Russian War Loan poster of the First World War
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In Western history textbooks, the Russian Empire is often not mentioned amongst the combatants of the First World War…
The First World War, in which 38 countries were involved, changed the course of history. It claimed millions of lives, and it was the first war to show the deadliness of advanced technological combat. The war lasted more than four years, and ended on 11 November 1918, when Germany and the Entente states signed an armistice agreement at Compiègne. Today, Western history textbooks don’t even list Russia as being amongst the participants of the war, even though it lost at least 3 million soldiers on the various fighting fronts.
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Members of the Russian Expeditionary Force in France, 1916
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Yelena Rudaya, a leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the RAN, said, “Until now, there’s been many myths surrounding the First World War, they’re simply unfair to the Russian contribution to the war, for Russia paid for the victory of the Entente with the blood of its soldiers. That’s because the decisive battles took place in the East or, as they called it, the German Front, for the fighting was between the Russian and German forces. This was the main fighting front for Russian troops and divisions, for the Russian army. Russian society greeted the news of the beginning of World War I with unanimous patriotism. Indeed, back in 1914, it was called the Second Fatherland War, in memory of the First Great Patriotic War in 1812 against Napoleon, some one hundred years earlier”.
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Map of the Eastern Front in 1917… the Imperial Army had kept the Germans out of the Russian heartland… a fact glossed over in the West today…
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In 1914, the impact of two Russian offensives on the Eastern Front rescued Paris from being overrun by the Germans. In 1916, the Russian forces inflicted a crushing blow on the Austro-Hungarian army. For three years, Russia’s strength was sapped by its selfless performance of its treaty obligations. There were tragic consequences for the country; a revolution broke out, resulting in a fratricidal civil war. Winston Churchill, at the time, the First Lord of the British Admiralty, once remarked that Russia received a raw deal from an unjust fate, saying, “Having victory within its grasp, she suddenly fell to the ground, eaten alive by worms”. Because of the separate peace signed at Brest-Litovsk between the Bolsheviks and Germany in February 1918, Soviet Russia wasn’t invited to the Versailles Conference, where, in 1919, the victors of the war redrew the map of the world. For that matter, representatives of the defeated German side weren’t invited, either.
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Russian Army vets of the Great War and their families in San Francisco CA in 1939
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Many historians consider the Treaty of Versailles an unfair document. The Entente states absolved themselves of all responsibility for the war, when, in fact, it was a pan-European tragedy, and the blame for it lay on all the sides involved. An overly large assessment of reparations upon Germany led to hyperinflation and the impoverishment of the German population. Historians believe that the punitive provisions of Versailles Treaty enabled the rise of the Hitler régime, which put forward a relentless mantra of revenge, and, then, started the Second World War. In the West, the First World War gave rise to the literature of so-called “lost generation”, Richard Aldington in England, Ernest Hemingway in the USA, and Erich Maria Remarque in Germany. Hundreds of scholarly monographs are devoted to the period. However, Russian historians believe that an objective history of the First World War is yet to be written.
11 November 2010
Mikhail Aristov
Voice of Russia World Service
Voices from Russia 
A View from Moscow by Valentin Zorin… How Much Did the Elections in the USA Cost?
Tags: A View from Moscow, Barack Obama, Democratic, George W. Bush, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Obama administration, political commentary, politics, Republican, right-wing, United States, USA, Wall Street
This is Mitch McConnell and John Boehner… they’ll enjoy the coverage of the Congressional “socialistic” healthcare plan… and deny you access to an analogue. SUCKER…
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This year, every seat on Capitol Hill cost the winner around 4 million dollars (122.703 million Roubles 2.926 million Euros 2.48 million UK Pounds). Clearly, Republican candidates didn’t suffer from a shortage of funds. National elections in the USA ended in a serious defeat for the Democratic Party, as they lost control of the House of Representatives, and their control of the Senate was reduced to an irreducible minimum. Whilst the past elections are technically called “midterms”, their result for the Obama administration will not be transitory. Programmes and plans proposed some two years ago by the ruling Democratic Party now face serious difficulties. Yet, to talk about a total victory, as the leaders of the Republican Party do now, is not something that I find myself in agreement with. This victory was more arithmetical than political in nature. Yes, the number of Republicans on Capitol Hill is markedly greater. However, the Republican leaders don’t offer any coherent strategy to deal with the difficult problems that the country is facing. We can reduce their political course over the most recent past to a single word… “No”.” “No” to the propositions of the Democratic administration, and “No” to Barack Obama, who is an outsider to the traditional Washington élites.
One can’t see any constructive submissions in the Republican agenda, and, for the first time in many years, they don’t have a strong and authoritative leader on the national level. Do you think that some media outlets can impose such twisted figures as Sarah Palin, the hapless and barely literate governor of Alaska, or, the media mogul and billionaire Donald Trump, a frequenter of fashionable hangouts, rather more a denizen of glitzy precincts than the political world, as the Republican candidate in the next presidential election? The lack of a recognised leader [in the Republican Party] is directly related to their lack of specific and clearly articulated proposals to deal with the serious problems facing America today. The defeat of the Democratic Party in the past midterm elections isn’t a new wrinkle in American political history. For many decades, in the midterm elections, the ruling party, it didn’t matter if it were the Republicans or the Democrats, lost a significant portion of the voters who had supported it in the previous presidential election. Unfulfilled promises made during the last campaign always cause disappointment amongst the voters.
This time, the main discontent affecting Americans who came to the polls was the burden of economic hardship laid on their shoulders by the current crisis. The Democratic administration couldn’t overcome the economic crisis, which was a legacy of the previous Republican government. This crisis, which crowned the presidency of George W Bush, was, from the very beginning, an unfavourable backdrop for all the actions of the Obama administration. It had to pay other people’s bills. The Obama administration’s attempt to regulate the financial sector, which provoked the onset of the crisis in the autumn of 2008, provoked distinct dissatisfaction in both the Republican leadership and corporate interests. When President Obama signed the Banking Regulation Act into law, it became a red flag causing outrage on Wall Street and its environs.
The current election campaign cost an unprecedented four billion dollars (122.703 billion Roubles 2.926 billion Euros 2.48 billion UK Pounds). This year, every seat on Capitol Hill cost the winner around 4 million dollars (122.703 million Roubles 2.926 million Euros 2.48 million UK Pounds). Clearly, Republican candidates didn’t suffer from a shortage of funds. Answering the eternal question, “Where did the money come from?” President Obama stated, “It may have been the oil companies, it may have been the insurance industry, it could have been Wall Street. We don’t know. They close their mouths, but they open the hatches for the cash”. No one in Washington is speaking openly. Billions of these hatches undoubtedly played a significant role in the results of the past American election campaign. The defeat of the Democratic Party in the midterm election puts the Obama administration in a difficult situation. To push many of his programmes through Congress in its altered composition will not be easy. Will he continue to be a success? Time will tell.
9 November 2010
Voice of Russia World Service
http://rus.ruvr.ru/2010/11/09/32729376.html
Editor’s Note:
Note well that John Boehner (R-OH), the putative Speaker of the House, has already stated that his objective is to abrogate healthcare reform and financial market regulation. Given the divided nature of the Congress, that’s impossible. Considering that exit polls showed that at least half of the electorate favours healthcare reform (or an even stronger version), Boehner’s stance is lunatic and without foundation. It means that he’s beholden to the banks, insurance companies, and HMOs… let the public be damned.
I have a “modest proposal”… let’s extend to the entire American population the same healthcare coverage as exists for US congressmen. That’s FAIR… after all, how can such a plan be socialistic if such “conservative” Solons as Boehner and McConnell benefit from it and find it not only useful, but also necessary! Am I being catty if I mention that Mr McConnell had heart bypass surgery in 2003, at Bethesda Naval Medical Centre, a classic example of “socialised health care”, if there ever was one. If we were to enjoy Congress’ healthcare coverage, it would be MORE generous than the Obama plan… makes you wonder about those lying POS Republicans, doesn’t it? They want a “socialist” healthcare plan for themselves and their families, yet, they won’t let you have the same benefits and coverage!
2012 bids fair to be interesting…
BMD