THE SOVIET GULAGS 🧵

Established after the Bolsheviks took power in 1919, the gulags were forced labor camps where at least 1 million people died over the next 50 years. During the days of Joseph Stalin, one wrong word could end with the secret police at your door, ready to drag you off to a Soviet gulag – one of the many forced labor camps where inmates worked until they died.

For those that want to read the whole Carlson-Putler interview (I don't know why), I present it here to you in all its "glory". All 21 pages of it.

Maybe some historian might find it useful in 100 years time?

#RussiaIsATerroristState #PutinWarCriminal
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How it started - Hitlerjugend. How it's going - Putlerjugend. #RussiaIsAFascistState





thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/20…

Pictures from the book “Drawings from the #GULAG” by Danzig Baldaev, a retired Soviet prison guard. Through his eyes, we get to see some of the brutal acts of Soviet genocide performed on those imprisoned. How can anyone want to glorify Stalin?

In early December 1930, a Congress of the Folk Singers of Soviet occupied Ukraine, with 337 delegates from different oblasts, was held at the Opera Theatre in Kharkiv. The stated objective of the congress was to involve the folk singers in the building of socialism and to give them new ideological priorities while distancing them from their traditions.

In the wake of the 2013 Euromaidan protests and the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the decommunization laws were signed by then-President Petro Poroshenko OTD May 15, 2015. Under these laws, streets, towns, and institutions with Soviet-inspired monikers were renamed, and all Soviet flags, emblems, and military regalia were banned in Ukraine. This ban extended to any imagery bearing the likenesses of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

ruZZia wants everyone to remember the "Good Ol' Days" under Soviet rule. Here are some examples of of those days.

Ukrainians were frequently targeted for mass executions, deportations and violence by Stalin's Soviet regime. The citizens of one Ukrainian town, Vinnytsia, were virtually wiped out between the bloody years of 1937 and 1938. When the extent of the massacre first came to light in 1943, a total of 9,439 bodies were found, with most indicating that a .22-caliber gun had been used to kill them execution-style. Of these corpses, 169 were identified as women.

Ukrainian Cossack hetman Pylyp Orlyk in 1710 created what is now argued to be one of the world's first constitutions. The document he published on the date of his election as hetman was an incredibly progressive document for its time. Orlyk’s constitution was a treaty between the Hetman, the Cossacks and the whole Ukrainian population, stating rights and responsibilities & also establishing a democratic standard for the separation of powers in government between the legislative, executive & judiciary branches.

What's the best way to run an undetectable "espionage front"?

First, create a "religion" based on something that is accepted worldwide.

Second, recruit the heads of that church from an established spy agency.

Third, set up a hierarchy based on money, power and corruption.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… And to try to stop this becomes problematic.

If you don't believe - you're a heretic.

If you want to take it down - your against "freedom of religion".

It's a nicely thought out operation.

df.news/en/2022/11/26/…

While Ukrainians are getting ready for Easter, some talented ones are pulling out the bee's wax and coloured dyes and are starting to write their own pysanky. What is a pysanka? It is an elaborately decorated Ukrainian Easter egg used for decorating Easter baskets. Chicken eggs were traditionally used, but of recent years, goose and ostrich eggs have been used as well.

🧵 "Metropolitan" Pavel Lebed ran the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine's most important monastery, which was forcibly taken over by the ruZZian Orthodox "Church" by its Ukrainian branch (UOC-MP). When the Ukrainian government declined to renew the Moscow Patriarchate lease on the monastery, Pavel declined to leave.
apnews.com/article/kyiv-m…

🧵The Soviet Union — unlike past imperialist states — was to be a "harmonious multiethnic construction" under Stalin. "Friendship of the peoples" was one of its most ubiquitous slogans, and Soviet leaders claimed they had solved the "nationalities problem". However, between 1939 and his death in 1953, Stalin implemented policies of forced resettlement, or deportations, against many of the Soviet Union's ethnic minorities.

The Ukrainian bandura is more than a national musical instrument - it is the voice of Ukraine. It is unique to the culture of Ukraine and its history is closely tied to centuries of suppression and occupation of the Ukrainian people. The bandura combines the musical characteristics of both the lute and the harp. So it produces a sound similar to a harpsichord but with a wider range and tone.

Yesterday , was the 8th Anniversary of Boris Nemtsov's murder in Moscow. He was shot dead in close proximity to the Kremlin. No one has been brought to trial over the murder.

A reminder of some of many deaths of Putler's true opposition. 🧵 April 2003 - Liberal politician Sergei Yushenkov assassinated near his Moscow home.

Lesya Ukrainka was born OTD February 25, 1871, in Novhorod-Volynsky, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), in a family of intellectuals, political activists, and writers. Her mother, a feminist, wrote short stories for children and poetry in Ukrainian. At eight years old, she wrote her first poem, “Hope” for her Aunt Olena who was arrested for her anti-Tsarist politics. At twelve she contracted tuberculosis of the bone.

Apologists for Stalin to this day insist that the Holodomor cannot be called a genocide because approximately 3 million people died during the course of it in the territory of the Russian Federation. But they ignore the fact that a large share of these were ethnically Ukrainian. Census data and the decrees of the Soviet government show that Stalin used the Holodomor not only to destroy the peasantry and weaken the Ukrainian nation in Ukraine but also to destroy the large Ukrainian populations in the Russian SFSR and especially in Kuban.

Russia’s myth of being anti-fascist.
(A thread🧵)

The effect of portraying the Russians as the great enemy of fascism has been the portrayal of the Russians as the “eternal enemy” of fascism. Even under the Soviet Union, that was not entirely true. The most obvious case in point here is that for nearly one-third of the duration of what we call WWII, the Russians under the Soviet system were not enemies, but in fact allies of the Germans.

The mass graves of Sandarmokh. (Thread 🧵)

“The condemned were brought by car to a forest. There, deep pits were dug and the prisoners were told to lay down face down. After that they were shot”. So read the notes of the interrogation of NKVD executioner Mikhail Matveyev, who personally executed 1111 prisoners from the notorious Solovki island camp in Karelia in the Russian Far North. It took him four days to execute the whole group.

Putler's regime is not just a bunch of genocidal terrorists. They are also a well oiled kleptocratic mafia.

A THREAD OF RESOURCES. 🧵 lowyinstitute.org/the-interprete…

Donbas region: How the Ukrainian Kozaks tamed the wild steppe.

A THREAD 🧵 Bakhmut. As a complete settlement, it was founded by Kozaks of the Izyum Sloboda regiment in 1680-1690. It was an important salt mining point.