By Vladislav Krasnov Ph.D. Dear friends of the Russia & America Good Will Association (www.raga.org) and antiwar colleagues!
Let me start by congratulating Vladimir Putin on being re-elected for another 6-year presidential term and wishing him that he carries out all the promises he made to his electorate. He got over 76% of the vote in a contested election. Clearly, the russophobic anti-Putin propaganda campaign that US mega media has conducted in the hope to drive a wedge among Russians by issuing hurtful sanctions back-fired. Putin's share actually increased considerably, at the cost of pro-Western liberal opposition. Putin's numbers were the highest in the Crimea.
Sending congratulations is a matter of courtesy, not politics. RAGA has sent Open Letter to Obama and congratulated Trump (http://www.raga.org/news/raga-newsletter-antidote-31-merry-christmas-donald-trump-open-letter-to-obama-obamas-response-and-krasnovs-rebuttal-happy-holidays-william-brumfields-photographs).
Later, RAGA carried an open letter to President Trump written by Professor of Religious Studies Rudolf Siebert http://www.raga.org/news/open-letter-to-president-trump. Our mission remains the same, PEACE.
Now take a look what RAGA friends and associates, mostly Americans, have to say about the dangerously rising tensions between the super powers.
(1) Russia is Not the Soviet Union/ By Charles G. Mills, March 2, 2018
The Soviet Union was a dogmatically atheist regime. Today’s Russia, in contrast, is a Christian country. Vladimir Putin is a faithful Russian Orthodox Christian with a personal confessor. http://www.fgfbooks.com/Mills-Charles/2018/Mills180302.html
Charles is a lawyer of the conservative Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation in DC, dedicated to the preservation of Western civilization. I am proud to be FGF contributor. In previous Antidote letters I have pointed out a rapid rise of Christian and other religious values in Former Soviet Union. For comparison with the negative dynamic in the US, take a look at the two "boxers" on RAGA's front page. http://www.raga.org If that is not enough, read:
(2) Resurgence of Christianity in Russia as new Orthodox churches open across the nation. 24 new churches opened in Moscow in 2017 with another 21 set to be opened this year, as Russia rebuilds and strengthens its Christian foundations.
By Seraphim Hanisch
Russia is know throughout the world for the Russian Orthodox Church, and its beauty, its music, and its unique architecture, especially that of its ancient churches. In the years right before the Communist Revolution, there were nearly 86,000 churches and chapels, and more than one thousand monasteries throughout the Russian Empire. Under Communism, almost all of these were destroyed, with the number of churches falling to fewer than 500. Between 14 and 22 million Christians perished in the most horrific Christian persecution in recorded history.
http://russiafeed.com/resurgence-christianity-russia-new-churches-open-everywhere/
Of course, Russia remains a secular country with freedom of religion and conscience for all, including Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Atheists. All the more, it's a shame that the two most-powerful nuclear-armed Christian countries cannot figure out how to get along with each other--for the sake of Mother Earth!
(3) About the Skripal poisoning affair read The Washington Times
By Edward Lozansky - - Tuesday, March 20, 2018
So, Vladimir Putin did it again or did he?
<<I leave it to legal and linguistic professionals to decide whether “highly likely” terminology is acceptable in any independent court of law, but many politicians and experts, including those in the know, express serious doubts that it was Mr. Putin’s handiwork.>>
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/20/crosstalk-how-prevent-british-drama-turning-traged/
What about Putin’s presentation of Russia’s new weapons systems during his Address to the Federal Assembly on 1 March? Listen to his explanation to MegynKelly:
(4) ‘Why would we want a world without Russia?’
Putin on Moscow’s nuclear doctrine
Published time: 7 Mar, 2018 14:05
Putin told NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today” that a new arms race has been started by Washington when it decided to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) back in 2002. The US then proceeded with a massive arms build-up right on Russia’s doorstep. In the following years, the US has virtually encircled Russia with its missile defense installations, in particular by stationing them in Romania and Poland. It also, for the first time, deployed a battery of Patriot long-range anti-aircraft systems to Lithuania for war games.
https://www.rt.com/news/420715-putin-world-russia-nuclear/
(5) Israel Shamir, a former Soviet dissident and my friend. Israel became Zionist,emigrated to Israel, turned against Zionism and converted to Christianity. He contributes to The Unz Review: ISRAEL SHAMIR • MARCH 11, 2018
Putin’s Missiles: Deterring an American Attack?
Putin’s March 1st presentation of new Russian weapons has been greatly misunderstood as a declaration of strategic parity or triumphalism. There was a much more urgent need, namely, to prevent an imminent strike. This danger is not over yet, for a week later, on March, 7, President Putin emphasized his readiness to employ the nuclear weapons for retaliation purposes. “Certainly, it would be a global disaster for humanity; a disaster for the entire world,” Putin said, “but, as a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state I must ask myself: Why would we want a world without Russia?” http://www.unz.com/ishamir/putins-weapons/
(6) Shamir was seconded by Mary Dejevsky of UK/
Putin's speech wasn’t aggressive – it was a plea to the US to start talking again
The military half of Putin’s address was not only – or perhaps even primarily – directed at the Russian audience. This message of new, and world-beating, defence prowess surely had another intended recipient: the United States/ By Mary Dejevsky Thursday 1 March 2018
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/russia-putin-trump-us-speech-weapons-wasnt-aggressive-plea-to-start-talking-a8235356.html
(7) Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, a pre-eminent US Russia scholar, based in Brussels, thinks that
"U.S. Raises the White Flag, Calls for Talks with Russia over the New Arms Race"
One can say with certainty that it has elicited the desired response from its target audience in Washington, D.C. http://usforeignpolicy.blogs.lalibre.be/archive/2018/03/21/u-s-raises-the-white-flag-calls-for-talks-with-russia-over-t-1164493.html
(8) The US establishment's Washington Post let Karen DeYoung elaborate: It may still be far from the depths of the Cold War, but Russian President Vladimir Putin’sThursday speech, outlining new, “invincible” weapons to overcome U.S. defenses, lowered the already chilly temperature of the relationship by several degrees.
Few experts on either side believe that the new weapons, assuming they actually exist and are ever deployed, would change the balance of power between two nations that already have the ability to destroy each other many times over. At the same time, there is widespread agreement that the rhetorical attacks, stalled diplomacy and military escalation that increasingly characterize U.S.-Russia relations are counterproductive to global security.
“The tension level is high, higher now than it was several months ago, in part because the Russians have gotten past the phase where they thought with President Trump they would be able to move the relationship in a different direction,” said Thomas Graham, senior director for Russia on the George W. Bush National Security Council staff and now managing director at Kissinger Associates Inc.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/putin-speech-adds-to-freeze-in-us-russia-relations/2018/03/01/ffab9174-1d8d-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html?undefined=&utm_term=.280e2420111b&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
(9) PATRICK LAWRENCE of the liberal SALON magazine assesses the overall situation: Washington can’t adjust to losing its role as global sheriff, and the entire world must bear the consequences
If the first few weeks of 2018 are any guide, it is going to be a tumultuous, confrontational year for America’s foreign relations...To say what we are likely to see is going to beunpretty is to put the point far too mildly.... Finally, and related to the above, the “sole superpower” phase of the post–Cold War era is slipping with accumulating momentum into the past. Maintaining unipolarity, to put the point another way, becomes an ever more forlorn endeavor. It cannot hold, and one mourns Washington’s inability to grasp this reality.
https://www.salon.com/2018/01/28/now-the-u-s-is-playing-spoiler-role-in-korea-syria-and-elsewhere-but-why/#.Wm4D_Ue0Kkw.twitter
The recent appointment of John Bolton as Trump's National Security Adviser bodes no good. Even George Will, a Washington Post observer denounces of "the second most dangerous man".
(10) Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor of Veterans Today, a site where I am a contributor, says "Bolton’s record is beyond horrible on where he stood on policy and his total inability to acknowledge what a disaster Iraq was."
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/03/25/foreign-policy-magazine-john-bolton-poses-a-threat-to-us-national-security/
(11) Brother Nathanael explains why on March 20, 2018 in his timely video
Tillerson Out, Neocons In!
http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1279
<<I mean, when neocon Jews and their shills lie, we’re not really upset, and nobody bats an eye.>>
His reference to "neocon Jews" is pointed because Bolton was among the 1997 founders of the PNAC, the Project for the New American Century, originally designed to encourage Israel to dominate the Middle East and then re-designed for the US to take the burden of world domination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm
Several of the founders were former Trotskiytes used to think in terms of global domination. https://www.proudprimate.com/Resources/PNAC%20Background.htm
(12) James George Jatras, a former Congressional operative, admirer of Solzhenitsyn and my friend, thinks.
We're Sliding Towards a Nuclear 1914 - Can We Save Ourselves?
He sees The spooky similarities between 1914 and today
What was unthinkable in the old Cold War has become all-too-thinkable in the new one between the US and Russia. As described by veteran arms control inspector Scott Ritter, in analyzing a draft of the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the US threshold for the use of nuclear weapons has become dangerously low
http://russia-insider.com/en/were-sliding-towards-nuclear-1914-can-we-save-ourselves/ri22451
(13) Let now the best known statesman of the 1990s speak up about the current downturn in US-Russia relations
Mikhail Gorbachev: The U.S. and Russia Must Stop the Race to Nuclear War
We must remind the leaders of all nuclear powers of their commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate reductions and eventually the elimination of nuclear weapons. Their predecessors signed that obligation, and it was ratified by the highest levels of their government. A world without nuclear weapons: There can be no other final goal.
However dismal the current situation, however depressing and hopeless the atmosphere may seem, we must act to prevent the ultimate catastrophe. What we need is not the race to the abyss but a common victory over the demons of war.
http://time.com/5191433/mikhail-gorbachev-nuclear-weapons-trump-putin-russia/
Finally, two articles on the topic of Jew Taboo that dominated the previous issue RAGA antidote 41. http://www.raga.org/news/raga-antiwar-antidote-41-bausman-solzhenitsyn-karl-marx-putin-karlin-doctorow-makow-tennison-ira-helfand-brett-abrams-tsar-michael-ii-roulston
(14) First, is Dmitry Orlov's article
"Never, Ever Listen to What American Jews Have to Say About Russia".
http://www.raga.org/news/never-listen-to-what-american-jews-have-to-say-about-russia
Orlov is as contentious as Charles Bausman who brought up the Jew Taboo issue. But he deserves to be heard. First, Orlov is one of the better-known thinkers The NewYorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians', along with James Howard Kunstler, another RI contributor.These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up. Second, Orlov came to the USA in a massive Soviet Jewish immigration during the 1970s and 1980s. It was a deal worked out by Kissinger and Brezhnev to let Soviet Jews immigrate to Israel for "family re-unification", but the majority (over 300,000) chose the USA. For Soviet authorities the deal was useful as they wanted to get rid of dissidents as well criminals. A popular Soviet joke then was in the form of Radio Moscow "You ask/We answer" session. A listener asks: "What does the word Jewishmean, ethnicity or religion?" Radio Moscow answers: "Neither. After doing research across the USSR, we found out that the word Jewish is most frequently used to designate the surest method of immigration to the USA".
Soon the news of "Russian mafia" came to dominate Brighton Beach and other places where the immigrants were settled, usually on welfare. The Congress of Russian Americans (CRA), of which I was a board member, protested the defamation of ethnic Russian community, usually assimilated,Christian and patriotic US citizens. We suggested that these criminals be called "former Soviet Jews". Nobody listened, until Robert Friedman wrote a book "Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America". Of course, the criminals spoke Russian and some of them may have been ethnic Russians, but at least Friedman tied the crime to its Soviet origin, even though the Jew Taboo was still observed.
(15) In the wake of Bausman's article
The SPLC Attacks Russia Insider, Gilbert Doctorow Responds.
I will not go into the other numerous confused attempts by Reid Ross to pigeon-hole me either as facilitator of Right-Left coalitions or as a rightist, pure and simple. He willfully misses the point. My political and authorial activities have had only one purpose: to facilitate public discussion of the reckless and ignorant foreign policy originating in Washington and followed slavishly in Europe which is leading us to nuclear Armageddon.
https://russia-insider.com/en/splc-attacks-russia-insider-our-contributor-gilbert-doctorow-responds/ri22497
Diverse News:
Russia's Biggest Bank Is 2nd Most Valuable in Europe After HSBC (Sberbank)
With 127 million retail customers and 16,000 branches, it also is one of the largest financial players in many Eastern European markets. Investors also see it as a way to get exposure to the growing Russian economy and growing Russian middle class.
https://russia-insider.com/en/russias-biggest-bank-2nd-most-valuable-europe-after-hsbc-
Let me start by congratulating Vladimir Putin on being re-elected for another 6-year presidential term and wishing him that he carries out all the promises he made to his electorate. He got over 76% of the vote in a contested election. Clearly, the russophobic anti-Putin propaganda campaign that US mega media has conducted in the hope to drive a wedge among Russians by issuing hurtful sanctions back-fired. Putin's share actually increased considerably, at the cost of pro-Western liberal opposition. Putin's numbers were the highest in the Crimea.
Sending congratulations is a matter of courtesy, not politics. RAGA has sent Open Letter to Obama and congratulated Trump (http://www.raga.org/news/raga-newsletter-antidote-31-merry-christmas-donald-trump-open-letter-to-obama-obamas-response-and-krasnovs-rebuttal-happy-holidays-william-brumfields-photographs).
Later, RAGA carried an open letter to President Trump written by Professor of Religious Studies Rudolf Siebert http://www.raga.org/news/open-letter-to-president-trump. Our mission remains the same, PEACE.
Now take a look what RAGA friends and associates, mostly Americans, have to say about the dangerously rising tensions between the super powers.
(1) Russia is Not the Soviet Union/ By Charles G. Mills, March 2, 2018
The Soviet Union was a dogmatically atheist regime. Today’s Russia, in contrast, is a Christian country. Vladimir Putin is a faithful Russian Orthodox Christian with a personal confessor. http://www.fgfbooks.com/Mills-Charles/2018/Mills180302.html
Charles is a lawyer of the conservative Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation in DC, dedicated to the preservation of Western civilization. I am proud to be FGF contributor. In previous Antidote letters I have pointed out a rapid rise of Christian and other religious values in Former Soviet Union. For comparison with the negative dynamic in the US, take a look at the two "boxers" on RAGA's front page. http://www.raga.org If that is not enough, read:
(2) Resurgence of Christianity in Russia as new Orthodox churches open across the nation. 24 new churches opened in Moscow in 2017 with another 21 set to be opened this year, as Russia rebuilds and strengthens its Christian foundations.
By Seraphim Hanisch
Russia is know throughout the world for the Russian Orthodox Church, and its beauty, its music, and its unique architecture, especially that of its ancient churches. In the years right before the Communist Revolution, there were nearly 86,000 churches and chapels, and more than one thousand monasteries throughout the Russian Empire. Under Communism, almost all of these were destroyed, with the number of churches falling to fewer than 500. Between 14 and 22 million Christians perished in the most horrific Christian persecution in recorded history.
http://russiafeed.com/resurgence-christianity-russia-new-churches-open-everywhere/
Of course, Russia remains a secular country with freedom of religion and conscience for all, including Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Atheists. All the more, it's a shame that the two most-powerful nuclear-armed Christian countries cannot figure out how to get along with each other--for the sake of Mother Earth!
(3) About the Skripal poisoning affair read The Washington Times
By Edward Lozansky - - Tuesday, March 20, 2018
So, Vladimir Putin did it again or did he?
<<I leave it to legal and linguistic professionals to decide whether “highly likely” terminology is acceptable in any independent court of law, but many politicians and experts, including those in the know, express serious doubts that it was Mr. Putin’s handiwork.>>
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/20/crosstalk-how-prevent-british-drama-turning-traged/
What about Putin’s presentation of Russia’s new weapons systems during his Address to the Federal Assembly on 1 March? Listen to his explanation to MegynKelly:
(4) ‘Why would we want a world without Russia?’
Putin on Moscow’s nuclear doctrine
Published time: 7 Mar, 2018 14:05
Putin told NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today” that a new arms race has been started by Washington when it decided to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) back in 2002. The US then proceeded with a massive arms build-up right on Russia’s doorstep. In the following years, the US has virtually encircled Russia with its missile defense installations, in particular by stationing them in Romania and Poland. It also, for the first time, deployed a battery of Patriot long-range anti-aircraft systems to Lithuania for war games.
https://www.rt.com/news/420715-putin-world-russia-nuclear/
(5) Israel Shamir, a former Soviet dissident and my friend. Israel became Zionist,emigrated to Israel, turned against Zionism and converted to Christianity. He contributes to The Unz Review: ISRAEL SHAMIR • MARCH 11, 2018
Putin’s Missiles: Deterring an American Attack?
Putin’s March 1st presentation of new Russian weapons has been greatly misunderstood as a declaration of strategic parity or triumphalism. There was a much more urgent need, namely, to prevent an imminent strike. This danger is not over yet, for a week later, on March, 7, President Putin emphasized his readiness to employ the nuclear weapons for retaliation purposes. “Certainly, it would be a global disaster for humanity; a disaster for the entire world,” Putin said, “but, as a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state I must ask myself: Why would we want a world without Russia?” http://www.unz.com/ishamir/putins-weapons/
(6) Shamir was seconded by Mary Dejevsky of UK/
Putin's speech wasn’t aggressive – it was a plea to the US to start talking again
The military half of Putin’s address was not only – or perhaps even primarily – directed at the Russian audience. This message of new, and world-beating, defence prowess surely had another intended recipient: the United States/ By Mary Dejevsky Thursday 1 March 2018
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/russia-putin-trump-us-speech-weapons-wasnt-aggressive-plea-to-start-talking-a8235356.html
(7) Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, a pre-eminent US Russia scholar, based in Brussels, thinks that
"U.S. Raises the White Flag, Calls for Talks with Russia over the New Arms Race"
One can say with certainty that it has elicited the desired response from its target audience in Washington, D.C. http://usforeignpolicy.blogs.lalibre.be/archive/2018/03/21/u-s-raises-the-white-flag-calls-for-talks-with-russia-over-t-1164493.html
(8) The US establishment's Washington Post let Karen DeYoung elaborate: It may still be far from the depths of the Cold War, but Russian President Vladimir Putin’sThursday speech, outlining new, “invincible” weapons to overcome U.S. defenses, lowered the already chilly temperature of the relationship by several degrees.
Few experts on either side believe that the new weapons, assuming they actually exist and are ever deployed, would change the balance of power between two nations that already have the ability to destroy each other many times over. At the same time, there is widespread agreement that the rhetorical attacks, stalled diplomacy and military escalation that increasingly characterize U.S.-Russia relations are counterproductive to global security.
“The tension level is high, higher now than it was several months ago, in part because the Russians have gotten past the phase where they thought with President Trump they would be able to move the relationship in a different direction,” said Thomas Graham, senior director for Russia on the George W. Bush National Security Council staff and now managing director at Kissinger Associates Inc.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/putin-speech-adds-to-freeze-in-us-russia-relations/2018/03/01/ffab9174-1d8d-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html?undefined=&utm_term=.280e2420111b&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
(9) PATRICK LAWRENCE of the liberal SALON magazine assesses the overall situation: Washington can’t adjust to losing its role as global sheriff, and the entire world must bear the consequences
If the first few weeks of 2018 are any guide, it is going to be a tumultuous, confrontational year for America’s foreign relations...To say what we are likely to see is going to beunpretty is to put the point far too mildly.... Finally, and related to the above, the “sole superpower” phase of the post–Cold War era is slipping with accumulating momentum into the past. Maintaining unipolarity, to put the point another way, becomes an ever more forlorn endeavor. It cannot hold, and one mourns Washington’s inability to grasp this reality.
https://www.salon.com/2018/01/28/now-the-u-s-is-playing-spoiler-role-in-korea-syria-and-elsewhere-but-why/#.Wm4D_Ue0Kkw.twitter
The recent appointment of John Bolton as Trump's National Security Adviser bodes no good. Even George Will, a Washington Post observer denounces of "the second most dangerous man".
(10) Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor of Veterans Today, a site where I am a contributor, says "Bolton’s record is beyond horrible on where he stood on policy and his total inability to acknowledge what a disaster Iraq was."
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2018/03/25/foreign-policy-magazine-john-bolton-poses-a-threat-to-us-national-security/
(11) Brother Nathanael explains why on March 20, 2018 in his timely video
Tillerson Out, Neocons In!
http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1279
<<I mean, when neocon Jews and their shills lie, we’re not really upset, and nobody bats an eye.>>
His reference to "neocon Jews" is pointed because Bolton was among the 1997 founders of the PNAC, the Project for the New American Century, originally designed to encourage Israel to dominate the Middle East and then re-designed for the US to take the burden of world domination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm
Several of the founders were former Trotskiytes used to think in terms of global domination. https://www.proudprimate.com/Resources/PNAC%20Background.htm
(12) James George Jatras, a former Congressional operative, admirer of Solzhenitsyn and my friend, thinks.
We're Sliding Towards a Nuclear 1914 - Can We Save Ourselves?
He sees The spooky similarities between 1914 and today
What was unthinkable in the old Cold War has become all-too-thinkable in the new one between the US and Russia. As described by veteran arms control inspector Scott Ritter, in analyzing a draft of the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the US threshold for the use of nuclear weapons has become dangerously low
http://russia-insider.com/en/were-sliding-towards-nuclear-1914-can-we-save-ourselves/ri22451
(13) Let now the best known statesman of the 1990s speak up about the current downturn in US-Russia relations
Mikhail Gorbachev: The U.S. and Russia Must Stop the Race to Nuclear War
We must remind the leaders of all nuclear powers of their commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate reductions and eventually the elimination of nuclear weapons. Their predecessors signed that obligation, and it was ratified by the highest levels of their government. A world without nuclear weapons: There can be no other final goal.
However dismal the current situation, however depressing and hopeless the atmosphere may seem, we must act to prevent the ultimate catastrophe. What we need is not the race to the abyss but a common victory over the demons of war.
http://time.com/5191433/mikhail-gorbachev-nuclear-weapons-trump-putin-russia/
Finally, two articles on the topic of Jew Taboo that dominated the previous issue RAGA antidote 41. http://www.raga.org/news/raga-antiwar-antidote-41-bausman-solzhenitsyn-karl-marx-putin-karlin-doctorow-makow-tennison-ira-helfand-brett-abrams-tsar-michael-ii-roulston
(14) First, is Dmitry Orlov's article
"Never, Ever Listen to What American Jews Have to Say About Russia".
http://www.raga.org/news/never-listen-to-what-american-jews-have-to-say-about-russia
Orlov is as contentious as Charles Bausman who brought up the Jew Taboo issue. But he deserves to be heard. First, Orlov is one of the better-known thinkers The NewYorker has dubbed 'The Dystopians', along with James Howard Kunstler, another RI contributor.These theorists believe that modern society is headed for a jarring and painful crack-up. Second, Orlov came to the USA in a massive Soviet Jewish immigration during the 1970s and 1980s. It was a deal worked out by Kissinger and Brezhnev to let Soviet Jews immigrate to Israel for "family re-unification", but the majority (over 300,000) chose the USA. For Soviet authorities the deal was useful as they wanted to get rid of dissidents as well criminals. A popular Soviet joke then was in the form of Radio Moscow "You ask/We answer" session. A listener asks: "What does the word Jewishmean, ethnicity or religion?" Radio Moscow answers: "Neither. After doing research across the USSR, we found out that the word Jewish is most frequently used to designate the surest method of immigration to the USA".
Soon the news of "Russian mafia" came to dominate Brighton Beach and other places where the immigrants were settled, usually on welfare. The Congress of Russian Americans (CRA), of which I was a board member, protested the defamation of ethnic Russian community, usually assimilated,Christian and patriotic US citizens. We suggested that these criminals be called "former Soviet Jews". Nobody listened, until Robert Friedman wrote a book "Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America". Of course, the criminals spoke Russian and some of them may have been ethnic Russians, but at least Friedman tied the crime to its Soviet origin, even though the Jew Taboo was still observed.
(15) In the wake of Bausman's article
The SPLC Attacks Russia Insider, Gilbert Doctorow Responds.
I will not go into the other numerous confused attempts by Reid Ross to pigeon-hole me either as facilitator of Right-Left coalitions or as a rightist, pure and simple. He willfully misses the point. My political and authorial activities have had only one purpose: to facilitate public discussion of the reckless and ignorant foreign policy originating in Washington and followed slavishly in Europe which is leading us to nuclear Armageddon.
https://russia-insider.com/en/splc-attacks-russia-insider-our-contributor-gilbert-doctorow-responds/ri22497
Diverse News:
Russia's Biggest Bank Is 2nd Most Valuable in Europe After HSBC (Sberbank)
With 127 million retail customers and 16,000 branches, it also is one of the largest financial players in many Eastern European markets. Investors also see it as a way to get exposure to the growing Russian economy and growing Russian middle class.
https://russia-insider.com/en/russias-biggest-bank-2nd-most-valuable-europe-after-hsbc-
Oxford-Perm Sister Cities Association, January 2013 newsletter
David Roulston reviews Donald Crowford, The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II
Last Tsar Emperor Michael II Donald Crawford, Publ. Murray McLellan, Edinburgh, 2012. This book contains much material from an earlier work ‘Michael and Natasha’ published in 1997 and reviewed by Vladislav Krasnov in our Perm Newsletter October 2008. The new book is considerably shorter, more focused on Michael. It starts with interesting details of Michael’s and Natasha’s backgrounds and describes how in 1912 they managed to avoid the Okhrana to have a secret marriage in Vienna; then their exile from Gatchina in Russia, living in England at Knebworth House near Stevenage until war broke out in 1914 when they returned to Russia. Joining the army, Michael led a top division of horsemen in the Caucasus, and was awarded Russia’s top award for gallantry. The chapters covering the events of March 1917 make fascinating reading and are written mainly as they affected Michael and of course his brother Nicholas. From his temporary apartment on Millionnaya Street in St Petersburg, with his brother Nicholas stuck on trains between his military headquarters at Mogilev, Pskov (from where he could communicate with St Petersburg) and Tsarskoe Selo, the sequence of events evolves with a proposed manifesto (which could stop the revolution) coming too late, and demands from the people and the Duma for the abdication of Nicholas in favour of the Tsar’s young son, with Michael as Regent. Within 24 hours Nicholas had changed his views (not to be separated from his son) and offered his abdication in favour of Michael as Emperor. This was opposed by the ever more powerful Soviet; Kerensky visited Michael in Millionnaya Street to persuade Michael to abdicate (although this word was not in fact used in the signed document). Crawford’s description of the meetings is vivid and ends with the signing of a new manifesto by Michael handing power over to the provisional government until the formation of a democratically elected Constitutional Assembly expressing the will of the people. The next day 4th March he returns to Gatchina where he lives with Natasha (in comparative freedom compared to his brother) until he is arrested in June, finally being exiled by the Bolsheviks to Perm where he lived before being killed in June 1918 by the Motovilikha Perm Cheka. Natasha returned to England but eventually died in 1952, a pauper in Paris where she has her grave in Passy. Crawford’s book is an illuminating and at time moving account of early Russian 20th century history and a gripping story of one man’s struggles with a rapidly changing system, from being ruled by a Tsar (or his wife Alexandra and adviser Rasputin) to Kerensky’s government and overthrow of the evolving constituent assembly signed into place by Michael during his one day rule.
By David Roulston
http://www.oxfordperm-assoc.org/members- only/news-Jan13.pdf
David Roulston reviews Donald Crowford, The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II
Last Tsar Emperor Michael II Donald Crawford, Publ. Murray McLellan, Edinburgh, 2012. This book contains much material from an earlier work ‘Michael and Natasha’ published in 1997 and reviewed by Vladislav Krasnov in our Perm Newsletter October 2008. The new book is considerably shorter, more focused on Michael. It starts with interesting details of Michael’s and Natasha’s backgrounds and describes how in 1912 they managed to avoid the Okhrana to have a secret marriage in Vienna; then their exile from Gatchina in Russia, living in England at Knebworth House near Stevenage until war broke out in 1914 when they returned to Russia. Joining the army, Michael led a top division of horsemen in the Caucasus, and was awarded Russia’s top award for gallantry. The chapters covering the events of March 1917 make fascinating reading and are written mainly as they affected Michael and of course his brother Nicholas. From his temporary apartment on Millionnaya Street in St Petersburg, with his brother Nicholas stuck on trains between his military headquarters at Mogilev, Pskov (from where he could communicate with St Petersburg) and Tsarskoe Selo, the sequence of events evolves with a proposed manifesto (which could stop the revolution) coming too late, and demands from the people and the Duma for the abdication of Nicholas in favour of the Tsar’s young son, with Michael as Regent. Within 24 hours Nicholas had changed his views (not to be separated from his son) and offered his abdication in favour of Michael as Emperor. This was opposed by the ever more powerful Soviet; Kerensky visited Michael in Millionnaya Street to persuade Michael to abdicate (although this word was not in fact used in the signed document). Crawford’s description of the meetings is vivid and ends with the signing of a new manifesto by Michael handing power over to the provisional government until the formation of a democratically elected Constitutional Assembly expressing the will of the people. The next day 4th March he returns to Gatchina where he lives with Natasha (in comparative freedom compared to his brother) until he is arrested in June, finally being exiled by the Bolsheviks to Perm where he lived before being killed in June 1918 by the Motovilikha Perm Cheka. Natasha returned to England but eventually died in 1952, a pauper in Paris where she has her grave in Passy. Crawford’s book is an illuminating and at time moving account of early Russian 20th century history and a gripping story of one man’s struggles with a rapidly changing system, from being ruled by a Tsar (or his wife Alexandra and adviser Rasputin) to Kerensky’s government and overthrow of the evolving constituent assembly signed into place by Michael during his one day rule.
By David Roulston
http://www.oxfordperm-assoc.org/members- only/news-Jan13.pdf
All statements in this report are an opinion of the author. Act at your own risk. Russia & America Goodwill Association (RAGA) is not responsible for the content of the article. Any views or opinions presented in this report are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RAGA. Any liability in respect to this communication remain with the author.
RAGA News
www.RAGA.org
RAGA News
www.RAGA.org
RSS Feed
