Rating – Four Stars Congratulations to Michael Walker on his assiduous research and lucid manuscript about this seminal 1929 conflict between the Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) over control of the China Eastern Railroad (CER). The CER runs through Chinese Manchuria and links the Russian Far East city Chit […]
Tag Archives: Soviet Union
July 17, Anniversary of The Regicide
In the early hours of 17 July 1918, the Cheka firing squad (the Soviet secret police) fired volley after volley into Nicholas Romanov, Czar of all the Russias, and his family: Empress Alexandra, son Nikkei, and four daughters, Maria, Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia. In the March 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks successfully overthrew the Romanov’s régime […]
Book Review: Air War Over Khalkhin Gol: The Nomonhan Incident
Rating – Three Stars From May to September, 1939, the Union of Socialists Soviet Republics and the Empire of Japan waged an undeclared war near the Khalkhin Gol (River) over the border between Soviet controlled Mongolia and the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo (formerly the Chinese Province Manchuria). In this little remembered war, casualties in men […]
BOOK REVIEW: Killing Reagan: A Violent Assault that Changed a Presidency by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
An outstanding book. Exceptionally well written—no nonsense, no extraneous jabberwocky, no political twists—just the facts presented in a sterile, compelling narrative. O’Reilly strips the Holy Grail sheen off Ronald Reagan and renders him an ordinary human being—much as the rest of us with all our frailties. At times, Reagan was petty, angry, vindictive, chapfallen, humdrum, and […]
International Brigades in Spain 1936-39 by Ken Bradley: A Book Review
The clue to the authors political bent is in his Dedication: “To the volunteers of the international brigades who gave all they had to oppose international fascism and to preserve a free Spain.” (My emphasis on “free.”) Republican Spain (again another euphemism) was anything but free or a republic. In 1936, when the Spanish Revolution […]
Romanov Jewelry
Fabulous hardly describes the vast treasure of the Romanov jewelry cache. Below are a few samples of this vast collection. For those who have a keener interest I recommend the book titled Jewels of the Romanovs, Stefano Papi, Thames&Hudson, New York, 2010. Join the Czar’s1916 Christmas Ball in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg—formal […]
What compelled me to pen this historical novel, St. Catherine’s Crown, about the Russian Revolution?
I chose to write about the Russian Revolution—the overthrow of the monarchy and installation of an atheistic Communist regime—to refresh our minds of its monumental impact on world events for seventy years. The Bolshevik’s leaders—Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Felix Dzerzhinsky head of the Soviet secret police, for examples—exercised their unmitigated evil and bilious […]
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Llich Lenin (1870-1924) Lenin was born into a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Russia—a town on the Volga river about 850 miles east of Moscow. He became a leftist revolutionary after the OHKRANA (the Czar’s secret police) arrested and executed his brother in 1887. He attending the Kazan State University, but he was suspended […]