Sunday 30 December 2012

Moscow News 1936

Moscow News Weekly Edition dated September 16th 1936

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The English language Russian newspaper Moscow News was founded by the American socialist Anna Louise Strong and originally ran from 1930 until 1949. The paper was revived in 1956 under Communist Party control.
The front cover picture would look just as appropriate as part of a Hitler Youth recruitment poster.

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Page 2 sets the tone for the rest of the paper with an article about the success of Soviet military manoeuvres.
Kliment Voroshilov (picture above) was Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (i.e. Head of State) from 1953 to 1960 when Leonid Brezhnev took over. Voroshilov and Semyon Budyonny (the other man in the picture) were 2 of the first 5 Marshals of the Soviet Union, the other 3 were to die in Stalin’s Great Purge. 

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The trial of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Center, which Lenin’s widow (Nadezhda Krupskaya) is writing about in this article, was the first Moscow Show Trial and set the stage for subsequent trials based on trumped up charges. 
Gregori Zinovyev, Lev Kamenev and 14 others were charged with, among other anti-Soviet actions, conspiring to murder Joseph Stalin. The defendants were found guilty on August 24, 1936.
Prior to the trial, Zinoviev and Kamenev had agreed to plead guilty to the false charges on the condition that they would not be executed, a condition that Stalin accepted. Immediately after the conviction, Stalin ordered their execution.


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And for your reading pleasure the transcript of the Show Trial. I don’t think it’s available on Kindle, although I see you can get it from Collet's in the Charing Cross Road.

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Drawn by Boris Yefimov who had a career as a political cartoonist from 1919 until his death in 2008 at the age of 108!


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In 1949 the Editor-in-Chief Mikhail Borodin, was tried for being an enemy of the State (i.e. Joseph Stalin), and he died 2 years later in a Siberian prison camp.
Anna Loiuse Strong was a strong supporter of Russian Communism until 1936/37 when Stalin’s Great Purge started. She went back to America and switched her allegiance to the fledgling Chinese Communist cause. She spent the last 20 years of her life in China and died in 1970.
The strength of the Red Army was much appreciated a few years later when Russia's help in defeating Hitler was critical.

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Vladimir Kokkinaki was a test pilot that set numerous records from 1932 until 1960. In 1936/37 he broke his own altitude record 6 times.

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The Nottingham tournament was the first victory by a Soviet chess master outside of Russia and Mikhail (Michael) Botvinnik went on to be the World Chess Champion for 13 years.

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This article by Anna Louise Strong herself shows how obsessed with productivity the Soviets were.


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It is now known that Joseph Stalin was a monster who had the blood of millions on his hands - not only those who died in the Gulags but the countless peasants that died as a result of his Collectivist policies. And who was his biggest trading partner? The UK.

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The 1936 Nuremberg Rally or The 8th Party Congress was known as the "Rally of Honour". Leni Riefenstahl filmed the 1934 Rally as ‘Triumph of the Will’.
The Soviets calling the Nazis hypocritical is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

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The name Dynamo Moscow goes back to 1923 when the team was managed by the head of the Russian Secret Police (CHEKA). In 1936 they won the Soviet Championship. Who can forget such players as Mikhail Semichastny, Vasili Pavlov, Vasili Smirnov and Sergei Ilyin? I just have.

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If all this jollity has whetted your appetite why not visit the USSR? Oops too late.









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