Portside

Bernd Gehrke is critical of those in the peace movement and left who dismissed the threat of invasion coming from Russia - a failure to understand the genesis of today’s Russian capitalism and its emergence from Soviet-era party bureaucracy.

It is important for us to rethink the usual categories, including «defense of the Motherland,» clearing them of militarism. It is worth defending the Motherland first of all from poverty, violence, war, corrupt politicians and unscrupulous capital.

Sergei Prokofiev died 70 years ago today, overshadowed by the death of Joseph Stalin, who had banned much of his work. But Prokofiev’s brilliant musical compositions have outlived him and still sound fresh and exciting to modern listeners.

A top-down society is extremely brittle. Vertical control is easier; it eliminates the need to convince anyone. But it is far less effective. The number of errors and the cost of correcting them increase sharply.

How nuclear weapons gradually became a key part of international relations.

There is no dividing line between the Russian “quasi-liberals” of the 90s and the ideology of Russian imperialism today. They are aligned politically and economically, the first easily spilling over over into the second.

Russia faces the greatest defeat in its history. Russia had lost the moment the first bomber took off towards Kyiv because at that moment Russia had only two options - to become an invader or to be crushed on the battlefield.

Modern Russian propaganda, much like the modern Russian state, continues to parasitize off of the Soviet Union. Today, it is difficult for political convictions to be born: there is no habit of conscious resistance to the authorities.

Reader Comments, Elections - It's The Economy and Abortions; Lessons of Cuban Missile Crisis; Socialist Lessons; Announcements: Communists in Closets; Anti-Fascism in the 21st Century; The Farmer-Labor Movement; Cartoons; more....

For the first time in any language the National Security Archive is publishing a translation of the first meeting between Khrushchev and Raul Castro on July 18, 1960, providing new insight into what each side wanted, expected and promised.