They are closed for Russians, in the West, as it turned out, they are enemies, the security forces are ordered not to travel abroad, politicians are not allowed to go there. Moreover, they tightened currency exchange and control over foreign accounts. All this makes us think about the prospects for real freedom of movement of our fellow citizens across the border. We decided to remember how the Soviet "Iron Curtain" fell over Russia. And you can make comparisons yourself.
Once upon a time, the "Iron Curtain" could even be felt with your hands. A long time ago, such a metal structure was used in theaters: in the event of a fire on the stage, a special metal curtain fell, which blocked the audience in the hall from the raging flame. However, initially a purely technical term over the past 90 years has been used in a completely different interpretation. In reference books, this phrase is called a political metaphor, implying the political, economic and cultural isolation of the country (in this case, the USSR) from other states.
The right to be called the inventor of the winged expression could be challenged by several people. One of them is the Russian philosopher Vasily Rozanov, who in 1917, in his book “The Apocalypse of Our Time”, expressed the opinion that after the October Revolution, an iron curtain descended over Russian history, like in a theater, “with a clang, a creak”.
Soon the same metaphor for the isolation of communist Russia was used in a speech at the Paris Peace Conference by then Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau.
This phrase was most loudly heard in the famous Fulton speech of the British Prime Minister Churchill, which he delivered in 1946, and which marked the beginning of the decades of the Cold War.
In reality, the "Iron Curtain" descended around the world's first state of workers and peasants in the mid-1920s. Since then, for the vast majority of people living in the "Red", all other states have become an inaccessible mirage.
It was impossible to get to it: the border was locked. The only exceptions were rare lucky ones - diplomats, scientists, musicians, high-class engineers ... And also the "Stalin's falcons" - Soviet pilots who became famous for their unique extra-long flights. (In 1937, the ANT-25 aircraft, controlled by a crew under the command of Valery Chkalov, managed to fly from the USSR through the North Pole to America. Three pilots - Chkalov, Baidukov and Belyakov - for this feat, in addition to state awards, also received a thousand US dollars, for which they purchased in the same place, in the United States, miracles of technology unprecedented for the USSR - household refrigerators and "fancy" American radios.)
Valery Chkalov
The case of citizen Lebedev
Former gentlemen - "exploiters", "bourgeois scientists", "adherents of hostile ideologies", who even before the advent of the "Iron Curtain" managed to go into exile (and some of them were almost kicked there by the new government from the Land of Soviets), could now savor your luck.
Well, those who hesitated to leave the cordon, henceforth had to put up with the situation of eternally persecuted second-class people for the rest of their lives. Or try to find some "exclusive" ways to leave the "Bolshevik paradise".
Some have tried to do it semi-legally. For example, the heiress of the famous merchant dynasty, Vera Ivanovna Firsanova (who owned the Petrovsky Passage and the Sandunovsky baths in Moscow before the revolution) managed to get from Belokamennaya to Moscow in 1928 with a theater troupe that went abroad on tour. In order for such a journey to become possible, Firsanova had to join the staff of the theater's technical staff - either in the wardrobe department, or in the prop shop ... Naturally, such a metamorphosis of the eminent merchant's wife could not have happened if it were not for the generous remuneration received from her by someone then from the theater administration.
Vera Firsanova
Once in France, Vera Ivanovna stayed there. And a few years later she tried to rescue her husband Viktor Lebedev from Russia. An official appeal to the Soviet embassy unexpectedly gave a favorable result. In 1932, all the necessary documents for leaving the USSR were issued for Viktor Nikolayevich, he even bought tickets for an express train from to Western Europe ... Was such a “happy ending” really possible in the “country of the Chekists”? The subsequent course of events showed that this was only an illusion.
In the morning on the eve of departure, citizen V.N. Lebedev was found strangled in his apartment. The money and jewelry that he had with him, prepared for transportation abroad, disappeared. They didn’t even try to look for the villains who committed this crime, and “heart attack” was indicated as the cause of death in the medical report. (I wonder if any of the valiant OGPU officers were awarded for a successful operation to prevent the export of Lebedev's capital from the country?).
In those years, of course, there were also attempts to illegally cross the border. The classics of this genre were immortalized in the finale of their famous novel The Golden Calf by Ilf and Petrov. They described Ostap Bender's attempt to cross the cordon right across the virgin snow, with cash capital, prudently "converted" into liquidity - a luxurious fur coat, golden cigarette cases and "trinkets" ...
The end of this operation for the Grand Combiner turned out, as we remember, very sad. Although, in reality, some of his followers still succeeded in such operations... However, in fairness, it must be said that many of the illegal immigrants simply died when they tried to cross the border - they drowned in rivers, froze, ran into bullets from border guards...
The certificate, prepared in 1930, mentions that in the first six months alone, on the northwestern section of the border, the Chekists suppressed more than 20 attempts to illegally leave the USSR, in which 7 violators of the border regime were killed.
Record holder Kanafiev
Cases of flight and attempted flight of Soviet citizens behind the "Iron Curtain" were regularly noted in the post-war years.
The most resonant became, of course, the stories associated with the hijacking. The first such "air breakthrough" was a terrorist act carried out in 1970. Two Lithuanians, the father and son of Brazinskasa, hijacked an An-24 aircraft with 46 passengers on board, performing a regular Batumi-Sukhumi flight. During the hijacking of the plane by the Brazinskas, 19-year-old flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko was killed, two crew members and one passenger were injured. The airliner hijacked by criminals landed in Trabzon, Turkey. After serving two years in prison for their "feat", the Brazinskas subsequently managed to move to America.
Pranas Brazinskas
For the followers of these two Lithuanians, attempts to “fly away” from the USSR on a plane with captured hostages ended in most cases unsuccessfully: they were either “taken” on the ground by the fighters of our special detachments, or returned from other countries to their homeland as a result of diplomatic negotiations.
There were other, more original cases of attempts by Soviet citizens to overcome the Iron Curtain.
Surprising perseverance in his desire to escape "from the Scoop" was shown by a resident of Simferopol Alexander Kanafiev. In the late 1970s - mid-1980s, he tried several times to "go to the West." The idea of trying to get to the Turkish shores along the Black Sea in an inflatable boat almost ended in his death, but the 25-year-old graduate of the Faculty of Physical Education did not leave his dream.
Some time later, he managed to "leak" through the Soviet-Romanian border and even get to the capital - but there he was detained by the Romanian special services and handed over to the Russian side.
Alexander still managed to escape ... And almost immediately he again attempted to cross the border - this time from the Azerbaijan SSR to, but then the border guards quickly "tied up" the malicious violator.
Such a stubborn unwillingness of a young man to build a “bright communist future” together with all Soviet citizens was regarded as a clear sign of mental illness, and Alexander spent the next few years in compulsory treatment in one of the psychiatric special institutions. Coming out of it, in the summer of 1986 he once again risked crossing the Soviet-Romanian border. On the territory of the "fraternal socialist country" he was again detained and returned to the Soviet side. Alexander's "reward" for another test of the "Iron Curtain" for strength was a prison term, which was shortened only by the perestroika that gained momentum in the country.
A lot of commotion was caused in the summer of 1959 by the flight "to the capitalists" of the Soviet Baltic officer Nikolai Artamonov. When the latest destroyer destroyer “Crushing” was stationed in the Polish port of Gdynia, its commander Captain III rank Artamonov, taking advantage of the opportunity, fled with his Polish mistress to Sweden - right on the command boat.
At the same time, in order for the sailor-minder to fulfill his order, the captain took a pistol from his holster and threatened the sailor that he would shoot him. (A noteworthy touch to this story: when the boat reached one of the Swedish ports, Artamonov got out with his companion on the shore, and ordered the sailor to return back to the destroyer, since he supposedly "has nothing to do in the West.")
The defector immediately found himself under the tutelage of the CIA. Soon he received an American passport in the name of Nicholas George Shadrin and worked for 7 years in the analytical unit of American intelligence. The KGB officers, having come on the trail of a traitor, managed to recruit him, but later the ex-captain was suspected of a double game and decided to take him to Soviet territory. In the winter of 1975, the Chekists conducted a special operation: under a plausible pretext, they lured Artamonov to, and there, after injecting him with a certain drug, and bringing him into an unconscious state, they took him to Russia, hiding him in a car. However, the former captain of the III rank did not live to see the investigators at the Lubyanka: he died of an overdose of "disabling" agents shortly after crossing the Austrian-Czechoslovak border.
relatives for sale
From the 1970s, let's fast forward again 40-50 years ago.
Keeping citizens out of the country is, of course, a good way to protect the self-sufficiency of the young Soviet state, but troublesome and unprofitable. It is necessary to monitor, stop, commit “actions of coercive influence”, search for and confiscate valuables prepared for export over the cordon ... It is quite another matter for former Russians who have emigrated and are eager to get their less fortunate relatives out of the “Sovdepiya”. - These are ready to pay money for the salvation of loved ones. And all that remains for Soviet officials is to draw up papers, enter the appropriate ransom amounts in them, and receive currency for the Land of Soviets.
So some residents of the USSR turned into completely free "export goods". Such a profitable business, however, was very reminiscent of the slave trade and the “remnants of serfdom”, which were unanimously condemned by all revolutionaries. However, the Bolshevik rulers were not particularly scrupulous when it came to serious material benefits. They simply covered up such deals.
Very little is known about this article of Soviet "deliveries" abroad. However, thanks to the help of the Moscow history researcher Valery Lyubartovich, the author of these lines has the opportunity to acquaint the readers of "MK" with documents relating to the history of the ransom of the family of the Russified German Roman Prove from communist captivity.
Before the revolution, Roman Ivanovich Prove was known as one of the reputable Moscow entrepreneurs, he was on the boards of several large banks. Even after the December uprising of 1905, he - away from sin - transferred the bulk of the capital abroad, and in 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power, he hurried to leave for.
But in Soviet Russia, the daughter of Roman Ivanovich (who became Rudolf in the "nemetchina"), Evgenia, who was married to the nobleman Nikolai Redlich, remained. In the very first years of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Redlich family was evicted from their mansion in the center of Moscow, and a few years later, Evgenia Romanovna's husband was completely arrested as a "socially alien element." Perhaps for the elder Redlichs and their seven children, the matter would have ended very sadly if in 1933 Herr Prove had not applied through the USSR Embassy to the Soviet authorities with an official request to allow his daughter and her relatives to leave for permanent residence in Germany.
Such a statement did not in the least embarrass the responsible comrades in charge of foreign and domestic affairs in the Soviet people's commissariats. So what if Nikolai Redlich was arrested and convicted?! So what if this family goes to a country where fascism came to power?! - The main thing is that they pay good money for them!
The archives of the great-granddaughter of Rudolf Prove preserved papers drawn up more than 80 years ago when organizing the Redlichs' departure from Russia. This entire commercial operation was organized (apparently, for greater secrecy!) through the Berlin office of Intourist.
In a paper dated June 7, 1933, all the "overhead costs" associated with sending Evgenia Romanovna's family from the "bright kingdom of socialism" "under the heel of the brown plague" are scrupulously described.
Here, for example, for each of the older children, 1479 Reichsmarks had to be paid, of which 151 marks went to pay for travel in the third-class carriage of the Moscow-Berlin train, another 134 marks "with kopecks" were intended as compensation to the intermediary - "Intourist", well, the main part - 1194 Reichsmarks 26 pfennigs - was actually a ransom. (However, formally, this very impressive amount at that time was supposed to be transferred to the Soviet side, allegedly for issuing a passport.)
It should be noted that the “humanists” from the USSR in this case approached the assessment of citizens sold to the West in a differentiated way. Compared to adult family members, for minors, Andreas and Natalia were asked for half the price! (Truly, the market approach: these, large, - five, but these - small, but three!)
As a result, taking care of saving the daughter's family cost Rudolf Prove almost 12 thousand Reichsmarks. (In terms of the current price level, this amounts to an impressive amount - about 250 thousand dollars.) However, it should be recognized that the Bolsheviks honestly worked out the currency they received. - Already four months after the deal was closed, Herr Prove met his beloved Zhenya with her husband and children at the Berlin railway station.
As Valery Lyubartovich said, a similar story happened in the Osorgins family. Her husband, Georgy Osorgin, died in the Solovki camp in the autumn of 1929. And his wife Alexandra Mikhailovna, nee Princess Golitsyna, was redeemed a year later, along with two small children, by her relatives who settled in Paris. By the way, one of these children exchanged for currency, Mikhail Osorgin, later became a priest and for more than two decades was the rector of the Russian Orthodox Church in Rome. But what did they spend the money received by the Soviet side for the future shepherd of human souls?.. - Well, this currency, perhaps, also went to a good cause. Useful, for example, for the purchase of machine tools or medical equipment.
This terrible Rush
On the other side of the "Iron Curtain" were also going on - through his "fault" - curious things. In many leading capitalist countries, the local residents were diligently protected from the “communist infection” that could seep from the Soviet side.
In Canada, England, the Scandinavian countries very selectively allowed the penetration of objective information about life in the USSR - our films, books, magazines, pictures telling about Rush were offered to people in the West in very small quantities. (On the other hand, the production of American action films was launched on a large scale, where the main negative characters were the Bolshevik murderous monsters, ruthless Russian military leaders, insidiously trying to destroy the countries of “true democracy” ...) Tours in the USSR were not encouraged: potential travelers were told all sorts of horrors about that what dangers and hardships await civilized Europeans in "Red Russia". As a result, those who nevertheless went on an “extreme voyage” to the Soviet Union, having returned safely from there, acquired the halo of real heroes in the eyes of their compatriots.
Another very indicative, but little-known fact, which happened to be heard from Alexander Plevako, the former editor-in-chief of the Foreign Broadcasting of the USSR (more often called Moscow Radio by listeners).
- We are talking about broadcasting from the Soviet Union to an audience in the United States, - said Alexander Sergeevich. “The Americans like to say that, unlike the Soviets who jammed the Voice of America, they never interfered with our radio transmissions from Moscow. However, it is not. They just found another, not as obvious as the work of "jammers", a way to isolate most of their citizens from Soviet propaganda. Moscow Radio has always broadcast its programs on short waves, and for many years in America they deliberately slowed down the production of short-wave radios. They were produced in small quantities and were very expensive ...
The "Iron Curtain" began to gradually "dilapidate" along with a decrease in the intensity of the passions of the "cold war". At the end of the 1980s, when Gorbachev's Perestroika was in full swing in the USSR, it collapsed and crumbled.
The policy of isolation was mutual. In the Encyclopedia Britannica and Western journalism, the prevailing opinion is that the "curtain" was erected by the USSR in the course of its self-isolation policy pursued by its leadership. In Soviet journalism, attention was drawn to the West's policy of isolating the USSR.
The term "Iron Curtain" was used in a propaganda sense before Churchill by Georges Clemenceau (1919) and Joseph Goebbels (1945). As for the isolation of the Soviet state, it began back in 1917-1920. In 1917, the expression was first used by the Russian philosopher Vasily Rozanov, who compared the events of the October Revolution with a theatrical performance, after which a bulky iron curtain fell over Russian history “with a clang, a creak”. The beginning of strengthening the self-isolation of the Soviet power dates back to 1934-1939.
The Iron Curtain began to crumble towards the end of the 1980s as a result of the policy of glasnost and openness pursued in the USSR and Eastern European countries (see European picnic). The destruction of the Berlin Wall became a symbol of the fall of the Iron Curtain. The official date for the end of this period was January 1, 1993, when, already in the post-Soviet era, the law “On the procedure for leaving the USSR” came into force, which actually canceled the permissive visa of those leaving the OVIR and allowed free travel abroad.
Story
One of the earliest popularizers of the Iron Curtain theory was the German politician Joseph Goebbels. In his article "2000" ("Das Jahr 2000") in the newspaper "Das Reich (English) Russian"On February 23, 1945, he expressed confidence that after the conquest of Germany, the USSR would fence off Eastern and South-Eastern Europe from the rest of it with an" iron curtain ". It is also known that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Third Reich, Schwerin von Krosig, on May 2, 1945, said the following on the radio: “Through the streets of the still unoccupied part of Germany, the stream of desperate and hungry people, pursued by fighter-bombers, is heading west. They flee from indescribable horror. An iron curtain is approaching from the east, behind which destruction invisible to the world is going on. The expression "Iron Curtain" got its modern meaning thanks to Winston Churchill, who used it in his Fulton speech. At the same time, it is known that he used this expression as early as June 4, 1945 in a telegram to Harry Truman.
However, it has existed before. As early as 1904, in The Food of the Gods, HG Wells used the expression "iron curtain" to describe "enforced privacy".
In relation to Russian history, in the book "The Apocalypse of Our Time" (1917), the philosopher Vasily Rozanov (1856-1919) wrote as follows:
With a clang, a creak, a screech, an iron curtain descends over Russian History.
- The show is over.
The audience stood up.
It's time to put on your coats and go home.
We looked back.
But there were no fur coats, no houses.
After World War II
The powerful forces behind Harry Truman proclaimed a policy of unbridled anti-communism and war hysteria. This affected everything, and in particular the question of the repatriation of Soviet citizens. With a roar, the descending American iron curtain cut off from the Motherland our compatriots, brought by an evil fate to West Germany.
In practice, the population of the country was deprived of the opportunity to travel abroad without the permission of the authorities, and receive information from the outside world that is not authorized by the authorities (see Jamming). Any contact with foreigners had to be authorized by the authorities, even if the Soviet citizen simply wanted to practice his knowledge of a foreign language. Marriage to a citizen of another country faced many obstacles and was often practically impossible.
Individual attempts to overcome the "Iron Curtain" amounted to "non-return" from an authorized trip abroad. Attempts to emigrate with the whole family were possible only to go to Israel, and then on a limited quota and after overcoming numerous obstacles (see Refusenik) or if one of the spouses was a foreigner. Other reasons for emigration were not considered. In extreme cases, attempts to break out of the borders of the USSR led to crimes (see Ovechkin family, Capture of a bus with children in Ordzhonikidze on December 1, 1988, etc.)
Memory
see also
Notes
- The philosophy of the Cold War matured during the Second World War, or what is behind Churchill's Fulton speech // RIA Novosti Doctor of Historical Sciences Valentin Falin:
It is somewhat strange that Churchill did not bother to clarify the origin of the cliché "Iron Curtain". Directly in front of the former prime minister, such a "curtain" was cut by Goebbels, who called on the Germans to resist the Russian invasion to the grave. Under the cover of the same “curtain”, the Nazis tried in 1945 to put together a “saving front of civilizers” against the Russian hordes. And if Churchill digs even deeper, he would know that the term "Iron Curtain" first came into use in Scandinavia, where workers in the early 1920s protested against the desire of their rulers to fence them off from the "heretical ideas" coming from the East. - Iron Curtain // Britannica
- On the origin of the term "Iron Curtain" // Encyclopedic Dictionary of winged words and expressions / Avt. V. Serov. - M.: Lokid-press, 2005.
The history of the Cold War is not only the history of the rivalry of two ideologies, but also the history of the rivalry of two economic systems, which in essence were antipodes to each other. What is remarkable about this topic?, It illuminates the beginning of what we will all witness in our lifetime. “Iron Curtain” - this expression was given life by a device used earlier in the theater - an iron curtain, which, in order to protect the auditorium from fire, was lowered onto the stage in the event of a fire on it. This was very advisable in an era when open fire was forced to be used on the stage to illuminate it - candles, oil lamps, etc. For the first time, such an iron curtain began to be used in France - in the city of Lyon in the late 80s - early 90s gg. 18th century."
Vadim Serov.
Let's remember how it was...
"AT. I. Lenin proclaims Soviet power. V.A. Serov, 1962
It is generally accepted that the well-known "Iron Curtain" descended on the country of the Soviets in the 1920s, roughly speaking, as soon as the USSR was created, they immediately covered it with a curtain so that dirt from the west would not fly. I'm afraid to disappoint some, but it's not.
The country of the Soviets existed, developed, and there was no self-isolation, and it did not have closedness, on the contrary, the Soviet government made every effort to eliminate this closeness. For this, famous writers, artists and other figures from all over the world were invited to the USSR. The purpose of all this was to break the veil of lies that enveloped us in the West, and to give an opportunity to assess what is happening in our country more or less truthfully.
In addition to writers and artists, ordinary people also came to the USSR: some of them were invited as specialists for a large salary, and some came on their own, for ideological reasons (people wanted to build the society of the future with their own hands). Naturally, after some time, returning to their homeland, they all brought with them a baggage of information about the country of the Soviets.
But the Western powers did not attach much importance to this, they no longer saw Russia as a serious adversary for the coming decades, although they did not stop their attempts to snatch an extra piece from us (a campaign of 14 states).
“Russia, which was a civilization of the Western type - the least organized and most shaky of the great powers - is now a modern civilization in extremis (lat. with its last gasp - ed. note). … History knows nothing like the collapse experienced by Russia. If this process continues for another year, the collapse will be final. Russia will turn into a country of peasants; cities will be deserted and turned into ruins, railroads will be overgrown with grass. With the disappearance of the railroads, the last remnants of the central government will disappear.”
HG Wells, 1920
A. Hitler. 1924
However, the explosive growth rates of the USSR greatly frightened the West, showing them that they had greatly miscalculated on our account, even taking into account the insertion of sticks into all our wheels and wheels.
Then, the trump ace of the West, Adolf Hitler, was pulled out of his sleeve (you can read more about this in the article “The Shock USSR. Chronicles of Stakhanov”) and a grandiose war was unleashed, hitherto unseen by mankind.
“In the event that the Germans gain the upper hand, then the Russians must be helped, and if things turn out differently, then the Germans must be helped. And let them kill each other as much as possible."
G. Truman, New York Times, 1941
As they say (they, in the West) - "nothing personal, just business."
Bear trap
"Who controls the country's money is the absolute master of all industry and commerce."
James Abram Garfield, 20th President of the United States, 1881
In July 1944, at the very height of the war, the international Bretton Woods conference was held in the United States (New Hampshire). The meaning of this conference boiled down to two main points: the dollar is the only currency that is now allowed to have a gold content, all other countries must refuse to back their currencies with gold, introducing dollar backing instead (buy the dollar to print their currency), and the second point - the dollar becomes the main settlement currency (all international trade must now be conducted only for dollars).
The USSR signs the enslaving Bretton Woods agreement, its ratification (approval) is scheduled for December 1945.
Here we will deviate a little from the main topic, since it is worth mentioning one more important fact.
April 12, 1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is assassinated. The reason for the murder was his friendly relations with the USSR and Stalin personally. This event shows once again that US presidents are just pawns in a big game.
“We were closest to equal cooperation when Roosevelt was in America, and Stalin was with us.”
S.E. Kurginyan, political scientist.
Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran
Here are the words of Roosevelt:
“Under the leadership of Marshal Joseph Stalin, the Russian people showed such an example of love for the motherland, firmness of spirit and self-sacrifice, which the world has not yet known. After the war, our country will always be happy to maintain good neighborly relations and sincere friendship with Russia, whose people, saving themselves, help to save the whole world from the Nazi threat.
Personal message to Stalin on the results of the Tehran conference (held: November 28-December 1, 1943):
"I believe that the conference was very successful, and I am sure that it is a historic event, confirming our ability not only to wage war, but also to work for the cause of the world to come in full harmony."
“In simple terms, I got on very well with Marshal Stalin. This person combines a huge, unyielding will and a healthy sense of humor; I think the soul and heart of Russia have their true representative in him. I believe that we will continue to get along well with him and with the entire Russian people.
“Since the last meeting in Tehran, we have been working in really good cooperation with the Russians, and I think the Russians are quite friendly. They are not trying to swallow all of Europe and the rest of the world.”
The quotes speak for themselves.
Exactly 2 hours and 24 minutes after the death of Roosevelt, his place is taken by US Vice President and ardent anti-communist Harry Truman. Literally into Russian, "Truman" is translated as "real man" (English "true man") =)) , but this is a joke.
The first thing Truman does is forbid the execution of any instructions from the previous Roosevelt administration.
On April 23, 1945, at a meeting of the White House, Truman would say: “Enough, we are no longer interested in an alliance with the Russians, and therefore we may not fulfill the agreements with them. We will solve the problem of Japan without the help of the Russians.”
From this moment on, any friendliness can be forgotten.
On the eve of the Potsdam Conference (held: July 17 - August 2, 1945), Truman receives a coded message: “The operation took place this morning. The diagnosis is not quite complete yet, but the results seem to be satisfactory and already exceeding expectations.” It was a message about the successful test of the atomic bomb. And on July 21, US Secretary of War Stimson, who accompanied Truman to the conference, receives photographs of the tests and shows them to the president.
And Truman goes on the offensive.
The Big Three in Potsdam
During the conference, he tries to hint to Stalin that the United States has nuclear weapons.
Churchill describes the scene this way: “We stood in twos and threes before dispersing. I was perhaps five yards away and followed this important conversation with keen interest. I knew what the president was going to say. It was extremely important to know what impression this would make on Stalin.
A little later, Churchill would approach Truman: "How did it go?" I asked. "He didn't ask a single question," the president replied.
And on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States carries out two nuclear attacks on Japanese cities - on the city of Hiroshima (up to 166 thousand dead) and on the city of Nagasaki (up to 80 thousand dead).
“Military and civilians, men and women, old men and youth, were killed indiscriminately by the atmospheric pressure and heat radiation of the explosion ... The said bombs used by the Americans, in their cruelty and terrifying effects, far exceed poison gases or any other weapon, the use of which forbidden.
Japan protests against the US violation of internationally recognized principles of warfare, violated both by the use of the atomic bomb and by earlier incendiary bombings that killed the elderly, women and children, destroyed and burned Shinto and Buddhist temples, schools, hospitals, residential areas, etc. d..
Now they have used this new bomb, which has a much more destructive effect than any other weapon used hitherto. This is a new crime against humanity and civilization.”
According to an American report from 1946, there was no military necessity for the use of atomic bombs:
“Based on a detailed examination of all the facts and after interviews with surviving Japanese officials, in the opinion of this Study, definitely before December 31, 1945, and most likely before November 1, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped. and the USSR would not have entered the war, and even if the invasion of the Japanese islands had not been planned and prepared.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Americans planned subsequent atomic bombings of Japan, but later decided that it was more expedient not to waste bombs as they were created, but to start accumulating them.
The bombings were an act of intimidation. The message to Stalin here is unambiguous: ratify the Bretton Woods agreement or the bombs may fly into you, by accident.
On September 4, 1945, the US Joint Military Planning Committee prepared memorandum No. 329: "to select approximately 20 of the most important targets suitable for strategic atomic bombing of the USSR and in territory controlled by it." As the arsenal increased, the number of cities was planned to increase. By that time, the USSR did not have not only such weapons, but even a strategic bomber capable of long-range flights.
December 1945 came. The USSR flatly refused to ratify the Bretton Woods agreement.
But there were no atomic strikes on the USSR. Stalin too well weighed all the pros and cons.
One of the important reasons for the failed attack was the Americans themselves, namely their supply to us under Lend-Lease.
From 1941 to 1943, more than 4,500 Bell P-39 Airacobra fighters were delivered to the USSR by the Allies.
And since the middle of 1944, approximately 2,400 R-63 Kincobra attack fighters, the best American fighters at the end of the war, were delivered to the USSR, which were a modification of the aforementioned R-39s. The Kinkobrams failed to take part in the war with Germany, and practically the same in the war with Japan.
Thus, it turned out that by the end of the war we were armed with a full set of the latest American fighters (I think good relations with Roosevelt played a role here), and all atomic bombs, at that time, were delivered using long-range aviation, vulnerable to fighters.
So it turns out that the Americans protected us from themselves.
R-63 "Kinkobra"
America did not have the opportunity to fight us in a fair fight, even joining forces with Europe. The Soviet Union by this time was no longer too tough for them. So the West is beginning to build up its joint military power with all its might in order to bring it down on the USSR as soon as possible. The USSR, however, had only to strengthen its air defense and speed up work on its nuclear program.
The curtain falls
"The most important thing is to choose the right enemy."
Joseph Goebbels.
W. Churchill, 1940
On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, speaking at Westminster College in Fulton (USA), divided the world into two poles: those who are with us and those who are with them, the so-called bipolar world. President Truman also attended the speech.
This speech was the official start of the Cold War.
Speech at Fulton
“Neither the effective prevention of war nor the permanent expansion of the influence of the World Organization can be achieved without the fraternal union of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and the British Empire and the United States.
[...]
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain descended on the continent. On the other side of the curtain are all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe - Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia. All these famous cities and the populations in their districts fell within what I call the Soviet sphere, all of them, in one form or another, not only under Soviet influence, but also under the considerable and increasing control of Moscow.
Almost all of these countries are run by police governments and have no true democracy.”
But Churchill was not the one who first introduced the concept of the "Iron Curtain" in relation to the Soviet Union. He borrowed this expression from an article by the Reich Minister of Public Education and Propaganda of Germany, Joseph Goebbels:
Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)
“If the Germans lay down their arms, the Soviets will occupy, according to the Yalta Conference, all of eastern and southeastern Europe, together with most of the Reich. An iron curtain will descend on the entire gigantic territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which the peoples will be exterminated.
[...]
All that will be left will be human raw materials, a dumb roaming mass of millions of desperate, proletarian working animals who will know only what the Kremlin will want about the rest of the world.
This article was written by Goebbels on February 25, 1945, immediately after the Yalta Conference, at which the fate of the world was decided.
With his article, Goebbels tried to bring seeds of discord into the ranks of the allies (anti-Hitler, of course) and desperately beg the West for the last chance for salvation, in the face of imminent death: “Now Bolshevism stands on the Oder. It all depends on the resilience of the German soldiers. Will Bolshevism be pushed to the east or will its fury cover all of Europe. Everything will be decided by us or will not be decided at all. That's all the alternatives."
Goebbels' article had its effect, but only after the fall of Germany and the death of its leadership. It was then that Churchill took the words of Goebbels for his speech in Fulton.
"If Churchill had dug deeper, he would have known that the term 'iron curtain' first came into use in Scandinavia, where workers in the early 1920s protested against their rulers' desire to fence them off from the 'heretical ideas' coming from the East."
Valentin Falin, Dr. Sciences.
We didn’t fight Hitler to transfer power to the Churchills
Caricature of Churchill in FultonStalin immediately reacted to Fulton's speech:
“It should be noted that Mr. Churchill and his friends are strikingly reminiscent in this respect of Hitler and his friends. Hitler started the business of starting the war by proclaiming the racial theory, declaring that only people who speak German constitute a full-fledged nation. are full-fledged nations, called to decide the fate of the whole world.
German racial theory led Hitler and his friends to the conclusion that the Germans, as the only complete nation, should dominate other nations. The English racial theory leads Mr. Churchill and his friends to the conclusion that the nations that speak the English language, as the only full-fledged ones, should dominate the rest of the nations of the world.
In fact, Mr. Churchill and his friends in England and the United States are presenting to the non-English speaking nations something like an ultimatum: accept our domination voluntarily, and then everything will be in order - otherwise war is inevitable.
Parable of the Good Samaritan
Good Samaritan. Artist: S.V. Bakalovich
The Cold War has been declared. The two next steps for the West were the proclamation of the Truman Doctrine (March 12, 1947) and the US Secretary of State George Marshall's Plan (1947-1948).
The meaning of the Marshall Plan was to provide financial assistance to countries affected during the Second World War.
Goodwill gesture, you say. Alas, no, in America "only business." Each of the countries that received aid had to sacrifice part of their sovereignty.
The Truman Doctrine, on the other hand, contained specific measures against the expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence and the spread of communist ideology (the "doctrine of containment" of socialism), as well as aimed at returning the USSR to its former borders ("the doctrine of rejection" of socialism).
The father of the founder of the "doctrine of containment" is the American ambassador to Moscow (of that time) George Kennan. It was he who formulated and outlined in his telegram of February 22, 1946, even before Churchill's speech at Fulton, all the main trends of the future Cold War. The telegram was called "long" because it contained about 8,000 words.
Here are excerpts from the telegram:
“Many foreign countries, especially those of Europe, are exhausted and intimidated by the experience of the past and are less interested in general freedom than in their own security. They seek advice, not responsibility. We must be able to offer them such assistance in a better way than the Russians. And if we don't do it, the Russians will.[...]
The Soviet regime is essentially a police regime, originating from the time of tsarist political intrigues and accustomed to thinking primarily in terms of police categories. This must not be overlooked when assessing the motives of the USSR. (Here we see an example of a myth so actively imposed by the West that it has already become a dogma that does not require proof - "Russia is a prison of peoples" - ed.)
It was George Kennan who formulated the idea that the Soviet Union should be defeated without entering into a direct military conflict with it. The bet here was on the depletion of the Soviet economy, because the economy of the West was much more powerful (why was it more powerful? Yes, because it developed while we were at war, and ate our gold).
Thus, by the middle of 1947, two types of foreign policy orientation were finally formed on the world map: pro-Soviet and pro-American.
Division of the world Cold war, mapAnd on April 4, 1949, countries that received economic assistance from the United States under the Marshall Plan sign the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO). Here's a two-move combo.
RDS-1 atomic bomb of the USSRBut already in August (29th) 1949, the USSR successfully tested its first atomic bomb - RDS-1. And two years before that, at the beginning of 1947, a long-range bomber capable of delivering nuclear charges was created in the USSR. It was the famous Tu-4.
A little about our bomber.
On August 3, 1947, an air parade in Tushino was opened by three Tu-4 aircraft, which was attended by foreign military representatives. At first, foreigners did not believe that Soviet planes were flying in the sky, because only the United States had such bombers, it was their latest development. But, as much as they would not like to admit it, the planes were Soviet. And the reason for the disbelief of foreigners was the similarity - the planes were exact copies of the American B-29 "Superfortress" (superfortress).
Tu-4 and V-29 bombers. Tu-4 (left) and B-29 (right)In 1949, the Tu-4 was put into service and became the first Soviet aircraft to carry nuclear weapons.
Thus, the position of the two forces in the world was relatively equalized. Now, with bare hands, it was no longer possible to take us.
Dangerous Soviet Union
Bear hurts Uncle SamTruman started the Cold War. And he began it out of fear, out of weakness, not out of strength. And why? After the Second World War, capitalism as a system was badly battered. He was discredited in the eyes of millions of people. He created the Great Depression. He created a terrible war. It gave rise to fascism and gas chambers. The Soviet Union was in this sense a real alternative. And this happened against the background when Europe was in ruins.
The Greek communists are about to come to power.
The Italian communists in 1943 had 7,000 people. In 1945 they had 1.5 million people.
And so Truman and his entourage had a fear that Stalin would take advantage of the opportunities that were opening up before him. Moreover, there was a civil war in China, where the communists won. India continued to fight for independence. There were wars of liberation already in Indonesia and Vietnam, or they were ready for it.
That is, the Soviet Union, as the Americans believed, could take advantage of this situation in order to create a real threat to American capitalism, the American way of life. The Soviet Union had to be stopped. That was the reason why the Americans started the Cold War.”
A.L. Adamashin, Russian diplomat.
The Soviet system was dangerous for the West not so much from an ideological point of view as from a methodological one. This mainly concerned the economic component.
“The principle of state policy (Soviet - ed.) was made a constant, albeit modest, improvement in the well-being of the population. This was expressed, for example, in large and regular price reductions (13 times in 6 years; from 1946 to 1950, bread fell three times, and meat 2.5 times). It was then that the specific stereotypes of mass consciousness, enshrined in the state ideology, arose: confidence in the future and the belief that life can only improve. The condition for this was the strengthening of the financial system of the state in close connection with planning. To preserve this system, the USSR took an important step: it refused to join the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and on March 1, 1950, it left the dollar zone altogether, transferring the definition of the ruble exchange rate to a gold basis. Large gold reserves were created in the USSR, the ruble was inconvertible, which made it possible to maintain very low domestic prices.”
S. Kara-Murza.
And now a little about the price reduction.
Today's youth probably thinks that it can't be that prices are constantly falling, because everyone knows that prices should rise - because inflation and a lot of other things, with complicated names that a simple person cannot pronounce.
But I have a question - who said that prices should constantly rise?
Let me explain why prices are going up.
Explanation on the fingersIn each country, there is a certain amount of goods and services (commodity equivalent, TE), the number of these goods and services is constantly growing or decreasing (depending on the situation in the country, but definitely not standing still) and there is a money supply, the purpose of which is to serve universal exchange equivalent (DE - cash equivalent). The money supply is always attached to goods and should approximately correspond to their quantity (that is, TE = DE). If there is more money than goods, this is called inflation (TE DE = deflation).
But the Central Bank (in this particular case, I mean the Fed) constantly prints extra money, in other words, it creates inflation (TE DE), and in order to equalize the “goods-money” ratio, the prices of goods were reduced (i.e., the solvency of money grew ).
“The essential features and requirements of the basic economic law of socialism could be formulated approximately as follows: ensuring the maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of the whole society through the continuous growth and improvement of socialist production on the basis of higher technology. Consequently: instead of ensuring maximum profits, - ensuring maximum meeting the material and cultural needs of society; instead of the development of production with interruptions from rise to crisis and from crisis to rise, - continuous growth of production ... "
Here it is clear even to the donkey that the Soviet model, from the time of Stalin, is out of competition, and therefore the only way to fight the Soviet system is to silence it, that is, the same notorious iron curtain.
Nothing personal, just business
“If the American people ever allow banks to control the issuance of money, the banks and corporations that grow up around it will take all their property from people until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States.
But why did the US choose such an illogical and highly unsustainable financial system? The answer is not complicated - "just business." The Fed is a private company, and the inflationary financial system is just a way for this company to make a profit.
“The main features and requirements of the basic economic law of modern capitalism could be formulated approximately as follows: ensuring the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of a given country ...”
And now I will explain what inflation is, as many do not understand the essence of this term.
For example: 10 people live in the country, each of them has 100 rubles (that is, the total turnover of the country is 1000 rubles), but then the Central Bank prints another 1000 rubles. And I have a question for you - how much money did these people have? Yes, they still have all the money, but their price (solvency) has been halved. In other words, the population of the country was simply robbed of 1,000 rubles. This is the system of inflation - by producing extra money, the Central Bank simply robs its population. But here again we recall that the FRS is a private office, and therefore it turns out that it is not robbing “its own population”, but simply “the population” (and it doesn’t matter which country). "Nothing personal, just business."
Ron Paul, dollar depreciation, trend“Goods and services that in 1913 could be purchased for $1 are now worth $21. Let's look at this in terms of the purchasing power of the dollar itself. Now it is less than 0.05% of its value in 1913. We can say that the government with its banking cartel, as a result of the ongoing inflationary policy, stole from us 95 cents out of every dollar.
Ron Paul, American politician, 2009
With the death of Stalin, the practice of lowering prices in the USSR was discontinued. Khrushchev abolished the gold content of the ruble, transferring the Soviet currency, following the example of all countries, to dollar backing.
“Now that the documents of the first period of the Cold War have been published in the United States, it is obvious that this was a war aimed at destroying the USSR and the Soviet state. The doctrine of war prescribed the conduct of two parallel programs: an arms race to deplete the Soviet economy and the indoctrination of the top of the party-state nomenklatura.
S. Kara-Murza
As we can now see from history, the second program was a success.
Those who have eyes, let them see. findings
Wheel of SamsaraThe topic of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War as a whole is relevant today more than ever. As you know, history always repeats itself, it spins in a circle, like the wheel of Samsara, which is why it is important to know history - knowing the past is able to foresee the future.
In conclusion, I would like to quote one more excerpt from D. Kennan's "long telegram" (February 22, 1946):
“The success of the Soviet system as a form of power within the country has not yet been definitively proven. It must be demonstrated that it can stand the decisive test of a successful transfer of power from one individual or group of individuals to another.
Lenin's death was the first such transition, and its consequences had a devastating effect on the Soviet state for 15 years. After the death or resignation of Stalin, there will be a second transition. But even this will not be a decisive test. As a result of recent territorial expansion, Soviet power within the country will experience a number of additional difficulties that once already subjected the tsarist regime to severe tests. Here we are convinced that never since the end of the civil war has the Russian people been so far emotionally from the doctrines of the Communist Party as at the present time.
In Russia, the party has become a gigantic and now prosperous apparatus of dictatorial rule, but has ceased to be a source of emotional inspiration. Thus, the internal strength and stability of the communist movement cannot yet be considered guaranteed.
What was the genius of Stalin? He understood that the ideological component needed to be constantly changed to meet the changing needs of the country, that is, to be flexible, but his followers no longer understood this, which is what Kennan was talking about.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many thought that the US emerged victorious in the Cold War, but the collapse of the USSR was not the end of the war, it was only the end of the battle. Today we can observe the information war - a new round, a new battle in one big war - the battle of empires ...
Let me remind you a couple more historical moments: Remember these moments: and just recently The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -Alexander Podrabinek: On March 5, 1946, the leader of the British Conservatives, Winston Churchill, delivered a speech at Westminster College in the American city of Fulton, in which he said: "From Szczecin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended on the continent." Then, from that day, the countdown of the Cold War began, and the term "Iron Curtain" itself entered the international political lexicon and firmly entrenched in it, denoting a means of self-isolation of the Soviet Union from the free world. True, it should be noted that HG Wells wrote about the Iron Curtain in 1904 in his science fiction novel Food of the Gods, and in 1919 French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau spoke about the Iron Curtain at the Paris Peace Conference.
The "Iron Curtain" is one of the brightest signs of a totalitarian regime. Not the only one, but very revealing. The ban on leaving the country is a safety net for the totalitarian dictatorship in case of mass dissatisfaction of the people with the existing regime. In the Soviet Union, this system lasted until 1991, when the law "On the procedure for leaving the USSR" was adopted, abolishing the need to obtain exit visas at OVIRs - the visa and registration departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In the Soviet Union, as, indeed, in other countries of the socialist bloc, there was a system of exit visas. That is, in order to travel to another country, it was necessary to obtain not only an entry visa from the embassy of this country, as in many cases it is still necessary today, but also an exit visa from their own authorities. It was put in the Soviet passport, and before perestroika, it was almost impossible for an ordinary person to get it. This was the privilege of the Soviet and party nomenklatura, and the issue of issuing exit visas to all Soviet citizens was also resolved with it.
The Soviet government considered the intention to emigrate from the country as a betrayal of the motherland. True, this did little to embarrass those who set themselves the goal of leaving the socialist paradise. Few have been able to do it legally.
The most massive category of Soviet emigrants were Jews who declared their intention to repatriate to their historical homeland in Israel. Over the years, this has been more difficult or easier to do, but almost always the declaration of the intention to repatriate entailed undesirable consequences. What troubles awaited people who applied for immigration to Israel?
Roman Spektor, Head of the PR and Mass Media Department of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, tells the story.
Roman Spector: The first is job loss. And this is probably the scariest thing. The second is arrest. This did not depend in any way on the quality of participation in any movement, it had nothing to do with the actual category of refusal. The Jews were by that time hostages, nothing depended on their desire. Some kind of strong KGB power decided how many Jews, when and for what reason to let them go. The very idea of the vacation was, of course, a reaction to the desire of the Jews to leave the country. At first, it was the expressed, deeply tempered Zionist will, which, with such heroes as Yasha Kazakov, now Yasha Kedmi, ignited the Jews of the whole world, which began to fight for the right of Jews to emigrate to Israel. Since there was some procedure that depended on the filing, people served and fell into two traps. One of them was called a ban on leaving the country due to secrecy at work - these are the so-called "secrets", the second - these are the relatives of those who were banned, the category of the so-called "poor relatives". And the quantity, the region, all this was planned by the authorities only in order to somehow show somewhere that Jews still have the right to leave, but there were very few such "lucky ones". People fell under arrest and under the Gulag when there was some kind of order, everything worked for us for the sake of some inflated figure, especially when such a department ordered it. The current speaker of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, was imprisoned because he taught Hebrew. But Hebrew was taught by many other people, why Yulik ended up behind bars - this is a question that should be addressed not to me, but to those KGB officers who determined this.
A significant number of people who received permission went to non-Israeli or used Israeli visas to end up in Austria, Germany, the American states, and so on. The reverse flow, or re-emigration, as we call it, has always existed. This is, in general, a fairly small stream, which did not rise above 7-10%, depending on some circumstances. Since not all Jews were equally ideologically infected and in their behavior the craving for the Promised Land was not so pronounced, in search of a better life, they first went to Israel and some other countries, not having acquired the necessary social status there, not finding the necessary work there and the necessary income, they returned enriched with language and new realities. And the smallest part of them joined the ranks of activists and by that time already established Jewish institutions here in Russia.
Alexander Podrabinek: Another category of legal emigrants were dissidents, more precisely, a small part of them, whom the Soviet authorities let go abroad. Why did she do it? Says human rights activist Pavel Litvinov.
Pavel Litvinov: I think it's just that they don't stay in Russia. It was believed that they would bring less harm to Soviet power abroad, that they would be heard less there. They had a contradiction all the time: on the one hand, they wanted to get rid of the dissidents, on the other hand, they did not want there to be an easy way to emigrate, less freedom. There were different periods. When the democratic movement began in 1967-1968, emigration was a pure abstraction, that is, no one left, we did not hear that anyone left, no one returned. Communists could leave, and then not leave, but go, sometimes remain defectors. I remember we said that in principle there should be freedom of emigration, but all this had nothing to do with the matter. Then the KGB decided to use the Jewish emigration in order to push out one of the dissidents. But it was a completely new phenomenon, it began in 1970-71. I think that political emigrants played a big role, I, in particular, together with Valery Chelidze, we published the magazine "Chronicle in Defense of Human Rights", republished "Chronicle of Current Events", published books. I spoke on Radio Liberty, Voice of America. Corresponded with people in Moscow. Thus, we have created additional channels of information, the movement has become truly international. I think that it is unlikely to return to past practice, but it is impossible to predict, the regime may become so worse that these will be the details of additional fascistization of the regime. This seems unlikely to me.
Alexander Podrabinek: Ethnic Germans and Pentecostals achieved some success in the struggle to leave the country, but in general, for the majority of Soviet citizens, the border remained closed. However, there is no such lock that folk craftsmen could not crack. Escape across the border was dangerous, but not uncommon.
The simplest method was used by "defectors" - people who did not return from the West from tourist trips and business trips. It should be noted that defectors are an older concept than Soviet power. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, after the victory over Napoleon, more than 40,000 lower ranks of the Russian army became defectors and remained in the West. Alexander I even wanted to return them to Russia forcibly, but nothing happened.
Among the Soviet "defectors" one can name such famous people as the world chess champion Alexander Alekhin and the USSR chess champion Viktor Korchnoi, director Alexei Granovsky, singer Fyodor Chaliapin, geneticist Timofeev-Resovsky, Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, ballet dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev, historian Mikhail Voslensky, actor Alexander Godunov, pianist Maxim Shostakovich, Soviet Ambassador to the UN Arkady Shevchenko, film director Andrei Tarkovsky, Olympic medalist and three-time world champion hockey player Sergei Fedorov, writer Anatoly Kuznetsov. This is one of the most famous.
And there were many people who, at their own peril and risk, fled from the Soviet paradise in a variety of ways. Oceanographer Stanislav Kurilov, who was allowed by the Soviet authorities to explore the depths of the sea exclusively in the territorial waters of the USSR, took a ticket for an ocean cruise from Vladivostok to the equator and back without calling at ports. It did not require an exit visa. On the night of December 13, 1974, he jumped from the stern of the ship into the water and, with flippers, a mask and a snorkel, without food, drink or sleep, swam about 100 km for more than two days to one of the islands of the Philippine archipelago. After an investigation by the Philippine authorities, he was deported to Canada and granted Canadian citizenship. And in the Soviet Union, Kurilov received a 10-year prison sentence in absentia for treason.
Vladimir Bogorodsky, who was sitting with me in the same camp in the early 80s, to whom the Soviet authorities did not give permission to repatriate to Israel, told how he spat on legal ways to emigrate and simply crossed the Soviet-Chinese border. He demanded from the Chinese to give him the opportunity to fly to Israel or meet with American diplomats in Beijing, but the Chinese communists turned out to be no better than the Soviet ones. They offered him an alternative: either stay in China or return to the Union. So instead of Israel or America, Volodya spent three years in Shanghai, and then relations between Moscow and Beijing warmed up, the fugitive was brought to the Soviet-Chinese border and handed over to Soviet border guards. He received three years in the camp for illegally crossing the border and was happy that it was not 15 years for treason.
The plane has always been the fastest and most convenient means of transportation. Including from the socialist camp to the free world. Daredevils, one way or another involved in aviation, fled abroad on planes, usually military ones.
Most of these escapes took place after the Second World War, but there were cases before. So, for example, on May 1, 1920, four aircraft from the 4th Fighter Air Group of the First Aviation Squadron of the Red Army took off from the Slavnoye airfield near Borisov to scatter leaflets over the territory of Poland, against which the Bolsheviks fought then. Only three fighters returned. Former lieutenant colonel of the tsarist army, Pyotr Abakanovich, flew on his Nieuport-24-bis to the Poles, landing at the airfield in Zhodino. Then he served in the Polish Air Force, twice got into a plane crash, during World War II he was in the resistance, fought against the Nazis, participated in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and after the war he continued to fight the communist regime in Poland. In 1945 he was arrested, in 1946 he was sentenced to death, but then the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1948, he died in the Vronka prison from beatings by a guard.
In 1948, the Yak-11 training aircraft was hijacked to Turkey directly from the flight school in Grozny. It must be assumed that the cadet went to study as a military pilot, already having clear intentions.
In the same 1948, pilots Pyotr Pirogov and Anatoly Barsov flew on a Soviet Tu-2 military aircraft from the Kolomyia airbase to Austria. The American occupation authorities in Germany granted them political asylum. A year later, Anatoly Barsov, for some unknown reason, returned to the USSR, where six months later he was shot.
On May 15, 1967, pilot Vasily Yepatko flew on a MiG-17 aircraft from a Soviet air base in the GDR to West Germany. He did not land, but ejected near the city of Augsburg. He later received political asylum in the United States.
On May 27, 1973, aircraft engineer Lieutenant Evgeny Vronsky took off on a Su-7 combat aircraft from the Grossenhain airbase of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Having minimal piloting skills obtained on the simulator, Vronsky flew the entire flight in afterburner mode and did not even remove the landing gear after takeoff. After crossing the German border, Vronsky ejected. His car crashed into a forest near the city of Braunschweig and soon the wreckage of the plane was returned to the Soviet side, and Lieutenant Vronsky received political asylum.
On September 6, 1976, Senior Lieutenant Viktor Belenko fled in a MiG-25 to the Japanese island of Hokkaido. After the study of the aircraft by American specialists, the aircraft was returned to the Soviet Union in a disassembled state. After this escape, a button appeared in the missile launch system from the fighter, which removed the lock on firing at its aircraft. She received the nickname "Belenkovskaya".
But they fled from the Soviet Union not only on military aircraft. In 1970, 16 Jewish refuseniks from Leningrad planned to hijack a civilian AN-2 aircraft, having bought all the tickets for this flight. It was supposed to land the plane in Sweden, but all the participants in the operation were arrested by the KGB at the airport, that is, before they had time to do anything. Ultimately, all were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
What the Jewish refuseniks failed to do, 30 years later, the Cuban refugees managed to do. On September 19, 2000, 36-year-old pilot Angel Lenin Iglesias, with his wife and two children, flew exactly the same AN-2 from the airport in the Cuban city of Pinar del Rio. All other passengers and the co-pilot were also relatives of Iglesias. There were 10 people on board. The plane headed for Florida, but ran out of fuel and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. During a hard landing on the water, one of the passengers died. The rest were picked up by a passing Panamanian cargo ship, which delivered the rescued to Miami.
The joint Russian-French film "East-West" tells about the fate of a family that returned from emigration to the Soviet Union and faced the realities of Stalin's dictatorship here. The prototype of the main character was Nina Alekseevna Krivosheina, a Russian emigrant of the first wave, the wife of the White Guard officer Igor Krivoshein, who was imprisoned under the Nazis in Buchenwald, and under the Communists in the Gulag. Unfortunately, the authors of the film did not bother to mention in the credits that the script was based on Nina Krivosheina's book Four Thirds of Our Life. Nina Alekseevna's son Nikita Krivoshein, a former Soviet political prisoner who was sentenced to a camp term in 1957 for an article in the French newspaper Le Monde condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary, recalls his fellow prisoners who tried to escape from the Soviet Union.
Nikita Krivoshein: I knew Vasya Saburov, who served in the border troops, got off the tower on the Turkish border and went to Turkey. Then he ended up in the United States. Then he was told that his homeland forgives him, cannot live without him, he returned and received 10 years. I knew Lyova Nazarenko, a resident of Minsk, who took a train, went to Batumi station, had breakfast and walked to the Turkish border on foot. There he was met by two shepherd dogs. He got 10 years. I knew a Moscow student who, in those days it was possible, agreed with the Scandinavian crew that they would take him on board the plane. But being a good son, before leaving, he said to his father: "Dad, goodbye. I want to go to Scandinavia in this way." Dad played Pavlik Morozov in reverse and immediately called the right place. The plane landed in Riga, and he received 10 years. Here are a few examples for you, such examples are still abundant, starting with the Solonevich brothers, who managed to escape from the Solovetsky camps and move to Finland, and then to Latin America, not to mention countless defectors.
Alexander Podrabinek: In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the international communist system, the "Iron Curtain" also collapsed. Departure became free, exit visas were canceled, those who wanted to emigrated, the rest could freely travel to other countries to visit, study, work or relax during their holidays. Article 27 of the Russian Constitution, which states that "everyone can freely travel outside the Russian Federation," did not remain only on paper - it actually operated and guaranteed the right to freedom of movement.
The clouds began to thicken a few years ago. In 2008, regulations were issued in the country prohibiting free travel abroad for certain categories of persons - debtors for administrative fines and taxes, non-payers of alimony, defendants in lawsuits. In all these cases, mechanisms of recovery and coercion already existed in the legislation - from the seizure of property to administrative and criminal cases. The issue of "closing the border" for a citizen began to be decided by a judicial act, but not in a court session with a fair competition of the parties, but personally by a bailiff. For example, in 2012 bailiffs banned 469,000 citizens from leaving the country. In the first quarter of 2014, 190,000 Russians, mostly bank debtors, were banned from leaving the country.
Behind all these decisions, the shadow of the Soviet Union looms: the authorities regard travel abroad as a gift to citizens, and not as their inalienable right. Indeed, why can't a person who has monetary debts to organizations or citizens temporarily go abroad, say, for medical treatment or to visit a dying relative? Will he definitely become a defector? Run away from debt and ask for political asylum? What else can our government suspect him of? That he will spend money on himself that he could return to pay off debts? How does it look from the point of view of the law and the right of citizens to freedom of movement?
Lawyer Vadim Prokhorov shares his impressions.
Vadim Prokhorov: Article 27 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, namely the first part of it, guarantees freedom of exit and entry from the Russian Federation. In development of this provision of the constitution, a federal law was adopted on the procedure for leaving the Russian Federation and entering the Russian Federation. Article 15 of this law establishes a number of grounds on which the departure of Russian citizens from the Russian Federation may be restricted. What are these grounds? There are 7 bases. The first reason is access to information constituting state secrets or top secret information. The second ground is the passage of urgent military or alternative civilian service. The third reason is the involvement as an accused or suspected of committing a crime, from my point of view, the most obvious reason for restricting travel, this is generally quite fair. The fourth ground is those held in places of deprivation of liberty by a court sentence until the sentence is served. Fifth - this is the most slippery, delicate basis, as having some obligations of a civil law nature, as a rule, imposed by a court decision, including debt obligations, credit obligations, unfulfilled obligations. The sixth ground is when they knowingly provided false information when applying for a passport. And finally, the seventh is employees serving in the Federal Security Service, respectively, until the end of the contract. These are the grounds on which travel may be restricted. If we look at these grounds in more detail, it is clear that there is a certain conflict between the constitutional norm, which allows you to freely leave the country and enter it, and the requirements of the federal law, which allow you to restrict the corresponding exit. Some reasons seem logical enough to me. For example, those held in custody or suspected or accused of committing crimes. Another thing is how our law enforcement and judicial system works - a separate conversation. But in general, criminals or potential criminals should be appropriately restricted in travel until the issue is resolved. The most slippery grounds are those who have obligations of a civil law nature, that is, they do not comply with the relevant court decisions, evade, including maliciously, from paying alimony, and so on. There really is a certain subtle balance here, because on the one hand it is a constitutional right to enter and exit. Why is it necessary to limit a person in this? On the other hand, for example, as a practicing civil lawyer, I understand perfectly well that, unfortunately, the legal and economic situation in Russia is such that often people quite deliberately evade the fulfillment of their civil obligations. There is really a problem here, whether it is possible to restrict the constitutional right of a citizen to leave by protecting the rights of his claimants, his creditors. It seems to me that the question is not obvious, it does not have a clear answer, from my point of view. It is necessary to protect constitutional rights, on the one hand, on the other hand, unfortunately, the level of legal awareness of society is such that for some reason debts are often not considered debts for some reason. Yes, travel restrictions, as a kind of debt hole, can be called differently.
Alexander Podrabinek: Perhaps such a system of debt collection is really effective. In the same way, for example, torture inquiry against arrested criminals is effective - under torture, they quickly betray their accomplices. Even more effective is the blackmail of their loved ones arrested by fate - here few people can resist not to confess to committed crimes, and to imperfect ones too. However, the general question sounds like this: is it possible to protect the rights of some citizens, violating the rights of others for this? And if it is possible, then to what extent, and where is the border that cannot be crossed in a state of law?
In 2010, the ban on leaving the country affected the FSB. They were allowed to travel abroad only by special decision and only in the event of the death of close relatives or urgent treatment, which is impossible in Russia. The exact number of FSB officers is unknown to the public, but according to various estimates, it is at least 200 thousand people.
In April 2014, by interdepartmental orders, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Federal Penitentiary Service, the Federal Drug Control Service, the prosecutor's office, the Federal Bailiff Service, the Federal Migration Service, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations were banned from leaving for most countries. That is, those who are usually referred to as the "power bloc". In total, this is about 4 million people. And no matter what, and these are also citizens of Russia, who have the same constitutional rights as everyone else.
Why the authorities needed such measures against the backbone of their regime is not entirely clear. These normative acts have not been published, there are no official comments. Some believe that this is a kind of revenge of the leaders of law enforcement agencies, many of whom fell under Western sanctions in connection with Russia's interference in the events in Ukraine. Others believe that this is only the first step towards a total travel ban for all Russian citizens. A kind of courtesy sign for society: we start with our own, and then it will be your turn!
Former Soviet political prisoner Nikita Krivoshein, who lives in France, does not believe in the return of the Iron Curtain.
Nikita Krivoshein: I read that there are restrictions on civil servants, certain categories of civil servants, people working in the defense industry who have access to state secrets, but the same restrictions may not be the same, but similar restrictions still exist in France for similar categories. I read that restrictions are being introduced for alimony defaulters and people who have not paid off their loans - this already seems ridiculous to me, but anyway I am convinced that the resorts of Turkey and Spain will not be empty.
Alexander Podrabinek: The assumption that the "Iron Curtain" may well return and cover the continent again is not as absurd as it might seem at first glance. In neighboring Belarus, for example, some oppositionists have been banned from leaving the country for several years.
In our country, after the capture of Crimea this year, everyone who wanted to retain Ukrainian citizenship and did not want to take Russian citizenship suddenly became foreigners. Now they must obtain a residence permit and cannot spend more than 180 days a year at home. The leader of the Crimean Tatars, former Soviet dissident and political prisoner Mustafa Dzhemilev, was banned by Russian authorities from entering Russia and Crimea altogether. Now he cannot return to his home in Bakhchisarai, to his family and to his homeland, which he and his people managed to defend under Soviet rule.
So, the prototype of the future "Iron Curtain" operates in both directions: as always, someone is not allowed to leave here, and someone is not allowed to come here.
The issue of freedom of movement, the right to leave the country and return is by no means an idle one. Today, for many people, it has a clear practical significance. One question: leave or stay? Another question: if you leave, then when?
"Now they often say "unipolar world". This expression is absurd, since the word "pole" is inextricably linked with the number two, with the presence of the second pole."
S. Kara-Murza, political scientist.
The history of the Cold War is not only the history of the rivalry of two ideologies, but also the history of the rivalry of two economic systems, which in essence were antipodes to each other. What is special about this topic? It illuminates the beginning of what we will all witness in our lifetime.
What am I talking about?
Read between the lines. For he who has eyes, let him see...
Background.
"The Iron Curtain - this expression was given life by a device that was used earlier in the theater - an iron curtain, which, in order to protect the auditorium from fire, was lowered onto the stage in the event of a fire on it. This was very advisable in an era when people were forced to open fire was used - candles, oil lamps, etc. For the first time such an iron curtain began to be used in France - in the city of Lyon in the late 80s - early 90s XVIII in."
Vadim Serov.
It is generally accepted that the well-known "Iron Curtain" descended on the country of the Soviets in the 1920s, roughly speaking, as soon as the USSR was created, they immediately covered it with a curtain so that dirt from the west would not fly. I'm afraid to disappoint some, but it's not.
The country of the Soviets existed, developed, and there was no self-isolation, and it did not have closedness, on the contrary, the Soviet government made every effort to eliminate this closeness. For this, famous writers, artists and other figures from all over the world were invited to the USSR. The purpose of all this was to break the veil of lies that enveloped us in the West, and to give an opportunity to assess what is happening in our country more or less truthfully.
In addition to writers and artists, ordinary people also came to the USSR: some of them were invited as specialists for a large salary, and some came on their own, for ideological reasons (people wanted to build the society of the future with their own hands). Naturally, after some time, returning to their homeland, they all brought with them a baggage of information about the country of the Soviets.
But the Western powers did not attach much importance to this, they no longer saw Russia as a serious adversary for the coming decades, although they did not stop their attempts to snatch an extra piece from us (a campaign of 14 states).
"Russia, which was a civilization of the Western type - the least organized and most shaky of the great powers - is now a modern civilization in extremis (lat. with its last gasp - ed. note). ... History knows nothing like the collapse Russia is experiencing. If this process continues for another year, the collapse will be final. Russia will turn into a country of peasants; the cities will become empty and turn into ruins, the railways will overgrow with grass. With the disappearance of the railways, the last remnants of central power will disappear.
HG Wells, 1920
However, the explosive growth rates of the USSR greatly frightened the West, showing them that they had greatly miscalculated on our account, even taking into account the insertion of sticks into all our wheels and wheels.
Then, the trump ace of the West, Adolf Hitler, was pulled out of the sleeve (you can read more about this in the article - "Shock USSR. Stakhanov's Chronicles") and a grandiose war was unleashed, hitherto unseen by mankind.
"In the event that the Germans prevail, then the Russians must be helped, and if things turn out differently, then the Germans must be helped. And let them kill each other as much as possible."
G. Truman, " New York Times", 1941
As they say (they, in the West) - "nothing personal, just business."
Bear trap.
"Who controls the country's money is the absolute master of all industry and commerce."
James Abram Garfield, 20th President of the United States, 1881
In July 1944, at the very height of the war, the international Bretton Woods Conference was held in the United States (New Hampshire). The meaning of this conference boiled down to two main points: the dollar is the only currency that is now allowed to have a gold content, all other countries must refuse to back their currencies with gold, introducing dollar backing instead (buy a dollar to print their currency), and the second point - the dollar becomes the main settlement currency (all international trade must now be conducted only for dollars).
The USSR signs the enslaving Bretton Woods agreement, its ratification (approval) is scheduled for December 1945.
April 12, 1945 Franklin Delano Roosevelt is assassinated. The reason for the murder was his friendly relations with the USSR and Stalin personally. This event shows once again that US presidents are just pawns in a big game.
"We were closest to equal cooperation when Roosevelt was in America, and Stalin was in our country."
S.E. Kurginyan, political scientist.
Here are the words of Roosevelt:
"Under the leadership of Marshal Joseph Stalin, the Russian people showed such an example of love for the motherland, firmness of spirit and self-sacrifice that the world has not yet known. After the war, our country will always be happy to maintain good-neighborly relations and sincere friendship with Russia, whose people, saving themselves, help to save the whole world from the Nazi threat."
Personal message to Stalin following the results Tehran conference (passed: November 28-December 1, 1943):
"I believe that the conference was very successful and I am sure that it is a historic event, confirming our ability not only to wage war, but also to work for the cause of the world to come in full harmony."
“To put it simply, I got on very well with Marshal Stalin. This man combines a huge, unbending will and a healthy sense of humor; I think the soul and heart of Russia have their true representative in him. I believe that we will continue to get along very well and with him, and with all the Russian people."
"Since the last meeting in Tehran, we have been working in really good cooperation with the Russians, and I think the Russians are quite friendly. They are not trying to swallow all of Europe and the rest of the world."
The quotes speak for themselves.
Exactly 2 hours and 24 minutes after the death of Roosevelt, his place is taken by US Vice President and ardent anti-communist Harry Truman. Literally into Russian, "Truman" is translated as "real man" (English "true man") =)) , but this is a joke.
The first thing Truman does is forbid the execution of any instructions from the previous Roosevelt administration.
"That's enough, we are no longer interested in an alliance with the Russians, and therefore, we may not fulfill the agreements with them. We will solve the problem of Japan without the help of the Russians."
From this moment on, any friendliness can be forgotten.
On the eve of the Potsdam Conference (held: July 17 - August 2, 1945), Truman receives a coded message: " The operation took place this morning. The diagnosis is not yet fully completed, but the results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations.". This was a message about the successful test of the atomic bomb. And on July 21, US Secretary of War Stimson, who accompanied the conference Truman , receives photographs of the tests carried out and shows them to the president.
And Truman goes on the offensive.
During the conference, he tries to hint to Stalin that the United States has nuclear weapons.
Churchill describes the scene this way: "We stood in twos and threes before dispersing. I was perhaps five yards away and followed this important conversation with keen interest. I knew what the president was going to say. It was extremely important to know what impression this would make on Stalin ".
A little later, Churchill would approach Truman: "How did everything go?" I asked. “He didn’t ask a single question,” the president replied..
And on August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States carries out two nuclear attacks on Japanese cities - on the city of Hiroshima (up to 166 thousand dead) and on the city of Nagasaki (up to 80 thousand dead).
"Military and civilians, men and women, old and young, were killed indiscriminately by the atmospheric pressure and heat radiation of the explosion...
These bombs used by the Americans, in their cruelty and terrifying effects, are far superior to poison gases or any other weapon whose use is prohibited.
Japan protests against the US violation of internationally recognized principles of warfare, violated both by the use of the atomic bomb and by earlier incendiary bombings that killed the elderly, women and children, destroyed and burned Shinto and Buddhist temples, schools, hospitals, residential areas, etc. d..
Now they have used this new bomb, which has a much more destructive effect than any other weapon used hitherto. This is a new crime against humanity and civilization."
According to an American report from 1946, there was no military necessity for the use of atomic bombs:
"Based on a detailed examination of all the facts and after interviews with surviving Japanese officials, in the opinion of this Study, definitely before December 31, 1945, and most likely before November 1, 1945, Japan would have capitulated even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped. and the USSR would not have entered the war, and even if the invasion of the Japanese islands had not been planned and prepared.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Americans planned subsequent atomic bombings of Japan, but later decided that it was more expedient not to waste bombs as they were created, but to start accumulating them.
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| Stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the world. |
On September 4, 1945, the United States Joint War Planning Committee prepared memorandum No. 329: " select approximately 20 of the most important targets suitable for strategic atomic bombing of the USSR and in the territory controlled by it"As the arsenal grew, the number of cities was planned to be increased. By that time, the USSR did not have not only such weapons, but even a strategic bomber capable of long-range flights.
December 1945 came. The USSR flatly refused to ratify the Bretton Woods agreement.
But there were no atomic strikes on the USSR. Stalin too well weighed all the pros and cons.
One of the important reasons for the failed attack was the Americans themselves, namely their supply to us under Lend-Lease.
And from the middle of 1944, approximately 2,400 R-63 Kincobra attack fighters were delivered to the USSR, the best American fighters at the end of the war, which were a modification of the aforementioned R-39s. The Kincobras failed to take part in the war with Germany, and practically the same in the war with Japan.
Thus, it turned out that by the end of the war we were armed with a full set of the latest American fighters (I think good relations with Roosevelt played a role here), and all atomic bombs, at that time, were delivered using long-range aviation, vulnerable to fighters.
So it turns out that the Americans protected us from themselves.
America did not have the opportunity tofight with us in a fair fight, even joining forces with Europe. The Soviet Union by this time was no longer too tough for them. So the West is beginning to build up its joint military power with all its might in order to bring it down on the USSR as soon as possible. The USSR, however, had only to strengthen its air defense and speed up work on its nuclear program.
The curtain falls.
"The most important thing is to choose the right enemy."Joseph Goebbels.
On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill, speaking at Westminster College in Fulton (USA), divided the world into two poles: those who are with us and those who are with them, the so-called bipolar world. President Truman also attended the speech.
This speech was the official start of the Cold War.
"Neither the effective prevention of war nor the permanent expansion of the influence of the World Organization can be achieved without the fraternal union of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and the British Empire and the United States.From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain descended on the continent. On the other side of the curtain are all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe - Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, Sofia. All these famous cities and the populations in their districts fell within what I call the Soviet sphere, all of them, in one form or another, not only under Soviet influence, but also under the considerable and increasing control of Moscow.
Almost all of these countries are run by police governments,<...>there is no true democracy in them."
But Churchill was not the one who first introduced the concept of "Iron Curtain" in relation to the Soviet Union. He borrowed this expression from an article by the German Reich Minister for Public Education and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels:
“If the Germans lay down their arms, the Soviets will occupy, according to the Yalta Conference, all of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, together with most of the Reich. An Iron Curtain will descend on the entire gigantic territory controlled by the Soviet Union, behind which the peoples will be exterminated.
<...>
All that will be left will be human raw materials, a dumb roaming mass of millions of desperate, proletarian working animals who will know only what the Kremlin will want about the rest of the world.
This article was written by Goebbels on February 25, 1945, immediately after the Yalta Conference, at which the fate of the world was decided.
With his article, Goebbels tried to bring seeds of discord into the ranks of the allies (anti-Hitler, of course) and desperately beg the West for the last chance for salvation, in the face of imminent death: “Now Bolshevism stands on the Oder. Everything depends on the steadfastness of the German soldiers. Whether Bolshevism will be pushed to the East or whether its fury will cover all of Europe.<...>Everything will be decided by us or will not be decided at all. That's all the alternatives."
Goebbels' article had its effect, but only after the fall of Germany and the death of its leadership. It was then that Churchill took the words of Goebbels for his speech in Fulton.
"If Churchill had dug deeper, he would have known that the term 'iron curtain' first came into use in Scandinavia, where workers in the early 1920s protested against their rulers' desire to fence them off from the 'heretical ideas' coming from the East."Valentin Falin, Dr. Sciences.
We were not at war with Hitler in order to transfer power to the Churchills.
Stalin immediately reacted to Fulton's speech:
“It should be noted that Mr. Churchill and his friends are strikingly reminiscent in this respect of Hitler and his friends. Hitler began the work of starting the war by proclaiming the racial theory, declaring that only people who speak German represent a full-fledged nation.
Mr. Churchill begins the business of unleashing war also with racial theory, arguing that only nations that speak the English language are full-fledged nations, called upon to decide the fate of the whole world.
German racial theory led Hitler and his friends to the conclusion that the Germans, as the only complete nation, should dominate other nations. The English racial theory leads Mr. Churchill and his friends to the conclusion that the nations that speak the English language, as the only full-fledged ones, should dominate the rest of the nations of the world.
<...>
In essence, Mr. Churchill and his friends in England and the United States are presenting to non-English-speaking nations a kind of ultimatum: accept our domination voluntarily, and then everything will be in order - otherwise war is inevitable.
Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The meaning of the Marshall Plan was to allocate financial assistance to countries affected during the Second World War.
Goodwill gesture, you say. Alas, no, in America "only business." Each of the countries that received aid had to sacrifice part of their sovereignty.
The Truman Doctrine, on the other hand, contained specific measures against the expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence and the spread of communist ideology ("the doctrine of containment" of socialism), as well as aimed at returning the USSR to its former borders ("the doctrine of rejection" of socialism).
The founder of the "doctrine of deterrence" is considered to be the American ambassador in Moscow (of that time). It was he who formulated and outlined in his telegram of February 22, 1946, even before Churchill's speech at Fulton, all the main trends of the future Cold War. The telegram was called "long", as it contained about 8,000 words.
Here are excerpts from the telegram:
You can read the full text of the telegram here (link) or at the end of the article, in the additional section. materials.
It was George Kennan who formulated the idea that the Soviet Union should be defeated without entering into a direct military conflict with it. The bet here was on the depletion of the Soviet economy, because the economy of the West was much more powerful (why was it more powerful? Yes, because it developed while we were at war, and ate our gold).
Thus, by the middle of 1947, two types of foreign policy orientation were finally formed on the world map: pro-Soviet and pro-American.
And on April 4, 1949, countries that received economic assistance from the United States under the Marshall Plan sign the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO). Here's a combination in two moves.
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| RDS-1. |
A little about our bomber.
On August 3, 1947, an air parade in Tushino was opened by three Tu-4 aircraft, which was attended by foreign military representatives. At first, foreigners did not believe that Soviet planes were flying in the sky, because only the United States had such bombers, it was their latest development. But, as much as they would not like to admit it, the planes were Soviet. And the reason for the distrust of foreigners was the similarity - the planes were exact copies of the American B-29 "Superfortress" (superfortress).
In 1949, the Tu-4 was put into service and became the first Soviet aircraft to carry nuclear weapons.
Thus, the position of the two forces in the world was relatively equalized. Now, with bare hands, it was no longer possible to take us.
"Truman started the Cold War. And he started it out of fear, out of weakness, not out of strength. And why? After the Second World War, capitalism as a system turned out to be very battered. It was discredited in the eyes of millions of people. war It gave rise to fascism and the gas chambers.
The Soviet Union was in this sense a real alternative. And this happened against the background when Europe was in ruins.
The Greek communists are about to come to power.
The Italian communists in 1943 had 7,000 people. In 1945 they had 1.5 million people.
And so Truman and his entourage had a fear that Stalin would take advantage of the opportunities that were opening up before him. Moreover, there was a civil war in China, where the communists won. India continued to fight for independence. There were wars of liberation already in Indonesia and Vietnam, or they were ready for it.
That is, the Soviet Union, as the Americans believed, could take advantage of this situation in order to create a real threat to American capitalism, the American way of life. The Soviet Union had to be stopped. That was the reason why the Americans started the Cold War."A.L. Adamashin, Russian diplomat.
The Soviet system was dangerous for the West not so much from an ideological point of view as from a methodological one. This mainly concerned the economic component.
"The principle of state policy (Soviet - ed.) was made a constant, albeit modest, improvement in the well-being of the population. This was expressed, for example, in large and regular price cuts (13 times in 6 years; from 1946 to 1950 bread the price of meat fell by 3 times, and meat by 2.5 times.) It was then that the specific stereotypes of mass consciousness enshrined in the state ideology arose: confidence in the future and the conviction that life can only improve.
The condition for this was the strengthening of the financial system of the state in close connection with planning. To preserve this system, the USSR took an important step: it refused to join the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and on March 1, 1950, it left the dollar zone altogether, transferring the definition of the ruble exchange rate to a gold basis. Large gold reserves were created in the USSR, the ruble was inconvertible, which made it possible to maintain very low domestic prices.
In each country there is a certain amount of goods and services (commodity equivalent, TE), the number of these goods and services is constantly growing or decreasing (depending on the situation in the country, but definitely not standing still) and there is a money supply, the purpose of which is to serve the universal equivalent of the exchange (DE - cash equivalent). The money supply is always attached to goods and should approximately correspond to their quantity (that is, TE = DE). If there is more money than goods, this is called inflation ( TE< ДЭ = инфляция ); if there is less money than goods, then this is called deflation ( TE > DE = deflation).
But the Central Bank (in this particular case, I mean the Fed) is constantly printing extra money, in other words, it creates inflation (TE< ДЭ ) и для того, чтобы уровнять соотношение "товар-деньги", цены на товары и услуги растут. Вот и вся математика.
What happened in Stalin's USSR?
And there it was exactly the opposite: the number of goods grew, and the Central Bank, on the contrary, did not print more money, that is, it created deflation (TE > DE), and in order to equalize the "goods-money" ratio, the prices of goods were reduced (i.e. the solvency of money increased).“The essential features and requirements of the basic economic law of socialism could be formulated approximately as follows: ensuring the maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of the whole society through the continuous growth and improvement of socialist production on the basis of higher technology. Consequently: instead of ensuring maximum profits, - ensuring maximum satisfaction of the material and cultural needs of society; instead of the development of production with interruptions from rise to crisis and from crisis to rise, - continuous growth of production ... "Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States.
But why did the US choose such an illogical and highly unsustainable financial system? The answer is not complicated - "just business." The Fed is a private company and the inflationary financial system is just a way for this company to make a profit.
"The main features and requirements of the basic economic law of modern capitalism could be formulated approximately as follows: ensuring the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of a given country..."
And now I will explain what inflation is, as many do not understand the essence of this term.
For example: 10 people live in the country, each of them has 100 rubles (that is, the total turnover of the country is 1000 rubles), but then the Central Bank prints another 1000 rubles. And I have a question for you - how much money did these people have? Yes, they still have all the money, but their price (solvency) has been halved. In other words, the population of the country was simply robbed of 1,000 rubles. This is the inflation system - by producing extra money, the Central Bank simply robs its population. But here again we recall that the FRS is a private office, and therefore it turns out that it is not robbing "its own population", but simply "the population" (and it does not matter which country). " Nothing personal just business".
"Goods and services that could be bought for $1 in 1913 are now worth $21. Let's look at it in terms of the purchasing power of the dollar itself. It's now less than 0.05% of its value in 1913. You could say, that the government and its banking cartel, as a result of the incessant inflationary policy, stole from us 95 cents out of every dollar.Ron Paul, American politician, 2009
With the death of Stalin, the practice of lowering prices in the USSR was discontinued. Khrushchev abolished the gold content of the ruble, transferring the Soviet currency, following the example of all countries, to dollar backing.
“The success of the Soviet system as a form of power within the country has not yet been conclusively proven. It must be clearly demonstrated that it can withstand the decisive test of a successful transfer of power from one individual or group of individuals to another.
Lenin's death was the first such transition, and its consequences had a devastating effect on the Soviet state for 15 years. After the death or resignation of Stalin, there will be a second transition. But even this will not be a decisive test. As a result of recent territorial expansion, Soviet power within the country will experience a number of additional difficulties that once already subjected the tsarist regime to severe tests. Here we are convinced that never since the end of the civil war has the Russian people been so far emotionally from the doctrines of the Communist Party as at the present time.
In Russia, the party has become a gigantic and now prosperous apparatus of dictatorial rule, but has ceased to be a source of emotional inspiration. Thus, the internal strength and stability of the communist movement cannot yet be considered guaranteed."What was the genius of Stalin? He understood that the ideological component needed to be constantly changed to meet the changing needs of the country, that is, to be flexible, but his followers no longer understood this, which is what Kennan was talking about.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many thought that the US emerged victorious in the Cold War, but the collapse of the USSR was not the end of the war, it was only the end of the battle. Today we can observe the information war - a new round, a new battle in one big war - the battle of empires...
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