Soviet History – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

The Similarities Between Fascists and Bolsheviks
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

Here is a brief glance at various observations made by a correspondent for The London Observer who compared the two dominate tribes found in 1933 Moscow and Berlin. The journalist was far more distracted by the similarities in their street hustle and their speechifying rather than their shared visions in governance and culture – for example, both the Nazis and Soviets were attracted to restrictions involving public and private assembly, speech and gun ownership while sharing an equal enthusiasm for May Day parades and the color red. Additionally, both totalitarian governments held religion as suspect and enjoyed persecuting their respective dupes – for the Nazis that was the Jews and for the Communists it was the bourgeoisie.

Read a magazine piece that compares the authoritarian addresses of both Hitler and Stalin – maybe you will see how they differed – we couldn’t.

Read an article explaining how the Soviets used early radio…

The Optimist’s Joseph Stalin
(Coronet Magazine, 1943)

During the Second World War in the United States it would have been an act of treason for a journalist to write a slanderous profile about any of the leaders of the allied nations who were beset against the Axis powers. Not only would the writer face grave charges, but so would his editor and publisher. However, this does not mean that the editors of Coronet Magazine had to go so far over the top as to publish this article by the Soviet cheerleader Walter Duranty (1884 – 1957) of The New York Times.

From Amazon:

Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’s Man in Moscow

Their Nascent Justice System
(Reader’s Digest, 1923)

KEY WORDS: Admiral Alexey Mikhailovich Schastny purged by Trotsky 1923,Red Justice by Sergey Kobyakov McClure’s Magazine April 1918Read more …

Stalin Puts Trotsky ”On Trial”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

In response to Stalin’s Moscow show trial convicting Leon Trotsky of anti-revolutionary sedition – a second kangaroo court was convened in Mexico in which Trotsky and his fellow travelers offered a public defense on behalf of the accused.

Movie Night in the Worker’s Paradise
(Photoplay, 1937)

Saturday night in Stalin’s Moscow: so much to do! If you wanted to take your date to a Russian movie you could go to Battleship Potemkin, or you could take her to Battleship Potemkin, or to Battleship Potemkin! On the other hand, you might choose a foreign movie that was approved by the all-knowing Soviet apparatchik, and in that case the two of you would see a Charlie Chaplin movie – and we’ll give you one guess as to which one he liked.

Click here if you want to know what films Hitler liked.

The Police State
(Literary Digest, 1937)

Victor Serge (1890 – 1947) was a devoted Bolshevik writer who was highly critical of Joseph Stalin; he spent five years in the gulag for his subversive activity and would have no doubt died there had not an international mishmash of humanitarians raised a stink about his incarceration. He was exiled from the Marxist-dream-land in 1936 – the attached column is an extract from his gulag writings concerning the cruelties of Stalin’s secret police.

‘The Madhouse”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)

The party purge had been widened to include the Soviet Secret Police itself, with 50 of its number being arrested.

FDR Prepares to Break With Finland
(L.A. Times, 1943)

Although the diplomatic break with Finland would not come until the Fall of the following year, the pressure was being applied by Joseph Stalin to recognize a German-Finn alliance. FDR, however, knew that Finland was only interested in regaining ground that the Soviets had stolen during the Winter War.

He Spied on the Bolsheviks
(Literary Digest, 1921)

Fracture in Moscow
(Literary Digest, 1921)

Sharp encounters between Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Dzerzhinsky and other Bolshevik leaders took place when Trotsky tried to take Warsaw in 1920 and the majority of the committee antagonized his policy, we learn from a letter written by a Bolshevik adherents in Russia, who is ‘presumably‘ high up in the Soviet hierarchy and a partisan of Trotsky.

An American in Kharkov
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1932)

An American woman recalled the difficulties she encountered while trying to set up a household in Soviet Russia.

Soviet and Nazi Rhetoric Compared
(The New Leader Magazine, 1951

A carefully compiled assortment of quotes that were voiced by Stalin and Hitler (or their assorted Yes-Men). These utterances were printed with Stalin’s poisonous pronouncements in red and Hitler’s sickening soliloquies in black – both shades refer to similar topics and show an identical manner of thought that is indistinguishable from the other.

Hitler used the Bolshevik lingo more often than you might have thought…

A Love Letter to Lenin
(Soviet Russia Magazine, 1920)

Sweet, sweet words from British socialist George Lansbury (1859 – 1940) concerning his first encounter with the Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin:

He is about 50 years old, of medium height and carries himself with a slight stoop. He has fine eyes, which look you straight in the face, sometimes with a whimsical expression, as if he were trying to discover if anything unexpressed lay behind your words. They have, too, an expression of careful kindness; and you put him down as a man who musty love children.

Soviet-Approved Poetry
(Literary Digest, 1921)

No liberty of the press exists in Russia and so none but a poet recognized by the Government can get his verses published… In justice to Russian letters it must be said that all talented Russian authors have abstained from writing, or at any rate, from publishing their works during the rule of the proletariat, so that only the official poets, the literati hired by the Government, have their say.

The only Soviet-approved poet they single out for derision is Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893 – 1930), who is quoted liberally.

The Soviet Life Style
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

The standard of living in Russia has never been very high, but even despite his natural stoicism, the average citizen feels he has a good reason to be disgruntled with his life… Like any other totalitarian state, the Soviet state has done its best to paint a larger than life-size picture of its citizens. It likes to describe them as steel-hard heroes with an inflexible will, living for nothing but the great ideal of a Communist future, laughing at difficulties, gaily grasping with hard ship – a continent of Douglas Fairbankses. This is just a bit too good to be true, and the last one to be taken in by it is the average Russian.

The Defection of Stalin’s Daughter
(Coronet Magazine, 1967)

Unquestionably, the most famous individual to defect from the USSR and seek refuge in the West was Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926 – 2011), the only daughter of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (she used her mother’s maiden name). She was the one closest to the aging dictator during his closing days – and her defection to the United States aroused a tremendous amount of interest throughout the world. In this interview she claimed that her defection to the West was primarily inspired by her yearning to write freely. Dutiful daughter that she was, Alliluyeva stated that the guilt for the crimes attributed to her father should be equally shared by those who served in the Politburo at the time.

– from Amazon:

Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva

Starvation in the Worker’s Paradise
(Current Opinion, 1921)

The first Soviet famine lasted from 1919 through 1923; some historians have placed the death toll as high as five million:

[Lenin] is held responsible for the policy which has brought about a consumption of so great a proportion of the seed wheat that the fields cannot be sown. For the first time since Bolsheviki gained power, says the Berlin Lokalanzeiger, Lenin is a cipher.

Click here to read about the blackmail and extortion tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression…

Another Purge?
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

A short list of the assorted difficulties that faced the Russians in the early Fifties, with two additional news paragraphs that told of additional setbacks on both sides of the iron curtain.