USSR – Soviets

Postcommunist armed forces

December 19, 2011

Postcommunist armed forces are key actors in the process of democratic consolidation. The successful transition of post communist military institutions is essential to protecting the democratic gains achieved by society overall, and for ensuring that coercive force is not used to reverse them. —Marybeth Peterson Ulrich, Professor of Government at the U.S. Army War College in Democratizing [...]

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Kalashnikov ammunition production in Cuba

November 30, 2011

RIA Novosti reports today: Russia and Cuba are planning to sign a contract on building an assembly line  for production of ammunition for Kalashnikov assault rifles, Kommersant business daily reported on Wednesday. According to a source in the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, cited by Kommersant, an assembly line for 7.62-mm rounds used in Kalashnikov [...]

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Father of containment

November 15, 2011

Henry Kissinger reviews noted Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis‘s new book on the father of [Soviet] containment, George F. Kennan: Nonetheless, no other Foreign Service officer ever shaped American foreign policy so decisively or did so much to define the broader public debate over America’s world role. This process began with two documents remembered [...]

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Artillery units of the Eastern Army

November 2, 2011

This recent but undated video from Cuban state media posted on YouTube shows an artillery unit of Cuba’s Eastern Army in field exercises. A Soviet-era relic BM-21 (truck-mounted 122 mm multiple rocket launcher), which was introduced in 1963 by the Russian Army, can be seen rolling by as well as a wheeled self-propelled howitzer that was on [...]

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Mysterious Russian numbers station

October 5, 2011

This month’s Wired magazine has a great article on the strange Russian numbers station, UVB-76: From a lonely rusted tower in a forest north of Moscow, a mysterious shortwave radio station transmitted day and night. For at least the decade leading up to 1992, it broadcast almost nothing but beeps; after that, it switched to [...]

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Forgotten martyrs

August 20, 2011

The Wall Street Journal on the heroic forgotten martyrs who died in their struggle against Soviet rule for a free Russia: Today, Dmitry Komar, Ilya Krichevsky and Vladimir Usov are all but forgotten—obscured by deep disillusionment with the political and economic chaos that for many Russians defined Mr. Yeltsin’s attempt at democratic rule in the [...]

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