War Loan: The Purpose of the Loan is to Speed Victory Over the Enemy
Unknown Artist
circa 1914-17
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On Monday, the Kremlin Press Service announced Russia would remember its soldiers who fell during the First World War on 1 August every year forthcoming, saying, “The following changes were introduced to the Federal Law on Days of Military Glory and Remembrance Days in Russia, adding 1 August as the Day of Remembrance for Russian soldiers who fell in the First World War of 1914-1918”. President Putin suggested creating a memorial to the Russian soldiers who fought in World War I during his State of the Nation Address of 12 December.
Allied to Britain and France in that conflict, according to the history site firstworldwar.com, Russia is thought to have lost about 1.5 million soldiers at the front, with about 5 million wounded, although some historians question these figures. The USSR downplayed Russia’s participation in World War I, largely due to the Bolshevik view of it as an “imperialist war” that paved the way for revolution.
Speaking with young Russians at the Seliger youth camp in July 2012, President Putin raised the issue of Russia’s role in World War I, and blamed the Bolsheviks for how Russia left the war, saying, “It’s also known that the Bolsheviks wished for the defeat of their own nation in World War I. Overall, I must say that their input in Russia’s defeat was commensurate”. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed between Bolshevik Russia, the German Empire, Austria Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire on 3 March 1918, officially terminated Russia’s involvement in World War I. Putin said, “This was an astonishing situation, wherein Germany surrendered to the Allies, but Russia lost to the defeated nation, Germany, and with such grave consequences… losing enormous territories and suffering other truly severe ramifications. This is truly a unique large-scale example of national treachery!”
31 December 2012
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20121231/178511724/Kremlin_August_1_to_be_Russias_WWI.html
Editor’s Note:
What President Putin proposes is NOT what White Guard elements in the ROCOR want. They want to erase the Soviet past completely… as too many of them are of families that collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. Besides that, many descend from bourgeois and aristocratic elements that benefited greatly from the state crapitalism of the tsarist state (which led directly to the ferment that brought on the 1917 events). Not everything in the USSR was wicked… not everything in tsarist Russia was good. Any reasonable person can see that… the ROCOR bishop’s anti-leftist letter of 14 December 2012 is crank to the bone and has Victor Potapov’s fingerprints all over it.
No one dare mention Guantánamo, drone attacks on civilians, or the massive rape of America by soulless money-grubbing oligarchs such as Willard Romney (he sent American jobs to China in the midst of his election campaign… what hubris and arrogance). If you condemn Lenin, you must condemn the contemporary Republican Party… Lenin bowed in front of History… but the Republicans bow in front of the Almighty Dollar. I’ll say this… Lenin was a personally-modest man who didn’t steal from the state. That’s NOT true of the “conservatives” in the West is it?
The ROCOR bishops are utterly in the wrong here. They are right in many things, but they’re hopelessly WRONG in this. Remember how they lied how they “were in touch with the catacomb church” in the 60s and 70s? Remember how Jordanville stabbed the rodina in the back in the 90s (“The communists are still in charge! We can have nothing to do with the MP!”)? Remember how Vitaly Ustinov established ROCOR parishes in Russia and ordained questionable sorts to run them? Remember how the ROCOR put forward such creeps as Varnava Prokofiev, Agafangel Pashkovsky, and Valentin Rusantsov (and then had to shitcan them when they buzzed off into schism)? This is cut from the same bolt of cheesy cloth. The sooner that we clean house of some elements, the better. The new broom will start sweeping up the trash after Hilarion Kapral’s death… ponder that, if you will.
Anyone who wishes to erase ANY part of our history is EVIL… where we did right, we did right; where we did wrong, we did wrong. The latter has to be kept in place… otherwise, we learn no lessons from it. That’s why the current campaign to stuff history down the memory hole in the OCA and the ROCOR has to be fought with all our powers. If the bastards win, we not only lose our past, we lose our future, too. That’s a meaty bone to chew upon…
BMD
World Marks 98th Anniversary of Armenian Genocide
Tags: Armenian, Armenian Genocide, genocide, history, Ottoman Empire, Pan-Turkism, political commentary, politics, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, Turkey, World Council of Churches, World War I, Young Turks
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On 24 April, Armenians worldwide, along with many countries, commemorated the 98th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians went to Tsitsernakaberd Memorial in Yerevan to remember the victims of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey denies the fact of Armenian Genocide. Uruguay (1965), the Republic of Cyprus (1982), Argentina (1993), Russia (1995), Canada (1996), Greece (1996), Lebanon (1997), Belgium (1998), Italy (2000), the Vatican (2000), France (2001), Switzerland (2003), Slovakia (2004), the Netherlands (2004), Poland (2005), Germany (2005), Venezuela (2005), Lithuania (2005), Chile (2007), and Sweden (2010) recognise and condemn the Armenian Genocide. The Council of Europe and the World Council of Churches also recognise and condemn the Armenian Genocide.
The atrocities committed against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during World War I are what we now call the Armenian Genocide. The Young Turk government perpetrated these massacres throughout all of the regions of the Empire. The first international reaction to the violence came in a joint statement by France, Russia, and Great Britain in May 1915, where they defined the Turkish atrocities directed against the Armenian people as “a new crime against humanity and civilisation”, with an agreement that that the Ottoman government must be punished for committing such crimes.
Why did the Armenian Genocide happen?
When World War I erupted, the Young Turk government, hoping to save the remains of the weakened Ottoman Empire, adopted a policy of Pan-Turkism, that is, the establishment of a Turkish empire comprising all Turkic-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia extending to China, with the additional intention of Turkifying all ethnic minorities of the empire. The Armenians were the main obstacle standing in the way of the realisation of this policy. Although the government took the decision to deport all Armenians from Western Armenia (Eastern Turkey) in late 1911, the Young Turks used World War I as a suitable opportunity for its implementation.
How many people died in the Armenian Genocide?
There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of World War I. Approximately one-and-a-half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. Another half-million found shelter abroad.
The mechanism of implementation
Genocide is the organised killing of a people for the express purpose of putting an end to their collective existence. Because of its scope, genocide requires central planning and internal machinery to implement it. This makes genocide the quintessential state crime, as only a government has the resources to carry out such a scheme of destruction. On 24 April 1915, the first phase of the Armenian massacres began with the arrest and murder of hundreds of intellectuals, mainly from Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire (now, Istanbul in present-day Turkey). Subsequently, Armenians worldwide commemorate 24 April as a day to memorialise all the victims of the Armenian Genocide.
The second phase of the “final solution” was the conscription of some 60,000 Armenian men into the Ottoman Army. Then, Turkish soldiers disarmed them and killed them. The third phase of the genocide was massacres, deportations, and death marches of women, children, and the elderly into the Syrian Desert. During those marches, Turkish soldiers, gendarmes, and Kurdish mobs killed hundreds of thousands. Others died of famine, epidemic diseases, and exposure to the elements. Turkish soldiers raped thousands of women and children. Tens of thousands were forcibly-converted to Islam. Finally, the fourth phase of the Armenian genocide was the total and utter denial by the Turkish government of the mass killings and elimination of the Armenian nation. Despite the continuing international recognition of the Armenian genocide, Turkey’s consistently fought the acceptance of the Armenian Genocide by any means, including false scholarship, propaganda campaigns, lobbying, etc.
24 April 2013
Pravmir.com
Orthodox Christianity and the World
http://www.pravmir.com/world-marks-98th-anniversary-of-armenian-genocide/