The Burning of Pirčiupiai… Lest We Forget What Rightwing Racism Leads To

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On 3 June 1944, the fascist occupiers burned the village of Pirčiupiai in Lithuania, killing 119 people, burning them alive. Amongst the victims were 5 elderly persons over 65, 1 pregnant woman, 49 children under 15 years of age, 14 children under 5 years of age, and 4 nursing infants.

In 1960, the young Lithuanian sculptor Gediminas Jokūbonis created a memorial at the site of the tragedy, including the statue “Mother”, with a wall with decorated reliefs carved with names of the dead. The central monument portrays a tense image of a mother, the anger and sorrow of the old Lithuanian peasants, as well as severe generalised images, harmonising the architecture and memorial space with the surrounding countryside. In 1963, Jokūbonis received a Lenin Prize for creating the memorial. A Memorial Museum is also in Pirčiupiai.

In 1981, the Lithuanian cinema studio LKS filmed the movie Fakt (Fact) directed by Steponas Almantas Grikevičius, telling the story of the destruction of the village by the fascists. It won the main prize at the 14th all-Union Film Festival in Vilnius and represented the Soviet film industry in the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival, which it won the award for Best Supporting Female Role for actress E Ya Solovey.

2 June 2018

СССР. Прекрасная страна, в которой мы жили

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21 February 2018. “Do Russians Want War?” No… But Trump and Chilly Hilly Do!

“Remember the Meeting on the Elbe!” This Sov-era poster evokes the incident related in the song below… it focuses on the positive… quite unlike the Trump and Clinton filth. Russians don’t want war… but the War Witch and  Dimwit Donnie do…

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Kvatro is one of my fave ensembles. English subtitles… “Do Russians Want War?” NO! Remember, President Putin’s brother lies in the Piskorovskoye Memorial Cemetery in Piter… a child victim of the German fascists. America wants to walk in their footsteps…

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“Do Russians want war?” No… the last time, MILLIONS died. MILLIONS. Let that sink in. Eighty times as many Soviet citizens died in that war as did Americans… most of them civilians murdered by the Germans. We were “Untermenschtum”… “Subhumanity”, unfit to be masters in our own house. The Americans made common cause with the fascists after World War II… Truman allowed that. Anyone who was anti-communist and was willing to kiss the Americans’ ass got a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. Today, the USA supports the children of fascist collaborators in the Ukraine, the Baltics, Croatia, Kosovo, and elsewhere.

Honour the legacy of the Anti-Hitler Coalition or honour the legacy of fascism. They’re the only two options on offer… choose wisely.

BMD

Stjepan Stevo Filipović (1916-42): His Spirit Will Never Die

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102 years ago, Stjepan Stevo Filipović was born on 27 January 1916. Filipović was a Yugoslav communist, a partisan, and People’s Hero of Yugoslavia, the “Yugoslav Che Guevara”. He was born in Opuzen in Croatia, then part of Austria-Hungary. He was a locksmith by trade. He graduated from primary school, then, his family moved to Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina), where he graduated from the second level at the gymnasium. After that, he studied in Sirmii and Kragujevac (Serbia).

He was an active revolutionary since 1937, actively involved in demonstrations and strikes, for which he went to prison for a year in 1939. In 1940, he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Filipović then did party work on the local level in Kragujevac; after the occupation of Yugoslavia by German troops in April 1941, the Party transferred him to Valjevo. There, he helped to set up clandestine radio stations and trained the first partisan groups. His personal courage and bravery in combat made him the commander of the local unit. On 15 August 1941, in an attack on Lajkovac, Filipović, armed only with a gun and grenades, put to flight a German machine-gun detachment squad. In this battle, his unit killed and wounded around 40 German soldiers. He received a commendation from Tito, the commander of the partisan forces. He received such again for his attack on Krupan.

At the end of September 1941, he was commissar of his unit for a short while. When his unit received reinforcements, he became a battalion commander. On 24 February 1942, the Chetniks ambushed Filipović… they wounded him and took him captive. The Chetniks handed him over to the Germans in Sabac, they transported him to Valjevo and tortured him for two months. A court sentenced him to death, with the execution date set for 22 May 1942. The Germans made all the locals come to the execution. In his last moments, Filipović spoke about the partisan movement, reminding them that the Red Army’s victory was inevitable and that the cruelty and bestiality of the fascist invaders would bring a prompt and just punishment to them. A photographer managed to capture the moment when Filipović spoke the words that became the slogan of the antifascist movement in Yugoslavia… “Death to fascism, freedom to the people!” Unable to stop the “communist propaganda”, the executioner decided not to wait for the appointed time, but to execute Filipović immediately. The execution took place 15 minutes earlier than planned.

On 16 February 1949, Filipović won the highest Yugoslav award, People’s Hero of Yugoslavia. On 28 October 1960, they dedicated a monument to Filipović in Valjevo. In the 1980 s, a monument existed in Filipović’s hometown of Opuzen, but in 1991 Croatian nationalists destroyed it. The modern Yugoslav left respects Stjepan Filipović, “our Che Guevara”, for his bravery, honesty, fearlessness, and internationalism.

27 January 2018

Yevgeny Ivanov

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Putin’s Message at Annual Leningrad Siege Memorial: Never Again

Soviet war dead being given an honourable hero’s burial in contemporary Leningrad Oblast

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He who doesn’t learn from history is doomed to repeat it; Russians understand this fact better than any when they recall the storms of World War II and the bloody Siege of Leningrad. Russia can’t afford to forget… more than 20 million Russians perished in the Great Patriotic War, which is more than the population of several modern countries, including Romania, the Netherlands, Greece, and many more. Take a moment and imagine an entire country obliterated, that’s how great the death toll was for Russia. However, those millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, other Slavs, and Soviet citizens weren’t obliterated from existence. Their eternal memory and resolve gave the living strength, and with it, they endured as they always have, and they captured Berlin, ending the largest holocaust in human history.

By far one of the bloodiest battles in human history was the Siege of Leningrad (also called Petrograd and St Petersburg today). Casualties were around one million people… one million, for one city. The real number is possibly higher, as many people went missing. Bear one thing in mind when you read what President Putin said, remember it, and never forget it… his brother was amongst the dead. President Putin’s own brother, a child, died of disease during the terrible siege. TASS reported what President Putin said to veterans and celebrants at the anniversary:

We must use every occasion to remind ourselves about [the tragic events of the Great Patriotic War] so that we never forget about this so that the entire world remembers this and so that nothing like this ever happens again in the destiny of our country or in the world at large.

There’s an old Russian saying, “The only time you’ll ever see the back of a Russian soldier is when he’s dead”. In principle, Russians don’t take one step backwards. As a result, to this day they still find the remains of Russian soldiers in the thick northern swamps around St Petersburg. Their weapons always point forwards towards the enemy. President Putin commented on this:

They didn’t retreat anywhere and they died with weapons in their hands in battle as they marched forward. This attitude to the Motherland is typical of our people and this is what we must seal for long years to come for all the future generations. This is what Russia has always relied on… self-sacrifice and love for the Motherland, especially during difficult years of ordeals.

Next time you hear a Western leader scurrilously compare Putin to Hitler, remember that unlike almost all Americans, Putin’s family was under fire during one of the bloodiest battles of the bloodiest front of the bloodiest war in history. Remember that Putin’s own brother died in this conflict, buried in one of the unmarked graves of Leningrad. Just imagine what restraint it must require for him to throw those who make such comparisons across the room. Quite understandably, it’s in bad taste to make a Holocaust joke or to make light of the Jews killed. If anyone compared the Israeli Prime Minister to Hitler, the highest echelon of the Western world order would condemn such a remark. There’d be mass outrage, and rightly so! Hitler, the Nazis, and their supporters are despicable villains best left in the dustbin of human history.

The only question is, why is there no outrage when they compare Putin to Hitler? Where’s the outcry for the 20 million Russians killed? Applying a double standard to the deaths of millions is not “just” politics; there’s only one word for it… “degeneracy”. Disgracing the honoured dead makes a man just as guilty as their killers because that kind of pathetic disregard for the writing on the wall allowed such wars to happen in the first place. Should the world ever forget the horrors of the Great Patriotic War, they wouldn’t take steps to prevent another such conflict, and it’d surely repeat itself. That’s Putin’s message… we must do everything to prevent this from happening, not just for Russia, but for all humanity.

TASS also summarised the events of the Leningrad siege brilliantly. In the interest of understanding history, you may feel inclined to check it out:

Siege of Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad started on 8 September 1941 and lasted 872 days. On 10 September, the Luftwaffe bombed and burnt the city’s warehouses, leaving Leningrad without significant food supplies. Gradually, fuel and water reserves ran out in the city, stopping electricity and heating. Hunger swept the city in the autumn of 1941. Leningrad introduced rationing in Leningrad to provide residents with food. The bread rations dwindled to 250 grammes a day for workers and to 125 grammes for the rest of the population by 20 November 1941. During the blockade, the Germans dropped over 107,000 incendiary and high-explosive bombs, they fired more than 150,000 artillery shells, destroying about 10,000 buildings and structures. Despite the blockade, over 200 enterprises continued to work in the city, including seven shipyards that built 13 submarines. The industry of besieged Leningrad produced 150 types of military products. Overall, during the years of the blockade, Leningrad enterprises produced about 10 million shells and mines, 12,000 mortars, 1,500 warplanes, and rolled out or repaired 2,000 tanks.

On 12 January 1943, Soviet troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts launched Operation Iskra, aimed at routing the German forces south of Lake Ladoga and restoring Leningrad’s land connection with the rest of the country. On 18 January 1943, the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts broke the city’s encirclement with the support of the Baltic Fleet and restored its land connection with the rest of the country. On the same day, the Soviet troops liberated the Shlisselburg fortress and drove the enemy away from Lake Ladoga’s entire southern coastline. Within 17 days, the Soviets built new rail lines and highways across the resulting corridor; on 7 February, the first goods train arrived in Leningrad. On 14 January 1944, the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts, together with the 2 Baltic Front, launched the Leningrad-Novgorod strategic offensive. The lifting of the siege happened on 27 January 1944. A salute of 24 salvos from 324 artillery guns in the city honoured this victory.

No more than 800,000 residents remained in the city by the end of the blockade out of the 3 million people that were in Leningrad and its suburbs before the blockade. According to various estimates, from 641,000 to 1 million Leningraders died in the siege from hunger, bombing, and artillery shelling. Almost 340,000 people were wounded, 716,000 residents were left without shelter, and 1.7 million were evacuated across the Road of Life and by air during 1941-42.

26 January 2018

Nick Ivanov

Russia Feed

http://russiafeed.com/putins-message-annual-leningrad-siege-ww2-memorial-never/