Russian Archives

Ukraine war: how Gorbachev’s 1987 INF missile treaty has limited the arsenal available to Putin

by History Guild | Sep 27, 2023 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
Thanks to the final Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, a disarmament treaty has denied Vladimir Putin thousands more missiles which he could have ordered to be used against Ukraine. Russian forces attacking Ukraine have not been able to use land-based missiles with ranges of between 500km and 5,500km because this entire category of weapons was scrapped under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the former Soviet leader was instrumental in establishing.

Regimes Around the World are Manipulating History and Threatening Historians

by History Guild | May 31, 2023 | History News, Political and Economic History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
In March 2022, overshadowed by British asylum policies, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published its findings about the state of free speech in Rwanda. In 2018, the government of President and “darling tyrant” Paul Kagame adopted the latest version of a law making punishable, by up to seven years imprisonment, public speech questioning the events and statistics related to the 1994 Genocide. However, the law lacks clear definitions and its vague language is seen as instrumental in prosecuting legitimate debate, in particular over crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), of which Kagame was the commander. Prosecution of legitimate historical discourse took place under earlier versions of the law, but in the lead-up to the thirtieth anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Kagame government has increased its efforts to combat “genocide ideology.”

On the screen: Cold warriors

by History Guild | Apr 6, 2023 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
The Courier, directed by Dominic Cooke, is a film of the Cold War with the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 as backdrop. The central characters, British salesman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and GRU (Soviet military intelligence) Colonel Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), are centre stage, but the real dynamic is the challenge issued by the Soviet Union and its empire to the United States and its Western allies. Infamously, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had boasted that the USSR would bury the West and this claim features in the opening of the movie. A nuclear war between the two superpowers of the time emerges as possible as the Soviet presence in Cuba is revealed to be more threatening than originally thought.

PUTIN’S PAST: The Return of Ideological History and the Strongman

by History Guild | Apr 5, 2023 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
From Russian Constitutional Court chairman Valery Zorkin, to former Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky, to presidential adviser Yuri Kovlachuk, amateur history is everywhere in the Russian government today. This is not an accident but a deliberate way to build official state ideology in Russia. For instance, in a recent interview discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, Oleg Khramov, said that the West is trying “to stop the course of history” by “blinding” many Ukrainians to the historical truth of their shared civilizational identity with Russia.

The absurd irony of Putin’s invocation of Stalingrad

by History Guild | Mar 24, 2023 | Military History, Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address in Volgograd on 2 February, in which he sought to draw moral parallels between the heroic Soviet defence of Stalingrad in World War II and the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, represents a new low for Kremlin propaganda.

The debate on the origins of the First World War

by History Guild | Mar 22, 2023 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The way historians have viewed the causes of WWI has changed in the hundred years since war broke out. This article explores the origins of the Great War.

How could the death of one man, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated on 28 June 1914, lead to the deaths of millions in a war of unprecedented scale and ferocity? This is the question at the heart of the debate on the origins of the First World War. Finding the answer to this question has exercised historians for 100 years.

Ukraine: why supply of US and German tanks echoes cold war

by History Guild | Mar 21, 2023 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The export of German and US tanks to Ukraine is not without risk, both real and symbolic. In purely military terms, well-trained, well-led and motivated Ukrainian tank crews operating the Leopard 2 or M1 Abrams will be better protected, have better firepower and be more manoeuvrable than their Russian counterparts. Provided the Ukrainians can cope with the fact that they will need different ammunition, spare parts and possibly fuel they can make a difference, significantly enhancing Ukraine’s capability to defend its territory.

Saint Olga of Kyiv is Ukraine’s patron saint of both defiance and vengeance

by History Guild | Sep 14, 2022 | Military History, Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Ukrainians are used to adversity and they have a special medieval role model who personifies their bravery in the face of hardship. The Mongol horde destroyed her tomb in Kyiv in 1240 but a Ukrainian Orthodox cathedral dedicated to her was consecrated there as recently as 2010.

Why Gorbachev’s legacy still threatens Putin

by History Guild | Sep 8, 2022 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Little remains of the legacy of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader and one of the greatest reformers in Russian history.

The Story of the AK-47: The World’s Most Famous and Deadliest Rifle

by History Guild | Aug 8, 2022 | Military History | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
The AK-47 is perhaps one of the most recognizable automatic rifles in the world. This simple gun, produced by Mikhail Kalashnikov, was initially intended to replace the somewhat ineffective weapons carried by Soviet forces. However, it quickly became the weapon of choice during most conflicts following the Second World War. But, how did this weapon become the most famous and deadliest rifle in the world?

Dispatches from Red Square: reporting Russia’s revolutions then and now

by History Guild | Jun 13, 2022 | Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 9 minutes
“No news from Petrograd yesterday”, was the headline in the Daily Mail on March 14, 1917. The story – or non-story – which followed, was only a few dozen words: “Up to a late hour last night the Russian official report, which for many months has come to hand early, had not been received”, it ran. So why publish it? The non-appearance of the daily news bulletin from the Russian government had led the Mail’s writer, trying to prepare a report in London, to suspect something was going on.

Putin’s brazen manipulation of language is a perfect example of Orwellian doublespeak

by History Guild | Apr 15, 2022 | Political and Economic History | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
If you’ve been paying attention to how Russian President Vladimir Putin talks about the war in Ukraine, you may have noticed a pattern. Putin often uses words to mean exactly the opposite of what they normally do.
He labels acts of war “peacekeeping duties.”
He claims to be engaging in “denazification” of Ukraine while seeking to overthrow or even kill Ukraine’s Jewish president, who is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor.

Tag: Russian