Bibliography

Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1917–1930 (1968)
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1930–1945 (1971)
Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1945–1965 (1973)
National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union (1973)
What Is Libertarianism? (1973)
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974, 1999) (Online version) (Online Russian version)
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976, 1999) (Online version)
Wall Street and FDR (1976, 1999) (Online version)
The War on Gold: How to Profit from the Gold Crisis (1977)
Energy: The Created Crisis (1979)
The Diamond Connection: A manual for investors (1979)
Trilaterals Over Washington – Volume I (1979; with Patrick M. Wood)
Trilaterals Over Washington – Volume II (1980; with Patrick M. Wood)
Gold vs Paper: A cartoon history of inflation (1981)
Investing in Platinum Metals (1982)
Technological Treason: A catalog of U.S. firms with Soviet contracts, 1917–1982 (1982)
America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones (1983, 1986, 2002) (Online version)Back up online [1]
How the Order Creates War and Revolution (1985) (Online Russian version)
How the Order Controls Education (1985)
The Best Enemy Money Can Buy (1986) (Online version)
The Two Faces of George Bush (1988)
The Federal Reserve Conspiracy (1995) (Online Russian version (as Vlast' dollara))
Trilaterals Over America (1995) (Online version) (Online Russian version)
Cold Fusion: Secret Energy Revolution (1997)
Gold For Survival (1999)

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Anthony C. Sutton - Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1945 to 1965 (1973).pdf

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Graeme B. Robertson - The Politics of Protest in H ybrid Regimes; Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia (2010).jpg

Communism - Graeme B. Robertson - The Politics of Protest in Hybri...egimes Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia 2010.jpg

Since the end of the Cold War, more and more countries feature political regimes that are neither liberal democracies nor closed authoritarian systems. Most research on these hybrid regimes focuses on how elites manipulate elections to stay in office, but in places as diverse as Bolivia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela, protest in the streets has been at least as important as elections in bringing about political change. The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes builds on previously unpublished data and extensive fieldwork in Russia to show how one high-profile hybrid regime manages political competition in the workplace and in the streets. More generally, the book develops a theory of how the nature of organizations in society, state strategies for mobilizing supporters, and elite competition shape political protest in hybrid regimes.

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Graeme B. Robertson - The Politics of Protest in H ybrid Regimes; Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia (2010).pdf

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Miniatury morskie EWM 11-11 - Sławomir Kędzierski - Moskity w Kronsztadzie (2007).jpg

W pierwszych dniach czerwca 1919 roku Agar, podporucznik rezerwy Royal Navy J. Sindall, midszypmen (później ppor.) J. Hampsheir, midszypmen (później ppor.) R.N. Marshall, mechanicy Beelcy i Piper oraz CMB nr 4 i nr 7, znaleźli się w Terioki, tuż nad granicą fińsko-sowiecką.

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Miniatury morskie EWM 11-11 - Sławomir Kędzierski - Moskity w Kronsztadzie (2007).pdf

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Colin Ballantine - Vintage Russian; Props and Jets of the Iron Curtain Airlines (1998).jpg

During the Cold War years from the mid-1950s through 1980, some intrepid enthusiasts did manage to photograph Eastern Bloc aircraft. Australian Colin Ballantine was one such person, and this book features many of his rare and unusual images. In addition to now-famous Russian jetliners and Tupolev aircraft, Ballantine captured on film many lesser-known airplanes during his clandestine photographic sorties into the Soviet Union.

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Colin Ballantine - Vintage Russian; Props and Jets of the Iron Curtain Airlines (1998).pdf

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Alfred Erich Senn - Lithuania 1940; Revolution fro m Above (2007).jpg

In his monograph, Prof. Alfred Erich Senn reconstructs the last years of the modern Lithuanian state: from the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which constituted the background for the Red Army occupation of Lithuania, until the formal annexation of Lithuania by the USSR. This well-known story is told originally and interestingly. The author uses a lot of historical literature and plenty of new archival materials from Lithuanian, Russian, American and Latvian archives.

The author had been provoked to make this research by the assertion of officials that Lithuania became a part of the USSR not by force, but by self-determination. This position practically reintroduces a version of the Soviet historiographic claim about socialist revolution in Lithuania in 1940. Senn’s main counterargument is that the whole political process was orchestrated by Moscow’s proconsul Vladimir Dekanozov (the “Revolution from above”) after the occupation of Lithuania on June 15, 1940. Consequently the argumentation about the self-determination of Lithuania collapses like a house of cards.

On the other hand, the author gives a stunning picture of how the Lithuanian state disintegrated with the collapse of Smetona’s authoritarian regime (like a “house of cards”, too), influenced by social and ethnic conflicts. Even a heretical question could be raised – were there other elements of statehood in Lithuania apart from the authoritarian regime of Smetona? Supplementary questions remain open: What was the balance between expansion and security motives in Stalin’s policy? Is it possible to identify in the Kremlin’s decisions some differences between the sovietization and the incorporation of Lithuania? The last question is probably the most intriguing, and some details given in the book indicate that such differences existed (pp. 120–121, 125). However the author himself unfortunately rejects such a possibility (p. 124). The question remains open for further scholarly research, though at an ideological level the quarrel about the “zero sum” balance still is up-to-date.

Nonetheless, Senn’s main idea is connected with the revolution that took place in Lithuania in 1940. Although the author uses the term “revolution” with the adjective “from above,” it is very questionable whether it is possible to separate the revolutions “from above” and “from below”. The question does not aim at a scholarly definition; to the contrary, it refers back to the Lithuanian “collective memory” which, according to Senn, was “fractionalized into antagonistic sections” by the Soviet invasion: aside from the issue of the socialist revolution in 1940, another version indicates that the Resistance movement came into being just on June 15, 1940 (pp. 3–4).

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Alfred Erich Senn - Lithuania 1940; Revolution fro m Above (2007).pdf

So the magnificat outcome in Senn’s book is that Smetona’s rotten regime determined revolution. As Smetona’s regime collapsed, the emerging revolutionary forces were immediately subdued by Dekanozov’s juggernaut and consequently they became as illegal as the incorporation. The paradox is that only Smetona’s regime henchmen preserved legality. The repercussions of that situation still are alive. Possibly Senn’s study could soften the deformations caused by the Revolution from above.

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Timothy Frye - Building States and Markets After C ommunism; The Perils of Polarized Democracy (2010).jpg

Does democracy promote the creation of market economies and robust state institutions? Do state-building and market-building go hand in hand? Or do they work at cross-purposes? This book examines the relationship between state-building and market-building in 25 post-communist countries from 1990 to 2004. Based on cross-national statistical analyses, surveys of business managers, and case studies from Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Uzbekistan, Timothy Frye demonstrates that democracy is associated with more economic reform, stronger state institutions, and higher social transfers when political polarization is low. But he also finds that increases in political polarization dampen the positive impact of democracy by making policy less predictable. He traces the roots of political polarization to high levels of income inequality and the institutional legacy of communist rule. By identifying when and how democracy fosters markets and states, this work contributes to long-standing debates in comparative politics, public policy, and post-communist studies.

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The Soviet Union, Socialist or Social-Imperialist; Essays Toward the Debate on the Nature of Soviet Society (1983).jpg

Communism - The Soviet Union, Socialist or Social-Imperialist Essa...Toward the Debate on the Nature of Soviet Society 1983.jpg

The Soviet Union: Socialist or Social-Imperialist? : Essays Toward the Debate on the Nature of Soviet Society

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The Soviet Union, Socialist or Social-Imperialist; Essays Toward the Debate on the Nature of Soviet Society (1983).pdf

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E. A. Wilson - Soviet passenger ships 1917-1977 (1 978).jpg

The Soviet Union possesses the largest fleet of passenger ships in the World today, and from the establishment of its mercantile marine in 1918, has managed a motley collection of vessels of various sizes from numerous sources.

In February 1918 Lenin signed a decree nationalising all Russian shipping, and it was several ex Tsarist vessels which formed the nucleus of the Sovtorgflot — the Sovietsky Torgovaya Flot — literally translated as the Soviet Merchant Fleet. Formerly privately owned or Government ships were taken over in Russian ports, and others which had been taken to foreign ports by the pro Tsarist Whites were returned as the new regime gained International recognition. However, three Romanian ships which had served in the Russian Navy during World War I had to be returned to Romania by the Soviets.

By the late 1920s most of the ex.Tsarist vessels must have been either demolished or unserviceable, and so the first Soviet built passenger ships were produced by the Severney and Baltika Yards at Leningrad in 1928. The first foreign built newbuildings were ordered in this year, two ships from the Krupp yard at Kiel, Germany — sisterships to four built at the Baltika Yard. In 1935 one Dutch and one British liner were purchased, followed in 1937 by a British cableship which was converted for passenger use. As well as purchasing secondhand tonnage, orders for new vessels were given to Italy in 1937 and to the Netherlands in 1939.

Soviet participation in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1940 resulted in two large liners and two smaller ones being sailed from Spain to the Black Sea, where they were either put to use of the Sovtorgflot or the Red Navy.

The Soviet invasion of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940 resulted in three coastal passengerships being added to the fleet at the expense of Estonia — as far as is known, neither Latvia nor Lithuania possessed any passengerships of note.

The outbreak of war with Germany caused the loss of the new JOSIF STALIN to the enemy in 1941 — no doubt a particularly galling loss considering the name of the ship and the fact that the Germans intended to put their prize to their own use. The wartime losses of Soviet merchant ships were particularly high, though exactly what passengerships were lost due to enemy action is not known. In 1941 the United States transferred two ex German World War I liners to the U.S.S.R. to reinforce the fleet.

It was the defeat of Germany, however, which provided the greatest impetus to the Sovtorgflot passenger fleet. Twelve large passengerships and several smaller ones were either seized from the Germans, received as Allied allocations of prizes, or salvaged from German waters at the end of the War, and most of the larger vessels are still in service today.

Germany's allies of Finland and Romania did not escape having to compensate the U.S.S.R. for war damage from their own small mercantile fleets — six Finnish and three Romanian ships were handed over between 1944 and 1950, and a further two ships were taken from Japan as a result of the short-lived war status between that country and the U.S.S.R.

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E. A. Wilson - Soviet passenger ships 1917-1977 (1 978).pdf

In 1949 and the following year two Polish liners were transferred to the Sovtorgflot, and in 1952 two Italian coastal passengerships under construction at Genova were purchased. With the reconstruction of East German shipyards after World War II there became available a source of new tonnage for the Soviet merchant fleet, and it has been the Mathias Thesen Werft at Wismar which has provided the bulk of passenger tonnage by delivering nineteen ships of the MIKHAIL KALININ Class and five of the larger IVAN FRANKO Class. Another Communist state, Bulgaria, has produced a class of at least twelve coastal passengerships for the shorter sea routes of the Morflot.

In 1961 the A. Zhdanov Yard at Leningrad built the first of ten vessels in a class which were the first Soviet built passengerships since 1932, and it was in the early 1960s that the title Morflot was introduced, replacing that of Sovtorgflot. Morflot, or to give its full title, Ministerstvo Morskoi Flot Ministry of the Seagoing Fleet is the ministry in Moscow which controls all Soviet merchant ships through fifteen companies based in the major ports throughout the Union, and recently a further department, Morpasflot Morskoi Passazhirskogo Flot— Seagoing Passenger Fleet — has been established for the management of the fleet's passengerships.

Between 1961 and 1968 five passenger train ferries were built by the Krasnoye Sormovo Yard at Gorky, and another class of four train ferries was built by the Baltiya Yard at Kaliningrad in 1974.

With the worldwide rise of bunker oil prices in 1973, many Western passengerships were laid up or sold for demolition, and this gave the Morflot the opportunity to purchase two Cunard Line ships in 1973, and a large modern West German ship in the following year — the HAMBURG — only six years old and the pride of the City of Hamburg. A smaller cruiseship was bought from Vickers Ltd., Barrow, in 1975, after the builders had not handed her over to the Danish company which had ordered her.

1975 saw the delivery of the first of a class of five cruiseships ordered from a Finnish yard — the Morflot now taking a good share of the lucrative World cruising trade as a source of foreign currency. Nowadays most Soviet newbuildings are cruising either for the Morflot or are on charter to foreign tour operators. Possibly this is the first time that the larger vessels have been run on a profitable basis, since as the U.S.S.R. has its own oilfields and the crews are government employees, fuel and crewing problems did not arise in the State owned merchant navy.

In Spring 1977 the French built cruiseliner AIVAZOVSKY entered service, thereby becoming the latest vessel in a long lineage of Soviet passengerships spanning sixty years — a lineage which promises to continue with the latest announcements of orders for eight passenger ferries from a Polish yard and four train ferries from a Yugoslavian builder. It will therefore possibly be the Morflot which will provide the material in the near future for the passengership enthusiast seeking a large and diverse fleet operating under the one flag.

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BBC Radio 4 - Martin Sixsmith - Russia, The Wild E ast; Part One, From Rulers to Revolutions, 18 Apri l - 20 May 2011 (2011).jpg

Communism - BBC Radio 4 - Martin Sixsmith - Russia, The Wild East ...rom Rulers to Revolutions, 18 April - 20 May 2011 2011.jpg

The first 25 episodes from the landmark BBC Radio series presented by Martin Sixsmith
Here Martin Sixsmith brings his first-hand experience of reporting from Russia to this fascinating narrative, witnessing the critical moment when the Soviet Union finally lost its grip on power.
Power struggles have a constant presence in his story, from the Mongol hordes that invaded in the 13th century, through the iron autocratic fists of successive Tsars. Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great – all left their mark on a nation that pursued expansion to the East, West and South. Many Tsars flirted with reform, but the gap between the rulers and the ruled widened until, in 1917, the doomed last Tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated.
The first part of Sixsmith’s history ends with Lenin and the Bolsheviks forcing through the final Revolution and paving the way for the Communist state.
Eyewitness accounts and readings from Russian authors and historians, from Pushkin to Solzhenitsyn, enhance this fascinating account, as well as music taken from a wide range of Russian composers including Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Shostakovich.

Russian - The Wild East - Series 1
BBC Radio 4
18 April - 20 May 2011

EPISODE 1 - Rurik, founder of Rus (18 April 2011)
In a major new series Martin Sixsmith traces 1,000 years of Russian history.

EPISODE 2 - A Church for the State (19 April 2011)
Martin Sixsmith explores the significance of Russia's adoption of Christianity.

EPISODE 3 - Prince Igor and the Polovtsians (20 April 2011)
Russia struggles to survive as the warring Polovtsians threaten its borders.

EPISODE 4 - The Mongol Yoke (21 April 2011)
The Mongol hordes invade Russia.

EPISODE 5 - Moscow - The New Capital (22 April 2011)
Martin Sixsmith charts the rise of Moscow and the reign of Ivan the First.

EPISODE 6 - Ivan the Terrible (25 April 2011)
Martin Sixsmith paints a portrait of Ivan the Terrible, the Tsar with absolute power.

EPISODE 7 - Enter the Romanovs (26 April 2011)
Martin Sixsmith describes how a new dynasty, the Romanovs, claimed absolute power.

EPISODE 8 - East into Siberia (27 April 2011)
Martin Sixsmith tells the story of how Siberia became a key part of Russia's empire.

EPISODE 9 - Peter the Great (28 April 2011)
Martin Sixsmith paints a portrait of Peter the Great, the architect of Russia's future.

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EPISODE 10 - A Window on the West (29 April 2011)
Martin Sixsmith visits St Petersburg, Peter the Great's 'window on the West'.

EPISODE 11 - Catherine, Lover and Reformer (2 April 2011)
Martin Sixsmith assesses Catherine the Great's reputation abroad and legacy at home.

EPISODE 12 - Rebellion and Punishment (3 May 2011)
Martin Sixsmith tells how a fierce rebellion turns Catherine from reformer to reactionary.

EPISODE 13 - Napoleon Marches East (4 May 2011)
Martin Sixsmith puts Napoleon's siege of Moscow in context: looking back and to the future.

EPISODE 14 -Decembrist Revolt (5 May 2011)
How victory against Napoleon bred further desire for radical reform.

EPISODE 15 - Defeat and Disaffection (6 May 2011)
Martin Sixsmith shows how the iron fist crushes nationalism in Russia's overblown empire.

EPISODE 16 - The Downtrodden Serfs (9 May 2011)
Over 700 years successive Tsars had extended the grip of Russia on new territory. The Empire needed a huge peasant class to work the land, and out of this need came the underdog of Russian society - 17 million serfs, or, as they were also called, souls. The plight of the serf pricked the conscience of the Russian intelligentsia, and for writers they were a fact of life that in the 19th century became a cause.

As pressure for change mounted, this programme traces the role serfdom has played in the history of Russia. As early as Kievan times in the 11th and 12th centuries, slaves were a valuable commodity. In many ways serfdom had been a relatively benign arrangement between landowner and peasant - and despite the many stories of brutality, the music that emerged is surprisingly joyful. "The inherited willingness to pull together in the face of shared problems helped the nation expand into an empire and defend itself against its enemies," argues Martin Sixsmith. "But it also hindered the development of private property, political freedoms and the law-governed institutions that Western Europe was beginning to take for granted."

In the 19th century serfdom had developed into the worst form of slavery and by the 1850's abolition was under serious discussion in Russia and America. An emerging Russian intelligentsia expressed their own guilt over the horrors of serfdom. But unpicking centuries of class division would have to wait for the 20th century before it erupted.

Historical Consultant: Professor Geoffrey Hosking

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EPISODE 17 - The Murder of the Tsar (10 May 2011)
The cultivation of Russia's great lands depended on the labour of millions of serfs, and they had for hundreds of years been at the very bottom of the social ladder. But, under a new Tsar, it seemed, at last, that their lowly place was going to change. On March the 3rd 1861 Alexander II took a step that many tsars before him had considered taking, but had always drawn back from.

The Manifesto on the Emancipation of the Serfs did something that had petrified previous rulers: it offered freedom to twenty three million Russians who for centuries had been little more than slaves. The liberation of the peasants was the biggest shake-up in Russian society since the time of Peter the Great. It affected nearly every member of the population, placed the whole economic and social structure on a new footing, and created shock waves that would rumble through the nation for decades.

The reform was long overdue. Peasant unrest had been growing since the end of the Napoleonic invasion, turning to violent uprisings during and after the recent military disaster of the Crimean War. The Manifesto is full of pleas for restraint that betray the very real fear of conflict. But as Martin Sixsmith points out, the Emancipation was 'a botched job - too little, too late - it disappointed and angered nearly everyone'.

And in 1881 an extremist revolutionary threw a bomb at the Tsar's carriage with fatal results. "Why," asks Sixsmith "did the man who brought emancipation, peace and the possibility of democracy in Russia end up with his legs blown off, his face shattered, bleeding to death?' The question's all the more poignant because in the minutes before he set off on his last, fatal carriage ride Alexander had just put his signature on a document that could have changed Russia forever.

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EPISODE 18 - Seeds of Revolution (11 May 2011)
In 1881 an assassin's bomb, thrown into the carriage carrying Tsar Alexander II, ended his life with an act of extreme violence. Despite Alexander's good intentions of reform, anger over the power of the ruling class had blazed into the open. The punishment for the assassins was unsparing.

Following on from the assassination, Martin Sixsmith looks at the origins of the revolutionary movement in Russia - and where it would lead. He begins with Camus' description of the execution of Alexander II's assassins in St Petersburg. The perpetrators belonged to the People's Will Movement, which had declared a merciless, bloody war to the death.

Sixsmith looks at the rise of socialism through the writers of the time, such as Chaadayev and Herzen. Their diagnosis of Russia's social and political backwardness crystallized a deep-seated ideological schism. By the 1840s both Westernisers and Orthodox Slavophiles agreed change was needed .... it was just that they had very different ideas of the form it should take, and they missed their chance.

In a few turbulent years, the cautious liberals were swept away by a new generation of angry radicals - Men of the Sixties - "much less squeamish and much readier to use violence to impose their views". Nikolai Chernyshevsky's book What Is To Be Done? published in 1864 determined the future of the whole revolutionary movement. The plot glorifies the 'new men', disgusted by tsarist society and selflessly dedicated to socialist ideals. The love affair of the two principal characters climaxes not in bed, but in the founding of a women's cooperative. Its glorification of 'cold blooded practicality and calculating activity' set the tone for the violence of the coming years and Lenin himself regarded it as a pivotal precursor of Bolshevism.

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EPISODE 19 - Censorship and Suppression (12 May 2011)
The assassination of Alexander II in March 1881 resulted in sheer panic amongst the ruling elite - revealed in the private correspondence between Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the right wing conservative adviser of the new tsar, and Alexander III.

Within days of ascending the throne, Alexander denounced his father's plans for a quasi-liberal constitution, thus signalling the end of yet another of Russia's brief flirtations with the ideas of liberal democracy and a return to the autocratic rule, which has always been her default position.

In an argument which Martin Sixsmith suggests is as relevant today as it was in 1881, Pobedonostsev contends that the vast size of Russia and its many ethnic minorities mean Western style democracy can never work there. Under his influence, censorship was tightened, the secret police reinforced and thousands of suspected revolutionaries packed off to Siberia. Ethnic tensions were met with a campaign of forced Russification which fostered resentment and sowed the seeds of future conflict in regions like Ukraine, the Caucasus, central Asia and the Baltic Provinces.

Alexander wanted to unify the country by turning a Russian empire into a Russian nation, with a single nationality, a single language, religion and sovereign authority. He had a pathological fear of political opposition and was quick to declare emergency rule, suspend the law and restrict civil liberties. For a while revolutionary activity was driven underground, and to the countryside. But it never went away and it returned with a conviction that if the people were not ready for revolution it must be brought about and imposed on society by a clique of dedicated professionals.

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EPISODE 20 - The Last Tsar (13 May 2011)
It is the turn of the century and the days of Imperial Russia are numbered. Nicholas II was crowned in May 1896. Nearly 1400 men, women and children were crushed to death in the crowds at his coronation, which was quickly seen as a bad omen. Within a year, disturbances had broken out in Russian universities and the Socialist Revolutionaries were disrupting government by murdering senior government ministers close to the Tsar. Double agents used their privileged position to mount further assassinations.
By the end of 1904, Russia was close to turmoil and a strike at the Putilov Engineering works in St Petersburg spread quickly to other factories. Within a month a hundred thousand workers had downed tools.

Dmitry Shostakovich's eleventh symphony - The Year 1905 - portrays the bloody culmination of the strikes on Sunday the 9th of January, when soldiers opened fire on protesters bringing a petition to the Tsar, leaving more than a hundred dead in the snow.

And trouble at home was soon to coincide with disaster abroad. Aggressive expansionism in the far-east had brought Russia into conflict with Japan, and the catastrophe of Tsushima in which Russia lost eight battleships and four cruisers, with 4000 men dead and 7000 taken prisoner. That and the uprising in Odessa, immortalised in Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin, dealt Tsarism an immortal blow from which it would never recover. Suddenly the mighty tsarist system didn't look so mighty after all.

The resulting concessions introduced by the Tsar were seen as an admission of the regime's fragility. As Martin Sixsmith hints, 'It wouldn't take much for the whole edifice to come crashing to the ground.'

EPISODE 21 - Too Little Too Late (16 May 2011)
In the final week of the first part of BBC Radio 4's major new series on the History of Russia, the momentum is all towards revolution.

After centuries of unbending autocratic government Nicholas II creates an embryonic parliament - an astounding leap forward. Unrest abates and the economy recovers. Martin Sixsmith reflects, "For a brief moment the vision of the Russian empire as a sort of British constitutional monarchy looked enticingly possible. Had it been offered earlier and more willingly - it might just have worked."
Instead it is seen as too little too late.

Sixsmith stands where the revolutionaries stood and paints this picture: "On the 18th of October 1905, a young Jewish intellectual with a small goatee beard, a thick head of black hair and intense dark eyes rose to address an unruly assembly of striking workers here in the Technological Institute in Saint Petersburg." That man was Lev Bronstein, better known by the pseudonym Leon Trotsky. He and Lenin were agitating for the whole Tsarist system to be swept away.

After the assassination of his uncle, Tsar Nicholas retreats from public view for eight years, but remains under the influence of his wife and her faith in the maverick and dissolute holy man, Grigory Rasputin. When the Prime Minister is assassinated at Kiev Opera House, imperial Russia's last attempt at political liberalism comes to an irrevocable end.

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EPISODE 22 - The Centre Weakens (17 May 2011)
Tsar Nicholas 2nd's reign at the beginning of the 20th century had already been marked by the shedding of workers' blood, and political weakness. Revolutionary voices had been raised, and an unstable Europe would break out into the First World War. The seeds of instability had been sown 40 years before, but it would be Nicholas who would reap the disastrous harvest.

Martin Sixsmith tells the story of Russia's part in the First World War through Solzhenitsyn's novel August 1914. Solzhenitsyn takes issue with Tolstoy's belief that individuals cannot shape history and argues that there was nothing inevitable about the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Greater determination and better leadership could have made things turn out very differently.

Sixsmith comments, "In many respects 1914 was a last opportunity for the tsarist regime to save itself. The war was popular and its cause had united many elements of a divided society. For a brief moment, peasant resentment and workers' demands took second place to the overriding imperative of defending the motherland. But the mood of national unity was soon to be shattered by political shenanigans, tsarist incompetence and further setbacks on the battlefield."

By 1917 patience with the Tsar had run out, the strain of the war effort led to food shortages, profiteering and inflation. The hated figure of Rasputin had been assassinated the previous year but it was not enough to save the monarchy. Discontent was turning to revolt. Sixsmith concludes, "The unity of 1914 was long gone; the old myths of loyalty to the tsar could no longer hold society together. Tsarism was rotting from within and the only question was who or what would trigger its collapse."

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EPISODE 23 - The Year 1917 Dawns (18 May 2011)
1917 is the year etched into Russian history. The First World War had caused disillusion amongst the military and the workers. Tsar Nicholas the 2nd believed blindly in his autocratic right to rule, but enemies were all around him, and the eventual victor - Lenin - was biding his time at a safe distance.

Shostakovich's Symphony 'The Year 1917' provides the backdrop for this most momentous year in Russian History. The February Revolution of 1917 was, like the earlier peasant revolts of Stenka Razin and Pugachev, a spontaneous uprising against a hated regime. Contrary to the Soviet account of the period, Martin Sixsmith argues "It was unplanned, uncoordinated, and the professional revolutionaries were left trailing in its wake."

But, with his kingdom crumbling, Tsar Nicholas the Second is portrayed, through letters to his wife Alexandra, as strangely detached. He barely mentions the revolution that was about to end Tsarism in Russia, as if willing it to go away by concentrating on other, minor inconveniences. Finally the Romanov dynasty, that had begun in the heroic glory of 1613 and celebrated its third centenary with great pomp just four years previously, came to an end in the banality of a provincial railway siding where Nicholas was forced to resign.

In the Tauride Palace in Saint Petersburg from where Martin Sixsmith tells the rest of the story, Nicholas's portrait was unceremoniously ripped from the wall of the Duma chamber. Sixsmith walks from the palace's right wing, where the Duma deputies announced they were creating a new government, to the left wing where hundreds of workers, soldiers and peasants were gathering - the two groups jostling to fill the vacuum. The time was crying out for someone to seize the initiative; he was already waiting in the wings.

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EPISODE 24 - Lenin's Return (19 May 2011)
Chaos follows the abdication of the Tsar, and it is into this chaos that Lenin returns from exile. The programme opens with a series of telegrams from the German foreign ministry which reveal that Berlin saw Lenin as a 'secret weapon', a 'dangerous virus' that would foment revolution forcing Russia to withdraw from the war, and so the Germans put him on the legendary sealed train bound for St Petersburg.

But Lenin was most certainly not in control. No one was in control. Tsarism had collapsed but the revolutionaries were far from united. The Provisional Government was trying to create Russia's first western style law-governed state: their "liberal idealism was impeccable," muses Martin Sixsmith, "but the middle of a world war with revolutionary chaos on the streets was not the easiest moment to introduce democracy."

The opposition was divided between the Mensheviks who wanted to go through a phase of capitalist democracy before true revolution ushered in the nirvana of socialism. The Bolsheviks, at that stage minor players, had more idea of what they wanted to destroy than what they wanted to create. But Lenin seized the moment: "All power to the soviets!" was his dramatic conclusion that has resonated through Russian history. He was already plotting a Bolshevik coup to take control and boldly promised Land, Peace, Bread and Freedom. This gave him the popular support he needed to have a real chance of taking power.

But then he ran away. Sixsmith draws on comments by Nikolai Valentinov, a friend of Lenin, which hint at a manic depressive side to Lenin's character to explain it. It puts things on hold, the Bolsheviks go underground, but by October, the pressure for change was unstoppable.

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BBC Radio 4 - Martin Sixsmith - Russia, The Wild E ast; Part One, From Rulers to Revolutions, 18 Apri l - 20 May 2011 (2011).mp3

EPISODE 25 - Revolution! (20 May 2011)
The signal for the Revolution was given on October 25th by the battleship Avrora, still moored at the St Petersburg quay where she was anchored in 1917.

In the concluding programme of the first half of BBC Radio 4's major history of Russia, Martin Sixsmith argues that between the February and October Revolutions of 1917, Russia missed her only chance for real change. He says, '1917 has long been seen as a turning point in Russian history. February put an end to tsarist rule and October inaugurated the era of proletarian socialism. But I believe the real chance for change came in the brief period between the revolutions. The Provisional Government was committed to the introduction of liberal parliamentary democracy, respect for the law and individual civil rights.'

But the Provisional Government did not survive, and under Lenin and Communism, the country's 1000 year history of autocracy would continue. Sixsmith quotes the writer Vassily Grossman who says, 'In 1917, the Russian soul had been a slave for a thousand years... the path of freedom lay open, but Russia chose Lenin.'
Sixsmith identifies widely differing versions of the events of 1917, untangling the myth and the reality.

Eisenstein's iconic film 'October' dramatizes the storming of the Winter Palace, but in fact it was defended by a smattering of teenage cadets. There wasn't much heroism or bloodshed, and it was all over in 24 hours. But it was the beginning of a power struggle between competing revolutionaries, and, in the next part of his history, coming to BBC Radio 4 in the Summer, Martin Sixsmith will describe how the Bolsheviks would consolidate their monopoly on power. They would create a repressive Communist state that would last for over seventy years until it was, in 1991, overturned.

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Matthew Brzezinski - Red Moon Rising; Sputnik and the Hidden Rivals That Ignited the Space Age (2008 ).jpg

At first glance, abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard seems a quaintly eccentric idea, but Texas congressman Paul presents a plan to eliminate our country's central bank, and return to a private banking system, that's both serious and plausible. The questionable aspects involve Paul's predicted results: not only will ending the Fed eliminate inflation (the government cannot print more money than it has gold reserves), but also business booms and busts, wars, income inequality, trade imbalances and the growth of government. Further, and perhaps most important, it would "disempower the secretive cartel of powerful money managers who exercise disproportionate influence over the conduct of public policy." Paul tends to gloss over those periods in history, including the Panic of 1907, in which private banking and the gold standard were law: "the bad reputation of nineteenth century American banking... is largely the result of... propaganda agitating for the creation of the Fed." With respect to "secretive cartels," Paul takes up the interesting question of whether J.P. Morgan is in fact preferable to Ben Bernanke. An engaging response to big-government solutions for the financial crisis, this knowledgeable and opinionated look at U.S. economics, from a firebrand public servant, should provoke much thought.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
"Rarely has a single book not only challenged, but decisively changed my mind. "
--Arlo Guthrie

"Everyone must read this book--Congressmen and college students, Democrats and Republicans--all Americans."
--Vince Vaughn

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Matthew Brzezinski - Red Moon Rising; Sputnik and the Hidden Rivals That Ignited the Space Age (2007 ).jpg

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Audiobook - Matthew Brzezinski - Red Moon Rising; Sputnik and the Hidden Rivals That Ignited the Spa ce Age (2007) Read by Charles Stransky (694m23s).mp3

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Karl Tobien - Dancing Under the Red Star; The Extr aordinary Story of Margaret Werner, the Only Ameri can Woman to Survive Stalin's Gulag (2006).jpg

Communism - Karl Tobien - Dancing Under the Red Star The Extraordi...the Only American Woman to Survive Stalins Gulag 2006.jpg

Margaret Werner (1921-1997), an American citizen living in the Soviet Union, was 17 years old when the secret police came for her father, whom she never saw again. Left destitute, she and her mother fought extreme cold and near starvation, taking whatever jobs they could find. Seven years later, in 1943, the police came for Margaret. Accused of espionage, she was sentenced to 10 years' hard labor. Tobien, her son, describes the appalling privations and backbreaking work in her Siberian prison camp, but also the prisoners' strong friendships and the dance troupe the women created with their guards' approval. A recurring theme is Margaret's growth in faith, culminating in her conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1991. Tobien tells his mother's story simply and chronologically, as if to a young audience. His use of a first-person point-of-view seems gratuitous, since he rarely explores Margaret's inner life. Despite the ever-present backdrop of Stalinist Russia, WWII and postwar communism in Russia and East Germany, this is less an analysis of cold war politics than a tribute to a woman who survived unimaginable horrors with her optimistic spirit intact.

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