Kremlin Brings Back Stalingrad

A reference to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is to appear on a Russian monument for the first time in 40 years, on orders of President Vladimir Putin. Putin ordered the word "Stalingrad" en graved on a memorial complex by the Kremlin wall, replacing Volgograd, the current name of the city, where one of the bloodiest battles of the Great Patriotic War was fought.

It is less than two years ago that Putin said that reviving the name of Stalingrad "would do us no good."

But this latest decision, posted on the presidential web site Kremlin.ru last month, said that restoring Stalin’s name on the monument was to "pay tribute to the heroism of the defenders of Stalingrad and to preserve the history of the Russian State."

After Khrushchev came to power, countess monuments referring to Stalin were pulled down. Hundreds of names of cities, towns, villages, factories and collective farms named after Stalin were forced to be renamed on the orders of Khrushchev.

Post Soviet-Russian leaders have resisted pressures from Soviet people and war veterans to restore the name of Stalingrad to the city on the Volga River, where more than 1 million Soviet and Germans died in five months of fighting in 1942-1943.

Just in December of 2002 Putin said, "I am sure that by reviving the name of Stalingrad in this country would trigger suspicion that we are returning to the times of Stalinism. This would do us no good."

But his change of mind appears to have been triggered by the plans to celebrate next-years 60^th Anniversary of the end of Word Wart II.

Opposition Forces Form an Ad-Hoc Alliance

Is Turkey Involved in Chechnya?

President Putin’s special representative for the fight against terrorism and transnational crime, Anatoly Safanov, has asserted that: "Chechen terrorists often use Turkey as a their rear base for collecting material and technical resources for recruiting mercenaries, and for transporting them. There exist certain public structures that provide ideological and financial support for terrorists entrenched in Chechnya."

An Open Letter to Contemporaries

Hello my contemporary friend:

I am asking you to put aside your daily work. Put it away and look around! Look around and think for a moment! What is happening to us? What is happening around us in our land? If you feel that everything is normal in our Motherland, then proceed with your daily work, read, clean, look at TV and be quiet.

Was it not you that recognized the fragments of a child on the newsreel about Iraq on your TV? Not yet yours? If that is the case, live, be quiet and live like a person as Chekhov said: " a person in a case!"

It wasn’t your husband that lay bloody on the ground, beaten up by clubs of Russia’s OMON in Yeliste? Not yours yet? Was it from you that the present Russian regime took away all your social security and benefits, which, if you have some money, inflation will soon eat it away? This does not concern you yet? You are still young and working? But remember that you are young and you will not work while older. The pension you will get depends upon when you reach the age to get it. The State will try to get you off its back sooner than that.

Is that not your girl who went unto the streets of the city to sell her body because in the village and town they dismembered the state and collective farms, no work -to be found, but a person wants to eat? It’s not your daughter? Is it not your son that they took into the Russian army and who was killed in Chechnya? It isn’t yours yet? So far everything in your family is fine. And you with all hardships are trying to feed your family, from pay to pay – then just sit and be quiet! Do not go out into the street or square, do not protest! Let those who love the memory of Lenin, let them protest. Let the present bourgeois take away your security, let them privatize everything, let then kill and rob! You just sit and be quiet! Do not think about anything. Because if you start to think you will get scared and think as to what we have done to life and to our Motherland.

We are the ones who elected these monsters as Presidents; it is we that have allowed these dregs of society to rule over us. They are only 5% of the population, plus another 10-15% who are licking their boots. But we are in the majority. But we can rectify this horrible situation. They only think about us when elections come, promising ice cream to children and flowers to the babushkas.

Then why are we supporting them? What use are these people to us? Did they not break all the norms, all the laws, both nationally and internationally?

I don’t know who you are. If you are a working intellectual, do you not see that we are the children of the billionaire Soros Foundation? If you are a worker of culture, tell me why is your pay much lower than a strip-teaser gets? Does this strip-teaser bring a better quality to life than you do? Will you explain to me as to why pornographic foreign magazines are printed in more quantity that the works of world renowned Pushkin? Even a maid in the newly-rich bourgeois homes gets better pay that you, with a University Degree.

The answer is very simple; you are not needed by these capitalists. We are to them like animals- and sometimes as voters.

Do these present rulers want that we should instigate a war against them, not only by Communists, but by all of the people?

Forgive my bluntness. But the pot is boiling over/. It seems that women should talk only about love, while I rail my hate against these "overeating pigs" and robbers, experimenting over us as to how long the working class will exist and live. In the present society, we are now ruled by Satan, grief and death is the order of each day.

Time has long past when we should bring order to this chaos, but in eliminating chaos, there is no equal to the power of women!

Georgia on a War Path

From INTERFAX, Dec. 8, 2004

Georgia is masterminding a plan for a new invasion of South Ossetia in the Spring of 2005.

As part of this war of nerves and bluster, Georgia had ceased vehicles containing Russian peacekeepers, breaking all the agreed protocols signed between the two countries in 1992 and 1994.

US Colin Powell demanded that Russia withdraw all of its peace keeping forces from Georgia and the USA is even willing to cover the costs of the withdrawal of the troops.

Under pressure from USA and EU, Georgia is demanding that Russian bases in Georgia be removed and they are to be replaced by US/NATO bases in this volatile region.