Tweet

@Levitt_Matt

More from @KyleWOrton

Kyle Orton

@KyleWOrton

29 Sep

#Russia's civil war was to all intents and purposes over by autumn 1919, though the main phase of fighting only ended a year later. A pocket of resistance against the Bolsheviks held out until June 1923, however <Thread>

The defeat of #Denikin's offensive on Moscow in the west and #Kolchak's offensive from the east in late 1919 ended any serious threat to the Bolsheviks. Kolchak was murdered in FEB 1920 and the remnants of Denikin's Army, now under #Wrangel, evacuated from Crimea in NOV 1920.

In Sept. 1921, Yakutia rose in revolt and a Volunteer Army commander, Mikhail Korobeinikov took the lead, expanding the pocket, and in March 1922 announced the establishment of an interim administration, the "Provisional Yakut Regional People's Government".

Read 13 tweets

Kyle Orton

@KyleWOrton

28 Sep

During the trial of the final #Nazi defendant at Nuremberg, Hans Fritzsche, the #Soviet prosecutor brought up Fritzsche's radio broadcast justifying the attack on Poland. Fritzsche responded: it had been "a matter of great satisfaction" that the Soviet press said the same thing.

#pt: from Francine Hirsch's wonderful book, "Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg" (2020), pp. 322-23.

Hans Fritzsche was only on trial at Nuremberg in the first place because the Soviets demanded it as a substitute for Goebbels. Everyone understood that Fritzsche just did not measure up in terms of responsibility to the other Nazis being tried.

Read 7 tweets

Kyle Orton

@KyleWOrton

15 Sep

In Sept. 1971, the KGB's Oleg Lyalin defected from the London Embassy and told the British government about the really alarming (and some quite bizarre) "special actions" the Soviets had been planning on the West, precipitating the mass expulsion Soviet spies in Operation FOOT.

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1438265324097396748

The interesting thing is that this meant the West was quite well aware, from near the beginning of Andropov's renewed campaign, that Soviet terrorism was a very real phenomenon, and yet down to the end most in the West considered it a "conspiracy theory"

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1438265324097396748

The KGB recruitment of Wadi Haddad of the PFLP in 1970 was the turning point: his Palestinian group was given weapons that even Eastern Bloc states hadn't received and given tasks as various as kidnapping CIA officers and assassinating Soviet defectors.

Read 7 tweets

Kyle Orton

@KyleWOrton

15 Sep

#Pakistan's claim to be a victim of terrorism rests on groups like #TTP ("Pakistani Taliban"), but it was the Army/ISI who created the jihadist emirate in North Waziristan where this group was formed, with the active and ongoing assistance of the ISI's loyal Haqqani Network.

#pt: "The Foutainhead of Jihad", pp. 164-5.

The #Haqqani-run enclave in North Waziristan, operating with the full backing of #Pakistan's ISI, not only nurtured the #TTP the Pakistanis would later portray as a mortal foe, it of course supported the "Afghan" #Taliban and was where #Al_Qaeda organised many post-9/11 plots.

Read 9 tweets

Kyle Orton

@KyleWOrton

14 Sep

#IS established itself in "Af-Pak" by building off the Afghan Salafist community that took root in eastern areas via the Arab presence there beginning many decades ago. The Salafis had some second thoughts, but the #Taliban is now pressuring them, too. trtworld.com/opinion/the-dy…

#pt: The Taliban made an approach to IS-Centre in 2015 to ask that ISKP not be used to open another jihadist front, since this would distract from the war with the West. No dice. IS didn't even bother to reply.

#pt: The original Pakistani, mostly TTP, leadership of #ISKP was killed off quite quickly and replaced with Afghan Salafis. The current leader, though, Dr. Shahab al-Muhajir, seems to be a former Haqqani Network operative, and has peeled away other parts of that network.

Read 4 tweets

Kyle Orton

@KyleWOrton

13 Sep

The lengths the #KGB went to in trying to destroy #Solzhenitsyn even after he had been expelled from the Soviet Union are extraordinary, and not entirely irrational: they understood the danger he posed to them.

<Mini thread drawn from "The Sword and the Shield", pp. 312, 317-21>

Andropov first tried to expel Solzhenitsyn in autumn 1971, but Brezhnev listened to interior minister Nikolai Shchelokov, who said the great writer should be co-opted rather than persecuted. Andropov did not forget this, and later witch-hunted Shchelokov until he killed himself.

In late 1973, after Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov wrote an open letter that encouraged Congress to override the Nixon-Kissinger administration by passing Jackson-Vanik that linked Soviet trade privileges to human rights, Brezhnev said the KGB should have cracked down from the start.

Read 9 tweets

Share this page!

Kyle Orton

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @KyleWOrton

Kyle Orton

Kyle Orton

Kyle Orton

Kyle Orton

Kyle Orton

Kyle Orton

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?