Let’s see some memes!

He would be 41 in this photo.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born in 1894 in the village of Kalinovka, in the Kursk province of the Russian Empire, to a family of poor peasants. He left school at 14 years old and worked as a metal fitter in the mines of the Donbas, a proletarian by origin and by experience. His employment in the mines exempted him from conscription during the First World War, and he was already active in workers' organizations before the revolutions of 1917. He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1918 and served in the Red Army during the Civil War, initially as a political worker and later as a battalion commissar with the Ninth Rifle Division. He fought against the White armies of Denikin and against Polish troops, and in 1920 he graduated with honors from a party school under the Ninth Army's political department.

He was, in his youth, a Stalin man, a loyal executor of the great campaigns of collectivization and industrialization, an attentive commissar for Stalin, and he earned his place in the leadership through a combination of ruthless intrigue, fervent energetic passion, and genuine belief in the socialist project. He was not a philosopher or a theoretician. He was a man of action, impulsive, earthy, sometimes crude, sometimes brilliant.

After the Civil War, Khrushchev built his career through the party apparatus in Ukraine. He studied at the Workers' Faculty of the Donetsk Mining Technical College and later at the Industrial Academy in Moscow By 1925 he was working full-time for the party, and his reputation as an effective organizer propelled his rise through the ranks. He became first secretary of the Moscow city party organization in 1935 and a member of the Politburo in 1939. In 1937, Stalin appointed him head of the Communist Party in Ukraine, where he administered the collectivization campaign from Kiev and carried out any ordered purges.

During the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev served as a political commissar on the Ukrainian front and Stalingrad, where he was a member of the Military Council and served as the intermediary between Stalin and the generals commanding the defense of the city. He was present at the battle that marked the turning point of the war, and he took pride in his role there. Later in the war, he served on the First Ukrainian Front, where his deputy was the young Leonid Brezhnev. After the liberation of Ukraine, he was responsible for the reconstruction of the war-torn republic and for the suppression of Ukrainian nationalist resistance, purging collaborators in city after city recaptured from the Germans.

Khrushchev’s own son, Leonid, a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Forces, was shot down on March 11, 1943, near Zhizdra during an air battle in the Kaluga region. His plane, a YaK-7B fighter, was lost, and he was listed as missing in action. The exact circumstances of his death remain unknown and is still subject to rumors today, but nonetheless, like Stalin, he lost his own child to the war on fascism.

When Stalin died in March 1953, Khrushchev emerged from the collective leadership as the First Secretary of the Communist Party, having outmaneuvered his rivals through a combination of political skill and the support of the party apparatus he had cultivated over decades, and in 1956 he purged Stalin loyalists from the party and denounced the late Marshal and General Secretary in the famous Secret Speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences in a secret meeting after the 20th Congress.

His tenure is known for his frank condemnation of Stalin, going so far as to demolish monuments and censor artworks and film dedicated to or mentioning Stalin, removing his body from Lenin’s mausoleum, where Stalin was lying at rest beside Lenin, and had his body reburied at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Stalin’s name was erased from Soviet schoolbooks, libraries and newspapers were ordered to redact and remove articles mentioning Stalin.
Stalin became a risqué subject to mention even in public discussion, and any positive achievements in Stalin’s tenure were denied or reattributed to others. Allies or supporters of Stalin and perceived “Stalinists” were purged from positions of influence and the arts.

You can read more on his time in leadership here
https://www.reddit.com/r/ussr/s/JrpPI6Uows

After his forced retirement from leadership in October 1964, Khrushchev spent his last years in a state of growing bitterness. He continued to believe that he had been right to attack Stalin, and he continued to present himself as a Leninist restoring the party to its true principles. He received few former colleagues, and those who visited him said that he was often lonely, resentful, and obsessed with talking about defending his record. He gardened, read, watched television, recorded his memoirs in audio tapes, knowing that the tapes could not be published in the Soviet Union.
Those tapes later became the basis for the Khrushchev Remembers volumes, which were smuggled to the West by his son Sergei, and published with the assistance of the American publisher Little, Brown and the Time-Life corporation.

He died on September 11, 1971, of a heart attack, aged 77 years old.

“When the Bolsheviks first assumed power they adopted an attitude of mildness towards their enemies. The Mensheviks continued to exist legally and conduct their own paper. The Socialist Revolutionaries also continued to exist legally and had their own paper. Even the Constitutional Democrats continued to publish their own paper. When General Krasnov organised his counter-revolutionary attack on Leningrad and fell into our hands, according to the rules of warfare, we might at least have kept him prisoner. In fact, we ought to have shot him. But we released him on his “word of honour.”

What was the result?

It soon became clear that such mildness was only serving to undermine the strength of the Soviet government. It was a mistake to have displayed such mildness towards the enemies of the working class. To have persisted in that mistake would have been a crime against the working class and a betrayal of its interests. That very soon became only too clear. It soon became obvious that the milder our attitude towards our enemies, the more bitter their resistance.

Very soon the Right Socialist Revolutionaries—Gotz and this like—and the Right Mensheviks began to organise the military cadets in Leningrad for the purpose of carrying out counter-revolutionary attacks, as a result of which many of our revolutionary sailors perished.

This very Krasnov, whom we had released on his “word of honour,” organised the White Guard Cossacks. He joined forces with Mamontov and for two years waged an armed struggle against the Soviet government.

It very soon appeared that behind the White Guard generals stood the agents of western capitalist states, such as France, England, America and Japan. And so we became convinced that mildness was a mistake. Experience taught us that the only way to cope with such enemies is to adopt a ruthless policy of suppression.”

An Interview with the German Author Emil Ludwig - December 13, 1931

This is a movie clip dramatizing the events in the 1939 film, Lenin in 1918, directed by Mikail Romm.

You can watch the full movie with English subtitle here

Lenin In 1918 (1939, Uncensored) Eng Sub

Amidst the Russian Civil War, with the White Army closing in on Tsaritsyn, Stalin arrives to take charge of organizing the efforts in defense of the city and organizing the party and the people.

In this clip, Stalin reviews the agenda written by a comrade for the Party Conference.

This is a movie clip from the film Tsaritsyn (1942), you can watch the entirety of part 1 in high quality with English subtitles here

Tsaritsyn Part 1: Voroshilov’s Campaign

Stalin: “A Social-Democratic party (that is, a Menshevik party) is not allowed in the Soviet Union for the same reason that counter-revolutionaries are not allowed here. Perhaps this may surprise you, but there is nothing surprising about it.
The conditions under which our country developed, the history of its development, are such that, whereas under the tsarist regime Social-Democracy was a more or less revolutionary party, after the overthrow of tsarism, under Kerensky, it became a government party, a bourgeois party, a party standing for imperialist war, and after the October Revolution it became a party of open counter-revolution, a party standing for the restoration of capitalism.
You must surely be aware that the Social-Democrats in our country took part in the Civil War on the side of Kolchak and Denikin, against Soviet power. At the present time that party stands for the restoration of capitalism, the liquidation of the Soviet system.
I think that this evolution of Social-Democracy is typical of it not only in the U.S.S.R., but also in other countries. In our country Social-Democracy was more or less revolutionary so long as the tsarist regime existed. That, in fact, explains why we Bolsheviks, together with the Mensheviks, that is, the Social-Democrats, formed one party. Social-Democracy becomes a bourgeois party, of the opposition or of the government, when the so-called democratic bourgeoisie comes into power. Social-Democracy turns into a party of open counter-revolution when the revolutionary proletariat comes into power.”

A delegate: Does that mean that Social-Democracy is a counter-revolutionary force only here, in the Soviet Union, or can it be described as a counter-revolutionary force in other countries too?

Stalin: “I have already said that there is some difference here.
In the land of the proletarian dictatorship, Social-Democracy is a counter-revolutionary force striving for the restoration of capitalism and for the liquidation of the proletarian dictatorship in the name of bourgeois "democracy."
In the capitalist countries, where the proletariat is not yet in power, Social-Democracy is either an opposition party in relation to capitalist rule, or a semi-government party in alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie against the most reactionary forces of capitalism and also against the revolutionary working-class movement, or else an out-and-out government party directly and openly defending capitalism and bourgeois "democracy" against the revolutionary proletarian movement.
It becomes out-and-out counter-revolutionary, and its counter-revolutionary activities are directed against the proletarian regime, only when the latter has become a reality.”

I.V. Stalin - Interview with Foreign Workers' Delegations November 5, 1927

Nikolai Antipov joined the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP in 1912. He was arrested 6 times before the Revolution, and after, he quickly became a trusted party functionary, from September 1918, Antipov headed the department for combating counter-revolution in the Petrograd Cheka, and in January 1919, he became its chairman. He was one of the organizers of the Red Terror in Petrograd on Lenin’s orders. After his ascendancy into the Central Committee in 1919, he held a series of senior party positions that brought him closer to leadership until he was directly working with Lenin and Stalin regularly.

Antipov was arrested on June 21, 1937, on charges of participating in an "anti-Soviet, Right-Trotskyist bloc". On July 28, 1938, he was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was presumed to be executed the next day, but Russian sources claim that Antipov was not executed until August 24, 1941 after the Nazis invaded USSR.

Sergei Kirov was Stalin’s close personal friend and associate. He joined the RSDLP in 1904, initially siding with the Mensheviks before siding with Lenin and the Bolsheviks. He was an active participant in the 1905 Revolution and was arrested multiple times. Before the October Revolution, he was a tireless journalist and organizer, and after October, he became a prominent Party Boss.

During the Civil War, he played a key role in the defense of Astrakhan against the White Guard forces of Denikin and Kolchak. He also participated in establishing Soviet power in Azerbaijan and Georgia, and was involved in negotiations leading to the Polish-Soviet peace treaty in 1920. For his military service, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.

In the power struggle between Stalin and the Opposition factions, Kirov defend Stalin fiercely with his influence, rhetoric and power, using his position as Leningrad Party Boss to remove members of the opposition from the Party.

On December 1, 1934, Kirov was assassinated at the Smolny Institute, the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad, by a gunman named Leonid Nikolayev. The exact motive or planner of this attack to this day remains a mystery.

Nikolai Shvernik was a long-serving Soviet politician and trade union leader. He joined the Bolsheviks as an associate at 17 years old in 1905, cutting his teeth in revolutionary work in Samara as a teen where he was arrested numerous times by Tsarist police.

During The Great Patriotic War, Shvernik was responsible for evacuating Soviet industry away from the advancing Nazi Army. He also chaired the Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes.

Shvernik served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (the official head of state) from March 19, 1946, to March 15, 1953.

In 1956, Khrushchev appointed Shvernik to head the Party Control Commission, putting him in charge of rehabilitating victims of the purges. This body became known as the "Shvernik Commission".

On this morning, August 19, 1991, a group of high-ranking Soviet officials and military officers conspired to form the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP), and moved to seize power from Gorbachev and stop the liberal reform of the USSR and halt the New Union Treaty.

In August 1991, the Soviet Union was in its final crisis. Gorbachev's reforms had weakened the central state, stripped the Soviet doctrine and structure of Marxist ideology, republics were demanding independence, and a New Union Treaty was set to be signed on August 20, transforming the USSR into a loose confederation of sovereign states, named Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics, replacing “Socialist” in the Union’s name, and preserving common citizenship and Soviet military, but moving to a confederation structure.

The State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP), consisted of eight members who will become known as the "Gang of Eight".

Gennady Yanayev (Vice President, acting president)
Valentin Pavlov (Prime Minister)
Vladimir Kryuchkov (KGB Chairman)
Dmitry Yazov (Defense Minister)
Boris Pugo (Interior Minister)
Oleg Baklanov (First Deputy Chairman of the Defense Council)
Vasily Starodubtsev (Chairman of the Peasants' Union)
Alexander Tizyakov (President of the Association of State Enterprises)

Day 1

At 4am, The Sevastopol regiment of KGB border troops surrounded Gorbachev's dacha in Foros, cutting off all communications. General Igor Maltsev orders the closure of Crimean Airport, and warships are anchored near Foros. Two tractors block the runway, preventing Gorbachev's aircraft from taking off. His family hears the news of his ouster from a small Sony transistor radio, tuned to the BBC World Service.

The GKChP issued Resolution No. 1, declaring a state of emergency for six months, banning rallies and strikes, and suspending political parties.

At 6am, The GKChP declared Gorbachev unfit to rule due to "illness", a message read on live television to Soviet people, followed by a broadcast of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a Soviet tradition for times of crisis or mourning. Vice President Gennady Yanayev proclaimed himself acting president, and tanks rolled into Moscow to secure order.

The GKChP appealed to the Soviet people that perestroika has "come to a dead end" and that "the honour and dignity of the Soviet man must be restored".

At 7am, The KGB issues an arrest list that includes Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his allies. However, almost no arrests are actually carried out during the coup. Russian-controlled Radio Rossii and the independent radio station Ekho Moskvy are taken off the air.

Yeltsin, who had been at his dacha outside Moscow, arrived at the White House (the parliament building) to coordinate resistance. Tanks from the Tamanskaya and Kantemirovskaya divisions begin arriving in Moscow; around 4,000 soldiers, 350 tanks, and 300 armored personnel carriers are deployed. Tanks take up positions near the White House and the Kremlin.

The GKChP dissolves freedom of the press, banning all but nine party-controlled newspapers.

Yeltsin issues his first public statement condemning the coup as a "right-wing, reactionary, anti-constitutional coup" and calls for a general strike. According to one of his advisors, Yeltsin's appeal becomes one of the crucial factors in turning the situation around.

Day 2

By the second day, protests and barricades swelled. Thousands of people were in the streets, and Boris Yeltsin was motivating the people to rise against the coup.
For years, liberal-nationalist sentiment had been growing under Gorbachev’s political reforms and anti-Soviet sentiment has been promoted in official Soviet state press that printed articles that expressed negative opinions of Soviet history, Marxism, and even Lenin. This had been directed by Gorbachev’s close advisor, Aleksandr Yakovlev, who, in his own memoirs, admits his goal was to destroy the Soviet legacy and turn people away from socialism towards liberalism and capitalism.

By afternoon of Aug 20, one of the Gang of Eight quits. Large crowds of protestors gather around the White House. An 11pm curfew order is ignored.

The GKChP prepared to storm the White House. KGB Chairman Kryuchkov searched for an assault team after the elite Alpha Unit refused to storm the building. Together with Yazov and Pugo, Kryuchkov canvassed commanders from nearly 20 other elite units, but found little enthusiasm among the candidates.

Day 3

In the early morning hours around 1am, a column of armored vehicles from the Tamanskaya Division was trapped in an underpass near the White House, blocked by barricades erected by protesters. Demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails at the vehicles, and several tanks and APCs caught fire. Soldiers fired their pistols into the air and towards any threatening members in the crowd.
In the violence and confusion, 3 protesters were killed:
Dmitry Komar, Vladimir Usov, and Ilya Krichevsky.
Komar and Usov were crushed by tanks trying to drive out of the fire and crowds, while Krichevsky was shot by a soldier.

The violent incident shook the military command. The morale of the military and central state was very low, and no assault on the White House to remove Yeltsin took place. The military commanders on site of the violence at the armored column ordered their troops to hold their fire, to not retaliate on protesters, and after the initial 3 deaths in the underpass scuffle, nobody else was harmed.

By 10am, the GKChP realizes they have lost the momentum and influence and the coup is unraveling.

At 1pm, the group calls for a meeting with Gorbachev to negotiate, but he refused.

6pm. Communications are restored to Gorbachev's dacha in Foros. A plane carrying Kryuchkov, Yazov, Baklanov, and Tizyakov flies to Crimea. Another plane, carrying Russian officials including Vice President Alexander Rutskoy and Prime Minister Ivan Silayev, also departs for Crimea to bring Gorbachev back to Moscow.

In the following days;

A victory rally is held at the White House, attended by tens of thousands of people. Yeltsin congratulates the nation on the defeat of the coup. The Russian tricolor flag is raised over the White House. The GKChP members are arrested.
Yeltsin issues a decree suspending the activities of the Communist Party of the RSFSR. The monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky is dismantled in Lubyanka Square.

Boris Pugo commits suicide by gunshot. His wife follows the same. He left a note:

"I trusted people too much. I have lived my whole life honestly."

August 23 Yeltsin publicly humiliates Gorbachev at a session of the Russian Supreme Soviet, forcing him to read documents confirming the complicity of the Communist Party in the coup. Gorbachev resigns as General Secretary of the CPSU.

August 24 Gorbachev calls on the Central Committee to dissolve the Communist Party.

Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, former Chief of Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces, was found hanged in his Kremlin office. He left 5 notes, addressed to various people to handle his affairs. The common addressed note reads:

“When my Motherland is perishing and everything I considered the meaning of my life is being destroyed, I can no longer live. Age and my past life give me the right to abandon life. I have fought to the end.”

Nikolai Kruchina, Party Treasurer, commits suicide by jumping from his apartment balcony.

"I am not a conspirator, but I am a coward. Please inform the Soviet people about this."
Additionally, he left a thick folder on his desk containing detailed information about the illegal commercial activities of the CPSU in recent years.

August 29 The Soviet Parliament votes to suspend the activities of the Communist Party across the entire USSR.

The Russian Tricolor was legalized as the republic flag of the Russian SFSR by Yeltsin, and over the next few months, Boris Yeltsin maneuvered to complete the Belovezha Accords and illegally declare the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25th, 1991.

SOVIET LIFE

The only magazine circulated in the United States by reciprocal agreement between the governments of the
USA and the USSR.
FIRSTHAND INFORMATION on the hopes, problems, aspirations, plans of the Soviet people. ARTICLES on economics, science, education, art, literature, sports.

In 1956, the Soviet and US Governments agreed to allow each other to publish a magazine in their own nation, but limited circulation to 30,000 copies per issue. The Soviet Government published a magazine entitled The USSR, while the US Government published Amerika.  A few years later The USSR changed its title to Soviet Life.

The pictures in post are from issues of 1973 and 1974.

For the shooting of the 2-part epic film, The Battle of Stalingrad (1949), director Vladimir Petrov suggested hiring Wehrmacht soldiers and officers who had been in Soviet captivity to play German troops. Many of them once actually fought in the city on the Volga in the ranks of the 6th Army of Field Marshal General Friedrich Paulus.

The Germans were dressed up, armed and sent back to “fight” in the streets of Stalingrad. Colonel Wilhelm Adam, Paulus’ aide who became a consultant for the movie, recalled the process of filming,

“Tanks with German crosses were rolling over the ruins. Flames flew out of the empty window peepholes of the ruins, infantrymen with submachine guns and hand grenades were advancing with a loud ‘hurrah’. Prisoner of war German officers and soldiers were specially re-equipped for this purpose.”

Thousands of townspeople gathered to watch the spectacle. There were rumors in the crowd that Friedrich Paulus himself had arrived in Stalingrad (this rumor was false).

The Germans feared conflict with the locals, but everything went quite well.

“The shooting probably evoked bitter memories for these people,” Colonel Adam noted: “However, not a single hostile word was said to the German officers who were present.”

Watch the full film with English subs at the link below

https://youtu.be/hzjQ3tOJjnE

On August 2, 1941, Sergeant Yakov Kharitonovich Kolchak, an artilleryman with the 680th Rifle Regiment of the 169th Rifle Division, 18th Army, was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union.

In July, in the Southern Front sector near the village of Filyanovka (Khmelnytskyi Oblast), he destroyed 4 German tanks with from a distance of 150 meters during a one-hour battle from his field gun.

Papura was a local activist and a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine’s Youth League, and part of the anti-Maidan movement that opposed the new authorities in Kiev and advocated for federalization and keeping closer ties with Russia.

On that day, a joint march by pro-Maidan demonstrators, including far-right groups, clashed with anti-Maidan protesters who had established a tent camp on Kulykove Pole Square. After street battles, the anti‑Maidan side retreated into the nearby Trade Unions House.
The building was set alight with Molotov cocktails, resulting in the deaths of 42 people, most from smoke inhalation or burns, while others were beaten or fell from windows attempting to escape.

Vadim chose to jump from the building in a panic to escape burning to death or suffocating.

His parents found his body on the ground, under the windows of the Odessa Trade Unions House, with his head smashed in. After he had jumped, according to his family and comrades, pro-Maidan rioters beat him to death.

Vadim’s death along with the majority of the deaths in Odessa that day remain the subject of limited official investigation by Ukrainian authorities and no convictions have been secured.

July 24th, 2014 would have been his 18th birthday.

He died 83 days before he turned 18.

If he did not die, he would have turned 30 today.

Happy 30th Birthday, Vadim.

Reupload as details of Vadim’s story were confused with another victim.