The Russian Connection: Stalin’s famous five-year plan was all about industrialising a land of peasants. ibid.
He took a short-term contract with Lloyd George instead, and after his first trip to Russia was invited down. ibid.
At a stroke, Gareth had been reborn as an expert in Russian affairs, a journalist, and a novice member of the British establishment. ibid.
The line between journalism and gathering political intelligence then was not very clear. ibid.
Germany was Gareth’s great love. He spoke the language even better than Russian. But it was changing fast. Hitler had just become chancellor. ibid.
The new [Soviet] farms were failing to meet their targets. ibid.
Central Ukraine: The horrors both Stalin and Hitler inflicted on Ukraine. ibid.
Gareth’s plan was to gather evidence ... to break the conspiracy of silence. ibid.
Back in Moscow a big story had broken: six British engineers had been arrested and accused of sabotage. It threatened to become a major international row. Gareth reverted to his official role. ibid.
He gathered some journalists together and gave them his story. ibid.
The Soviet secret police had been alerted. ibid.
Gareth was a marked man in Soviet eyes. ibid.
Gareth sensed that what the Japanese did next was going to be the big story. And the focus of that was inner Mongolia. ibid.
Gareth Jones Killed By Bandits in China. ibid. article
Lenin and the Bolsheviks feared foreign invasion from the day they came to power. Charles Wheeler, The Road to War 3/8: Soviet Union, BBC 1989
The war against the peasants was followed by widespread famine. ibid.
Stalin sent twenty bombers to Czechoslovakia and promised forty more would follow. ibid.
The threat of Soviet aggression was exaggerated, the problems were misconstrued, and the idealism that guided the actions was misplaced. But the requisite beliefs remained prominently on the shelf. However fanciful, they could be served up to the public when needed – often with perfect sincerity. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy introduction p23
One early example was in 1952, when the Kremlin put forth a proposal for reunification and neutralization of Germany, with no conditions on economic policies and with guarantees for ‘the rights of man and basic freedoms, including freedom of speech, press, religious persuasion, political conviction and assembly’ ... The US and its allies objected. ibid. p24
In the mid-1970s Soviet military spending began to level off, as later conceded, while the US lead in strategic bombs and warheads widened through the decade. President Carter proposed a substantial increase in military spending and a cutback on social programs. ibid. p26
It is, furthermore, quite true that the Soviet Union sought targets of opportunity where it could find them, entering into friendly and supportive relations with the most miserable tyrants and gangsters. ibid. p27
The complementary task was to reconstruct the climate of fear. To this end, it was necessary to bewail the triumphs of the Soviet enemy, marching from strength to strength, conquering the world, building a huge military system to overwhelm us. ibid.
The Western invasion of the Soviet Union was justified on defensive grounds, against ‘the Revolution’s challenge ... to the very survival of the capitalist order’. ibid. citing John Lewis Gaddis
To the proletariat of all countries, to the ignorance and mentally deficient, who by their numbers are urged to become masters ... a very real danger in view of the process of social unrest throughout the world. Robert Lansing, US secretary of state, cited Chomsky
The collapse of the Soviet Union is the single most important cause of the exponential growth in organised crime that we have seen around the world in the last two decades. Misha Glenny, McMafia
The only way to meet those targets was to employ wheelers and dealers who could handle the right materials from any source anywhere. These people were known as tolkachi, or fixers. ibid.
My Lord, [The First Sea Lord]
I was alarmed to read a recent article in The Spectator by Mrs Thatcher’s chiropodist, Dr Patrick Cosgrave, concerning the imminent outbreak of hostilities with the Soviets.
Has a definite date been fixed? Mrs Root is pressing me to take her on a sun-shine holiday for two to the Canary Isles, but as an ex-serving officer I naturally don’t want to be out of the country when the balloon goes up ... Henry Root, The Henry Root Letters, to First Sea Lord 17th April 1979
And now we join Sasha and Yuri on Potato World. Spitting Image s3e11, Russian presenter, ITV 1986
Only the iron leadership of the communist party can guarantee the victory of the popular masses. October: Ten Days that Shook the World, directors Aleksandrov & Eisenstein, caption, 1928
February: May the provisional government have a long life! ibid.
Down with the Provisional Government! ibid. Lenin
The uprising is premature! ibid. Bolsheviks
Everybody to the defence of the Petrograd! ibid.
The government opened the arsenal. ibid.
The Bolsheviks organised a military plot against the legitimate authorities. ibid.
Joseph Stalin consolidated his grip on the Soviet state by utilizing the newly powerful secret service as his personal instrument of control. Secrets of War: Cold War: Inside the KGB, 2000
By the end of World War II Soviet agents had infiltrated all the world’s major military and political establishments and many of the lesser ones. ibid.
But from its very birth it was evident that Israel had no intention of building a socialist state on the Soviet model … Stalin felt betrayed and turned his wrath on the Jews in his own country. ibid.
‘The KGB regarded killing people abroad as well as in the Soviet Union as a normal part of its operations. It stopped in the early 1960s … the risks of being found out.’ ibid. Christopher Andrew, co-author KGB: The Inside Story
In Moscow George Blake was rewarded with a large flat and a country house. ibid.
During his eleven year reign Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev diverged from the path of former dictator Joseph Stalin by instituting many controversial liberal reforms. Secrets of War s1e64: Brezhnev’s Kremlin
Brezhnev decided to disguise the coup as a democratic procedure. ibid.
Brezhnev remained devoted to the interests of the military complex. ibid.
Mikhail Gorbachev: Soviet leader from 1985 to 1991. To the West a statesman and a star. To Russia a figure of controversy. Mikhail Gorbachev: A Man Who Changed the World, History 1997
Gorbachev didn’t seem to have the Cold War mentality. ibid.
Gorbachev was fighting for the hearts and minds of the Soviet people. ibid.
Moscow, March 5th 1953: Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet empire, died at the age of 73 … ‘The Imperialists will finish you off like flies.’ Secrets of War: Cold War: Khrushchev’s Regime, 2001
Khrushchev disposed of Lavrentiy Beria and seized the reins of power. ibid.
It’s still not known how many US planes were lost in these secret missions over the USSR. ibid.
Khrushchev also introduced radical domestic reforms. ibid.
For 20 years Stalin’s NKVD security forces have imposed the great terror. The Death of Stalin 2017 starring Steve Buscemi & Simon Russell Beale & Paddy Considine & Rupert Friend & Jason Isaacs & Michael Palin & Andrea Riseborough & Jeffrey Tambor & Adrian McLoughlin et al, director Armando Iannucci, opening caption
If the leader is incapacitated, the committee must convene. Article 17 ii. ibid.
He’s on the floor! He’s on the fucking floor! ibid. Krushchev
We need to start putting together a plan: we need change – put a halt to the arrests, prison releases, maybe even reform the Church. ibid.
Who the fuck in their right mind would want everlasting life? ibid.
Trotsky was in charge of foreign concessions in the Soviet Union … Western firms went into the Soviet Union and built the first five-year plan, the second five-year plan, and so on right down to today There’s nothing in the history books about this. Anthony Sutton, lecture 1973, ‘National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union’
You just do not build steel mills and nitric acid plants from scratch. ibid.