demanded the release of all prisoners, including Marusya's soldiers. The VRK was forced to comply. The VRK troops north of the city discovered that it was effectively in Bolshevik hands.

Marusya and Muravyev now entered the city. There was more looting and not just by the anarchists. But there were no mass reprisals; in fact Polypanov said at a mass meeting that the three-day battle had been the result of a misunderstanding. The Reds remained in power in Elizavetgrad until the night of March 19, 1918 when they abandoned the city. Three days later the first German train arrived.

The battles at Elizavetgrad were typical of the Civil War in Ukraine – desperate encounters between fanatical opponents, with a more powerful third party picking up the spoils. Elizavetgrad was destined to change hands several more times before the Bolsheviks finally took over.

The Long Retreat

The Left Bloc tried to organize resistance to the German forces in the name of the puppet government they had set up in Khar'kov. This was a very unequal contest: comparing numbers alone, the German armies and their allies totalled 400,000 to 600,000 soldiers versus Left Bloc forces of around 30,000, including several thousand in anarchist detachments. Nevertheless there was more than token resistance and the occupation of Ukraine by the Central Powers took up most of the spring of 1918.

The Druzhina stopped in the town of Berezovka in south Ukraine and tried to extort a large sum of money from the inhabitants. Resistance appeared from an unlikely source, a rival anarchist detachment headed by Grigori Kotovsky. Kotovsky had been a real bandit before the Revolution, leading a gang specializing in armed robberies and blackmail. The Revolution had saved him from execution. But now he insisted the Berezovkans not give Marusya a single kopeck. Given his superior firepower Marusya was forced to back off.

The Druzhina now detrained and travelled cross-country as a cavalry unit. The detachment made quite an impression as their horses were arranged according to colour: "a row of black, a row of bay, and a row of white – and then again, black, bay, and white. Bringing up the rear were accordionists sitting in tachankas filled with carpets and furs." Marusya herself rode a white horse and many of the troops were dressed entirely in leather while others still had their sailor uniforms. As usual the Druzhina excited the envy of the Red Guards who referred to it as a "dog's wedding" or even worse names.

A rendezvous for the retreating Red detachments had been established on a huge estate near the village of Preobrazhenka. When Marusya arrived she found a Red Commander, Ivan Matveyev, in charge. Summoned to his office, she told him she was willing to take orders from him "until such time as all the detachments have arrived and it's clear who has the most people."

All she was concerned about, she told Matveyev, was distributing the goods found on the estate, starting with clothing. She had already carried out an inventory of the dresses, jackets, and skirts hanging in the huge wardrobes. "The property of the pomeshchiks," she said, "doesn't belong to any particular detachment, but to the people as a whole. Let the people take what they want."

Mateveyev, visibly annoyed, refused "on principle" to discuss "rags". Marusya stormed out, slamming the door.

The Bolsheviks decided to disarm the Druzhina before any more anarchists showed up. They called a general meeting of all the detachments where they intended to seize the anarchists and disarm them. This was a huge outdoor gathering in the centre of the estate. Marusya attended with some, but not all of her troops. The Bolsheviks started off by talking about the necessity of unity and discipline. Marusya caught their drift and when one of the speakers started complaining about the anarchists, she gave a signal for them to leave. When the Bolsheviks finally issued a call to seize the anarchists, they had already slipped away from the estate with their horses and tachankas.

The Druzhina reached a railway line and boarded echelons. Marusya decided to head for her home town, Aleksandrovsk, and try to defend it from the German invaders. The city was full of retreating Red Guard detachments. Since Marusya had left a few weeks earlier, relations between the Anarchist Federation and the Bolsheviks had gone downhill. Nevertheless the Bolsheviks were glad to see Marusya because of her reputation as a warrior.

On April 13, 1918, units of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen broke into the city and captured the railway station. In a warehouse nearby the corpse of a young woman, dressed in leather, was found. A rumour immediately spread through the city that the famous Marusya had been killed. Indeed Marusya took part in the battle, but she was very much alive. A day later the Riflemen were driven out of the city and forced to escape down the Dnepr in boats.

On April 18 the Germans finally entered Aleksandrovsk. The Druzhina was the last detachment to leave the doomed city.

Heading east, the Druzhina stopped at the station of Tsarekonstantinovka where Marusya ran into a disconsolate Nestor Makhno. A nationalist military coup in Gulyai-Pole had just resulted in the arrest of the local Revkom and Soviet while Makhno was absent. Marusya proposed a rescue mission but she knew she couldn't accomplish it alone. First she telegraphed the sailor Polypanov but he refused, as did the sailor Stepanov who was also passing through the station with a train packed with refugees. Finally she lined up a Siberian Red Guard detachment led by Petrenko. Marusya still possessed a couple of armoured cars which she proposed to use as spearheads for the attack (Gulyai-Pole was eight kilometres from the nearest train station). Just then Marusya received word that the Germans had occupied Pologi, on the line she would need to use to get to Gulyai-Pole. She had to abandon her plan and head further east.

Trial in Taganrog

The Bolshevik and anarchists detachments in Left-Bank (Eastern) Ukraine all headed for Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, the current site of the fugitive Ukrainian Soviet government. The Bolsheviks had no hope of hanging on to any part of Ukraine and, so as far as they were concerned, the anarchist troops were no longer necessary. In fact, with their constant agitation against the politics of the party state, they were an ideological liability.

The authorities in the Moscow had already taken steps to get rid of their obnoxious allies. On April 12, 1918 the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups was suppressed and almost 400 people arrested. The Bolsheviks propagandized this event as a police action against criminal elements rather than the elimination of political competition. The anarchists in Russia were too feeble to counter this action but in Ukraine it was a different story.

Arriving in Taganrog, Marusya found herself accused of leaving the Front (against the Germans) without permission. The task of arresting her and disarming the Druzhina fell to the Red Guard unit commanded by Kaskin. Marusya was arrested at the offices of the Central Executive Committee of Ukraine. As she was being escorted from the building, she noticed the well-known Bolshevik V. Zatonsky. She asked him why she was being arrested. When Zatonsky replied, "I have no idea," Marusya spat at him and called him a "lying hypocrite".

The disarming of the Druzhina didn't go smoothly either. The troops refused to transfer to Kaskin's brigade and demanded to know where Marusya was being held. The Taganrog Anarchist Federation and the constantly arriving anarchist detachments also demanded that the Bolsheviks justify their actions. Even the local Left SRs supported the anarchists.

Contacted by the anarchists, the Bolshevik commander-in-chief Antonov-Ovseyenko sent a telegram of support: "The detachment of Maria Nikiforova, and Comrade Nikiforova herself, are well known to me. Instead of suppressing such revolutionary formations, we should be creating them." Telegrams of support were also received from several other Red Guard commanders. And into Taganrog steamed an armoured train under the command of the anarchist Garin, a personal friend of Marusya's.

The chief accusation of the Bolsheviks against Marusya was the pillaging of Elizavetgrad both before and after the right-wing uprising there. The other main charge was deserting the Front, although Kaskin's troops had left the Front before Marusya's. The anarchists were indignant at the hypocrisy of the Bolsheviks who used up the strength of the anarchists in the front lines of the Civil War, while stabbing them in the back in the rear areas.

A "court of revolutionary honour" was held in late April, 1918. The judicial bench was composed of two local Bolsheviks, two local Left SRs, and two representatives of the Left Bloc government of Ukraine. The Bolsheviks presented a series of witnesses who accused Marusya of crimes which were punishable by death. But there were also many defence witnesses in the packed courtroom, people who disputed the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses and referred to Marusya's services to the Revolution. The anarchist Garin noted that Marusya had faith in the justice of the revolutionary court and added, "If I thought she didn't, my detachment would liberate her by force."

Ultimately Marusya was acquitted of all charges and the Druzhina was given back its weapons. Marusya and Makhno (also present in Taganrog) arranged a series of lectures in the local theatre and various workplaces on the topic: "The defence of the Revolution – against the Austro-German army at the front – against the government authorities in the rear". The pair also issued a leaflet on this topic.

Marusya and Makhno then split up. Makhno and other refugees from Gulyai-Pole decided to go home and carry out an underground struggle against the Germans and the Central Rada. Some of the Gulyai-Pole people joined the Druzhina. German pressure soon forced the Bolsheviks and anarchists to retreat to Rostov-on-Don. The anarchists collected valuable documents from the local banks – deeds, loan agreements, and bonds – and burned them in a bonfire in the main square. (Cynics noted that paper money was spared.)

An eye-witness described Marusya's crew: "They looked like Spaniards with long hair and black capes... . A pair of large pistols stuck out of their belts, they carried grenades in their pockets. The younger ones wore bell-bottom trousers and gold bracelets... ."

Finally the German advance halted and the long retreat could come to an end. But now the Bolsheviks had reached territory where they had a preponderance in numbers and could safely disarm the anarchists. Marusya saw what was coming and slipped out of the trap. The Druzhina made a dangerous journey north through the Don region, travelling along a railway line partially controlled by White Cossacks, to reach the Russian city of Voronezh where a new front was being formed.

It is difficult to follow Marusya's activities during the next few months. The Druzhina visited a number of Russian towns close to the border with Ukraine. As long as the Germans occupied Ukraine it was impossible for Marusya to carry on above-ground activities in Ukraine.

Finding the Central Rada too radical for their tastes, the German imperialists replaced it with a puppet government under the hetman Skoropadsky. But in November, 1918, the Germans lost the World War. As part of the armistice they were required to evacuate Ukraine. Skoropadsky's government quickly collapsed and was replaced by the Directory, a more radical nationalist group whose leading figure was Simon Petliura. Ukraine was now vulnerable to another Bolshevik invasion as well as to freebooters like Marusya and peasant insurgents like the Makhnovists.

In the fall of 1918, the Druzhina was part of the order of battle of a mixed force which seized Odessa from the Whites who had taken over the city in the power vacuum caused by the withdrawal of the Germans. Marusya then burned down the Odessa prison. This occupation of Odessa was short-lived; the Whites, with backing from Allied troops (French and Greek) were soon back in control.

Trial in Moscow

Marusya next turned up in the Russian city of Saratov, temporary home to many anarchist refugees from Ukraine. There she was arrested by order of the local Soviet and the Druzhina disarmed. During the Red Terror raging at the time (triggered by the attempted assassination of Lenin by an SR), Marusya could well have been shot without trial. Apparently the local Chekists were reluctant to shoot a "heroine of the Revolution" who may have known Lenin in Paris before the Revolution.

Marusya was transferred to Moscow and lodged in Butyrki Prison (where Makhno had spent many years). But soon she was out on bail for she still had friends in high places. The anarchist Karelin and the Bolshevik Antonov-Ovseyenko were prepared to guarantee her good behaviour. Her husband, the Polish anarchist Bzhostek, was also in Moscow. Like many former residents of the Russian Empire with revolutionary credentials, he had been given an important job in the new administration. While awaiting trial, Marusya took the opportunity to enrol in Proletcult, an officially sanctioned movement which encouraged workers to develop their artistic talents.

Marusya was tried in Moscow on January 21-23, 1919 by a court of "revolutionary honour". The Bolsheviks did not refrain from charging her with crimes which she had already been acquitted of in Taganrog, egged on by their exiled Ukrainian puppet government. That government had set up a special commission to investigate her "crimes". According to the chair of this commission, Yuri Piatakov, the Druzhina "disorganized the defence against the Germans and White Guards" and Marusya herself "under the mask of defender of the proletariat kept herself busy with pillaging. She is simply a bandit operating under the flag of Soviet power."

According to the indictment, "M. Nikiforova without the consent of local Soviets carried out in many cities requisitions from quartermaster's stores, private shops and societies; imposed large contributions of money on landowners; and collected guns and other weapons abandoned by the haidamaks. When the Soviets protested, she threatened them, surrounding the buildings of the Soviets with machine guns and arresting members of the executive committees. Her brigade shot a troop commander, and for not carrying out orders she sentenced to be shot the chairman of the Elizavetgrad Soviet and others."

Her old friend Karelin testified as a character witness, describing her as unselfish: "All she had she gave away even to comrades she barely knew. She wouldn't keep a kopeck for herself. She gave away everything... ." Karelin added she was a complete teetotaller.

The verdict was published in Pravda on January 25, 1919. Marusya was found guilty of "discrediting Soviet power by her deeds and by the actions of her brigade in several instances; and of insubordination in relation to local Soviets in the sphere of military activities." She was acquitted of pillaging and illegal requisitions.

Marusya could easily have been shot for the crimes of which she was convicted. Nevertheless the court sentenced her "to deprivation of the right to occupy responsible posts for six months from the date of the sentence." The tribunal announced that it had taken into consideration Marusya's services in the struggle for Soviet power and against the Germans.

Return to Gulyai-Pole

Although her sentence was light, it seemed onerous to Marusya. Six months was a long time under Civil War conditions. So almost immediately she headed for Gulyai-Pole where Makhno had carved out an anarchist enclave by driving out the Whites and Nationalists. Makhno concluded an agreement with the Bolsheviks on February 19, 1919 which allowed him freedom to build an anarchist society. Makhno's short-range plans did not include a confrontation with the Bolsheviks. So he was not particularly happy when Marusya showed up, knowing her bad relations with the Bolsheviks. Makhno made it clear to her that he intended to observe the conditions of her sentence. She was asked to involved herself with kindergartens, schools, and hospitals rather than military matters.

An ugly incident occurred at the 2nd Congress of Soviets of Gulyai-Pole raion held in the spring of 1919. Marusya, although not a delegate, asked to speak. When she starting attacking the Bolsheviks, the peasants became upset. They were more concerned about the Whites at that point – the Bolsheviks were their allies. Makhno, always a bit of a demagogue when it came to the peasants, physically dragged her down from the podium.

Despite public disagreements, Marusya and Makhno continued to work together. Marusya made trips to Aleksandrovsk, nominally under Bolshevik control, which Makhno hoped to include in his sphere of influence. The Bolsheviks responded by arresting anarchists she stayed with, although she was not officially regarded as an enemy of Soviet power.

Gulyai-Pole was visited by several high-level Bolshevik leaders in the spring of 1919, including Antonov-Ovseyenko, Lev Kamenev, and Kliment Voroshilov. Marusya acted as a sort of hostess for these visits and lobbied Kamenev to reduce her sentence from the Moscow court to three months. Apparently she was successful in this.

The visits by the Bolshevik leaders had a sinister purpose: they were trying to figure out when to stop using the Makhnovists for cannon fodder against the Whites and proceed to their liquidation. The Bolsheviks had already suppressed the anarchist organizations in Ukrainian cities under their control. The anarchists were forbidden to hold meetings or lectures, their printshops were shut down, and they were arrested under almost any pretext. This led to an influx of urban anarchists to Gulyai-Pole and the territory controlled by the Makhnovists.

Return to Underground Terror

After her sentence had been shortened, Marusya went to the Azov port of Berdyansk in May, 1919, and organized a new detachment using dedicated militants from Makhno's counter-intelligence staff and anarchist refugees from the cities. Among the members of this group was her husband Bzhostek. He had come to Ukraine not to visit his wife but to recruit experienced terrorists for an underground group in Moscow.

Early in June Makhno and his military staff were declared outlaws by the Soviet state. This was an incredibly stressful time for the Ukrainian anarchists. Fighting a losing battle against the Whites in the east, they were now being attacked from the rear by the Bolsheviks. Makhno responded by trying to salvage some military capability. Marusya had other plans.

No longer able to field a regular military force, Marusya decided to launch an underground war against her enemies. But first she needed money. Hearing about Makhno's outlaw status, she and her followers caught up with him at the station of Bolshoi Tokmak. Meeting Makhno in his railway car, she demanded money for her terrorist activities. Makhno cursed and pulled out a revolver. He was too slow – Marusya already had her gun out. After an acrimonious discussion Makhno gave her 250,000 roubles from his treasury and told her to get lost.

Marusya divided her group into three sections of about 20 each. One group under Cherniak and Gromov was dispatched to Siberia to blow up the headquarters of the White dictator Kolchak. They reached Siberia but were unable to catch up with Kolchak and ended up being absorbed in the anti-White partisan movement.

The second group under Kovalevich and Sobolev went north to Kharkov to free Makhnovist prisoners and blow up the Cheka headquarters. But the prisoners had already been shot and the Chekists had evacuated the city. So the group went on to Moscow to organize a terrorist attack on the Bolshevik leadership. In preparation for this they carried out a number of armed robberies in Moscow and nearby cities top raise funds. On September 25, 1919, they exploded a bomb at a meeting of the Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik Party, killing 12 and wounding 55 prominent party members. In the ensuing manhunt the group was wiped out. After Kovalevich and Sobolev had been killed in shoot-outs, the rest of the group holed up in a dacha and chose to blow themselves up along with a number of Chekists.

The third group, including Marusya and Bzhostek, headed to Crimea, then under White control, with the intention of blowing up the headquarters of General Denikin, the leader of the White armies in southern Russia. Denikin's headquarters was in Rostov-on-Don at the time but Marusya may have sought help, financial or otherwise, from the Crimean anarchists.

The Last Trial

The last days of Marusya have long been the subject of various legends, resulting from the fact that events in White Crimea were almost impossible for people on "revolutionary soil" to know. The Makhnovists Chudnov and Belash both gave conflicting stories, as did Antonov-Ovseyenko. Only in recent years have documents come to light which clear up the mystery.

On August 11, 1919, Marusya was recognized on the street in Sevastopol and she and her husband were arrested by the Whites. Marusya's group, despairing of being able to rescue her, headed for the Kuban region where they took part in partisan activities in the rear of the Whites. Marusya's arrest was a great coup for White counter-intelligence and a month was spent gathering evidence for the case against her (difficult under Civil War conditions). Her trial, actually a field court-martial, was held on September 16, 1919 before General Subbotin, commandant of Sevastopol Fortress. The indictment read:

I. that the person calling herself Maria Grigor'evna Bzhostek, also known as Marusya Nikiforova, is charged as follows: that during the period 1918-1919, while commanding a detachment of anarcho-communists, she carried out shootings of officers and peaceful inhabitants, and she called for bloody, merciless reprisals against the bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionaries. For example:

in 1918 between the stations of Pereyezdna and Leshchiska by her order several officers were shot, in particular, the officer Grigorenko;

in November 1918 she entered the city of Rostov-on-Don with detachments of anarchists and incited a mob with an appeal to carry out bloody reprisals against the bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionaries;

in December 1918, while commanding an armed detachment, she participated together with the troops of Petliura in the capture of Odessa, after which she took part in burning down the Odessa prison, where the chief warden Pereleshin was killed in the fire;

in June 1919 in the city of Melitopol' 26 persons were shot on her order, including a certain Timofei Rozhkov.

These charges involve crimes specified in Articles 108 and 109 of the criminal code of the Volunteer Army.

II. Vitol'd Stanislav Bzhostek is charged, not with taking part in the crimes of Part I, but with knowing about them and shielding M. Nikiforova from the authorities.

Both of the accused were found guilty and sentenced to death. As Part II of the indictment indicates, V. Bzhostek was convicted of the "crime" of being Marusya's husband.

According to reporters at the trial, Marusya was defiant throughout the proceedings and swore at the court after the sentence was read. She only broke down briefly while saying goodbye to her husband. They were both shot.

The newspaper "Aleksandrovsk Telegraph" (the city was now in White territory) crowed about her death in its September 20, 1919 issue: "One more pillar of anarchism has been broken, one more idol of blackness has crashed down from its pedestal... . Legends formed around this ‘tsaritsa of anarchism'. Several times she was wounded, several times her head was cut off but, like the legendary Hydra, she always grew a new one. She survived and turned up again, ready to spill more blood... . And if now in our uyezd the offspring of the Makhnovshchina, the remnants of this poisonous evil, are still trying to prevent the rebirth of normal society and are straining themselves to rebuild once more the bloody rule of Makhno, this latest blow means we are witnessing the funeral feast at the grave of the Makhnovshchina."

Two weeks after these lines were published the Makhnovist Insurgent Army captured Aleksandrovsk from the Whites.

The Legend Continues

Since Marusya had escaped death so many times, it was hard for people to believe she was really gone. Their disbelief created the possibility for false Marusyas to appear. There were at least three of these atamanshas active in the Civil War and they apparently made use of the terror evoked by Marusya's name:

(1) Marusya Chernaya commanded a cavalry regiment in the Makhnovist Insurgent Army in 1920-1921. She was killed in battle against the Reds.

(2) Marusya Sokolovskaia, a 25-year old Ukrainian nationalist school teacher, took over her brother's cavalry detachment after he was killed in battle in 1919. She was captured by the Reds and shot.

(3) Marusya Kosova was an atamansha in the Tambov peasant revolt in 1921-1922. After the revolt was suppressed she disappeared from history.

Another legend had Marusya working as a Soviet secret agent. According to this story she was sent to Paris for undercover work and was involved in the assassination of the Ukrainian Nationalist leader Simon Petliura. Petliura was killed by a former member of Kotovsky's anarchist detachment. The only truth in this story might be the fact of anarchists doing the Bolsheviks' work for them.

Maria Nikiforova represents the destructive side of anarchism, the sweeping away of the old to make way for the new. She was not insensitive to the other side of anarchism (see Appendix) but never enjoyed the tranquillity necessary to pursue constructive work. Although she had no effect on the ultimate course of the Russian Revolution, she might have for she was always ready to act on her principles at key moments. She devoted her considerable talents to fighting her legions of enemies but eventually fell in this unequal struggle.

The two photographs of Marusya reproduced in this work were probably taken in Elizavetgrad in 1918. On the back of one of them is written: "Don't think badly of me. – M. Nikiforova".

Appendix

In December 1918 Marusya attended the First All-Russian Congress of Anarchist-Communists in Moscow. The following is the text of a brief speech she gave which was preserved in the minutes:

"Looking at the way anarchists live their lives, I feel depressed at how many deficiencies there are in their work. What is the cause of this? A lack of talent? But that can't be because you can't say there is no talent among the anarchists. But why then are anarchist organizations collapsing? Why, when anarchists followed where their consciences lead them, did they not get those results they had hoped for? For this not to continue, the anarchists must clarify their mistakes.

In their approach to their work, anarchists must not restrict themselves to the big stuff. Any kind of work is useful. To sacrifice oneself is easier than to work constantly, steadily, achieving definite goals. Such work demands great staying power and a lot of energy. Anarchists don't have enough of this staying power and energy and besides, they must be prepared to submit to comradely discipline and order.

Anarchists must:

be role models (anarchists currently don't have communes);

distribute their propaganda widely in printed form;

organize themselves and stay in close touch with each other. For this last point we need to register all the anarchists but we need to be selective and encourage not so much those who know theory as those who can put it into practice.

The process of social revolution is continuing and the anarchists must be prepared for that moment when they must apply all their forces and then each one must carry out their own task, not holding anything back.

But our work must be based on examples, for example, in Moscow itself we should create a whole network of vegetable gardens on a communist basis. This would be the best means of agitation among the people, people who in essence are natural anarchists."

#russian revolution #anarchism #world history

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brookstonalmanac · 2 years

Text

Events 10.14

1066 – The Norman conquest of England begins with the Battle of Hastings. 1322 – Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at the Battle of Old Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence. 1586 – Mary, Queen of Scots, goes on trial for conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth I of England. 1656 – The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends. 1758 – Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great suffers a rare defeat at the Battle of Hochkirch. 1773 – The first recorded ministry of education, the Commission of National Education, is formed in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. 1774 – American Revolution: The First Continental Congress denounces the British Parliament's Intolerable Acts and demands British concessions.[6] 1805 – War of the Third Coalition: A French corps defeats an Austrian attempt to escape encirclement at Ulm. 1806 – War of the Fourth Coalition: Napoleon decisively defeats Prussia at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt. 1808 – The Republic of Ragusa is annexed by France. 1843 – Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell is arrested by the British on charges of criminal conspiracy. 1863 – American Civil War: Confederate troops under the command of A. P. Hill fail to drive the Union Army completely out of Virginia. 1884 – George Eastman receives a U.S. Government patent on his new paper-strip photographic film. 1888 – Louis Le Prince films the first motion picture, Roundhay Garden Scene. 1898 – The steam ship SS Mohegan sinks near the Lizard peninsula, Cornwall, killing 106. 1908 – The Chicago Cubs defeat the Detroit Tigers, 2–0, clinching the 1908 World Series; this would be their last until winning the 2016 World Series. 1910 – English aviator Claude Grahame-White lands his aircraft on Executive Avenue near the White House in Washington, D.C. 1912 – Former president Theodore Roosevelt is shot and mildly wounded by John Flammang Schrank. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Roosevelt delivers his scheduled speech. 1913 – Senghenydd colliery disaster, the United Kingdom's worst coal mining accident, claims the lives of 439 miners. 1915 – World War I: Bulgaria joins the Central Powers. 1920 – Finland and Soviet Russia sign the Treaty of Tartu, exchanging some territories. 1923 – After the Irish Civil War the 1923 Irish hunger strikes were undertaken by thousands of Irish republican prisoners protesting the continuation of their internment without trial. 1926 – A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard’s children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh is first published, introducing the eponymous teddy bear to the public under his most famous name. 1930 – The former and first President of Finland, K. J. Ståhlberg, and his wife, Ester Ståhlberg, are kidnapped from their home by members of the far-right Lapua Movement. 1933 – Germany withdraws from the League of Nations and World Disarmament Conference. 1939 – World War II: The German submarine U-47 sinks the British battleship HMS Royal Oak within her harbour at Scapa Flow, Scotland. 1940 – World War II: The Balham underground station disaster kills sixty-six people during the London Blitz. 1943 – World War II: Prisoners at Sobibor extermination camp covertly assassinate most of the on-duty SS officers and then stage a mass breakout. 1943 – World War II: The United States Eighth Air Force loses 60 of 291 B-17 Flying Fortresses during the Second Raid on Schweinfurt. 1943 – World War II: The Second Philippine Republic, a puppet state of Japan, is inaugurated with José P. Laurel as its president. 1947 – Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to exceed the speed of sound. 1949 – The Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders in the United States convicts eleven defendants of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the federal government. 1952 – Korean War: The Battle of Triangle Hill is the biggest and bloodiest battle of 1952. 1956 – Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, leader of India's Untouchable caste, converts to Buddhism along with 385,000 of his followers (see Neo-Buddhism). 1957 – The 23rd Canadian Parliament becomes the only one to be personally opened by the Queen of Canada. 1957 – At least 81 people are killed in the most devastating flood in the history of the Spanish city of Valencia. 1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis begins when an American reconnaissance aircraft takes photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles being installed in Cuba. 1964 – Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. 1964 – The Soviet Presidium and the Communist Party Central Committee each vote to accept Nikita Khrushchev's "voluntary" request to retire from his offices. 1966 – The city of Montreal begins the operation of its underground Montreal Metro rapid transit system. 1968 – Apollo program: The first live television broadcast by American astronauts in orbit is performed by the Apollo 7 crew. 1968 – The 6.5 Mw  Meckering earthquake shakes the southwest portion of Western Australia with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), causing $2.2 million in damage and leaving 20–28 people injured. 1968 – Jim Hines becomes the first man ever to break the so-called "ten-second barrier" in the 100-meter sprint with a time of 9.95 seconds. 1973 – In the Thammasat student uprising, over 100,000 people protest in Thailand against the military government. Seventy-seven are killed and 857 are injured by soldiers. 1975 – An RAF Avro Vulcan bomber explodes and crashes over Żabbar, Malta after an aborted landing, killing five crew members and one person on the ground. 1979 – The first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights draws approximately 100,000 people. 1980 – The 6th Congress of the Workers' Party ended, having anointed North Korean President Kim Il-sung's son Kim Jong-il as his successor. 1981 – Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected as the President of Egypt, one week after the assassination of Anwar Sadat. 1982 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaims a War on Drugs. 1991 – Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1994 – Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their role in the establishment of the Oslo Accords and the framing of future Palestinian self government. 1998 – Eric Rudolph is charged with six bombings, including the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia. 2003 – The Steve Bartman Incident takes place at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. 2004 – MK Airlines Flight 1602 crashes during takeoff from Halifax Stanfield International Airport, killing all seven people on board. 2004 – Pinnacle Airlines Flight 3701 crashes in Jefferson City, Missouri. The two pilots (the aircraft's only occupants) are killed. 2012 – Felix Baumgartner successfully jumps to Earth from a balloon in the stratosphere. 2014 – A snowstorm and avalanche in the Nepalese Himalayas triggered by the remnants of Cyclone Hudhud kills 43 people. 2014 – The Serbia vs. Albania UEFA qualifying match is canceled after 42 minutes due to several incidents on and off the pitch. Albania is eventually awarded a win. 2015 – A suicide bomb attack in Pakistan kills at least seven people and injures 13 others. 2017 – A massive truck bombing in Somalia kills 358 people and injures more than 400 others. 2021 – About 10,000 American employees of John Deere go on strike.

#Events

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brookstonalmanac · 3 years

Text

Events 7.10

138 – Emperor Hadrian dies of heart failure at Baiae; he is buried at Rome in the Tomb of Hadrian beside his late wife, Vibia Sabina. 645 – Isshi Incident: Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari assassinate Soga no Iruka during a coup d'état at the imperial palace. 988 – The Norse King Glúniairn recognises Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin. 1086 – King Canute IV of Denmark is killed by rebellious peasants. 1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground. 1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, defeats the king's Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton. 1499 – The Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama. 1512 – The Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre commences with the capture of Goizueta. 1519 – Zhu Chenhao declares the Ming dynasty's Zhengde Emperor a usurper, beginning the Prince of Ning rebellion, and leads his army north in an attempt to capture Nanjing. 1553 – Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England. 1584 – William I of Orange is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland, by Balthasar Gérard. 1645 – English Civil War: The Battle of Langport takes place. 1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1789 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River delta. 1806 – The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company. 1832 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States. 1850 – U.S. President Millard Fillmore is sworn in, a day after becoming president upon Zachary Taylor's death. 1877 – The then-villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain. 1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears. 1883 – War of the Pacific: Chileans led by Alejandro Gorostiaga defeat Andrés Avelino Cáceres's Peruvuan army at the Battle of Huamachuco, hastening the end of the war. 1890 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state. 1920 – Arthur Meighen becomes Prime Minister of Canada. 1921 – Belfast's Bloody Sunday: Sixteen people are killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1924 – Paavo Nurmi won the 1,500 and 5,000 m races with just an hour between them at the Paris Olympics. 1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins of John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. 1927 – Kevin O'Higgins TD, Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State is assassinated by the IRA. 1938 – Howard Hughes begins a 91-hour airplane flight around the world that will set a new record. 1940 – World War II: The Vichy government is established in France. 1940 – World War II: Six days before Adolf Hitler issues his Directive 16 to the combined Wehrmacht armed forces for Operation Sea Lion, the Kanalkampf shipping attacks against British maritime convoys begin, in the leadup to initiating the Battle of Britain. 1941 – Jedwabne pogrom: Massacre of Polish Jews living in and near the village of Jedwabne. 1942 – World War II: An American pilot spots a downed, intact Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island (the "Akutan Zero") that the US Navy uses to learn the aircraft's flight characteristics. 1943 – World War II: Operation Husky begins in Sicily. 1947 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor-General of Pakistan by the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. 1951 – Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong. 1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit. 1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, co-founded by Martin Luther King Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago. As many as 60,000 people attend. 1973 – The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. 1976 – Four mercenaries (one American and three British) are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial. 1978 – ABC World News Tonight premieres on ABC. 1978 – President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania is ousted in a bloodless coup d'état. 1985 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira. 1985 – An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 stalls and crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), killing all 200 people on board in the USSR's worst-ever airline disaster. 1991 – The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid. 1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia. 1991 – A Beechcraft Model 99 crashes near Birmingham Municipal Airport (now Birmingham–Shuttlesworth International Airport) in Birmingham, Alabama, killing 13 of the 15 people on board. 1992 – In Miami, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations. 1997 – In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. 1997 – Miguel Ángel Blanco, a member of Partido Popular (Spain), is kidnapped (and later murdered) in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests. 1998 – Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by Rudolph Kos, a former priest. 1999 – In women's association football, the United States defeated China in a penalty shoot-out at the Rose Bowl near Los Angeles to win the final match of the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup. The final was watched by 90,185 spectators, which set a new world record for attendance at a women's sporting event. 2000 – EADS, the world's second-largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA. 2002 – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens's painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. 2007 – Erden Eruç begins the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world. 2008 – Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškoski is acquitted of all war-crimes charges by a United Nations Tribunal. 2011 – Russian cruise ship Bulgaria sinks in Volga near Syukeyevo, Tatarstan, causing 122 deaths. 2017 – Iraqi Civil War: Mosul is declared fully liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. 2019 – The last Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the line in Puebla, Mexico. The last of 5,961 "Special Edition" cars will be exhibited in a museum.

#Events

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brookstonalmanac · 4 years

Text

Events 7.10

138 – Emperor Hadrian dies of heart failure at Baiae; he is buried at Rome in the Tomb of Hadrian beside his late wife, Vibia Sabina. 645 – Isshi Incident: Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari assassinate Soga no Iruka during a coup d'état at the imperial palace. 988 – The Norse King Glúniairn recognises Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin. 1086 – King Canute IV of Denmark is killed by rebellious peasants. 1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground. 1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, defeats the king's Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton. 1499 – The Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama. 1512 – The Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre commences with the capture of Goizueta. 1519 – Zhu Chenhao declares the Ming dynasty's Zhengde Emperor a usurper, beginning the Prince of Ning rebellion, and leads his army north in an attempt to capture Nanjing. 1553 – Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England. 1584 – William I of Orange is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland, by Balthasar Gérard. 1645 – English Civil War: The Battle of Langport takes place. 1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1789 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River delta. 1806 – The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company. 1832 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States. 1850 – U.S. President Millard Fillmore is sworn in, a day after becoming president upon Zachary Taylor's death. 1869 – Gävle, Sweden, is largely destroyed in a fire; 80% of its 10,000 residents are left homeless. 1877 – The then-villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain. 1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears. 1883 – War of the Pacific: Chileans led by Alejandro Gorostiaga defeat Andrés Avelino Cáceres's Peruvuan army at the Battle of Huamachuco, hastening the end of the war. 1890 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state. 1921 – Belfast's Bloody Sunday: Sixteen people are killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins of John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. 1927 – Kevin O'Higgins TD, Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State is assassinated by the IRA. 1938 – Howard Hughes begins a 91-hour airplane flight around the world that will set a new record. 1940 – World War II: The Vichy government is established in France. 1940 – World War II: Six days before Adolf Hitler issues his Directive 16 to the combined Wehrmacht armed forces for Operation Sea Lion, the Kanalkampf shipping attacks against British maritime convoys begin, in the leadup to initiating the Battle of Britain. 1941 – Jedwabne pogrom: Massacre of Polish Jews living in and near the village of Jedwabne. 1942 – World War II: An American pilot spots a downed, intact Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island (the "Akutan Zero") that the US Navy uses to learn the aircraft's flight characteristics. 1943 – World War II: Operation Husky begins in Sicily. 1947 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor-General of Pakistan by the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. 1951 – Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong. 1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit. 1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago. As many as 60,000 people attend. 1973 – The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. 1976 – Four mercenaries (one American and three British) are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial. 1978 – ABC World News Tonight premieres on ABC. 1978 – President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania is ousted in a bloodless coup d'état. 1985 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira. 1985 – An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 stalls and crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), killing all 200 people on board in the USSR's worst-ever airline disaster. 1991 – The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid. 1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia. 1992 – In Miami, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations. 1997 – In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. 1997 – Miguel Ángel Blanco, a member of Partido Popular (Spain), is kidnapped (and later murdered) in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests. 1998 – Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by Rudolph Kos, a former priest. 1999 – In women's association football, the United States defeated China in a penalty shoot-out at the Rose Bowl near Los Angeles to win the final match of the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup. The final was watched by 90,185 spectators, which set a new world record for attendance at a women's sporting event. 2000 – EADS, the world's second-largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA. 2002 – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens's painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. 2005 – Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle, causing billions of dollars in damage. 2007 – Erden Eruç begins the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world. 2008 – Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškoski is acquitted of all war-crimes charges by a United Nations Tribunal. 2011 – Russian cruise ship Bulgaria sinks in Volga near Syukeyevo, Tatarstan, causing 122 deaths. 2017 – Iraqi Civil War: Mosul is declared fully liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. 2019 – The last Volkswagen Beetle rolls off the line in Puebla, Mexico. The last of 5,961 "Special Edition" cars will be exhibited in a museum.

#Events

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brookstonalmanac · 5 years

Text

Events 7.10

138 – Emperor Hadrian dies of heart failure at Baiae; he is buried at Rome in the Tomb of Hadrian beside his late wife, Vibia Sabina. 645 – Isshi Incident: Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari assassinate Soga no Iruka during a coup d'état at the imperial palace.[1] 988 – The Norse King Glúniairn recognises Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin. 1086 – King Canute IV of Denmark is killed by rebellious peasants. 1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground. 1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, defeats the king's Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton. 1499 – The Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama. 1512 – The Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre commences with the capture of Goizueta. 1519 – Zhu Chenhao declares the Ming dynasty's Zhengde Emperor a usurper, beginning the Prince of Ning rebellion, and leads his army north in an attempt to capture Nanjing. 1553 – Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England. 1584 – William I of Orange is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland, by Balthasar Gérard. 1645 – English Civil War: The Battle of Langport takes place.[2] 1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1789 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River delta. 1806 – The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company. 1832 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States. 1850 – U.S. President Millard Fillmore is sworn in, a day after becoming President upon Zachary Taylor's death. 1869 – Gävle, Sweden, is largely destroyed in a fire; 80% of its 10,000 residents are left homeless. 1877 – The then-villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain. 1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears. 1890 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state. 1913 – The temperature in Death Valley, California, hits 134 °F (57 °C), the highest temperature ever to be recorded on Earth. 1921 – Belfast's Bloody Sunday: Sixteen people are killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1925 – Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years. His followers observe Silence Day on this date in commemoration. 1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins of John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. 1927 – Kevin O'Higgins TD, Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State is assassinated by the IRA. 1938 – Howard Hughes begins a 91-hour airplane flight around the world that will set a new record. 1940 – World War II: The Vichy government is established in France. 1940 – World War II: Six days before Adolf Hitler issues his Directive 16 to the combined Wehrmacht armed forces for Operation Sea Lion, the Kanalkampf shipping attacks against British maritime convoys begin, in the leadup to initiating the Battle of Britain. 1941 – Jedwabne pogrom: Massacre of Polish Jews living in and near the village of Jedwabne. 1942 – Diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the Soviet Union are established. 1942 – World War II: An American pilot spots a downed, intact Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island (the "Akutan Zero") that the US Navy uses to learn the aircraft's flight characteristics. 1943 – World War II: Operation Husky begins in Sicily.[3] 1947 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor-General of Pakistan by the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. 1951 – Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong. 1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit. 1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago. As many as 60,000 people attend. 1973 – The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. 1973 – National Assembly of Pakistan passes a resolution on the recognition of Bangladesh. 1976 – Four mercenaries (one American and three British) are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial. 1978 – ABC World News Tonight premieres on ABC. 1978 – President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania is ousted in a bloodless coup d'état. 1985 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira. 1985 – An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 stalls and crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), killing all 200 people on board in the USSR's worst-ever airline disaster. 1991 – The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid. 1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia. 1992 – In Miami, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations. 1997 – In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. 1997 – Miguel Ángel Blanco, a member of Partido Popular (Spain), is kidnapped (and later murdered) in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests. 1998 – Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by Rudolph Kos, a former priest. 1999 – In women's association football, the United States defeated China in a penalty shoot-out at the Rose Bowl near Los Angeles to win the final match of the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup. The final was watched by 90,185 spectators, which set a new world record for attendance at a women's sporting event. 2000 – EADS, the world's second-largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA. 2002 – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens's painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. 2005 – Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle, causing billions of dollars in damage. 2007 – Erden Eruç begins the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world. 2008 – Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškoski is acquitted of all war-crimes charges by a United Nations Tribunal. 2011 – Russian cruise ship Bulgaria sinks in Volga near Syukeyevo, Tatarstan, causing 122 deaths. 2017 – Iraqi Civil War: Mosul is declared fully liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

#Events

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brookstonalmanac · 6 years

Text

Events 7.10

48 BCE – Battle of Dyrrhachium: Julius Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat by Pompey in Macedonia. 138 – Emperor Hadrian dies of heart failure at Baiae; he is buried at Rome in the Tomb of Hadrian beside his late wife, Vibia Sabina. 645 – Isshi Incident: Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari assassinate Soga no Iruka during a coup d'état at the imperial palace. 988 – The Norse King Glúniairn recognises Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin. 1086 – King Canute IV of Denmark is killed by rebellious peasants. 1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground. 1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, defeats the king's Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton. 1499 – The Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama. 1512 – The Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre commences with the capture of Goizueta. 1519 – Zhu Chenhao declares the Ming dynasty's Zhengde Emperor a usurper, beginning the Prince of Ning rebellion, and leads his army north in an attempt to capture Nanjing. 1553 – Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England. 1584 – William I of Orange is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland, by Balthasar Gérard. 1645 – English Civil War: The Battle of Langport takes place. 1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1789 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River delta. 1806 – The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company. 1832 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States. 1850 – U.S. President Millard Fillmore is sworn in, a day after becoming President upon Zachary Taylor's death. 1869 – Gävle, Sweden, is largely destroyed in a fire; 80% of its 10,000 residents are left homeless. 1877 – The then-villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain. 1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears. 1890 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state. 1913 – The temperature in Death Valley, California, hits 134 °F (57 °C), the highest temperature ever to be recorded on Earth. 1921 – Belfast's Bloody Sunday: Sixteen people are killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1925 – Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years. His followers observe Silence Day on this date in commemoration. 1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins of John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. 1927 – Kevin O'Higgins TD, Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State is assassinated by the IRA. 1938 – Howard Hughes begins a 91-hour airplane flight around the world that will set a new record. 1940 – World War II: The Vichy government is established in France. 1940 – World War II: Six days before Adolf Hitler issues his Directive 16 to the combined Wehrmacht armed forces for Operation Sea Lion, the Kanalkampf shipping attacks against British maritime convoys begin, in the leadup to initiating the Battle of Britain. 1941 – Jedwabne pogrom: Massacre of Polish Jews living in and near the village of Jedwabne. 1942 – Diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the Soviet Union are established. 1942 – World War II: An American pilot spots a downed, intact Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island (the "Akutan Zero") that the US Navy uses to learn the aircraft's flight characteristics. 1943 – World War II: Operation Husky begins in Sicily.[1] 1947 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor-General of Pakistan by the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. 1951 – Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong. 1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit. 1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago. As many as 60,000 people attend. 1973 – The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. 1973 – National Assembly of Pakistan passes a resolution on the recognition of Bangladesh. 1976 – Four mercenaries (one American and three British) are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial. 1978 – ABC World News Tonight premieres on ABC. 1978 – President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania is ousted in a bloodless coup d'état. 1985 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira. 1985 – An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 stalls and crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), killing all 200 people on board in the USSR's worst-ever airline disaster. 1991 – The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid. 1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia. 1992 – In Miami, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations. 1997 – In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. 1997 – Miguel Ángel Blanco, a member of Partido Popular (Spain), is kidnapped (and later murdered) in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests. 1998 – Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by Rudolph Kos, a former priest. 2000 – EADS, the world's second-largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA. 2002 – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. 2005 – Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle, causing billions of dollars in damage. 2007 – Erden Eruç begins the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world. 2008 – Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškoski is acquitted of all war-crimes charges by a United Nations Tribunal. 2011 – Russian cruise ship Bulgaria sinks in Volga near Syukeyevo, Tatarstan, causing 122 deaths. 2017 - Iraqi Civil War: Mosul is declared fully liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

#Events

0 notes

brookstonalmanac · 7 years

Text

Events 7.10

48 BC – Battle of Dyrrhachium: Julius Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat by Pompey in Macedonia. 138 – Emperor Hadrian dies of heart failure at Baiae; he is buried at Rome in the Tomb of Hadrian beside his late wife, Vibia Sabina. 645 – Isshi Incident: Prince Naka-no-Ōe and Fujiwara no Kamatari assassinate Soga no Iruka during a coup d'état at the imperial palace. 988 – The Norse King Glúniairn recognises Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, High King of Ireland, and agrees to pay taxes and accept Brehon Law; the event is considered to be the founding of the city of Dublin. 1086 – King Canute IV of Denmark is killed by rebellious peasants. 1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burns most of the city to the ground. 1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, defeats the king's Lancastrian forces and takes King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton. 1499 – The Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon after discovering the sea route to India as a companion of Vasco da Gama. 1512 – The Spanish conquest of Iberian Navarre commences with the capture of Goizueta. 1519 – Zhu Chenhao declares the Ming dynasty's Zhengde Emperor a usurper, beginning the Prince of Ning rebellion, and leads his army north in an attempt to capture Nanjing. 1553 – Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England. 1584 – William I of Orange is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland, by Balthasar Gérard. 1645 – English Civil War: The Battle of Langport takes place. 1778 – American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1789 – Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Mackenzie River delta. 1806 – The Vellore Mutiny is the first instance of a mutiny by Indian sepoys against the British East India Company. 1821 – The United States takes possession of its newly bought territory of Florida from Spain. 1832 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States. 1850 – U.S. President Millard Fillmore is sworn in, a day after becoming President upon Zachary Taylor's death. 1869 – Gävle, Sweden, is largely destroyed in a fire; 80% of its 10,000 residents are left homeless. 1877 – The then-villa of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, formally receives its city charter from the Royal Crown of Spain. 1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears. 1890 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state. 1913 – The temperature in Death Valley, California, hits 134 °F (57 °C), the highest temperature ever to be recorded on Earth. 1921 – Belfast's Bloody Sunday: Sixteen people are killed and 161 houses destroyed during rioting and gun battles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 1925 – Meher Baba begins his silence of 44 years. His followers observe Silence Day on this date in commemoration. 1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins of John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher accused of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act. 1927 – Kevin O'Higgins TD, Vice-President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State is assassinated by the IRA. 1938 – Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91-hour airplane flight around the world. 1940 – World War II: The Vichy government is established in France. 1941 – Jedwabne pogrom: Massacre of Polish Jews living in and near the village of Jedwabne. 1942 – Diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the Soviet Union are established. 1942 – World War II: An American pilot spots a downed, intact Mitsubishi A6M Zero on Akutan Island (the "Akutan Zero") that the US Navy uses to learn the aircraft's flight characteristics. 1943 – World War II: Operation Husky begins in Sicily. [1] 1947 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah is recommended as the first Governor-General of Pakistan by the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. 1951 – Korean War: Armistice negotiations begin at Kaesong. 1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, is launched into orbit. 1966 – The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., holds a rally at Soldier Field in Chicago. As many as 60,000 people attend. 1973 – The Bahamas gain full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. 1973 – National Assembly of Pakistan passes a resolution on the recognition of Bangladesh. 1976 – Four mercenaries (one American and three British) are executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial. 1978 – ABC World News Tonight premieres on ABC. 1978 – President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania is ousted in a bloodless coup d'état. 1985 – The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior is bombed and sunk in Auckland harbour by French DGSE agents, killing Fernando Pereira. 1985 – An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-154 stalls and crashes near Uchkuduk, Uzbekistan (then part of the Soviet Union), killing all 200 people on board in the USSR's worst-ever airline disaster. 1991 – The South African cricket team is readmitted into the International Cricket Council following the end of Apartheid. 1991 – Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia. 1992 – In Miami, former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega is sentenced to 40 years in prison for drug and racketeering violations. 1997 – In London, scientists report the findings of the DNA analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton which supports the "out of Africa theory" of human evolution, placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. 1997 – Miguel Ángel Blanco, a member of Partido Popular (Spain), is kidnapped (and later murdered) in the Basque city of Ermua by ETA members, sparking widespread protests. 1998 – Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by Rudolph Kos, a former priest. 2000 – EADS, the world's second-largest aerospace group is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA. 2002 – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents is sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. 2005 – Hurricane Dennis slams into the Florida Panhandle, causing billions of dollars in damage. 2007 – Erden Eruç begins the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world. 2008 – Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boškoski is acquitted of all war-crimes charges by a United Nations Tribunal. 2011 – Russian cruise ship Bulgaria sinks in Volga near Syukeyevo, Tatarstan, causing 122 deaths.

#Events

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