There were Russians who cried in spite of themselves when the hammer-and-sickle flag of the Soviet Union was lowered for the last time on Dec. 25, 1991. Yelena Ilingina was one. It had to happen, she realized that, but still, this was her country. Ilingina got together with friends. There was much vodka and laughter, and someone had a guitar. “We sang all the old songs,” she remembers. “And of course, we cried.” Read full article > >

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The end of the Soviet road

BERLIN — As Russia gets ready for another round of elections whose outcomes are in little doubt, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s final leader, condemned on Tuesday what he called “imitation” democratic institutions in his country and he said that Russia’s current leaders should not expect to maintain support forever. Read full article > >

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Gorbachev condemns Russia’s ‘imitation’ democratic institutions

The year 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Here’s a look back on the chaos that surrounded the USSR’s final months. Read full article > >

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Final Days of the Soviet Union

Today, April 12th is most likely to be notable as the day most procrastinators get around to starting their taxes. But this day also has a significant place in history. For in the early hours of two different April 12th mornings, 150 and 50 years ago today, the opening volleys of two different wars were launched. The Civil War was an attempt to hold onto a lifestyle of the past. The space race was an effort to control the world of the future. On April 12, 1861, the opening shots of the American Civil War were fired by Confederate soldiers on Ft. Sumter in South Carolina. Exactly 100 years later, the first human shot in the Cosmic Cold War conflict known as the space race was fired by the Soviet Union as it launched Cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin into space. The weaponry and goals were different, of course. Cannons versus rocket engines — which represents a staggering advancement in technology in just 100 years, in and of itself. But in many ways, the Civil War was an attempt by the Confederacy to hold onto a lifestyle and world of the past. The space race was an effort to control the world of the future. The Civil War was more bloody, of course. But make no mistake about it — the huge amounts of money and effort that both the Soviet Union and the United States poured into their space programs would not have been invested there if control of space weren’t seen as a critical military goal for both countries. On the other hand, it’s possible to see the firing of a rocket carrying the first human into space as an example of some of the better things we can do with technology, rather than simply using it to fire bullets and cannonballs at each other. The best and the worst that humans can rise or sink to … all connected to an object fired in the early morning hours, and commemorated on the same calendar day, 100 years apart.

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From Fort Sumter to the Moon

What if the Soviet Union had beaten the US to the Moon?

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Space race

“Sunder” is a collection of photographs by Bruce Haley documenting the former Soviet republics. Mathew R. Warren describes its origins.

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Lens: Lives in Former Soviet Lands

Two thousand seven hundred twenty-two days after U.S. troops crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, U.S. combat operations there officially ended. The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan turned older than the Soviet Union’s 3,339-day campaign in the country. Twenty-one percent of young veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were unemployed, Iraqi government officials said that some 58,000 stray dogs in Baghdad had been poisoned or shot, and Target, a dog rescued from Afghanistan after she alerted troops to a suicide bomber and saved dozens of soldiers, was accidentally euthanized. The Supreme Court upheld the right to record women crushing small animals with their feet and overturned two precedents to rule that the government cannot ban corporations from spending money in political elections. The U.S. House and Senate finalized a watered-down, 2,000-page financial-reform bill. “Not to be funny about it,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told the FCIC, “but my daughter asked me… ‘What’s the financial crisis,’ and I said, ‘Well, it’s something that happens every five to seven years.’” The Texas State Board of Education voted to revise its social-studies curriculum, mandating that the U.S. government should not be called “democratic,” and Republicans took control of the House. A Virginia judge voided the provision in Obama’s health-care law requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance. A Texas newborn with a heart defect was denied health insurance because of his pre-existing condition. “It would be hard to argue that we’re going backwards,” said Obama. “I think what you can argue is we’re stuck in neutral.” . . .

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Yearly Review

Thank you, Goldblog readers, for inundating us with Nazis ! Here’s one we missed : Congressman Paul Broun hopped aboard the “Obama is Hitler” train in 2008. Just a few days after Obama was elected President, the Republican from Georgia voiced his fear that the new President would try to impose a radical socialist dictatorship through his Gestapo-like national security force. “It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Rep. Paul Broun told the Associated Press. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.” Where did he get this from? A speech Obama made in July of 2008, when he suggested a civilian security force to help the military with its national security duties. “That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

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Nazis Everywhere, Cont’d

Russia’s foreign intelligence agency has unveiled a plaque to UK double agent Kim Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.

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Russia honours UK spy Kim Philby