region:far east

  • Photos of Abandoned Russia - The Atlantic

    https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/08/photos-of-abandoned-russia/566984

    Très impressionnant

    Across the vastness of Russia—the world’s largest country, at some 6.6 million square miles—and over the span of its long history, countless houses, factories, churches, villages, military bases, and other structures have been built and then left behind: imperial-era palaces, log cabins of pioneers in the Far East, Christian cathedrals, massive Soviet blocks of concrete, speculative-mining camps, and more. For years now, photographers have traveled across Russia finding and photographing these intriguing ghost towns, empty Soviet factories, toppling houses, and crumbling chapels.

    #russie #soviétisme #architecture #ùonde_post_soviétique #urss #ex-urss #union_soviétique

  • Gregory Klimov. The Terror Machine. Chapter 06
    http://g-klimov.info/klimov-pp-e/ETM06.htm

    Occupation Authorities at Work

    “Go and wait for me in the auto,” the general told me when I reported to him one day. He had a habit of not revealing where we were going. We might be visiting the Control Commission, or we might be going to the flying-ground to fly to Moscow or Paris. Either he considered that his subordinates should guess his thoughts, or he kept the route secret, in the manner of prominent personages, to prevent attempts on his life.

    His secrecy did not prevent his grumbling at his fellow travelers for not making preparations for the journey and arming themselves with the requisite materials, or even for traveling with him at all. Before the war he had been the first secretary of the Party District Committee in Sverdlovsk. During the war he was a member of the War Council and commander of the rear behind the Volkhov front-line army group; he was the Party’s eyes and ears in the army organization. These Party generals never directly intervened in the planning or execution of military operations, but no order was valid until they had countersigned it.

    I found Major Kuznetsov sitting in the auto. “Where are we going?” I asked.

    “Somewhere or other,” the adjutant replied unconcernedly. He was used to the general’s ways and did not worry his head about the object of the journey.

    We took the autobahn and drove to Dresden, where we drew up outside the Luisenhof. Innumerable red-pennoned automobiles surrounded it. On the steps of the hotel a group of generals was standing among them the double hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel-General of the Tank Army and military governor of Saxony, Bogdanov. These generals were the various military commanders of Saxony, and they had been summoned to Dresden to report to the high command of the S. M. A. Dresden and Berlin. The S. M. A. had received a mass of complaints and accusations concerning the activities of the local commandaturas. The various military commanders had received no instructions whatever after the capitulation and each was pursuing whatever policy he thought fit. The majority of them were half-educated men who had come to the forefront during the war, and they were completely unfitted for the tasks arising from peacetime occupation.

    Before General Shabalin went off with General Bogdanov to have a consultation prior to the conference he whispered something into his adjutant’s ear. Major Kuznetsov turned away and took me with him. “Come and help me look for an automobile,” he said.

    “What sort of automobile?” I asked in surprise.

    “One for the general,” he said briefly. “You’ll see how it’s done.”

    With the air of people objectively interested in car models we walked along the row of cars in which the commandants of the Saxony towns had come to the conference. As soon as a commander took over a city after the capitulation, thus becoming its absolute ruler, his first concern had been to requisition the finest car available. So now we were attending an exhibition of the finest models of the German automobile industry, from the rather conservative Maybach to the most modern creations of Mercedes-Benz. The new owners were already gone to the hotel, leaving the drivers, ordinary soldiers, in the cars.

    Major Kuznetsov made a leisurely examination of the various cars, kicking the tires with his toe, testing the springs, and even looking at the speedometers to see what mileage had been covered. Finally his choice fell on a Horch cabriolet.

    “Whose car is this?” he asked the soldier lolling comfortably behind the wheel.

    “Lieutenant-Colonel Zakharov’s,” the soldier answered in a tone suggesting that the name was world-famous.

    “Not a bad little bus,” Kuznetsov decided. He ran his fingers over the buttons of the instrument panel, took another look at the car, and said: “Tell your lieutenant-colonel he’s to send this car to Karlshorst, for General Shabalin.”

    The man gave the major a sidelong glance, but only asked distrustfully: “And who is General Shabalin?”

    “After the conference your lieutenant-colonel will know exactly who he is,” Kuznetsov answered. “And report to him that he’s to punish you for not saluting General Shabalin’s adjutant.”

    Looting activities were organized strictly in relation to rank and merit. The ordinary soldiers acquired watches and other small items. Junior officers picked up accordions; senior officers... The classification was complicated, but it was closely observed. If fate put a lieutenant in the way of acquiring a double-barreled sporting gun of the Derringer mark, it was no use his hoping to keep it. It was better for him to relinquish it voluntarily rather than have it taken from him. Sooner or later it would find its way into a major’s possession. But it would not remain with him long, unless it was well concealed. This general principle was applied with particular severity to cars. You couldn’t hide a car.

    The Saxony commandants had lost their sense of proportion through their exercise of local plenipotentiary powers and had committed a tactical error in bringing such a large number of attractive cars to their superiors’ notice. They paid for this by losing half the cars that were parked outside the hotel. When a second conference was held some months later many of the commandants arrived almost in carts. Of course they had got hold of quite good cars again by then, but they had left them behind.

    Some three hundred officers, ranking from major upward, were assembled for the conference. They included several generals, the commandants of Dresden, Leipzig and other large cities, who also were to take part in the exchange of experiences. The heads of the Dresden S. M. A. were seated at the presidium table, which was covered with red cloth. General Shabalin sat with them as the representative of the S. M. A. supreme authorities at Karlshorst.

    General Bogdanov opened the conference by stating that certain things had come to the ears of the S. M. A. which suggested that the commandaturas had a warped idea of their tasks. He called on the officers present to ’exchange their experiences’ and to submit the defects in the commandaturas’ work to pitiless criticism. He gave it to be understood that the S. M. A. was much better informed than they realized. So it would be better to discuss these defects themselves rather than wait for the S. M. A. to attack. In other words, if any one of them felt guilty he should expose as many of his neighbors’ sins as possible in order to obscure his own.

    A lieutenant-colonel was the first to speak: “Of course there are certain defects in the work of the commandaturas, but they’re chiefly due to the lack of control from above. The military commandaturas are left to their own devices, and that leads to....” The officer who had undertaken the task of self-castigation began very uncertainly and looked round at his comrades as though seeking their support. But they all had their eyes fixed attentively on their toecaps. General Bogdanov tapped his pencil expectantly on the table. The lieutenant-colonel went on: “Many commandants are losing sight of their duty; some of them have been demoralized and bourgeoisified. So far as they’re concerned the moral cleanliness of the Soviet officers is... er... er...” He felt that he had flown too high, and resolved to bring the question down to earth. “Take Major So-and-so, head of the commandatura in the town of X, for example....”

    “No pseudonyms, please,” General Bogdanov interrupted. “We’re all friends here.”

    “Well then, take Major Astafiev, for example,” the lieutenant-colonel corrected himself. “Since his appointment as commandant of the town of X it’s notorious that he’s gone to pieces. A little way outside the town there’s a castle, formerly belonging to a prince, which he’s made his residence. And there he lives in a style that not even the tsarist courtiers and boyars knew. He keeps more servants in the castle today than its former owners had. Every morning, when Major Astafiev deigns to open his eyes, he hasn’t got the least idea where he is until lie’s drunk half a bucket of pickled-cucumber liquor to clear his head after the previous night’s drinking bout. And then, as befits a real gentleman, the major sticks out his dainty feet and one German woman draws the stocking on to his left foot and another German woman draws on the right. A third stands ready with his silk dressing gown. And he can’t even put on his trousers without help from abroad.”

    There was a ripple of laughter in the hall. The gallant major’s style of living obviously impressed the conference.

    “But these are only the flowers; the fruits are still to come,” the lieutenant-colonel exclaimed. "Major Astafiev has reduced cohabitation with German women to a system. He has a special commando squad whose one task is to scour the district to get hold of women for him. They’re locked up for days in the commandatura cellars before they arrive at the major’s bed.

    “Recently, after one of his regular orgies, the major felt quite a longing for some fish soup. Without thinking twice about it he ordered the sluices of the castle lake to be opened so that the fish could be caught for him. He had a few small fishes for his supper, but many hundredweight of fish perished. Surely, comrades and officers, such behavior must arouse your indignation?”

    His words provoked amusement rather than indignation. Each of the officers recalled similar incidents within his own experience, and shared his impressions with his neighbors.

    “Major Astafiev’s case,” the speaker ended, “is of interest simply because it is typical. The situation is fundamentally the same in commandatura after commandatura. It is our duty to show up and brand such shameful activities, to call the fools to order and make them realize the existence of proletarian legality.”

    The look of amusement vanished from the other officers’ faces; their eyes again studied their boots. With the mention of responsibility and legality the affair had taken an unpleasant turn. The Soviet officers were well acquainted with Soviet law. It is based on the principle of the psychological education of the collective, and so it often resorts to the use of ’scapegoats’ who have to atone for the collective sins. In such cases the law is applied with unusual severity, as a deterrent.

    Soviet law turns a blind eye to peccadilloes. A man is not run in for simply knocking out someone’s tooth or breaking a window. There are more important matters to be attended to; for instance, a man can be given ten years for gleaning socialist ears of corn from the fields, or five years for stealing a piece of socialist sugar in a factory. Teeth and windowpanes are still private property, and so do not merit the protection of socialistic law. The result is that all feeling for legality is lost, and if this process goes too far, steps are taken to find a ’scapegoat’. It is highly unpleasant to be a scapegoat. One can get away with a great deal, only to find one is in danger of death for some really trifling offense. If the higher authorities of the S. M. A. had decided to put salutary measures into force under the pretext of harmless self-criticism, the situation must be pretty bad. And then some of the town commandants would be going before a military tribunal. Who would be the scapegoat? There was a distinct feeling of strain and nervousness in the hall.

    General Bogdanov’s calculation was sound. The lieutenant-colonel’s opening speech, which quite possibly had been arranged in the S. M. A., was followed by a succession of recriminations. The commandants devotedly flung muck at one another, while the secretaries took down every word in shorthand. Finally it came to the generals’ turn; the commandants of Dresden and Leipzig added their say. It was a rare sight to see a general standing like a schoolchild in the center of the hall and making confession of his sins. And if he referred to his general’s epaulettes and tried to justify his conduct a voice shot at him derisively from the presidium: “No mock modesty, General. We’re all friends here.”

    It revealed the mentality of a mass trained in absolute obedience. If the order comes from above to confess their sins, they all confess. Those who cannot boast of past sins confess their future ones. The commandants expose their ’deficiencies’ and swear to be good children in future, and pay attention to papa. For the papa in the Kremlin is always right.

    Someone in the hall rose and addressed the presidium: “May I ask a question, Comrade General? It isn’t quite to the point, but I’d like to have advice.”

    “Well, out with it. What’s troubling you?” Bogdanov said in a friendly tone.

    “My commandatura is right on the Czech frontier,” the speaker began. “Every day a horde of naked people are driven over the frontier into my area. I’ve put them all into cellars for the time being, we can’t have them running about the streets like that, and I’ve nothing I can dress them in.”

    “How do you mean, ’naked’?” General Bogdanov asked.

    “Just naked,” the commandant replied. “Like newborn babes. It’s shameful to see them.”

    “I don’t understand. Where do these naked people come from?”

    “They’re Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia. The Czechs first strip them, and then send them across the frontier to me. They tell them: ’You came here naked, and you can go back naked.’ They’re being transferred to Germany under the Potsdam Agreement. It’s a joke for the Czechs, but it’s a headache for me. What am I to dress them in, when my own men are going about in rags?”

    “There’s a bank in my town,” another commandant added his bit. “The bank director and I have inspected the private safes in the strongroom. They contain a large quantity of gold and diamonds, a real mountain of valuables. I’ve ordered it all to be sealed up. But what am I to do with it?”

    It was characteristic that not one of the commandants complained of difficulties with the German population. They had no diversionist activities to report, or unrest. Their own men gave them much more trouble.

    “The occupation machinery must be in control of the tasks set by our occupation policy,” General Bogdanov told the assembly. “We must maintain the prestige of our army and our country in the eyes of the people of the occupied country. The commandaturas are the lowest link in our contacts with the German population.”

    After the conference there was a banquet for all who had been present. Major Kuznetsov, an officer of the S. M. A. Dresden, and I had a table in a window niche. The commandants had recovered a little from the unpleasant experiences of the conference and were trying to restore their lost self-confidence by relating their heroic deeds of wartime. In this they had much assistance from the unlimited amount of drink available. The officer of the Dresden S. M. A. looked round the hall and remarked to me:

    “This reminds me of the Moscow Underground. The Under-ground’s wonderful, but the people using it don’t match it. Marble all round you, and hunger clothed in rags.”

    I asked Major Kuznetsov, whom because of his position, as adjutant was familiar with the general procedure: “What do you think will happen to Major Astafiev and the others who have been censured?”

    “Nothing!” he answered with a smile. “In the worst case, they’ll be transferred to other commandaturas. Even professional rogues are needed. Besides, these dolts are genuinely devoted to the Party, and to such men much is forgiven.”

    I was surprised to hear the major and the other officer expressing their opinions so frankly. But the frankness was due to the remark-able atmosphere that prevailed in the Party and all over the Soviet Union after the war. Everybody had the feeling that they had won their freedom, they had come out victorious. The feeling was general, but it was strengthened in those who had contacts with the west and could observe the striking contrasts between the two worlds.

    During our stay in Dresden General Shabalin was a guest of General Dubrovsky, head of the Administration for Economy of S. M. A. Saxony. Dubrovsky’s villa had formerly been the residence of some big German businessman. It had a beautiful garden, and after the conference Major Kuznetsov and I walked about the garden for a time. While we were out there Misha, the general’s chauffeur, brought us an order that we were to go at once to General Dubrovsky’s room.

    There we found a rather different kind of meeting in progress. The two Soviet generals were sitting on one side of the desk, and opposite them were the German city fathers, the head of the German administration for Saxony, and the burgomaster of Dresden. The burgomaster spoke perfect Russian, and until recently he had been a lieutenant-colonel in the Red Army. They were discussing Saxony’s economic tasks under the occupation regime. This subject was disposed of with amazing ease. The burgomaster was not only an obedient executive, but also a valuable adviser as to local conditions. We made no orders or demands; the burgomaster recommended efficacious measures, and we confirmed them.

    Only once did the burgomaster clearly reveal any consciousness of his German origin. When the great shortage of pitprops came up for discussion General Shabalin proposed:

    “There’s plenty of forest around here, cut it down.”

    The burgomaster, the former lieutenant-colonel in the Red Army, clapped his hands in horror. “If we cut down the forests, in five years our nourishing land of Saxony will be a desert!” he exclaimed. A compromise decision was come to, to look for other resources, and meanwhile to exploit the local forests.

    The head of the German Saxony administration was only a figurehead; a member of some democratic party, he was a feeble creature, ready to sign any document without looking at it. At his back was our man, a German who yesterday had been wearing Soviet uniform, but today a hundred per cent German, a burgomaster. He shrank from no effort to extract as large an amount of reparations as possible. The ’class-enemy’ had been displaced overnight, the other members of the population were paralyzed with terror, and our people worked under the guise of a ’new democracy’.

    Next day we drove to Halle, the capital of the province of Saxony. Here Shabalin met his old friend General Kotikov, head of the S. M. A. Administration for Economy at Halle. Later, General Kotikov acquired wider fame as the Soviet commandant of Berlin. He was a very pleasant man, and a hospitable host.

    At Halle there were similar conferences to those at Dresden. First an intermezzo with the town commandants, and then General Shabalin checked up on the work of the new democracy. The local German leader had lived for fifteen years in Pokrovsky Street, in Moscow, so he and I were almost neighbors. He was even more assiduous in his task than his colleague at Dresden. General Shabalin had to dampen his ardor as he presented a long list of measures to be taken in the direction of socialization.

    “Not so fast!” Shabalin said. “You must take the special features of the German economy and the transition stage into account. Put your proposals before General Kotikov for consideration.”

    On our way back to Berlin there was an unforeseen delay: one of our rear tires burst. Our driver had neither a spare cover nor a spare inner tube, and not even repair materials. The general raged. Whatever happened he wanted to be in Berlin before nightfall. Apparently he had no great trust in the efficiency of the city commandatura.

    Kuznetsov and I exchanged glances: we would have to do some-thing to get hold of a tier, for in his fear Misha had lost all the powers of invention for which Soviet drivers are renowned. There was only one possibility: we would have to ’organize’ a tier from a passing auto. Nowadays that was an everyday incident on the German country roads. We blocked the road according to all the rules of the military art, held up cars and submitted them to a thorough inspection. We found not one tier to fit our ’Admiral’s’ wheel. To the amazement of the people we held up, they were allowed to continue their journey. Our control post must have been an imposing sight: the general himself stood at our side, displaying his badges of rank.

    After some time a remarkable procession of automobiles came slowly along: several covered lorries, painted in rainbow colors, and plastered with garish playbills. A traveling circus. Only a blackhaired Carmen was lacking to complete the scene. A jeep closed the picturesque column with an American captain at the wheel.

    I tried to discover who was in charge of this show. But while I was wondering what language I would need to use in order to make myself understood, a modern Carmen jumped out of the jeep and addressed us in the genuine washerwoman’s lingo of the Berlin district of Wedding. For a moment Major Kuznetsov and I forgot what we had halted all these lorries for. That flower from Wedding was devilishly beautiful! No wonder the American captain was risking the dangerous journey along the roads of the Soviet zone. For such a woman one would forget all Eisenhower’s and Zhukov’s regulations taken together. We tore ourselves with difficulty from the enchanting view and began to examine the tiers. Finally we came to the jeep.

    “What about the jeep? Will its wheels fit?” Kuznetsov asked Misha.

    “The holes fit. We’ll limp a bit, but they’ll get us home.”

    So the problem was solved. Soon we would have a supplementary delivery on lend-lease account. In any case the jeep had a spare wheel: an unnecessary luxury.

    I told Carmen what we wanted, and pointed to the jeep’s spare wheel. The general mentally recalled the Potsdam agreement and the technique of intimidation. “Ask the American if he has a pass for the Soviet zone. And what he’s driving in these parts for?”

    But both the artist and her patron were glad to get away so cheaply without any psychological pressure: a car wheel in exchange for violating the Potsdam Agreement and a journey through the Soviet zone! I made a note of the captain’s Berlin address, so that we could return the expropriated wheel to its owner. Later I told Misha more than once to do so, but I fear the wheel got transformed into a bottle of vodka and found its way into his stomach. If the American captain should ever chance to read these lines, I express my thanks to him again and my apologies for the incident.

    Night was falling as we approached Berlin. The general grew fidgety and told Misha he was not to drive through the American sector on any account. He was to find a road through Rudow.

    That was easier said than done. Whichever way we turned, we found ourselves on roads running through the American sector, and so in the end we had to pass through it. The general flatly refused to take the normal route along the Potsdamerstrasse, and ordered Misha to wind his way through the southern suburbs until we reached the Soviet sector. Misha only shook his head. To have to travel through Berlin at night in the summer of 1945, and through unknown suburbs, was a difficult task.

    The general was pulling the wool over our eyes. He could not have been seriously afraid of an attempt on our lives or some under-hand design. There was no ban on Allies traveling through one anther’s Berlin sectors at that time. We had no secret documents with us. So, obviously, even on this occasion he was putting across some ideological bluff. Our auto crept slowly through the back streets. From time to time our headlamp picked out the figure of an American sentry. Or rather, figures, for they were always in pairs!

    The gallant soldier blinked angrily in the powerful beam, but his lady-friend quickly got over her alarm and smiled. Needless to say, they had no suspicion that a Soviet general was gazing at them from the darkness of the car. Shabalin snorted; it was all further evidence of the moral degeneration of the American army.

    After long wanderings among the ruins and allotments of the Berlin suburbs, in the light of our headlamp we saw a yellow arrow with the inscription: Karlshorst.

    The first post-war conference of the Big Three was held in Potsdam from 17 July to 2 August; it has gone down in history as the Potsdam Conference.

    In thinking of the Big Three at the Potsdam Conference one is inevitably struck by a gap: the familiar name of President Roosevelt was missing. He had died only a few days before the victory to which he had devoted so much strength and energy. One may find some consolation in the circumstance that he did not have to witness the crumbling of his illusions, on which he had based all his plans for a new ordering of the post-war world.

    During the conference Stalin went with the supreme representatives of the Western Allies on a car-tour of Berlin. One consequence of this trip was an order to the experts of the S. M. A. Air Administration to make a report to Stalin himself on the details of the Allied attacks on the city. The ruins of Berlin spoke more clearly than the newspaper reports and the statistics of bomb tonnage. As one drove through Berlin and saw the endless ruins, one might have thought that someone had shattered the enormous city with an equally enormous hammer. A comparison of the effects of the German air attacks on Moscow with the state of Berlin after the Allied attacks was provocative of thought. It was no casual interest that prompted Stalin to call for a special report.

    While the Big Three were negotiating, the S. M. A. was going on with its work. One of the first Soviet measures to have a radical influence on the internal structure of German economy was Marshal Zhukov’s Order No. 124. In this he decreed the confiscation of the vast wealth of former National Socialists and further, apparently quite incidentally, issued directions that preparations were to be made for the State to take over basic industries and for a plan of land reform to be drawn up. The German authorities were not yet used to Soviet methods, and could not read between the lines.

    Order No. 124 contained no precise figures. It was packed with demagogic phrases and it conferred comprehensive powers on the German authorities. The German ’people’, in the persons of their ’finest representatives’, were themselves to draft the plan and present it to the S. M. A. for consideration and confirmation. Simultaneously with the issue of Order No. 124, General Shabalin was given secret instructions on how it was to be put into force. These instructions laid down the precise nature of the reforms whose formulation was ostensibly to be left to the German autonomous authorities.

    I had more than one opportunity to see how the process of creating a land reform was carried through in General Shabalin’s private office. A solid-looking Maybach auto drove up to the entrance of the Administration, and a colorless individual in civilian clothes got out irresolutely. He was the Landrat, by favor of the S. M. A. the head of a district administration, and one of the ’finest representatives’ of the German people. In the general’s waiting room he stood in a cringing attitude, his coat over his arm, a shabby document-case gripped under his elbow, his hat pressed against his belly as though to defend him against a blow. With an ingratiating smile he cautiously lowered himself into a chair and waited patiently for an audience.

    At last he was summoned into the general’s room. An interpreter explained to Shabalin the Germans’ plan for land reform in the federal State of Saxony.

    “What do they propose as the upper limits of land-holdings this time?” the general asked.

    “One hundred to two hundred morgens, according to the individual case, Comrade General,” the interpreter answered after a glance at the land-reform draft in his hand.

    “Idiots! The third draft and still no good whatever! Tell him we can’t agree to it.”

    The interpreter translated. The Landrat kneaded his document-case helplessly between his hands, and began to explain that the proposed draft had been drawn up to secure the greatest possible economic advantages from the land, in view of the conditions of the State. He tried to explain the specific conditions of Saxony’s agriculture, and said that under the hard conditions imposed by nature it was absolutely vital to observe a close constructive relationship between cattle-breeding, forestry, and agriculture. Then he dealt with the peculiar features of the thorough mechanization of German agriculture; mechanization based on small farm conditions. He expressed a genuine desire to find the best solution to the problem raised by Order No. 124.

    Even when it was not absolutely necessary that I should attend, I always tried to be present at discussions of this kind. On closer inspection, Germany’s apparently planless economy proved to be organically so interlocked that it afforded a very interesting study for a Soviet expert. It was an exceptionally precise and complicated piece of mechanism, in which there was very restricted scope for experiment. Frequently I saw the German experts throw up their hands in despair when the general gave them advice or submitted demands which would have perfectly fitted Soviet conditions in new planning or reconstruction. They exclaimed with one voice: “That’s equal to suicide.”

    And so it happened this time. The general played with his pencil, puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette, blew out the smoke in rings. He did not even ask for the German’s arguments to be translated to him. He regarded it all as empty noise. When he considered he had given enough time to the matter he knitted his brows and turned to the interpreter:

    “Tell him the plan has got to be revised. We must look after the interests of the German peasantry, not those of the large landlords.”

    The general was a classic example of the Soviet official, who, being only an automatic executive organ, is incapable of considering argument put forward by the other side or of subjecting an issue to independent criticism. Yet he was deciding the whole economic future of the Soviet zone.

    The German rose to his feet in consternation. All his arguments had been useless. The draft of the land reform would be subjected to many further revisions, until the ’independent’ German proposal corresponded in every detail with the secret instructions, which the general kept in his safe.

    The land reform was not so much an economic as a political measure. Its object was the destruction of one of the strongest groups in German society, above all economically, and to create a new group in sympathy with the new regime. In the next phase, i. e., after the consolidation of the new regime, the first group would be physically destroyed, while the second would make acquaintance with the formula so well known in the Soviet Union: ’The land to you, the fruits to us.’

    I often felt sympathy for the Germans I met in General Shabalin’s office. The majority was communists. In one way or another they had fought the Hitler regime, and many of them had suffered for their convictions. After the German collapse they welcomed us joyfully, some regarding us as their liberators, others as their ideological allies. Many came to see us because they wanted to work for the benefit of a future Germany. It goes without saying that among them were the inevitable opportunists.

    Before any German was entrusted with any responsible position the S. M. A. subjected him to a thorough test of his political reliability. As they regarded us as their ideological allies, they did not hesitate to express their views frankly. And then one saw all too clearly what a great conflict there was between the convictions and desires many of them possessed and the instructions they received from the S. M. A. The S. M. A. wanted silent executives, not equal partners. The time was bound to come when these men would be faced with a choice: either to carry out orders without protest and become obedient tools, or clear out and make room for others.

    We had other visitors to the administration besides the German official authorities. The Scientific and Technical Department had some particularly interesting callers. Before the war the head of the department, Colonel Kondakov, had been head of the Department for Higher Military-Educational Institutions, a sub-section of the All-Union Committee for Higher School Affairs. He was an elderly and very cultivated man who knew his job and had much human understanding.

    One day Kondakov came up to me in the corridor. He had a look of despair on his face. “Gregory Petrovich,” he said to me, “be a good sort and give me a hand.”

    “Why, what’s wrong, Comrade Colonel?” I asked.

    “Some German in my room’s reducing me to despair. He’s invented some devilish device and is offering it to us. He won’t tell us the details, and we can’t make any sense of what he’s saying.”

    In the colonel’s room I found a fair-haired German; he introduced first himself then his young, doll-like wife to me.

    “Well, what is it you’ve got?” I asked.

    “First of all, Major, I must draw your attention to the fact that I am greatly interested in offering my invention to the great Soviet Union, where it will be used for the benefit of the toilers...”

    “Good, but what is it?” I interrupted as he paused for breath.

    “I don’t want my invention to fall into the hands of the Americans, though I know they’d pay me more. I don’t like the imperialists. I’m a convinced communist and...”

    “All right! We’ll take that for granted,” I interrupted again. “What exactly is your invention?”

    After an hour I was still no more able to make any sense of his remarks than the colonel had been. He had invented some very mysterious motor with an incredible performance and many other attractive features. He gave us to understand that it would bring about a revolution in warfare, and assured us he had kept it secret for years at the risk of his life, because he didn’t want the ’fascists’ to use it to the detriment of humanity. He asked to be given the opportunity to carry on his work and prepare models. The trouble was that all his calculations; plans and models had been destroyed during the American bombing attacks. In exchange for our assistance he bound himself to place the patent at the service of the Soviet government.

    I asked him to supply me with a list of the things he needed for his work. As though that was all he had been waiting for, he opened his case and handed me a statement which included all the desires of the heart: money, means of existence, even cigarettes, but none of the things which were necessary to an inventor of such a machine. He asked for a period of six months in which to carry it all through.

    I felt a strong desire to kick him out, and was sure he was trying the same trick on all the four occupation authorities. The colonel decided to give him a chance to justify his claims. But he muttered to himself: “You wait! If you’re trying to make a fool of me you’ll find yourself in a cell.”

    Such characters were regular visitors to all our departments. But it goes without saying that the Scientific and Technical Department was chiefly occupied with more important work. The people it was interested in did not come to the S. M. A. of their own accord. Usually they had to be sought for and brought in.

    The Scientific and Technical Department was really only a collecting and clearing point for the similarly named department attached to the Narcomvnudel. Colonel Kondakov sifted the incoming material, assessed its value, and passed it on to the cognate department of the Narcomvnudel in Potsdam, where highly qualified Soviet experts in all branches of science and technique were installed. From which one can assume that Moscow had more faith in the Narcomvnudel than in the S. M. A.

    The chief task of the S. M. A. Department was to search for brains. Moscow had a high estimation of German brains. So, for that matter, had the Western Allies, and consequently from the very first day of the occupation bitter struggle went on between the western and eastern allies. At the capitulation, Thuringia and a large part of Saxony were in the hands of the Americans. Two months later, in accordance with agreements, this area was handed over to the Soviet occupying authorities.

    During his inspection tours General Shabalin asked the military governors how far the S. M. A. order to seek out and register German experts had been carried through. He was astonished and indignant at the rapid and thorough work, which the ’damned Allies’ had put in. During their brief stay in Thuringia and Saxony the Americans had mopped up all the cream of the German scientific and technical spheres. Outstanding scientists, valuable research laboratories, technical archives, were all carried off.

    Scientists who received instructions to be evacuated could take with them not only all the material they needed for their work, but whole establishments together with their scientific collaborators, as they thought fit. In this province the Soviet authorities found only comparatively unimportant lecturers and assistants. The Zeiss works at Jena were regarded as particularly valuable booty. But from Jena, too, the Americans had been able to withdraw all the leading technical staff. Zeiss could manage to carry on with the staff that remained, but it could not advance. The same applied to the research institutes in Dresden and Leipzig.

    Another circumstance of great importance was the fact that the majority of the leading German scientists had fled westward while the Red Army was advancing. And so the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, one of the greatest scientific institutions in the world, and of especial interest to Moscow, proved to be as useful to us as the ruins of the Coliseum.

    To put up a good show to Moscow, the S. M. A. did its best to represent that the third-rate scientists who fell into their hands were men of the utmost importance. Assistants in Messerschmitt’s laboratory were declared to be his closest collaborators. The usual methods of Soviet leadership: the plan descended from above, and sand was flung up from below.

    On the plea that it was a necessary step to secure the peace, the S. M. A. sought all over Germany for military experts. Its representatives hunted assiduously for constructors of V2’s, jet-planes, and heavy tanks. And swarms of petty swindlers haunted the S. M. A. offices, offering their services in the perfection of deadly weapons.

    Colonel Kondakov’s assistant in the Scientific and Technical Department was a Major Popov. One day he and I were discussing the latest technical achievements of the air-arm, with particular reference to the Luftwaffe and the American Flying Fortresses, the B-29’s. “We’ve got them now,” he said casually. “You remember the papers reporting in 1943 that several Flying Fortresses went off their course after a bombing attack on Japan, and were interned in the Soviet Union?”

    “Yes, I remember,” I answered.

    “That was a really delicate affair,” he commented. “And rather different from how the papers reported it. When the Forts were discovered over our territory a squadron of especially fast Soviet fighters was sent up after them. They overtook the Americans and signaled to them to land. The Americans had been ordered that they were not to land in any unknown area with Flying Fortresses. The Forts were the latest achievement of American aviation technique, and they were a dead secret. In the event of a forced landing being necessary, the crews had orders to take to their parachutes and blow up their machines in mid-air.

    So the Forts continued to fly over the Siberian taiga without taking notice of our pursuit. The Soviet fighters fired a warning salvo with their rocket-guns, broke up the bomber formation and forced one to land on the landing ground at Khabarovsk. The crew was given a right hearty reception. But despite all attempts to persuade them, the Americans refused to leave their machine until an American consul had arrived.

    A consul wasn’t to be found all that easily, but in the presence of the crew the whole machine was sealed up, from nose to tail. Our people solemnly stuck the seal in the American commander’s pocket, and assured them that everything was in order, they could spend a couple of hours quietly in the Intourist hotel until the consul arrived. But while Intourist was entertaining the crew with all the pleasures of earth the cables between Moscow and Khabarovsk hummed with secret requests and answering secret orders. Planes loaded with the finest Soviet experts were hurriedly dispatched from Moscow.

    The Americans were persuaded, and where necessary forced, to spend the night in the hotel and meanwhile a feverish activity set in on the landing ground. The seals were removed, and the Soviet engineers, technicians, and constructors swarmed over the machine by the light of searchlights. I was one of the technicians sent to carry out the Kremlin’s order ’to commit everything to paper’. We spent several days studying the bomber, while the American crew were kept interned.”

    The fact that a B-29 had landed in the Far East of Soviet Russia was reported at the time by Tass, and one could take it for granted that everything went as Major Popov declared. But, after discussing the difficulties of the job and the services he personally had rendered, he gave the story a more romantic ending:

    "One of the members of the crew, who suspected that there was something wrong somewhere, managed to get out of the hotel at night and make his way to the landing ground. There he saw what was happening to the ’sealed’ machine. He returned and told his comrades. They had a short-wave transmitter which was to be used in emergencies, and they at once sent a code message to American headquarters. Meanwhile Washington and Moscow were engaged in a lively exchange of notes over the interned aircraft.

    By the time the crew’s report reached Washington the Soviet technical brigade had done its job. The crew was escorted to the landing ground, and the commander was solemnly invited to convince himself that the seals had not been broken. Stalin sent an extremely cordial cable to President Roosevelt, informing him personally of the machine’s release. A few minutes before the B-29 was due to leave, Stalin received a cable from the President: ’Accept the B-29 as a present from me.’

    "When the Soviet pilots took over the gift in order to fly it to Moscow, they came up against unexpected difficulties. It was far from easy to get the gigantic craft airborne. So one of our best test pilots for heavy machines was specially sent from Moscow. After studying it for two weeks he managed to get it up and flew it safely to Moscow. For which he was awarded the title of ’???? of the Soviet Union’.

    “Several of the Central Construction Bureaus attached to the People’s Commissariat for Aviation In Industry were assigned the task of preparing the manufacture of this type of machine. The first test machines were ready by the last year of the war. A little later a number of aviation works in the Urals began serial production. Tupolev and the gifted designer Petliakov were entrusted with the creation of the Soviet ’Flying Fortresses’.”

    As time passed more people arrived to work in the S. M. A. On entering General Shabalin’s outer office one day I saw a young woman leaning back in an armchair. She had one leg crossed over the other, a cigarette in one hand, and was conversing gaily with Major Kuznetsov. She left brilliant crimson traces of lipstick on her cigarette when she took it out of her mouth. She threw me a swift, appraising glance, then turned back to the major. There was something distinctive about her behavior, the exaggeratedly slovenly attitude, the way she took deep draws at her cigarette, the twist of her carmined lips. She was waiting to see the general. When she had gone in I asked Kuznetsov:

    “Who is that beauty?”

    “She’s been an interpreter to one of the dismantling generals. Now he’s gone back to Moscow and the chief of staff has recommended her to our boss. Apparently she’s to be his interpreter.”

    And so Lisa Stenina became General Shabalin’s interpreter, his private interpreter, as she always emphasized. She spoke German perfectly, was well educated, well read, and clever. And she had several other unusual qualities.

    She used make-up far too much. Although she looked at least twenty-five, she maintained that she was not more than seventeen. And although all her documents referred to her as Elizaveta Yefimovna, she always introduced herself as Elizaveta Pavlovna. Yefimovna was plebeian, but Pavlovna sounded like a Pushkin heroine.

    Lisa was not in the army, but she always wore an officer’s coat with lieutenant’s insignia over her silk dress, declaring she had nothing else to wear. Of course, that was sheer imagination: she wore the coat only for show. She had an unbridled tongue. And she was fond of discussing very delicate political questions. But above all she liked to impress. At every opportunity she mentioned that her sister was married to General Rudenko. If her audience failed to show any sign of interest, she added that General Rudenko was head of the Soviet Purchasing Commission in America. And if that didn’t do the trick, she confided that he wasn’t simply our trade representative in America, he was head of Soviet intelligence there.

    Once she was absent from the office a whole day without permission. She turned up in the interpreters’ room late in the evening, but in a shocking state: terribly scratched, her clothes torn, her head bound up.

    I was informed by phone of her arrival ten minutes before the close of office hours. I went to find out what had happened.

    “Where have you been?” I asked her anxiously.

    “A colonel invited me to go for a ride and took me into the forest. Well, and then....”

    “And then I suppose you made a fool of him,” I surmised.

    “Where’s your cap?” someone asked.

    “Lost,” she answered, to convey all the seriousness of the situation from which she had emerged victorious.

    “And have you lost nothing else, my dear Lisa?” I asked, in an assumed anxious tone. She gave me a devastating look.

    “Now what are we to do with you?” I asked commiseratingly. “As you’re a lieutenant, you should be put under arrest for arbitrary absence from duty. What will the general say?”

    “That’s my concern; you needn’t worry about that, Comrade Major.”

    “Poor Lisa!” I sighed.

    A day or two later Major Kuznetsov remarked to me casually: “I hear you’re always teasing Lisa. You want to be careful with her.”

    “But why?”

    “Take my advice. Even the general’s afraid of her. Give it a moment’s thought. She hasn’t been assigned to the general by chance. Understand?” He lowered his tone. “I tell you as a friend: don’t play with fire.”

    Later on I learned rather more about Lisa Stenina and her past.

    Sommaire https://seenthis.net/messages/683905
    #anticommunisme #histoire #Berlin #occupation #guerre_froide

  • Gregory Klimov. The Terror Machine. Chapter 02
    http://g-klimov.info/klimov-pp-e/ETM02.htm

    Soldier and Citizen

    The victory salutes thundered over Moscow, while the struggle continued at the front. Superficially the city showed little sign of the war. Anyone who had heard of the desperate air-battles over Moscow would have been amazed not to see any destruction that could be attributed to bombing. In Gorky Street only one house had been destroyed by bombs. I passed by the ruins more than once without even noticing them. Boards, painted like a gigantic film set, concealed them from the eyes of passers-by. Bomb damage generally was rare, and there was nothing in the nature of planned strafing from the air.

    The same was true of Leningrad. The Leningrad houses were pitted with shell-scars, practically all the wooden houses in the suburbs were pulled down and used for fuel by the people themselves during the blockade. But in Leningrad, too, there were no extensive signs of bomb damage.

    In Moscow there were many who wondered whether it really was not possible for the Germans to drop at least one or two bombs on the Kremlin. Just as a joke, to put the wind up its residents! It could not have done any harm, for a bomb-proof shelter had been built for the government in the nearest Underground Station, Kirovskaya, and it was connected with the Kremlin by an under-ground passage. The Moscow people firmly believed that the shelter had been constructed long before the outbreak of war. In 1942 the government was evacuated to Kuibishev, but the news-papers proudly emphasized that Stalin himself was remaining in Moscow. Of course the Muscovites added that a tunnel was hurriedly being constructed all the way from Moscow to the Volga town.

    By 1944 the majority of the government departments had returned to Moscow, and the city throbbed with a bustling, almost peace-time activity. The barrage balloons sent up for the defence of Moscow every evening seemed an obsolete procedure. The chief sign that the war was still going on was the great number of uniforms to be seen in the streets. There were more uniformed people than civilians.

    The Moscow command had very strong patrols in the city, and they not only checked documents, but saw to it that uniforms were scrupulously neat and boots and buttons polished. The patrol posted at the escalators of the Baumanskaya Underground station were rather worried about the swaggering fellows in uniform who had been using this station regularly for some time past. They wore the normal soldier’s shoulder-straps, but the red ground was edged by a very unusual gold piping. And almost all of them wore new officers’ coats of green English cloth. In addition, they had new Russian leather boots which were the object of the patrol’s envy, officers’ swordbelts with a red star and swordknot, and fur caps dashingly worn over one ear. Even these caps were not of the usual lambswool, but of grey caracoul. To crown everything, many of these foppish soldiers carried document-cases. In the army the function of the hands is to extend down the seams of trousers or to salute, not to carry document-cases.

    At first the military patrols were dumbfounded at such disregard of all the army regulations. Then, licking their lips at the thought of having such a rich booty in the guardhouse, they asked these youngsters to show their documents. When they presented crimson personal identity cards bearing the State escutcheon and the words ’Military College’ in gold lettering the patrols involuntarily saluted these extraordinary soldiers and shrugged their shoulders helplessly: ’Soldiers’ tabs and officers’ documents!’

    Not all the students in the first course were officers. When the son of some Moscow proletarian leader was called up the leader phoned the head of the college. General Biyasi: “Nikolai Nikolaich! How’s things? I’m sending my son along to see you today. Have a chat with him.” That was one way of doing your military service, even in wartime, without leaving your hearth and home, and with the opportunity of learning a valuable profession into the bargain. Unlike the students of other colleges we did not have to live in barracks, but could occupy private dwellings. As each student successfully completed each course he was advanced in rank.

    At the end of the first course an ordinary soldier became an officer, and a first lieutenant a captain. In this way a man who held no officer’s rank at all when he entered the college could leave it with a captain’s commission. On the other hand, a captain might have to start in the first course. The important thing was not one’s rank, but the faculty and course which one was attending. The members of a first course waited in a queue until it was their turn to enter the dining hall, but members of other courses walked in without having to queue. The members of the fourth course enjoyed many privileges and liberties. They could even take their rations home, a right that even officers on the teaching staff did not possess.

    In my time there were only eight students altogether in the fourth course of the German Department of the Western Faculty. They had been drawn from all over the U. S. S. R., and most of them had attended a university before. Their knowledge was of a very high standard, but so were the demands made of them by the college curriculum. They had to work hard and intensively. In addition to taking the normal subjects of the fourth course they had to get through the so-called ’special subjects’ of preceding courses, for instance, ’army service regulations’, ’army equipment’, ’army organization’, and ’army special training’. The discreet phrase ’special training’ connoted secret service and defence. And, of course, the ’army’ covered by the German Department was not the Soviet, but the German force. Outside his own special province, no Soviet officer knew as much about the Red Army as a student in our college had to know about all the formations of his ’army’, whether German, British, or other army covered by his particular department.

    For study of the special subjects the educational material provided usually consisted of handwritten matter or the service regulations of the respective army. It was forbidden to take notes on subjects which had to be kept very secret, and those concerned with the immediate past. But duplicated and carefully numbered rough notes could be obtained on these subjects, against the student’s signature and deposit of his personal documents. But these notes could be used only in the hall set apart for the purpose. The contents of these rough notes were always kept up to date, they were never more than a month old. The information covered not only the actual position at the moment, but even matters that were only in the planning or preliminary stage. Frequently photo-copies of the original documents were attached to the notes. The quality of the photograph indicated whether the document had been photographed legally, so to speak, or whether it had been done in rather less convenient and normal conditions. Sometimes one could tell quite easily that it had been taken with a micro-film camera. Such cameras can be built into a button, into the fastener of a lady’s handbag, etc.

    We in the German Department were taught some very interesting things. We had to study the medieval originals of literature in Gothic and old High-German, languages which would completely baffle a twentieth-century German. From the manner in which a man pronounced the words gebratene Gans we had to determine exactly where he came from, to within a few kilometres. We had to know the local food and drink of the various parts of Germany, how the people in various districts dressed and what were their characteristic habits. We had to know the smallest detail of the distinctive features of each national group, and learned to distinguish any faded German wine label with absolute certainty. We were told which of the German national groups cannot stand one another, and why; and what were their usual terms of abuse for one another. We were shown the historical genesis of all the present and past political and economic, ideological and religious antagonisms inside the German nation.

    The history of the Communist Party of Germany as we learnt it was very different from that to be found in the usual handbooks. The lecturer usually referred to the Party by the phrase ’our potential’ or other, more precise terms, but one might listen to a two-hour lecture without hearing the words ’communist party’ at all. These lectures would have been of great interest especially to German communists. Many of them honestly believe they are fighting for a better Germany. A political movement is to some extent only a trap for the credulous. Of course the leaders, who are in touch with the Comintern, are better informed on this delicate question.

    Once one of our students asked the lecturer: “Why don’t we get any communist come-overs from Germany these days?”

    “Think it over and you’ll find the answer for yourself,” the lecturer answered. “I can’t waste the other students’ time in giving explanations of such an elementary matter. We don’t want any come-overs. They’re much more use to us when they work outside.”

    In addition to lecturing at our college, this lecturer was an in-structor at the Red Army Secret Service High School, his subject being ’Underground work in the rear’.

    Despite what he said, if the issue be examined more closely certain questions remain unanswered. What has happened to the enormous German Communist Party? Germany was the first world power to enter into commercial and friendly relations with Soviet Russia. She had the strongest Communist Party and the most clearly defined industrial proletariat in all Europe, and for us Russians they were the shining example of proletarian consciousness and solidarity. At one time communism had struck its roots deep into the souls of the Germans. It had been regarded as axiomatic that Germany would be the next link in the chain of world revolution. Thalmann’s cap was as familiar to us as Karl Marx’s beard. And now...

    Now the Germans were fighting like devils, and our propaganda had thrown overboard all the principles of class approach. Instead, all Germans were branded as fascists and all we were expected to do was: ’Kill the Germans!’ Hitler couldn’t have thrown all the com-munists in Germany into concentration camps. Even our propaganda did not go so far as to say that. And yet Nazism seemed to be growing stronger and stronger among them. So what had happened to the communist consciousness, the proletarian solidarity, the class struggle, and so on?

    After a time our college transferred to new accommodation in a building right opposite the Stalin Academy for the Mechanization and Motorization of the Red Army, in Lefortovo Street. Under the old regime the building had been a Junker school; then it had be-come an artillery school. The place was rather uncomfortable, it stank of a barracks. On the other hand, this removal solved one of the most important problems of our command: now we were all under one roof, behind one fence. There was a parade ground in the middle, and a guardhouse somewhere in the background.

    In those autumn days of 1944 one often saw an edifying sight: students sauntering about the courtyard under the guard of other students. The prisoners had been relieved of their sword-straps and tabs, and they carried brooms and spades. With perfect equanimity they swept up the leaves that the autumn wind sent flying from the trees. The work was about as productive as bailing out water with a sieve. But the prisoners didn’t worry about that. Midday was still a long way off and life was boring in the clink.

    Other students did their best to cheer up the prisoners. “What Kolya, you in again? What heroic deed have you done this time? How long have you got?” Others stopped to stare at one of the generals’ sons among the prisoners. A very piquant situation: the father a general and the son collecting cigarette-butts under the eyes of a guard!

    The victims were usually first course students, many of whom were not yet accustomed to army discipline. Their punishment con-sisted mainly of sweeping up the leaves and collecting cigarette-butts. This was the method used to purge them of any desire for indepen-dent thought and to drill into them unquestioning submission to orders. Someone at some time or other had carefully carved the words on the door of the guardhouse: “I’ll teach you to love freedom!”

    This phrase was fashionable in the army about this time. Generals shouted it at the officers when they came upon signs of indiscipline during inspections. Sergeants shouted it into the faces of recruits, usually garnishing it with strong language and emphasizing it with blows of the fist.

    To this phrase there was one mysterious, but eloquent answer: ’Till the first battle...’ There is good reason for the change made in the new service regulations, as the result of which officers march, not at the head of their unit, but in the rear.

    Many of us officers were genuinely angry at the methods used to train reserve soldiers before transferring them to the front. They were drilled almost entirely in the manner of the parade ground; they learned to react to the orders ’right’ and ’left’, to salute their officers in the regulation style, to march in close order, etc. All through their training they used only dummy weapons, and they often reached the front without having fired a single shot from a rifle or other arm. The men themselves grumbled about this at first, but then they got used to it and submitted. This sort of thing often had its origin in local circumstances, but the general direction came from above and had a deeper significance.

    For the outcome of a war it is of no importance whether one man falls or another. But it is important that he should obey orders. And that is a decisive factor in training.

    The winter passed. I gradually got used again to study, and made acquaintances. I don’t remember how I first got to know Lieutenant Belyavsky. Some thirty-one years old, lean and upright, he seemed to possess an imperturbable calm and unconcern. But in reality he was very passionate by nature, and capable of great enthusiasms. At one time he had studied at the Leningrad University, and then had taken special courses preparatory to work abroad. He was master of several languages. During the Spanish civil war he was sent to Spain, and for some time passed as a Spaniard. For some mysterious reason he had remained with the rank of lieutenant for nearly ten years, whereas all his former Spanish comrades had by now achieved much higher rank and responsible service posts.

    He had a great love of the theatre, and brought tickets for all the Moscow first nights a month in advance. I sometimes thought he suffered from the spiritual malaise which affects so many Leningrad people, and that he turned to the theatre for temporary oblivion. For he had gone right through the worst period of the Leningrad blockade, and you could never get him to say a word about those days.

    All the college knew Valentina Grinchuk, generally and affectionately called Valia for short. While fighting with partisans she had been seriously wounded, had been brought out by air, and sent to a hospital just outside Moscow. On her recovery she was sent to our college to study. She looked like a child; her head reached no higher than my waist. In all the warehouses of the Moscow military district not one pair of boots could be found to fit her, so a pair had to be made to measure for her, on a children’s last. Yet few of our students could wear so many decorations, genuine battle orders, as that child. They were in such contrast to her clear, childishly innocent face that one could not help looking round as she passed. Even officers of superior rank to her involuntarily saluted her first.

    Before the war she had been a fourteen-year-old girl, running barefoot through her forest village to take a bucket to the well. She had had no idea who Hitler and what Germany were. Then one fine June morning the war violated the peace of her childlike heart. The Germans occupied her village; in the first intoxication of easy victory they did as they liked in the new ’eastern space’. With a child’s instinct she began to hate these strange men in grey-green uniform.

    By chance she happened to come into contact with the members of a regular partisan unit which had been detached from the Red Army for operations in the German rear. At first they used her as a scout. It never occurred to the Germans that this straight-haired, skinny little girl, who looked no more than twelve years old, could be in touch with the dangerous partisan movement. Soon after this, she was left an orphan, and she went off to join the partisans. She acted as machine-gunner, saboteur, and sniper, she volunteered for long treks as a liaison, she carried out highly dangerous acts of es-pionage. Many a German who thought of her as only a child had to pay for his negligence with his life. She had no real knowledge of life, and possibly for that reason she looked death fearlessly in the face; her soul was steeled in the fight.

    Just one thing was lacking in her-she never smiled. She had no knowledge of laughter, happiness, and joy. The war had robbed her of her chance of knowing the brighter aspect of life.

    Now she was an attractive girl of eighteen, attending a privileged Moscow college. Her contemporaries were still attending school, but this child wore the insignia of a first lieutenant, she had spent years in fighting, her officer’s tunic carried rows of active service decorations and gold and silver wound stripes.

    A flying officer, a second-course student, once invited Valia to go to a concert with him, and she readily agreed. Nobody knows exactly what happened that evening. It was only known that he tried to treat Valia as he thought girls who had fought at the front were used to being treated. Officers who had not themselves been at the front were always making this sort of mistake. When Valia sharply told him where he got off he shouted at her in a rage: “Everybody knows how you got all those orders! You’re all...”

    A little later he was found lying in the street with a head wound inflicted by a pistol butt.

    When the head of the college, General Biyasi, sent for Valia and demanded an explanation she curtly answered: “He can think him-self lucky he got off with his life.” The general did not know what to say to that, and only ordered Valia to hand over her pistol. But after that even the most presumptuous critics of front-line women fighters treated her with respect.

    February 1945. The German counter-offensive in the Ardennes was drowned in its own blood. The Allied invasion armies were preparing to leap over the Rhine and break through the notorious Siegfried Line. After prolonged preparations our troops on the Oder had gone over to the offensive, had broken the resistance of the East Wall and had enlarged the bridgehead, ready for the last blow against the heart of Germany. The war was nearing its end.

    Strange to say, conditions in Moscow had improved a little by comparison with the previous years; possibly the difficulties had been stabilized and the people had grown accustomed to them; possibly the successes at the front and the hope of a speedy end to the war made it easier to endure the difficulties. In the army and all over the country there was a clear improvement in morale. A miracle had been achieved: instead of being exhausted by the long years of war, the army was technically and morally stronger. Towards the end it was using a vast number of planes, tanks, automatic weapons, munitions, and equipment; in other words, it now had all that was so disastrously lacking at the beginning. That was difficult to under-stand, and many of us racked our brains over the problem.

    It would be naive to assume that this miracle was due solely to our military efforts and the moral transformation that had occurred in the nation’s soul during the war; nor could it be ascribed simply and solely to Allied aid. For one thing, by the end of the war the Soviet war industry potential was lower than at its beginning. The moral factor played a great part, especially when one remembers that at the beginning it completely failed to come up to the Kremlin’s expectations; but then, as the result of skilful internal propaganda and the enemy’s mistakes, it was brought up to specification again. The military aid provided by the Allies was enormous; it greatly lightened the burden of the Russian soldiers and the Russian people, it made up for many defects in the Kremlin’s military apparatus, and shortened the war. But not one of these factors determined the out-come of the war.

    War is like chess, it is susceptible of innumerable variations. The single moves may change in accordance with circumstances, but the game as such is determined from the beginning by the funda-mental strategy of the players. In this war the Kremlin developed a strategy that at first deliberately resorted to a gambit opening, in order that reserves could be thrown in at a later stage with all the greater force. This quite clearly occurred during the final phase.

    We students of the college often discussed the ’three stages’. While we were of various opinions in regard to details, fundamentally we were in complete agreement as to the general interpretation of our war strategy. These discussions had their origin in the very restricted circle of the Kremlin and Red Army general staff milieus. There was good reason for the fact that our college was secretly known as the ’Kremlin college’; not for nothing did many of our students have their ’papas’ on the General Staff. In the college one learned a great deal which was quite unsuspected by the ordinary soldier.

    It is very significant that all who took part in such discussions emphasised that they paid no attention to the official statements and rumours. Many ’rumours’ were deliberately put into circulation by the ’rumour-mongers’ of the Narcomvnudel. The Kremlin made use not only of an official propaganda machine in the form of the press and radio, but also of a remarkably efficient network of ’rumour-mongers’ organized by the Narcomvnudel, with the task of systematically leading the people into error in the direction the Kremlin desired. It need hardly be said that the Kremlin never publicly ad-mitted adoption of the gambit strategy known as the ’three stages’.

    According to this interpretation, the story of the war can be divided into three stages, or phases. The first phase began the day the Soviet-German Pact of Friendship was signed. The following day, in September 1939, I was to start my course of training in practical work at the Rostov Agricultural Machinery Works (Rostselmash), the largest producer of agricultural machinery not only in the Soviet Union, but in all Europe. When I went to the reaper-combine department, to which I was assigned, I was struck by a remarkable sight.

    The most important feature of this shop was the U-shaped conveyor belt, on which the combines were assembled. The conveyor was mounted on the floor, and each combine was fastened to a hook rising from the belt, so travelling round the shop. But now the con-veyor was at a standstill, the combines stood motionless, half assembled. And literally every square yard of space between the conveyor belt and the workmen’s benches was packed with a new production line: thousands of munitions chests for anti-tank guns. They had been made overnight, after the conclusion of the Pact of Friendship. A similar sight was to be seen in all the other shops.

    On the day the Pact of Friendship was signed with Germany tele-graphed orders were sent out from Moscow to put into operation a secret mobilization plan; this plan had been kept in the safe of the secret department attached to every Soviet factory and works. During all the three months I worked at Rostselmash every shop, all of which in normal times were concerned only with production for peaceful purposes, was engaged in turning out military material. Not only that, but from the very first day of the works’ existence so-called ’special departments’ had worked uninterruptedly on orders connected with the production of military weapons.

    In the course of my work I frequently had to visit the goods yards in Rostov station, and could not help seeing the endless trains loaded with armaments which were being produced by the Rostov industries which had been engaged in peacetime production. I must make it clear that I am not referring to the normal armaments works, each of which had its own railway lines, and whose production did not come under public notice.

    If one may digress into the field of political economy, the Soviet industry engaged in producing means of production could be analysed into two basic categories: the armaments industry as such, pro-ducing exclusively military material; and the other industries, which can be described as industries for peace production, but which, even at the time of their inauguration, were so planned that they could be turned over to armaments production in a moment. It is very difficult to draw the line between the two categories. Machinery construction appears at first sight to be a peace industry, but ninety per cent of the machinery produced goes to equip arma-ments works. And in September 1989 even this second category, which hitherto had been working, within limits, on the production of consumer goods, was geared wholly and completely to the mobilization plan, and from then on worked exclusively for war purposes.

    Like myself, the other students of our Industry Institute had to undergo practical training, being sent to hundreds of the larger works all over the Soviet Union. They all reported the same picture everywhere. The open preparations for war were obvious, even in September 1939. The only uncertainty was: whom was this war to be waged against? There were many who rather assumed that the Kremlin had decided to join with Germany in sharing out the world. The events in Finland, the Baltic States and Bessarabia, which followed soon after the Pact, seemed to confirm this view. In any case the Kremlin had already decided that the time had arrived for an active solution of the foreign policy problems.

    So the Kremlin prepared all its war machinery for the struggle. Friendship with Germany was made to serve the same end. U-boats bought in Ger-many arrived in Kronstadt, where the German distinguishing ’U’ was painted over with the Soviet letter for ’shch’, after which the Soviet naval men called them ’pike’, since the ’shch’ letter was the first letter in the Russian word for ’pike’ (shchuka). These U-boats served as prototypes for the Soviet dockyards to turn out ’pikes’ by the dozens. Later on battleships were ordered in Germany, but their arma-ments were to be supplied by the Kirov works in Leningrad, where they were to be mounted. But these battleships did not arrive in time.

    At a certain moment in this ’friendship’ period-the historians could establish the exact date-unexpected changes occurred in the relations between the ’high contracting Parties’. Both the partners’ appetites had grown immensely. Apparently Hitler, intoxicated with his successes, now felt convinced that he could manage to eat all the cake himself, without the aid of his bewhiskered friend. Any Soviet General Staff officer would laugh outright if anyone were to tell him that Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union took the Kremlin by surprise. And with justice, for no other regime in the world is so well informed on the situation in neighbouring countries as is the Kremlin.

    The myth of the unexpected ’perfidious attack’ was put out in order to justify the Kremlin’s mesalliance to the world. Weeks before the start of fighting on the Soviet-German front many citizens of the Soviet Union heard the British radio reporting the transfer of 170 German divisions to the eastern frontier of the Reich. And did the innocent children in the Kremlin have cottonwool in their ears?

    Anyone who did not happen to hear the radio transmissions could draw his own conclusions from the official Tass dementi: ’The foreign press recently has contained provocative reports of a concentration of German forces on the Soviet frontier. From well informed sources Tass is authorized to state that these reports are completely un-grounded fabrications.’ The Soviet people knew Tass far too well not to know that the truth was exactly the opposite of this statement.

    By the early spring of 1941 the Kremlin knew that war was in-evitable during the next few months. An extraordinary session of the Politbureau was held to draw up the basic decrees covering the strategy to be adopted in the event of a ’change in the situation’, i. e., in the event of war. A Defence Committee was set up at the same time, though its existence was made public only after the outbreak of war.

    The Kremlin knew the power relationships perfectly, far better than did the German Supreme Command. Despite all the enormous war preparations it knew that Russia was at a disadvantage in this respect. The only hope of salvation lay in wearing down the enemy by means of a protracted war, in thorough exploitation of the country’s vast territory and her material and human reserves, and therefore in the application of the Kutuzov strategy adapted to the requirements of modern war. It was about this time that the Krem-lin decided on a gambit opening. This form of defence strategy was to cost the country dearly; it was completely contrary to the Krem-lin’s pre-war propaganda, which had always talked of a ’bloodless war on enemy soil’. Naturally these new plans could not be made public. They were the Kremlin’s deepest secret since the first days of the Politbureau.

    Even at that stage the lines of retreat were foreseen and approxi-mately determined, the presumable losses and the available reserves were balanced against each other; even then Stalingrad was re-cognized to be the farthest point of retreat. They coldbloodedly worked out on paper operations involving tens of millions of human lives, and the results of the toil, sweat and blood of a whole generation. The members of the Politbureau could feel the ropes round their necks, it was a question of saving their own skins. The price...

    Even at that stage the war was divided into phases, and it was calculated what must be held in reserve for the ’third phase’. All else, everything that did not seem to be required for the ’third phase’, was condemned to be sacrificed in the ’second phase’.

    When the war broke out, men were sent to the front with old, quite unserviceable uniforms and weapons. Yet millions of sets of complete, modern equipment, armaments, and automatic weapons were lying, packed to resist the ravages of time, in scaled warehouses: these were predestined for the ’third phase’. When the Germans advanced more swiftly than the Kremlin plans had provided for, such stocks were destroyed or they fell into the hands of the enemy; but in no case were they distributed to the forces ahead of schedule.

    In the ’second phase’ there was much that did not go according to the Kremlin plan. Most of all they erred in their estimation of the people’s moral state. The Russian people made it quite clear that they had no desire whatever to defend the Politbureau. The morale of the troops was much lower than expected, and so the loss in human material was much higher. In order to retrieve the situa-tion the Kremlin was compelled to resort to extraordinary measures and declare the war a national patriotic war for the fatherland.

    The loss of territory was more or less in line with the ’plan’, but fulfilment of the ’territorial plan’ cost far more human lives than had been expected. The losses in material corresponded with the calculations; the forces thrown into defence received only out-of-date equipment and weapons; ’old stock’, planes and tanks of the most ancient type, were disposed of. This held good of the human material too. Sixty-year-old men, and women, were sacrificed to the ’defence phase’, while reserves for the ’third phase’, the ’offensive phase’, waited in the Far East for the day when they were to be thrown in.

    At the critical moment a new and favourable factor came into the reckoning. The western democracies, who in the period of Stalin-Hitler friendship had been reviled as bitter enemies, were now, willy-nilly, the Soviet Union’s allies.

    This was when the great game began. The Kremlin showed that, if it was not clever, it was at least cunning. Its aim was to spare its own reserves and to squeeze all the help possible out of the western democracies. And then, at the end, it would play its trump card, the reserves held in readiness for the ’third phase’, and the Russian bear would not only be left alive, but going forward to victory.

    The farther the Red Army advanced westward during the third phase, the greater was the quantity of first-class equipment of Soviet production that reached the front. It was no secret to staff officers that in 1945 great masses of arms were thrown in, much of it bearing a pre-war production mark.

    But since in the early stages the Kremlin had spared its man-power less than its material, toward the end of the war there was an acute shortage of soldiers. Moreover, the industries not regarded as of ’war importance’ were no longer able to fulfil the tasks set them, and so during the ’third phase’ there was a disastrous shortage of transport and other ’war-unimportant’ details, whereas Soviet-produced tanks and planes were available in adequate quantities. The majority of the military transport lorries and the like were of American production. The situation was still worse in regard to food. The food shortage was terrible. But, after all, that was nothing unusual in Soviet conditions. It was much more important to keep the war industry running at full speed.

    Such was the theoretical explanation of the war successes put forward by Moscow military circles.

    The Yalta conference came and went. After they had settled their military problems, the Big Three turned to the problem of restoring order in the world after the war.

    In connection with the Yalta conference, ’high circles’ of the Kremlin openly talked of two attempts to enter into peace negotia-tions between Hitler and the Soviets. The first attempt to sound the ground for a separate peace on the eastern front was made by Hitler when the Red Army gained a foothold on the right bank of the Dnieper. The Kremlin was quite ready to talk, and stipulated that observance of the Soviet 1941 frontier was the most important prerequisite.

    This shows how little the Kremlin then hoped for any great successes. Their only concern was to save their flayed hide from being worried any more. But Hitler still doubted whether the wheel of history had begun to turn to his disadvantage, and he demanded the Ukraine on the right bank of the Dnieper as his price. In this instance both the totalitarian opponents played with their cards on the table; at least they were more frank than they were with their democratic opposite numbers.

    The second attempt to conclude a separate peace was made by Hitler when the noose was already round Germany’s neck, im-mediately before the Yalta conference. On the eve of Stalin’s departure for Yalta he had no hesitation in entering into preliminary negotiations with Hitler. Who would offer him more, Hitler or the democracies?

    This time Hitler was asked to pay dearly for his immoderate demands in the earlier negotiations. Now the Kremlin no longer insisted simply on the retention of its pre-war frontiers; it required a free hand in the Balkans, possession of the Straits, and extensive concessions in the Near East. This time it was Hitler who was offered his former frontiers. Now the dream of world domination had come to birth in another brain. The policy of keeping trumps up the sleeve was justified; it brought not only salvation, but also the possibility of continuing the game.

    Hitler flatly rejected the Kremlin’s conditions. To accept them would have been a moral defeat for him. He preferred to suffer both moral and physical defeat, and to drag his whole nation, his Reich, down into the pit with him.

    The Yalta conference appeared to achieve complete unanimity among the partners. And then Stalin threw overboard all thoughts of a separate peace with Germany and concentrated all his attention on the diplomatic game with the western democracies. In the castle of Livadia he felt far more confident than he had been in Teheran. But even now he preferred not to make great demands, but to apply the tactic of squeezing out aid and concessions in exchange for promises and guarantees which he had no intention of keeping. It was still too early to show his strength. The Kremlin’s strength was only just beginning to develop, and the Kremlin itself had no clear idea of its immensity. It was best to gain time, and meanwhile get as much as possible in negotiations.

    The western allies proved very complaisant. They were quite convinced that the Kremlin was not strong enough to overrun Europe, and that the ’coup de grace’ would be administered by them, while the Soviet bear would remain stranded somewhere on the frontier of Poland. They made many concessions in the belief that the Kremlin would not be in a position to take advantage of them.

    Only the prudent and farsighted Churchill perceived the danger, hence his proposal to build up a second front in the Balkans and so protect Europe from the Red peril advancing from the East. The execution of this plan would have cost the Allies far more dearly than the invasion on the Atlantic seaboard, so its opponents won the day and it was decided to give the Soviet bear a further opportunity to burn its paws in pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for them.

    The Soviet bear pulled out the chestnuts, but he put them into his own mouth, even while he went on complaining of his weakness in order to obtain further deliveries of commodities. Quite con-vinced that he was bleeding to death, the Western Allies readily threw him further milliards in the form of lend-lease deliveries, and the bear prudently locked them away in his store-room.

    So the ’high contracting Parties’ shook one another’s hands and signed the communique, which at least one of them did not believe for one moment, having no intention of observing its terms. The communique was published, and all mankind, with the exception of the signatories, believed in it and were overjoyed. The future lay before us like a sunny May day, or like the blue sky above the Yalta shore. True, the only thing the ordinary Russian knew about current policy was that bread in Moscow cost fifty roubles a kilogramme.

    I took the final course examinations in the middle of February 1945. As I was credited with several subjects which I had taken during my studies at other schools, I was set free ten days earlier than my colleagues. After much difficulty I succeeded in getting a week’s leave. I obtained an official ’order’ from the college, and an official travel voucher to correspond, and so was enabled to visit my home town in the south of Russia.

    This trip was not a very cheerful one. The town gave me the same sort of impression as that conveyed by an autumn garden after a stormy night: bare boughs, leaves rustling underfoot, broken twigs. In my heart I felt desolation and emptiness.

    Before the war Novocherkassk had been famous for its high-spirited youth. There were five higher educational institutions to its hundred thousand inhabitants, and students dominated the town. But now I walked along the main street from the station at twelve o’clock midday and met only a few wizened old women. The typical picture of the Soviet rear. I walked beneath the cool colon-nades of my alma mater. The pictures my memory conjured up out of the past seemed far finer than the present reality. But had the reality changed so much, or had my wanderings about the world led to my applying a different yardstick?

    At the street corners women in rags were sitting, selling sun-flower seeds and home-made fruit drops. Just like 1923! Only now I had to give my little cousin a thirty-rouble note to buy the same quantity of seeds as five kopeks had bought in those days. The need, the poverty, were so hopeless, so completely without the least ray of light, that even the modest conditions of pre-war times seemed like a golden age. What we had thought wretchedness then passed for prosperity now.

    As I left the station at Moscow and plunged into the midst of the great metropolis’s swirling hurry and activity, I felt as relieved as a man returning home from the cemetery. In Moscow there was an upsurge of hopeful life. But in all the rest of our vast country men were conscious only of the bony hand of hunger, they felt only utter hopelessness.

    Now, after the German yoke had been thrown off, something much worse had taken its place: dread of a settle-ment of accounts. Men did not know what crime they had com-mitted, they knew only that there would be no escaping the reckon-ing. Enormous areas of the Soviet Union, and over half its popula-tion, had been under German occupation. And now, over every one of these people hovered the spectre of a reckoning for ’betrayal of the fatherland’.

    At the end of February all the graduates of our course were sent to the front and attached to the active army; before taking their State examination they had to have a period of experience on active service. I was attached to the staff of the First Byelorussian Army.

    During those days the divisions of the First Byelorussian and the First Ukrainian Armies were fighting desperately to overcome the latest achievements of German fortifications technique. After breaking through the East Wall a fight began to enlarge the Oder bridgehead. Inspired by their successes, the Soviet troops were burning to tear on into the heart of Hitler’s Germany, on to Berlin.

    Towards the end of April, just as the street battles in Berlin had reached their height, I was unexpectedly recalled to Moscow.

    #anticommunisme #histoire #Berlin #occupation #guerre_froide

  • Is U.S. President Trump Drawing Inspiration From Inner Mongolia? | The UB Post
    http://theubpost.mn/2018/03/18/is-u-s-president-trump-drawing-inspiration-from-inner-mongolia

    It’s perhaps for this reason that there wasn’t actually that much discussion about a proposal that would be particularly unusual for modern America: the idea of a military parade in Washington D.C. While this has actually happened before when the U.S. needed to drum up civilian support for conflicts abroad, it’s now viewed more as a mark of an authoritarian or dictatorial regime (thanks in large part to associations with North Korea and Russia). We don’t know exactly what Trump is envisioning, but it’s possible that he’s actually taking inspiration from Inner Mongolia – which may be a first for a U.S. president.

    The closest thing to an official account is that Trump was directly inspired by the Bastille Day parade he witnessed in France – almost a cheerier version of the sort of parades we’ve occasionally seen in Russia and the Far East. However, we also know that in July of last year Xi Jinping presided over a parade in Inner Mongolia, marking the 90th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army. Over 12,000 military units and personnel were in action with Jinping inspecting them directly, ultimately making for both an impressive spectacle and a formidable show of strength.

    Given the fact that Trump publicly discusses what he appears to view as a very competitive relationship between the U.S. and China, it’s easy to imagine that this 2017 parade had an effect on him as well. So while some still think it’s unlikely the U.S. president actually gets his parade, there’s a chance we could see an Inner Mongolian spectacle imitated in Washington in the near future.

    #défilé_militaire #humour_mongol

    Opinion libre, probablement inspirée par cette revue des revues

    Donald Trump Is Not the Only One Who Likes a Grand Parade
    http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/donald-trump-is-not-the-only-one-who-likes-a-grand-parade


    Soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army prepared for a military parade to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the army at Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in China on July 30, 2017.
    China Daily via Reuters

    US President Donald J. Trump wants a military parade—a grand military parade.

    Trump, reportedly inspired by the Bastille Day parade he witnessed in Paris last summer, has asked the Pentagon to organize a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington that [wait for it] tops the French.

    The reaction to Trump’s plan has ranged from skepticism to criticism.

    The last major military parade in the United States marked victory in the Gulf War in 1991. George H.W. Bush was president at the time. According to the Washington Post, opinion was sharply divided over the parade.


    US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron attended the Bastille Day military parade in Paris with their wives, First Lady Melania Trump (left) and Brigitte Macron (right), on July 14, 2017. Trump was reportedly so impressed by the display that he asked the Pentagon to host a military parade in Washington.
    Reuters/Yves Herman

  • Islamic State Uses Satellite Internet To Spread Message - SPIEGEL ONLINE
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-uses-satellite-internet-to-spread-message-a-1066190.html


    Vers l’Occident compliqué, je volais avec des idées simples... pour paraphraser De Gaulle.

    The answer to this question is an extremely problematic one for Europe, for it is European companies that provide the terrorists with access to the platforms they use to spread their propaganda. It remains unclear whether the companies knowingly do so, but documents obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE show that they may very well know what’s going on. And the documents show that the companies could immediately cut off Islamic State’s Internet access without much effort.

    If you need to get online in Syria or Iraq, the technology needed to do so can be purchased in the Hatay province — a corner of Turkey located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Syrian border.

    #tic_arabes

    • Most of the satellite dishes going to the Middle East make their way through Rotterdam, the world’s third-largest port. It’s here, among the 12 million containers processed annually, that the satellite technology and modems arrive in Europe. Most of the manufacturers are located in the Far East, with their customers based in Paris, London or Luxembourg.

      A number of distribution firms are involved in the sales chain of the technologies required to obtain satellite Internet access. At the beginning of this chain are the major European satellite operators, led by France’s Eutelsat, Great Britain’s Avanti Communications and Luxembourg’s SES. Among the most popular brands are Hughes by Avanti and, especially, Tooway by Eutelsat. The French company has been in business for years and offers almost complete global coverage with its satellites.

      Distribution firms then buy facilities and satellite capacity from the big companies and resell it to corporate or private customers. They also work together with additional companies like the German firm Sat Internet Services based in the northern city of Neustadt am Rübenberge.

      It’s a lucrative business for company CEO Victor Kühne, who expanded distribution to Turkey a few years ago. His problem is: the market for satellite Internet technology is limited in the European Union because of near blanket coverage of standard broadband Internet connections on the continent. Sales in Turkey are fairly slow too, because satellite connections are more expensive than classic DSL access.

      The satellite operators don’t provide data on the number of customers they have, but there is anecdotal evidence. In Turkey, for example, those seeking to access the Internet using a satellite dish are required to register with the government’s BTK telecommunications authority. According to the most recent data available from the agency, there were 11,000 registered satellite Internet users in Turkey during the first quarter of 2015, only 500 more than the previous year.

      But during 2013 and 2014, alone, Neustadt-based Sat Internet Services exported more than 6,000 dishes to Turkey, customs agency documents obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE show. It is likely that most of those satellite dishes did not remain in Turkey, and there’s a strong chance a good deal of them ended up in Syria. The Syrian market has a decisive advantage in that there is no alternative Internet access available, meaning prices can be set very high.

      #ISIS #OEI #connectivité #infoguerre

      Possible connections linking Eutelsat with Syria could be particularly uncomfortable for the French government, which indirectly holds a 26-percent share in the satellite operator through the state-owned Bank Caisse des Dépôts.

  • PressTV-French container ship to call at Iran port
    http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/07/22/421400/iran-Shahid-Rajaei-port-CMA-CGM-Andromeda-Ebrahim-Idani

    http://217.218.67.233/photo/20150722/eb49028d-2ac3-469d-af86-742c8581b22d.jpg

    An Iranian official says the French CMA CGM shipping company has chosen southern Iranian Shahid Rajaei port as the port of call for its container ships.

    Ebrahim Idani, director general of Hormozgan Ports and Maritime Department, told reporters on Wednesday that the development has come after Iran and the P5+1 group of countries clinched an agreement over Tehran’s civilian nuclear program in Vienna last week.

    According to the agreement, all economic and financial sanctions against Iran will be removed through the Security Council resolution, which was adopted on Monday. In addition, all bans on Iran’s Central Bank, shipping, oil industry, and many other companies will be lifted.

    The Iranian official said France’s CMA CGM is the world’s third biggest shipping company which transports container goods and its first container ship will berth at Shahid Rajaei port in early August.

    The container ship, which will call at Shahid Rajaei port is the Andromeda. It is 363 meters (m) long with a draft of 15.5 m, which can carry 11,500 TEU of containers. It will unload its containers at the second terminal of Shahid Rajaei port,” he added.

    Idani stated that the Andromeda has started its journey from the Far East and is bound for the Persian Gulf.

    It has chosen 10 big ports for berthing along its way and since Shahid Rajaei port enjoys international standards for accommodating big vessels, the French ship has chosen it as one of its ports of call,” he added.

    The official noted that investments made in the development of Shahid Rajaei port in the past years have made it a suitable destination for giant container-carrying vessels.

    Shahid Rajaei port is located 23 kilometers west of Bandar Abbas, the capital city of southern Iranian province of Hormozgan. The port is equipped with 18 gantry cranes and 41 docks, which make it the biggest and most modern container port in Iran.

  • Plans for new transport route unveiled to link Pacific with Atlantic
    http://siberiantimes.com/business/investment/news/n0160-plans-for-new-transport-route-unveiled-to-link-pacific-with-atl

    Plans have been unveiled for an ambitious new transport route through Russia with a mega road and high-speed rail network to link Asia with Europe.

    At a meeting of the Russian Academy of Science, the head of the Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin presented the idea for the Trans-Eurasian belt Development (TEPR).

    Seen as a powerful and versatile transportation corridor it would join up to other networks and reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific, via the heart of Siberia and the Far East.

    The project would see not only a new train network built alongside the Trans-Siberian Railway but the construction of major roads, pipelines for oil and gas, and the laying of facilities for electricity and water supplies.

    Mr Yakunin has been engaged in the development of the project with academic Gennady Osipov and the rector of Moscow State University, Viktor Sadovnichy.

    During his presentation the head of the Russian Railways said that such a scheme was vital more than ever and would make Russia the new world centre for the creation and development of high-tech industries.

    He also said that Western-style globalisation is no longer seen as an incentive but as a hindrance on the economic, scientific, moral and spiritual development of society.

    He said: ’This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project. It should be an alternative to the current (neo-liberal) model, which has caused a systemic crisis. The project should be turned into a world ’future zone’, and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies.’

    The project aims to construct the mega transportation route to span the entire length of Russia, and link into existing networks in Europe and Asia. That would create the first ever modern route from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west.

    Il s’agirait de la plus longue route du monde.
    http://www.slate.fr/story/99497/russie-longue-route


    #transport #intercontinental

  • The #CIA and Drugs, Inc.: a Covert History » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
    http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/07/the-cia-and-drugs-inc-a-covert-history

    The CIA’s involvement in the Far East drug trade began with its predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services, which supplied Iranian opium to Burmese guerrillas fighting the Japanese. This is no secret: General William Peers, commander of #OSS Detachment 101 in Burma, confessed in his autobiography: “If opium could be useful in achieving victory, the pattern was clear. We would use opium.”

    #Etats-Unis #drogues #exceptionnalisme ##leadership#nos_valeurs

  • This is where Russia will build its Arctic vessels | Barentsobserver

    http://barentsobserver.com/en/energy/2014/06/where-russia-will-build-its-arctic-vessels-19-06

    Billions are invested in the Zvezda yard outside Vladivostok to make it capable of meeting Russia’s growing demand for ice-protected ships and platforms.

    By Atle Staalesen
    June 19, 2014

    Going Arctic, Rosneft eyes acquisition of Murmansk shipyard
    Rosneft moving into Northern Fleet territory

    http://barentsobserver.com/sites/barentsobserver.com/files/styles/grid_8/public/main/articles/zvezdayard1.jpg?itok=77YgJww9

    It is the Far East which is the country’s top priority oil and gas region. This is where the quickest growing markeds are and where the raw material prices are the best. New fields, processing plants and pipelines are under planning and both Rosneft and Gazprom have signed major cooperation deals with China and several other Asian powers.

    #transport_maritime #russie #arctique