This statue in #Ulaanbaatar #Mongolia commemorates Marshall Georgy Konstantinovich #Zhukov for his role in defeating the Japanese 6th Army at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in Mongolia. Zhukov was, amongst other things, deputy commander-in-chief of the #Soviet armed forces during #WorldWarTwo and a Hero of The Mongolian People's Republic. #Photo #Photography #Darktable #FujiVelviaEmulation

https://www.alojapan.com/1319447/japanese-sex-offerings-to-soviet-troops-in-1945-fully-exposed/ Japanese ‘sex offerings’ to Soviet troops in 1945 fully exposed #1945 #exposed #fully #Japan #JapanNews #JapanTopics #Japanese #news #offerings #sex #soviet #troops TOKYO — Many acts of sexual violence against women during World War II have been shrouded in darkness. But one incident from 80 years ago in Manchuria — in what was then the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo — has come to light thanks to the courage of victims who bro

The Revival of the GULAG: Russia's terror state Duma passed a law creating another network of special FSB prisons. KGB is ramping up rape, torture, murders now legal again. Text book criminal regime.

The authors of the bill are literally restoring the powers of the #Soviet KGB. These prisons will operate outside the regular prison system, with no obligation to report to correctional authorities.

Today in Labor History July 6, 1918: Uprising against the Bolsheviks by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR) during the Russian Civil War. One of their goals was to restart the war against Germany, which was helping suppress revolutionary activity in neighboring Ukraine and Finland. They also were frustrated by Bolsheviks’ move away from Revolutionary Socialism and toward “opportunistic service to the state." Maria Spiridonova, who spent years in prison under the Czar, and later under the Bolsheviks, was one of the leaders of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. She was also a member of the Shesterka ("Six")—6 women SR terrorists who were sent to Siberia. The failure of the SR Uprising facilitated the Bolsheviks consolidation of power and contributed to their creation of a one-party state in the USSR.

A #Russian propagandist states that he has “looked into it” and found that the country of #Azerbaijan is a fiction, invented during the #Soviet era. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marijnmarkus_azerbaijan-ukraine-history-activity-7346998816887259136-cXKH?utm_source=combined_share_message&utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAFNnBEBsqDudA3DtwoG-06MXHb9EgdNPiA

#Russia is so near bankruptcy that they have to re-use scripts from earlier and still ongoing invasions!

Part and parcel of #AmericanCarnage2.0 is relinquishment of the #UnitedStates leadership role against #Soviet and then #Russian tyranny. #Ukraine heroically shoulders that burden now, ironically on #July4th.

With news that #NorthKorea is sending 30,000 troops to assist fellow #terrorist state #Russia in their criminal invasion of Ukraine, the world is watching to see if #SouthKorea is also emasculated by cowardly inaction. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/02/europe/north-korea-troops-russia-ukraine-intl-cmd

#Resist tyranny, #StandWithUkraine.

NATO Pt. 1: An Anti-Imperialist Introduction w/ Elina Xenophontos

https://www.patreon.com/posts/nato-pt-1-anti-w-132803642

#communism #coldwar #war #education #democracy #russia #soviet #blackmastodon

#Gaza #Palestine #Syria #iran #lebanon #Genocide #geopolitics
@palestine @lebanon @yemen @irannachrichten #SettlerColonialism
#AntiImperialism #tiktok #cdnpoli
#canada #usa #yemen
@blackmastodon #freePalestine #GazaGenocide #IsraelTerroristState #StopGenocide
#palestina #StopAIPAC #IDFTerrorists #DismantleZionism

James Hogg & Mikhail Bulgakov

In the latest London Review of Books podcast, Marina Warner & Adam Thirlwell look at how James Hogg’s JUSTIFIED SINNER & Bulgakov’s THE MASTER & MARGARITA represent fanaticism, be it Calvinism or Bolshevism, & consider why both writers used the fantastical to test reality

@litstudies

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/close-readings-james-hogg-and-mikhail-bulgakov

Interesting little history about the time the Soviets sent a couple of their Jews to visit our Jews. I skipped to the end for the perfect pull quote.

"The paper’s final mention of the event was a snippet recalling that, when asked about the #Soviet position on #Palestine, Michoels and Feffer responded, “#Stalin will always be on the side of ‘yosher.’”

Coming into #Yiddish from #Hebrew, “yosher” means upright and is used in an ethical sense. It’s a haunting pronouncement, in light of the tragic epilogue.

In 1948, having hardened his views concerning #Jews and #Jewish culture, Stalin ordered the death of Michoels.

Four years later, Feffer was executed for “counterrevolutionary crimes” along with other Jewish intellectuals, all active in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, on what became known as the Night of the Murdered Poets."

https://jweekly.com/2025/07/02/when-the-ussr-sent-jewish-comrades-to-rally-san-franciscans/

Today in Labor History June 30, 1960: Congo won independence from Belgium after years of brutal colonial rule which slaughtered up to 10 million people, or half its entire population. However, imperial powers continued to exploit the people of Congo, even after independence. In 1961, the CIA orchestrated a coup that tortured, murdered, and overthrew its first democratically elected president, Patrice Lumumba, after a failed coup against him by Mobutu Sese Seku, who would later become dictator from 1971 until 1997.

President Eisenhower authorized the assassination because of Lumumba’s ties with the Soviet Union. The U.S., and its European allies, wanted control over Congo’s resources, particularly its rich uranium deposits, both to fuel their civilian and military nuclear programs, and, in particular, to keep them out of the hands of the Soviet Union, which was allied with Lumumba. The wonderful 2024 documentary “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” does a really great job of uncovering the concealed history of the 1961 assassination of Lumumba and the coup d’etat in Congo. But it’s really about so much more: Cold War machinations, propaganda, and covert operations; the superpowers’ jockeying for control of puppet regimes and spheres of influence in the global south; the Pan-African movement; racism in the U.S., the Civil Rights movement, and the repression against it; and, of course, jazz music, including tons of interviews and live footage of Lumumba, Ghanian president and revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, activist and writer Andree Madeleine Blouin, Malcolm X, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miriam Makeba, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, surrealist artist Rene Magritte. There’s even a “slumber party” with Fidel Castro at Malcolm X’s home, in New York, after the U.S. authorities convince all the hotels in New York to refuse Castro a place to sleep during a UN conference, and he attempts to camp out on the sidewalk with his contingent.

One of the people the CIA used in its early attempts to assassinate Lumumba was chemist Sidney Gottlieb, who ran the agencies secret MKULTRA mind control program. Gottlieb tried, but failed, to kill Lumumba with poisoned toothpaste. He also tried, and failed, to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar and with radioactively poisoned shoes. MKULTRA was a continuation of Nazi mind-control experiments, which utilized mescaline against Jews and Soviet prisoners, hoping it could be exploited as a “truth” serum. The program gave hallucinogenic drugs, like LSD and Mescaline, to 7,000 unwitting U.S. war veterans, as well as many Canadian and U.S. civilians.

Today in Labor History June 28, 1956: 100,000 workers struck in Poznañ, Poland, shouting "Bread & Freedom.” The protests were violently suppressed, with at least 67 workers killed. The government sent in tanks and 10,000 soldiers. The next day, another 70 would be killed, 700 would be arrested, and hundreds more would be wounded. Several months later, anti-government protests would break out in Hungary, during its Revolution. The Soviets sent in tanks to suppress that uprising, killing thousands. And from these events came the term “tankie” to refer to hardline communists who continued to support (or not criticize) these authoritarian governments and their repressive actions against their workers.

Today in Labor History June 27, 1905: The mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin began. Tensions were already high because of recent loses in the Russo-Japanese war and the presence. Furthermore, the crew was made up of recent recruits and the officers were relatively inexperienced. The mutiny began when sailors refused to eat the borscht that was served to them because of the meat was crawling with maggots. The ship’s 2nd in command threatened to shoot the men if they didn’t eat it. When he did shoot one of the mutineers, the crew attacked him and other officers, promptly killing nearly half the officers on board. They then decided to sail to Odessa to join the General Strike that was going on there. After that, they escaped to Romania where they obtained political asylum. The mutiny is considered an important step toward the Russian Revolution. It was depicted in Serge Eisenstein’s classic film, “The Battleship Potemkin.”

Today in Labor History June 27, 1869: Anarchist, feminist and labor activist Emma Goldman was born in Lithuania. She helped plot the assassination of steel magnate, Henry Clay Frick, with her lover and comrade Alexander Berkman. Frick was fiercely anti-union and hired hundreds of Pinkertons to suppress the Homestead steel strike in 1892. In a gun battle, the Pinkertons killed nine strikers. Seven Pinkertons died, as well. Later that year, Berkman carried out the assassination attempt, but failed, and spent many years in prison. It was supposed to be an attentat, or propaganda by the deed. Like many anarchists of that era, they believed that their violent action would inspire working people around the world to rise up against capitalism and its leaders, like Frick. After that, Goldman publicly spoke out against attentats, because they weren’t inspiring the masses into action, but they were increasing state repression against their movement.

The state did imprison Goldman numerous times for other offenses, like “inciting to riot,” war resistance, and illegally distributing information about birth control. They even arrested her in 1901, in connection with the assassination of President McKinley, though she had nothing to do with it. They eventually released her and executed a mentally ill, registered Republican named Leon Czolgosz for the crime. In December, 1919, they deported her and Berkman to Russia. She had initially been supportive of the Bolshevik revolution and was excited to be there to witness its fruits, but denounced them after the massacre of more than a thousand sailors during the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921. Soon after, she and Berkman left Russia, completely disillusioned. However, in Germany and England, leftists were offended by her denunciations of the Soviet Union. Berkman died in 1936. That same year, she travelled to Spain to support the anarchists during the Civil War. She died a few years later in Toronto, at the age of 70.