He will be remembered, at least in the West, as a pragmatic leader who transparently transitioned the Soviet Union away from its days as an Evil Empire and toward a more modernized economy that was integrated on a global scale.

At home, however, he is largely seen as the man who brought a collapse of Soviet-era prestige and power, preaching reform while protecting his own influence. In a 2017 poll of Russians, 30% said they had anger or distaste toward him, and 13% said they felt disgust or hate for him. For many, he was the harbinger of the end of Russian greatness.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has led to punishing economic sanctions and the highest tensions with the U.S. and Europe since the Cold War, has been seen as an attempt to reclaim at least some of the power and glory lost as a result of Gorbachev’s legacy.

Gorbachev himself refrained from commenting publicly on the war, but argued in 2016 that tensions were the fault of Kyiv’s lean toward NATO. “This conflict was not of Russia’s making. It has its roots within Ukraine itself,” Gorbachev argued.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://time.com/5636727/mikhail-gorbachev-dies/

The post Mikhail Gorbachev, First and Only President of the Soviet Union, Dies at 91 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

International power balance is primarily based on claiming ascendancy on the world stage, which in turn is driven by political imperatives, the prime mover in all initiatives towards claiming power. After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia assumed the mantle of Soviet power but struggled to prove itself as a world power of consequence. Its gradual rise back to a position of influence has been a long journey, guided by influential thinkers. Since the initiatives that Russia undertook to return to the world stage were based on military actions, there is a prevalent belief that its international dealings were based on a military doctrine that has been attributed to General Valery Gerasimov, the current Russian Chief of General Staff. This belief is a fallacy.

If a nation tends to project power based purely on military actions, it would amount to the military doctrine driving national security policy. The Soviet/Russian tradition does not support this process since the military has never been the driver, but only the implementer in Russia. Russia’s current national security policy is firmly based on a concept, a doctrine, which is gradually being recognized and labeled as the Primakov Doctrine, named after Yevgeny Primakov who became the Russian Foreign Minister in December 1995.

Who was Yevgeny Primakov (1929-2015)

Primakov was born in Kiev in 1929 and initially worked for the Russian broadcasting authority. Subsequently, he was trained by the KGB as an Oriental scholar, becoming multi-lingual, proficient in Arabic and English. During Leonid Brezhnev’s government, he became an expert on the Middle-East and was prominently involved in formulating the Soviet Union’s Middle-East and South Asian policies during the 1970s and 80s. He was a special adviser to Gorbachev and made a last-minute attempt to prevent the 1991 Gulf War, going against the then Soviet policy of cooperation with the United States.

In September 1991, Primakov supervised the seamless transition of the KGB to what became known as the Foreign Intelligence Service of the then-emerging Russian Federation, the SVVR. In 1995, he became the Foreign Minister of Russia and then became the Prime Minister during 1998-99. During his years in power, he drove Russian foreign policy imperatives and was lauded by all domestic institutions as a realist who was wedded to Russia’s strategic goals. It was under his aegis that Russia condemned the US-led intervention in Yugoslavia, Operation Allied Force (March-June 1999) and also lodged a symbolic protest against the unilateral action of the US, without UN sanction.

Evolution of the Current Russian Foreign Policy

Prior to Primakov coming to prominence, Russia had sought accommodation with the West. Primakov initiated actions to move on an independent track in its foreign relations, consciously demonstrating to the West that Russia was unwilling to be causally consigned to the proverbial ‘dust heap of history’. Primakov envisaged a Russia-led bloc that would emerge as an alternative to the then-emerging US-led unipolar world and create a truly multi-polar world order. The initial concept was of a trilateral group—Russia, China, and India—that became the foundation and trigger point for the emergence of BRICS.

Primakov’s concept started as a balance to neutralize the immediate threat to Russia, which was the international pressure being brought to bear after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He formulated the doctrine as the connecting bridge between policy objective and the strategy to preempt political backlash to Russian initiatives. This objective was to be achieved by exploiting the enemy’s weakness and upgrading Russian military maneuvers.

Primakov Doctrine – Fundamentals

The doctrine is premised on Russia being able to prevent the world from becoming unipolar, which is another way of stating that the international power and influence of the US has to be diluted. The insistence on developing a multi-polar world went directly against the post-Cold War initiatives of the US to create a unipolar world order with its own assured primacy. Such a multi-polar world was postulated on the strength of Russo-Chinese partnership, with the wider, and informal, view that this coalition would challenge the US-led alliance in the Persian Gulf and the Taiwan Straits. Further, Primakov also wanted to create an exclusive Russian sphere of influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

For a little over two decades, based on the Primakov Doctrine, Russian foreign policy has insisted on five fundamental factors or concepts, which has been supported to a limited extent by the slow economic recovery in Russia. The five concepts are:

• Russia is an indispensable actor in global politics, pursuing an independent foreign policy;
• Russia’s foreign policy is surmised within a broad vision of a multipolar world managed by a  group of nations;
• Acceptance of Russia’s primacy in the post-Soviet space and in Eurasia is fundamental to all diplomatic overtures to the nation;
• Russia is fundamentally opposed to any expansion of NATO; and
• Partnership with China forms a cornerstone of Russia’s foreign policy.

With the expansion of NATO into the old Soviet bloc nations, the line of contact is barely two hours from major Russian cities. This strategic repositioning has altered the threat perception in Russia, especially since the earlier ‘buffer-zone’ of the near-abroad between NATO and the Russian heartland has vanished. The current situation has instilled a new sense of vulnerability in Russia’s strategic security thinking.

Russia’s Recent Initiatives

As soon as Russia stabilized its economy and put in place a strong and centralize government, Russia initiated actions to reclaim its perceived international status. It also became prone to taking calculated risks to move forward the nation’s strategic agenda. These initiatives could be seen from the early 2000s, starting with its opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Even though Russia opposed the invasion in principle and voiced it, two factors combined to make it choose to remain in the sidelines and permit Saddam Hussein, its long-term client, to be deposed. First, the Russian economy was still in the process of recovery and its military forces were still to build-up their capabilities after the implosion of the 1990s; and second, the might of the US military machine and the resolve of that nation to go to war, embodied in the President, combined to make Russia accept the inevitable.

However, it took only another five years for President Putin to warn NATO to ‘stay away’ from former Soviet states, a remarkable display of confidence. In 2008, while Georgia was a prime candidate for NATO membership, the Russian military defeated the Georgian Army. This was a calculated risk that Russia took, but by demonstrating its willingness to go to war if required to assert its regional primacy over former Soviet space, Russia unequivocally signaled its return to global politics. In an overarching manner, this was confirmation of Russia coming back into the regional equation in Europe.

In another sphere, the conflict in Georgia was an eye-opener for Russia—it clearly pointed to the severe gaps that existed in its military capabilities. This realization led to the initiation of far-reaching military reform that resulted in a fundamental change in the thinking from designing the force in preparation for a large-scale, great power conflict to one of a leaner force meant to protect Russia’s immediate sphere of interest. Essentially, the focus of the Russian military became the limits of the Russian periphery, the old Soviet ‘near abroad’. The reforms were instituted with vigor, even though the Russian economy was contracting, and resulted in the visible upgrade of the military’s hard power capabilities.

By 2010, Russian military doctrine had also started to echo the same message—noting the decline in the chances of a large-scale war, assuming the mantle of enforcing the Primakov Doctrine in order to ensure Russian primacy in the post-Soviet space and its area of interest in Eurasia.

Realigning the Military Doctrine

By 2014, Russian military forces were revising their doctrine to align it more seamlessly with the Primakov Doctrine. The revised doctrine reiterated the belief that large-scale war against Russia was highly unlikely and emphasized the deterrent capability resident incapable military forces. While the Russian military is gradually moving away from the concept of large-scale wars, the US Army is consciously stating that soldiers who have been in the army for less than 18 years do not know what a large-scale combat operation would entail. Accordingly, the US Army has initiated the process to reset its training to prepare for the ‘big fight’, indicating that a near-peer, great power competition is back in the reckoning of the future. There is obviously a difference of view between Russian long-term thinking and that of the US Army.

Although discounting the chances of a large-scale war against a near-peer power, Russian military doctrine accepts the emergence of a more dangerous world that will be driven by increased global competition; inter-regional rivalries; and an inherent political instability that will impact economic developments at both the global and regional levels.

The fundamental difference in the military doctrine that was articulated in 2010 and the new iteration in 2014 was that while the earlier version was aligned towards the feasibility of peaceful coexistence, the revised doctrine of 2014 accepted that confrontation with the West could not be avoided in the long term. Accordingly, the military posture and structure started to reflect this inevitability—a confrontation was the new paradigm, which in turn brought acceptance of the role of hard power within the national security calculations. Emerging geographic realities and the fielding of highly evolved advanced precision-guided systems by the Western military forces reinforces Russia’s sense of vulnerability and makes it focus further on the development of matching hard power capabilities.

In the past five years, after the 2014 overhaul of its military doctrine, the Russian military concept of operations has been focused on denying NATO any advantage through embracing hard power capabilities and emphasizing small-scale, hybrid warfare. One of the major objectives has been to deny NATO the advantage of air dominance, the basis on which the Western forces develop their concepts of operations, through the development and fielding of sophisticated air defense systems deployed at vital points and critical areas. Based on these parameters, Russia has moved along a path of taking calculated and deliberate risk-taking; almost taunting the West to react.

The Annexation of Crimea

In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and launched an incursion into eastern Ukraine. The conflict with Georgia in 2008 had brought to light the shortcomings of the Russian military forces. The Crimean episode now demonstrated the effectiveness of the reforms that had been initiated since then and without a doubt emphasized the fact that Russia had now returned to the ranks of major military powers. The immediate aftermath of the Russian action in Ukraine signaled an altered relationship between Russia and the Western world. Even though it had been promised NATO membership in 2008, Ukraine was not a NATO member when Crimea was annexed, and so was not covered by any security guarantee. The Western reaction to the invasion was only statements with no military assistance or intervention.

Russian military actions in Georgia and Ukraine prevented the states within the old Soviet sphere of influence, which Russia now considered its own sphere of influence, from obtaining NATO membership or security guarantees. From the annexation of Crimea onwards, the Primakov Doctrine became the underpinning principle for all Russian politico-strategic initiatives, which were focused on improving Russia’s position as an independent power of global influence.

Russia in the Middle-East

In 2015, Russia intervened militarily in the Syrian Civil War, in support of and at the request of Basher al-Assad’s faltering regime—surprising observers both at home and internationally. This was the first time since the break-up of the Soviet Union that Russia was intervening in a theater, not within its close geographic proximity. Most observers predicted military overreach, high casualties, rapid failure, and retreat; none of which came true. Instead, Russia emerged as the most competent player in the confused Middle-East for the first time after the early 1990s.

The Syrian intervention was a classic example of the Primakov Doctrine in operation. The objectives of the intervention were very clear—prevention of the US-led/sponsored regime change; and questioning and putting an end to unilateral US military interventions. Russian actions confirmed to its military activities of the past decade; enabling a well-crafted campaign while accepting calculated risks and ensuring minimum casualties. The intervention was also ensured that there was no direct confrontation with the US, which was in any case already attempting to scale-down in Syria. Within a few months of the start of the military campaign, it became obvious that Russia had gained far in excess of the limited risk that it had accepted. It had saved a long-term client regime and in the bargain also established itself as a major influence in the Middle-East, using Syria as a springboard to reach out to other countries in the region. By a calculated and limited military intervention, Russia had demonstrated its willingness to employ its military forces to support a client regime, irrespective of its hue and without any overt caveats being placed on the regime. Russia cannot be ignored anymore and has regained its military-strategic influence as an influential power—the Primakov Doctrine had proved its veracity.

In Syria, Russia used a judicious mix of military power projection and diplomacy to gain ascendancy and dominance in an unstable region and has rapidly filled the vacuum that the US left when it hurriedly and rapidly exited the scene. There are many reasons for the Russian success in the Middle-East. First, it learned from US mistakes and realized that ‘sanctions’ would not work against brutal regimes, the corollary being that military interventions must be sufficiently low key while also being decisive. Second, the politico-military strategy has to be backed by diplomacy and the capacity to carryout multi-lateral negotiations. The Astana Process, started in 2017 to discuss the rebuilding of a broken Syria is an example and could be seen as a successful alternative to the US-led Geneva talks that is stagnating. Third, the success of any intervention is dependent on the ability of the nation to bring together all elements of national power in a concerted manner, effectively and decisively. The fourth reason is the old-fashioned concept of loyalty. Russia demonstrated that it was a committed partner to its allies, even when the allied government was autocratic in nature.

Conclusion

In the past decade, it has become obvious that Russia puts national interests above the pursuit of ideology and does not attempt to restructure the region of its interest. Instead, the effort is always to increase stability while adherence to ideology and values is kept on the back burner. This is pragmatism in the new world at its best. Perhaps more importantly, in a region broken-up by ancient and bitter rivalries and fragmented by religious, ideological and geopolitical fault lines, Russia has emerged as the new power broker, an influential and essential partner to any discussion that takes place. Russia is still playing the ‘Great Game’ and achieving better results than ever before.

Within Russia, the Syrian intervention is seen as a great success and therefore an internal debate is shaping up between the older generation leadership and the younger and emerging strategists. The one, ever mindful of the bitter experience of the Soviet Union and therefore risk-averse, and the other more robust and harboring global ambitions for their nation, clamoring for their place in the international sun. While the grey beards seem to be holding sway, for now, the new generation, as is their wont, are impatient and not unduly heedful of history. Sooner, rather than later, Russian ambition will break the restraints of the past and riding on the back of the Primakov Doctrine, it will create global consequences.

First published in Blog sanukay.wordpress.com

Dr. Sanu Kainikara

Dr. Sanu Kainikara is a Canberra-based Military Strategist and a practising Historian. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of New South Wales and the inaugural Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Regional Security, Canberra.

Source: https://www.eurasiareview.com/05112019-russias-return-to-the-world-stage-the-primakov-doctrine-analysis/

The post Russia’s Return To The World Stage: The Primakov Doctrine – Analysis first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Irina Sherbakova was a founding member of the human rights organization Memorial

 ‘An image of Stalin as a strong leader who ensured victory in the second world war and helmed a superpower has re-emerged.’ A celebration of Stalin’s birthday, Moscow 2015. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Great expectations characterized 1989. In Russia, the rock band Kino sang “We are waiting for changes!” In huge public rallies on the streets of Moscow, millions demanded freedom and democracy. The Gorbachev era brought about a frenzy of change, and people witnessed incredible events on a weekly basis: they snatched up newspapers, hung on every word broadcast on TV, and with every passing day they felt more alive and free.

Many also understood that to change the rotten Soviet system one had to know the truth about its Stalinist past. It was the year the human-rights organization Memorial was founded, bringing together hundreds of activists from across the Soviet Union. Some of them had experienced life in the gulags. Some were dissidents who had recently returned from labor camps or places of exile, such as the nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov. The mission was clear: we would bring back the memory of Stalin’s victims and make it public.

In the spring of 1989, something happened that I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams: I was invited to the history and archives institute in Moscow to give a talk to students on the fates of former gulag prisoners. Afterward one asked me if I had ever met a real-life Stalin supporter. My first reaction was to laugh, but then I paused and wondered: had we finally reached a point in time when 20-year-olds thought no Stalinists existed anymore? Thirty years on, I recall that moment with a bitter feeling.

In the early 1990s, visitors flocked to the small house where Memorial had its offices. They brought documents, memoirs of prisons and labor camps, letters from gulags, and little notes that had been thrown from freight cars in transit and had miraculously reached their intended recipients. Other objects from the gulags included plywood labor camp trunks, quilted prison jackets with inmate numbers, jagged spoons and bowls. Visitors brought handwritten books, embroidery, drawings and watercolors that they had managed to hide during searches of their cells. This led to the creation of an archive at Memorial, a collection of thousands of fragments of family memories.

At the time we thought this was only the beginning of a long process and that our new political leaders had realized that getting to grips with the past was a key task. But the reformers lacked interest in history; they were in a rush to build a market economy. They didn’t see the link between successful economic reforms and the need for a vibrant civil society. Boris Yeltsin’s government would mention Soviet political repression only ahead of elections in order to fend off the Communists.

Soon enough, in the grip of severe economic crisis, “democracy” became a dirty word for many Russians. They were disappointed and felt reforms were never truly accomplished. Russian society succumbed to weariness and indifference. Stalinist crimes, once thought better out in the open, had turned out to be so horrific that people didn’t want to spend time thinking about them.

‘Vladimir Putin has called the fall of the Soviet Union ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe’ of the 20th century.’ Photograph: Marco Ravagli/Barcroft Media

By the mid-1990s, nostalgia for the Soviet period started to creep in. The greyness of the Brezhnev era, with its endless queues and empty shops, started to be recalled as a peaceful, prosperous time. And gradually something that had seemed impossible during perestroika, became real: Stalin’s shadow loomed large again.

Vladimir Putin’s rise to power came accompanied by a new version of patriotism relying on “heroic” and “bright” aspects of the Soviet past. An image of Stalin as a strong leader who had ensured victory in the second world war and led a Soviet superpower re-emerged. Television propaganda again worked hard to create that image. The millions who perished in waves of political repression were pushed to the margins of collective consciousness.

Today, the 1989 liberation of eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war are understood by many Russians in terms of defeat, a disaster even. No wonder, given that Putin has called the fall of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. Today Stalin’s face watches you ubiquitously from billboards, subway train walls, and bookstore windows. Dozens of monuments to him have sprouted around Russia.

It’s not that Russians have forgotten about the direct link between Stalin’s name and the political repression that affected almost every family. Rather, they don’t want to reflect on the terror, on who perpetrated it or what the rationale behind it was. They aren’t ready to acknowledge that this was the central pillar of the entire system.

The current glorification of our victories and the whitewashing of Stalin have become possible because today’s Russia has, in fact, no concept whatsoever of the future. What kind of country do we want to live in? A country that “has risen from its knees” and follows its own, unique path? But what is that path? Kremlin ideologists have failed to map any of this clearly.

It is difficult today to recall 1989 without a deep feeling of lost opportunity and shattered hope. In the early Putin years, a silent majority traded the possibility of freedom for promises of “stability”, and later for the national pride of “great Russia”, a power that draws borders around itself and feels like a besieged fortress.

Every day our freedom seems to shrink as quickly as it expanded 30 years ago. Memorial is effectively the only organization that for decades, tirelessly, and without any governmental support, has worked to preserve memory. In 2016 authorities branded it a “foreign agent”, just like dozens of other NGOs. Yury Dmitriyev, one of our historians from the region of Karelia, has been in prison for almost three years on trumped-up charges, and human rights activist Oyub Titiev has been persecuted for his work in Chechnya.

Still, there are forces in Russian society that resist. People want to learn the fate of their ancestors. Memorial, just like so many years ago, is again receiving support from many quarters. More volunteers join in, more young people engage in our initiatives and despite all the obstacles put up by authorities, new projects are launched, exploring historical memory.

History will not be completely rewritten. Putin may be a focus of much concern across the world, but in Russia, it is obvious to many of us that our country’s return to democracy will be impossible as long as we fail to condemn Stalin and the system he created.

This article was translated from the original Russian by Nina Rozhanovskaya

• Irina Sherbakova is a historian, author and founding member of the human rights organization Memorial

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/10/vladimir-putin-russia-rehabilitating-stalin-soviet-past

The post Vladimir Putin’s Russia is rehabilitating Stalin. We must not let it happen first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Adoration of Stalin at an all time high in Russia, 70% of people regard his role as positive, according to Levada poll. Stockholm syndrome passed from generation to generation. It’s ironic that Stalin was a semi-taboo figure for half of Soviet history.

Bloomberg reports that the poll found that the nationwide perception of Joseph Stalin, the former leader of the Soviet Union, is becoming more and more positive among Russians. Levada, the only independent polling center in Russia which Quartz described as a “crucial member of Russian civil society,” conducts a survey about Stalin annually. The 2019 results showed that 51 percent of Russians view Stalin with admiration — up from 40 percent last year and the highest mark since the survey began in 2001.

Even more strikingly, 70 percent said Stalin’s 31-year rule was good for the country.

That nostalgia stems from the dissatisfaction many Russians feel about their living standards under President Vladimir Putin, writes Bloomberg. Of course, in many other parts of the world Stalin is considered a historical pariah for implementing tyrannical police state policies, persecuting members of every level of society, and for causing famine as a result of his collectivization program.

Per Bloomberg, Stalin’s crimes have been downplayed in Russian school textbooks and he has instead been cast as a “modernizer who transformed the Soviet Union into a superpower.”

The survey was conducted between March 21-27 via 1,600 personal interviews at people’s homes throughout Russia. The margin of error is 3.4 percent. Tim O’Donnell

Source: https://theweek.com/speedreads/835496/majority-russians-now-view-stalin-favorably-poll-finds

The post A majority of Russians now view Stalin favorably, poll finds first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Communist party supporters carry portraits of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, left, and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin during a demonstration marking the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017. Thousands of Communist demonstrators marked the centennial of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution Tuesday by marching across downtown Moscow. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

A band of political radicals seized the reins of power in post-tsarist Russia a century ago this week, installing Vladimir Lenin as their first leader and setting in play some of the forces that made the 20th century the bloodiest in human history.

The post Los Angeles Times: Russian Revolution still echoes 100 years later first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

On Thursday, the government is due release its final batch of secret files relating to the assassination, the majority of which will come from the FBI and CIA. The files are being released in keeping with a 1992 law that was passed in part due to Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” which explored the efforts of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to investigate Kennedy’s death.

Stone’s film was popular but widely criticized by experts who saw the film as a disservice to history. Scholars of the assassination are nearly unanimous in their belief that Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, while Garrison argued that elements of the U.S. government were actually responsible. Other conspiracy theorists point to the Mafia or foreign governments, such as Fidel Castro’s Cuba or the Soviet Union, as the hidden actors behind the assassination. Meanwhile, former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who says he had been pushing the president to release the files in full, has written a book claiming President Johnson was the real culprit.

President Trump is the only person allowed by law to halt the release of the files, although he’s said that he will release all of them “subject to the receipt of further information.”

There are numerous questions surrounding the assassination, which shocked the nation on November 22, 1963. For example, it is difficult to discern a clear motive for why Oswald, a 24-year-old former Marine who had briefly defected to the Soviet Union, would shoot Kennedy. Oswald also denied shooting Kennedy and famously claimed to be a “patsy” moments before nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed him on November 24.

The Warren Commission, which was put appointed by Johnson to investigate the assassination and lead by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, determined in 1964 that Oswald had acted alone. Still, a CBS News poll from 2013 found that 61 percent of Americans believed that more than one man was responsible for the assassination. Other polls have routinely found that majorities of Americans likewise believe in some sort of conspiracy surrounding Kennedy’s death. The same CBS poll found that 56 percent believed there was a cover-up.

It’s unclear whether Thursday’s big reveal will change anyone’s mind. But here’s what we do know: the new collection includes over 3,100 documents, and some of them are related to Oswald’s trip to Mexico City right before the assassination. But most experts are of the opinion that the new documents are unlikely to reveal all that much about what happened that day in Dallas, because the government was legally required to release anything particularly relevant to the case years ago.

On the other hand, it’s impossible to know if there’s a bombshell hidden in this new tranche of documents.

“It’s always possible that a really good researcher will find new information that they think is significant and will add to their version of the story, or perhaps even lead them in other directions,” Judge John Tunheim, who chaired the Assassination Records Review Board, told Time Magazine earlier this week.

“There’s a lot of still unanswered questions about the assassination. For example, did Oswald, when he lived in Minsk, have any connection with Cuban intelligence agents who were being trained in Minsk by the Soviets? There are issues like that that aren’t fully resolved anywhere, and going through these documents might give good researchers an opportunity to come up with more than what we know today in the official story.”

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/secret-jfk-files-released-by-us-government/

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When the Nazi iconography was discovered this summer in Herxheim am Berg, some called for the bell’s removal, others for its protection as a relic of a shameful national history. The village is still deciding what to do.

Germans have a word for coming to terms with the past: “Vergangenheitsbewältigung.” The word, coined after World War II, has no equivalent in the English language, no analog that might inform the American debate over Confederate monuments — whose defenders include not just torch-wielding neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., but also President Donald Trump.

On a continent riven in the last century by two world wars, genocide and a battle of ideas waged across the Iron Curtain, European nations have accepted the burden of curating the tortured landscapes of their past. Symbols — insignia, flags, monuments — have become explosive at moments of regime change, as shifts in political power alter the cultural currents of the day. East-west friction particularly marks the conflict over remembrance in Europe, from de-Nazification in the Cold War era to contests today over commemoration of communism’s past.

“To some extent, Germany is an exceptional case,” said Arnd Bauerkämper, a historian at the Free University in Berlin. “Only the abandonment of Nazi ideology, and the clear break with the Nazi past, enabled integration into the West — membership in NATO, German reunification. There never was such a decisive break with Confederate ideas in the United States.”

But addressing monuments to people, parties and movements that have fallen into disrepute has not been simple in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe. And while memorials to victims now predominate, particularly here in the former capital of the Third Reich, continuing strife over names and symbols illuminates the continent’s enduring divisions.

A statue of Franz Joseph I again occupies a prominent position in Prague, a century after Czechoslovak independence made the commemoration of an Austro-Hungarian emperor unthinkable. Other figures remain unpalatable. For years, Czech officials have debated what to do with the plinth once supporting a statue of Joseph Stalin that weighed 17,000 metric tons, destroyed in 1962 as the communist party line turned against the Soviet dictator.

Jirina Siklova, a Czech sociologist active in the dissident Charter 77 movement, said the site remained indelibly linked to Stalin.

“It is stimulation for an explanation of this man,” she said. “Without this statue of Stalin, and without the liquidation of this statue, the new generation and tourists wouldn’t remember this period.”

Hungary has removed Communist-era statues from their pedestals and placed them in Memento Park, an open-air museum outside Budapest. Lithuania’s Grutas Park is similar.

This has not quieted dispute over public memorials, however, particularly as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has pursued nationalist politics. A monument unveiled in 2014 to mark the 70th anniversary of Hungary’s invasion by Nazi Germany was dedicated to “the victims of the German invasion.” Critics said it obscured Hungary’s involvement in the annihilation of its Jewish citizens.

This year, activists threw paint-filled balloons at a Soviet memorial in Freedom Square in Budapest, in protest of perceived lingering Russian influence in Hungarian affairs.

Jakub Janda, deputy director of the Prague-based European Values Think-Tank, said Russian influence was inseparable from a new effort by Czech communists to commemorate Communist-era border guards, who once policed the country’s frontier with West Germany and Austria. Josef Skala, vice chairman of the Czech Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, said memorializing the guards was part of an effort to demonstrate that Czechoslovakia, in addition to the Soviet Union, was a victim in the Cold War.

“I, personally, and the party I belong to do not like rewriting history,” Skala said. “We did not initiate the Cold War. We made mistakes, yes, but we were defending our interests.”

Antipathy to Russia in Poland’s ruling nationalist party, Law and Justice, has created a new row over Communist-era monuments in the former Soviet satellite state. The Polish government has set out to remove 500 Soviet monuments, as Russian senators call on President Vladimir Putin to respond with sanctions.

Statues of Stalin and Vladimir Lenin have also been toppled in Ukraine, as part of pro-Europe revolutionary activity that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

Still another approach is that of Romania, which last year unveiled a new sculpture — depicting three wings pointing to the sky — that honors those who died fighting Communist rule in Romania and Bessarabia.

The German capital is a tableau of conflicting impulses. An underground transit station was renamed for Karl Marx in 1946 — not in the communist east but in West Berlin. Parts of the Berlin Wall remain in place, including at Checkpoint Charlie, a major tourist destination. Two years ago, the head of a giant Lenin statue was exhumed and exhibited in Berlin.

The European Union dropped in 2005 proposals to ban both Nazi and communist symbols, due to concerns for freedom of expression as well as disagreement over the scope of the prohibition. Still, many European nations bar the use of totalitarian symbolism. In parts of Eastern Europe, bans expressly extend to communist iconography. In Germany, only the prohibition on Nazi symbols and signals is unambiguous; tourists from across the globe have recently learned that giving the Nazi salute is forbidden.

Many sites associated with the Nazis stand today as haunting museums. Other structures have been demolished to thwart neo-Nazi pilgrimages. A prison that housed Nazi war criminals was razed in 1987, its materials ground to powder and scattered in the North Sea.

But purging Germany of Nazism was not as swift as severe legal codes might suggest. Nor were the country’s motives as pure, said Jacob S. Eder, a scholar of German history and Holocaust memory at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena.

“It’s important to avoid making the mistake of thinking that now because every German city has some kind of memorial or museum to the Nazi past, that this was an easy process,” Eder said. “It’s actually quite the opposite.”

Certain debates, he said, still confound the public. Parade grounds in Nuremberg where Hitler held massive rallies lie in disrepair. “The question is what to do with it and whether to let it just decay,” Eder said.

Controversy in the 1990s and early 2000s marked the conceptualization of the Holocaust memorial in the heart of Berlin.

“People considered it a mark of shame,” Eder said — an argument revived this year by Björn Höcke, a state leader of Alternative for Germany, a far-right party poised to enter the German Parliament for the first time in elections next month. “It was the government of Helmut Kohl that pushed for this monument, not out of a sense of moral responsibility but much more a political necessity, to improve Germany’s reputation abroad.”

From the beginning of the postwar era, as West Germany rebuilt under the Marshall Plan, external pressure guided de-Nazification.

“Our deliverance from the Nazi period wasn’t a development within Germany, but we were forced by the Allied forces to become a civilized nation again,” said Volker Beck, a Green Party lawmaker who heads the Germany-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group.

The process was faltering, as ex-Nazis sometimes found their way into power, said Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, author of “The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism.”

“But the thing that kept West Germany in the American orbit — and committed to de-Nazification — was fear of the Soviet Union,” he said. “There was no such fear in the American South.”

Aid to reconstruct Western European economies hinged on strict conditions to adopt democratic policies.

By contrast, a decade after the Civil War, as federal troops were withdrawn from the South, the decrees of Reconstruction went unenforced.

Luisa Beck contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/in-a-german-village-the-bell-still-tolls-for-hitler/article_33cae76b-3629-5ad8-9648-1adba16f2903.html

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