Soviet History

‘What the Finns Won” (Collier’s Magazine, 1940)

We suppose debate will go on for years about whether the Finns or the Russians won their 105-day war of late 1939 and early 1940. We think the Finns won all the phases of the war except those included in the peace treaty – and that the treaty was a minor matter in the long view of it all…As for the predictions that the Russians will be coming back in six months or so to gobble up the rest of Finland – we may easily be wrong, but we can’t picture the Russians tackling the Finns again for another thirty years.

‘What the Finns Won” (Collier’s Magazine, 1940) Read More »

The First Atheist Government (The Commonweal, 1930)

Throughout much of the Twenties and Thirties the religious communities of the Western world looked at the nascent Soviet Union with some fascination: not only was it the first atheist government to be established, but it was the first government to be openly hostile to all religions alike.


An article about Chinese persecution of the Christian Church can be read here…


Click here to read about the Nazi assault on the German Protestant churches in 1935.

The First Atheist Government (The Commonweal, 1930) Read More »

The Soviet Invasion of Finland (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

Just as Lenin had a triumphal military adventure, Stalin, too, believed that he could deploy Soviet forces victoriously. However, when Lenin launched his enterprise against neighboring Georgia in 1921, he had the benefit of skilled military leaders under his command – this was not the case with Stalin, who had seen fit to purge his military of thousands of officers (1934 – 1939). When Stalin’s legions attacked Finland in November of 1939, the Soviet losses that were inflicted by the numerically inferior Finns were far greater than he ever thought possible.


The article appeared during the closing weeks of the war and it reported on the outside aid the Finns were receiving. The attached file also includes an article from 1931 concerning some of the bad blood that existed between the two nations.


Read an article explaining how the Soviets used early radio…

The Soviet Invasion of Finland (Pathfinder Magazine, 1940) Read More »

The Soviet Press on Famine Conditions (Literary Digest, 1923)

Indignant accusations of trickery in dealing with the grain supply, which have been launched against the Russian Soviet Government by American and European editors, who were amazed to find that Russia was exporting grain in the midst of a new famine, are not particularly noticed by the Moscow press, which however, in such journals as the Moscow ‘Isvicstia’ and the ‘Economcheskaia Gizn’ feature reports of starvation in the Volga provinces.

Although there is no mention of the Soviet famine in this 1938 interview with Leon Trotsky, it is interesting nonetheless; to read it for free, you may click here.

The Soviet Press on Famine Conditions (Literary Digest, 1923) Read More »

Georgia Invaded (Literary Digest, 1921)

Nine months after the Soviet Union signed a good-will agreement respecting the autonomy and independence of its Black Sea neighbor, Vladimir Lenin’s Red Army quickly overran the borders of the Democratic Republic of Georgia on February 16, 1921; seizing the Georgian capital nine days later, Russian General Anatoli Ilyich Gekker declared the establishment of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic.


Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.

Georgia Invaded (Literary Digest, 1921) Read More »

Soviet Treaty Violations (U.S. Dept. of Defense, 1962)

This is a carefully cataloged list of the international treaties that the Soviet Union signed and agreed to abide by during the course of their first forty years (1920 – 1960). Printed next to these agreements are listed the dates the Soviets chose to violate the treaties and the direct results that ensued.


Promises are like pie crust, made to be broken. – V.I. Lenin


Click here to read about the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact.

Soviet Treaty Violations (U.S. Dept. of Defense, 1962) Read More »

‘How We Made the October Revolution” (New York Times, 1919)

Here is Leon Trotsky’s reminiscence of those heady days in 1917 that served as the first step in a 75 year march that went nowhere in particular and put millions of people in an early grave – this is his recollection of the fall of the Kerensky Government and the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics(R.I.P.).

THE REVOLUTION was born directly from the war, and the war became the touchstone of all the revolutionary parties and energies…


The review of the first English edition of Das Kapital can be read here…

‘How We Made the October Revolution” (New York Times, 1919) Read More »