OMNI
RUSSIA
ANTHOLOGY #11
From WWII to
End of Soviet Union and Beginning of Russian Federation
October 5, 2026
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
Russia Anthologies 1-10 Completed January 28, 2022. # 11 10-5-26.
#5 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/03/russia-newsletter-5-from-violence-to.html etc.
Russia became Ukraine
War and Soviet/Russophobia Anthologies.
RUSSIA
ANTHOLOGY #11 (RUSSIA to RUSSIA/ UKRAINE WAR).
March 23, 2014.
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2014/03/russia-ukraine-newsletter-1.html
SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA ANTHOLOGY #1, February
2, 2023.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2023/02/omni-sovietrussophobia-anthology-1.html
SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA ANTHOLOGY #2, MARCH 3, 2023.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2023/03/omni-sovietrussophobia-anthology-2.html etc.
SOVIET/RUSSOPHOBIA ANTHOLOGY #8, December 31, 2025.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/12/omni-sovietrussophobia-anti-communism.html
Nos. 9, 10, and 11 under
construction 2026.
What’s at Stake: Seeing the World
as Others See It.
One or two persons
have asked me why I seldom include criticism of Putin. My assumption has been
that anyone reading my anthologies and especially who lives in the US or West
understands that Putin can be a brutal dictator and imperialist. There’s little we can do about that, and the
US/NATO military alliance is spending billions of dollars a year to oppose him
by guns and bombs, and its propaganda machine demonizes him ceaselessly. But wars are often caused by both or multiple
sides. Enemies are sometimes or often
exaggerated in their evil. Bigoted
language undermines every peace initiative.
Our job then is to expose the warmakers and elevate the peacemakers in
the US and West. The US and West massively
prosecute Putin. The Russia, Soviet/Russo,
Ukraine War anthologies offer qualifications.
--Dick
CONTENTS
Alexander
Werth. Russia at War: 1941-1945.
“Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev’s Kremlin” by
Pietro Shakarian.
The leader
of the Russian Yabloko Party.
Alexei
Navalny.
Aaber
Madani. Putin’s Warning.
George Beebe. Lessons for Russia from US
9-11.
Patrick
Lawrence. Russia turning from the
West.
Scott
Ritter. The West, Georgia, and Russia.
TEXTS
Russia
at War: 1941-1945 by Alexander Werth. Books
Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com
› Russia-War-1941-1945-Alex...
A
firsthand account of the Soviet-German conflict during WWII, chronicling military operations, civilian hardships,
and political movements through interviews ...
AI Overview Russia at War, 1941–1945 is a landmark 1964
historical account written by Russian-born British journalist and war
correspondent Alexander Werth. Wikipedia +1
Author: Alexander Werth (1901–1969), who served as a wartime
correspondent in the Soviet Union for the BBC, The Sunday Times, and the
Guardian from 1941 to 1948.
AbeBooks +1 Publication Year: 1964. Wikipedia
Scope: Spans over 1,100 pages, chronicling the Soviet-German conflict
from the 1941 invasions and early disasters up to the end of World War II and
the start of the Cold War.
Amazon.com +1
Key Themes and Content
Eyewitness Account: Werth used his fluency in Russian and rare press access to
travel extensively to front-line zones, including Stalingrad, Leningrad, and
Ukraine.
YouTube·Google Play Books +2
Human Perspective: The book blends hard military and political
history with daily interviews and conversations involving soldiers, generals,
peasants, and city workers.
Historical Reception: Renowned journalist William Shirer hailed
it as the best English-language book on Russia at war, though other critics
noted a reliance on personal viewpoint and general political assessments
alongside its invaluable primary reporting. Wikipedia +1
POST-WWII SOVIET UNION, ITS BREAKUP, CREATION OF FEDERATION RUSSIA, and
REJECTION OF THE WEST
|
“The Nation’s Nadezhda Azhgikhina interviews Russian parliamentarian
Grigory Yavlinsky.”
ACURA (Feb
13, 2026).
On
January 26, The Nation’s correspondent Nadezhda Azhgikhina interviewed Grigory
Yavlinsky at his Moscow offices. Yavlinsky is a member of the Russian State
Duma, the leader of the Yabloko Party, and the chairman of the Center for
Economic and Political Research in Moscow. An economist by training, he held a
series of high positions during […] Read in browser »
Nadezhda Azhgikhina. “We Are
All Passengers on the Titanic: An interview with Grigory
Yavlinsky.” Nadezhda
Azhgikhina writes frequently for the Nation and is an independent
journalist living in Moscow. She is co-author with Katrina vanden Heuvel
of Hope Springs Eternal (Airo Publishers, 2025). A
digital copy of the book can be found here.
Here’s an
important passage (--D): “. . . I believe it would be quite
feasible to build such a project—that is, a ‘common European home from Lisbon
to Vladivostok,’ where all decisions would be centered upon the human
dimension—by the year 2050. Granted, this entails a lengthy and complicated
journey. It will annoy our competitors—such as the US or China. But it is
through dialogue that new approaches will be developed and a vision for the
future will be shaped.” “Yavlinsky is
the founder and leader of the Yabloko Party and a four-times candidate for the
presidency of Russia (1996, 2000, 2012, 2018), in three of which he ran against
Vladimir Putin, finishing third in March 2000 when Putin was elected for the
first time. He was a member of the Russian State Duma in 1993–2003 and later a
member of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. A labor economist by
training, Yavlinsky served as Vice Premier in the Russian Federation government
in 1990 and Vice Premier in the last Soviet government in 1991.”
NAVALNY V. PUTIN
Chris Zimmerman. “Alexei Navalny’s Faith.” The Catholic Worker (Aug-Sep,t.,
2024). A strong affirmation
of Navalny. Jesus’s words in the Sermon
on the Mount—“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”—“impelled
him to return to Moscow from the safety
of Berlin” where he had recovered after being poisoned by Putin’s agents. This fatal decision was much like Dietrich
Bonhoeffer’s return to Nazi Germany in 1939.
Advocate reflects on Alexei Navalny's legacy
Spectrum
News NY1 https://ny1.com ›
nyc › inside-city-hall › 2024/02/23
Feb
22, 2024 — Nicole Sedaca of the nonprofit Freedom House weighed in on
the impact that Navalny had on the fight for democratic change.
The Baudrillardian “Discourse of the Good:”
Putin's False Flag ...
Springer https://link.springer.com ›
content › pdf
Alexei
Navalny's efforts to build an anti-Putin
coalition of democrats and radical nationalists in Russia. In response, the
Kremlin. . . .
Aamer Madhani. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (June 09,
2024). Putin Warns of Arming Adversaries of the
West. Read more... Forwarded by pat snyder via uark.onmicrosoft.com 6-9-24
George Beebe. “Connecting dots: What Russia can learn from the US after
9/11.” ACURA (Am. Comm .for US-Russia Accord). April
1, 2024.
The sense of failure and frustration that
Russian security officials must be feeling should be all too familiar for
Americans whose job it had been to detect and prevent the September 11 attacks
by al-Qaida radicals on the United States. A shocked American public wondered
why the CIA and FBI had failed to “connect the […] Read
in browser »
PATRICK LAWRENCE. “Russia’s Turn From the West.” Consortium News (1-22-24).
A sweeping, significant analysis of Western and
Russian relations since the nineteenth century.
Here’s a sample:
There is another factor to consider. From the 1830s onward to
NATO’s post–Cold War expansions, the horrific U.S.–led program to turn
the Russian Federation into a capitalist greedfest after the Soviet Union’s
collapse, and now the conflict in Ukraine, Russia’s struggle to understand
itself has been accompanied by more or less incessant Western efforts
decisively to reshape Russia in the West’s image.
We cannot understand Lavrov’s press conference, or many, many of
the things Vladimir Putin has said these past few years, without this
historical context. In so many words, all of them well-chosen, the foreign
minister and the president have announced that Russia will no longer look
Westward as it advances into the 21st century. Modernization will no longer
mean Westernization.
It would be altogether impossible to overstate the historical
magnitude of what Russia has set as its new course. We live in the most
interesting times, to put this point another way — even if most of us,
mesmerized by the propaganda of eternal Western superiority, cannot see
five feet in front of us as the most significant events of our time unfold.
Many things will now fall into place. Lavrov, in enumerating the
members of Russia’s “close circle,” describes, a couple of years on, the “new
world order” the Chinese frequently reference.
The 5,000–word charter
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping made public two years ago next month,
“Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s
Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era
and the Global Sustainable Development,” can be understood now as
what your columnist called it at the time: the most important political
document to be issued so far in the 21st century.
Gordon Hahn, the accomplished scholar of Russia and Eurasia, last
week offered a superb history
of Russia’s relations with the West during an appearance last week
on The Duran, the daily web program produced by Alexander Mercouris and (in
this case) Glenn Diesen. In the course of this long, rich interview Hahn notes,
“Putin, as he has stated over and over again now recently, the [Russian] elites
routinely demonstrate that they do not trust anyone in the West anymore.” He
elaborates:
“For Russia, it looks now, the West is no longer its ‘Other.’…
Russia has always identified itself, motivated itself, driven itself in
relation to Europe. Now Putin is turning away from that. He said that we are no
longer to define ourselves, look at ourselves, through the European prism. For
now, we will put all our eggs in one basket, and that is Eurasia…. This close
bilateral relationship, of Europe as Russia’s Other, is ending, and therefore
the cycle [from conservatism to Westernization and back] is probably ending.”
This moment has been a long time coming. A shallow peruse of the
past brings us back to 1990–91, when Michail Gorbachev accepted
Washington’s assurance — without a signed document, imprudently — that NATO
would not expand eastward from the reunified Germany. . . .
SCOTT
RITTER. “Dancing the Khorumi on
Rustaveli Avenue.” MAY 4, 2024. This brief excerpt by the brilliant
scholar, weapons inspector, and peacemaker ties together several main themes: “The concept of a free and
independent Georgia was quashed by western elites whose vision of Georgia was
limited to a vassal state operating in support of a larger western policy of
containing and subverting Russia. NATO and EU membership was never a realistic
proposition. Georgia was simply a tool to be used until broken, after which it
would be discarded.” Read here...
. . .The situation for
Georgia and the Georgian Dream Party became dire following the February 2022
decision by the Russian government to initiate what it called a Special
Military Operation (SMO) against Ukraine. Like Georgia, Ukraine had been
extended an invitation to join NATO in 2008. Like Georgia, Ukraine had been
lured away from the Russian orbit by a promise of EU membership. The West
finally got what it wanted with Ukraine—an actual shooting war with Russia
where NATO could buffer itself using a non-NATO proxy. In short, NATO could
weaken Russia economically and militarily without directly assuming the risks
normally associated with war. Ukraine would do the dying. All NATO had to do
was supply Ukraine with weapons and money. . . .
END RUSSIA ANTHOLOGY #11
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