In grade school, we worried about the Atomic Bomb and practiced skrunching up under our school desks just in case. In high school, we worried about the Hydrogen Bomb and stocked up our bomb shelters just in case. None of this would have been necessary without the diabolical Russians, who were hoarding mountains of nuclear devices somewhere in the vast emptiness of the mother country just waiting for the right opportunity.
In college ROTC class, they showed us an actual, for-real atomic explosion for the first time in our lives. Oh-oh. Looked like those little school desks might not have helped much. And even if you made it to the bomb shelter, you had to deal with the lasting effects of radioactivity when you came out. Stuff like Godzilla and the giant ants from Them! and the zombies from Night of the Living Dead. Goddam Russians.
Now, it wouldn’t be fair to blame all the Russians for this misbehavior. As everybody knows, the Russian women are as hot as the pistols at the OK Corral and wouldn’t bomb a flea. Oh sure, they might con a few dumb Americans into quickie marriages, dump them overboard and run off to the Maldives with half their fortunes but at least they’re not dropping 50 megaton surprises on peoples’ heads. It’s that crass, ill-dressed, vodka-swilling male population that’s causing all the trouble. The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu says “Know thy enemy,” so let’s take a look at ours.
Who ARE These Guys?
Back in World War I days, the Russians used to have a Czar. The title was eventually changed to Tsar because the ‘z’ in “czar” was mucking up too many New York Times crossword puzzles. Anyway, in 1917, socialist organizers decided they’d had way too much of the Czar/Tsar and started a revolution. We know this because Warren Beatty rushed right over there with his movie camera and got it all down on film. By October, the Bolsheviks, the leftists and the Anarchists won majorities in elections across Russia and sent the Tsar packing to the remote Siberian city of Tobolsk, which is kind of like Newark. The Tsar’s family didn’t like it one bit out there and began sending hidden messages to the outside world, which irked the Bolsheviks no end. They moved the Tsar’s Romanov family to Ekaterinburg (Russian for “Nowheresville”) and cut off their heads. Peevish, those Bolsheviks.
The big boss of the new governing party was Vladimir Lenin. Nobody liked him, especially the governments of Europe and North America. Lenin thought the Russian revolution would trigger a socialist uprising in the rest of Europe and that a Socialist Europe would eventually help backward Russia to develop its own economy. Didn’t happen. People pointed at Lenin and laughed, which made him very grouchy. In December, 1917, he closed down the newspapers, pissing off the sports fans and Jumble savants, then he began arresting opposition political leaders. In 1918, as the Russian economy collapsed, Lenin nationalized all private property and the state became the owner of factories, stores and even the local bordellos. When citizens complained, “The government is really screwing us,” they weren’t kidding.
What Happened Then, Mr. Wizard?
So where did the Communists come from? Simple, the Bolsheviks just changed their name. “It was clumsy,” said Party member Ivan Ivanovich, “a bogeyman name. People thought Bolsheviks had spiked tails and were coming to get them.” The new Communist regime had plenty of enemies, including all of the other Socialist parties, which they promptly outlawed. Miffed, the outlaws formed the White Army, made up of former Tsarist officers, monarchists, liberals and anybody else looking for someone to shoot. The Communists replied with the Red Army, consisting of workers and peasants and unemployed borscht farmers. After considerable skirmishing and 3 million dead people, the Red Army prevailed. Stupid Russians.
The Russian economy, never one to write home about, totally collapsed, money became worthless and the factories shut down. A peon kid needed to wheel his Radio Flyer wagon full of large bills down to the ice cream store just to buy a popsicle. People fled the cities to find necessities like food and vodka, ravaging the countryside and pissing off the peasants. The country was in ruins but the government became even more militaristic. The working class shrunk to half its 1917 size and peasant rebels formed the Green Army to fight the Reds. Their motto, “Are We Having Fun Yet---NO!” was painted on banners all over the countryside. In early 1921, soldiers and sailors began to mutiny, seizing the Kronstadt naval base and drawing naughty pictures of Lenin on the walls. One clever varlet somehow got into Lenin’s bedroom, defecated on the carpet and left a “Souvenir for Vladimir,” a shocking event which led to a song of the same name. By Spring of 1921, Lenin began a period of “strategic retreat” and created “The New Economic Policy.” Amazing what a little shit will do.
Brother, Can You Spare A Kopek?
Soviet Russia was an outlaw state in the 1920s. Nobody wanted anything to do with them except the new democratic government of Germany. During that time, the Russians signed treaties to create a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) which was supposedly a federation of equal states but clearly dominated by Russia. The first years of the New Economic Policy were times of terrible famine throughout the land. “Yes, We Have No Potatoes” was number one on the Soviet Hit Parade for 19 months running and a farmer needed a magnifying glass to find a beet. Slowly, very slowly, agriculture stirred and began to recover but industry remained in the doldrums. Lenin was totally bummed out by the miserable scenario, suffered a series of debilitating strokes and died in 1924. His final two sentences were, “Oy vey, what a mess” and “Give my regards to Broadway!” His tombstone reads, “So what did you expect? It’s Russia.”
From Leon To Uncle Joe
Enter relief pitcher Leon Trotsky for one inning. Trotsky argued that the country was not industrializing fast enough and asserted that the peasants needed to be taxed more heavily. He also claimed the bureaucracy was corrupt. He was probably right on both counts and he found allies in guys named Lev (Watch Your Steppes) Kamenev and Gregory (The Siberian Contrarian) Zinoviev, but it’s Russia, remember. Joseph Stalin accused the trio of opposing Leninism and Trotsky was isolated as a result. Apparently, Russian citizens have memories like hamsters since Lenin’s policies had largely failed and were widely discredited. During the Russian grain shortage of 1928, Stalin adopted many of the policies adopted by Trotsky five years earlier. One minute you’re an exile, next minute you hung the moon. Crazy Russians.
Russia, 1928-1932
Nothing happened. Russians celebrated.
The Humorous Side Of Uncle Joe
By 1940, the USSR’s drive to industrialize had brought them almost even with the capitalist industrial powers. The Josef Stalin regime had managed to increase literacy rates and improve health care for most of the population. Even though he was killing off countless thousands of dissenters, Uncle Joe and his government leaders were considered heroes by millions of people. So many Russians were awarded various kinds of medals, American cartoonists began drawing caricatures of Russian bigwigs with the inevitable “HERO” star attached to their breasts. Unfortunately for the country, the costs of such rapid progress were enormous. Between the collectivization of the countryside and the frenzy of rapid industrialization, the entire society was constantly in chaos. Stalin saw spies behind every lamppost and his purges were frequent. The Russian secret police executed hundreds of thousands for imagined offenses. University and scientific communities were obliterated. While there are no accurate estimates of how many died, a conservative estimate is 3 million. And not a soul hung any funny signs or pooped in Uncle Joe’s living room. One man, Sergei Popovich was sentenced to 10 years in prison for telling six anti-Soviet jokes. They would have thrown away the key for George Carlin. (1937 Russian joke: Two judges bump into one another just outside the courtroom. One is laughing out loud. “Ah, comrade, what is so amusing?” asks the other. “Well, I just heard a very funny joke,” replies the tickled arbiter. “You must tell me this joke,” insists the other judge. The first opens his eyes wide, scowls and shakes his head angrily. “You must be crazy Gregori, I just sentenced a peasant to ten years in the Gulag for telling it.”) Those Russians. What cards.
Joe vs. Adolph
Despite having earlier signed a non-aggression pact with Russia, on 22 June 1941 Adolph Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, a large invasion of the Soviet Union. Over three-and-a-half-million German and Axis troops attacked along an 1,800 mile front, a total of 148 divisions or about 80% of the German Army supported by 2,700 aircraft from the Luftwaffe. They got off to a good start, quickly pushing forward toward their objectives while the clodhopper Russian troops fell apart in confusion. On the first day alone, 1800 napping Soviet aircraft were destroyed, most of them on the ground. By mid-July, German forces were a mere 60 miles from Moscow. “Ach du lieber, we’ll be in Moscow in time for sauerbraten and schnitzel,” exulted the Germans, patting one another on the back. Not so fast, my freunds.
Gradually, Soviet resistance stiffened despite catastrophic losses. Simultaneously, Hitler put on his genius uniform and halted the advance on Moscow to reinforce troubled troops elsewhere in the country. His high command rebelled. “Dummkopf, the panzers are only 220 miles from Moscow!” they cussed, but very quietly. Hitler decided the resource-rich Ukraine was more important. On August 21, he ordered the conquest of Crimea be given priority. The German Army eventually took Sevastopol but by then the fighting had severely depleted their ranks and supply lines were stretched to the limit.
Hitler’s attention returned to Moscow. On October 2, he unleashed Operation Typhoon, believing the Russians had been fatally weakened and lacked the strength to defend their capital. Uncle Joe tittered in anticipation. “The German pigs will eat poison pie!” he chortled, rubbing his hands together. By now Stalin had reinforced the defenses to over a million men and the Luftwaffe had been weakened by over three months of sustained operations. Ah, and the weather was starting to turn.
Though the early German assaults had pared the defenders to 90,000 men, the Nazi formations slowed to a crawl, beset by Autumn rains that turned the dirt roads into rivers of mud. It was November, the quagmire season; wheeled and horse-drawn transport became hopelessly stuck and the Germans were forced to halt operations. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” sang Uncle Joe. “And St. Nicholas is bringing me a bag of dead Nazis!”
On December 2, a German recon unit actually got within 5 miles of Moscow. They could see the buildings of the capital, but this was the limit of the entire advance. The depleted German units were exhausted and frozen into inactivity in the deep snow. On December 5, the Soviets launched a surprise counteroffensive and forced a retreat despite Hitler’s demand to defend every foot of ground. The Russians succeeded in crushing various German formations and pushing the enemy back 150 miles from Moscow.
Hitler ran around in little circles, ranting and firing generals, willy-nilly, including the commander-in-chief of the German Army, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, whom he called a potato-head. Adolph appointed himself in his place. “We have only to kick in the front door and the whole rotten edifice will come tumbling down!” Hitler advised his generals. They stubbornly disagreed. “No mein Fuhrer,” they argued. “You are forgetting this is not France!”
After The Ball Was Over
At the conclusion of World War II, the Soviet Union extended its control into Eastern Europe, taking over the governments in Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia, not to mention the eastern half of Germany. The Baltic countries---Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania---were converted into republics. Even Finland was partly controlled by the Soviets. The Communist Party was also flexing its muscles in Italy, France and Asia. In 1945, Outer Mongolia became the first Communist regime outside the Soviet Union. China opted for Communism in 1949. Russia was at the height of its powers and ready for a new enemy, the “capitalist tools” of the West.
Joseph Stalin died in 1953, resulting in a less repressive rule in Russia, though the Communist Party still thrived. In 1957, the Soviet satellite Sputnik was the first to orbit the Earth, spurring an intense space race with the United States and earning Russia an unprecedented degree of prestige. Prior to Sputnik, Western newspaper cartoonists had a field day deriding poorly made Russian goods and a backward Soviet scientific community. The cartoonists wouldn’t have long to wait, however, until a new Russian cartoon character arrived.
Nikita (The Shoe) Khrushchev
On October 20, 1960, Lorenzo Sumulong of the United Nations’ Filipino delegation decried the deprivation of “the free exercise of their civil and political rights” of the people of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. The First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, could barely contain himself, leaping from his seat and pounding his shoe on the rostrum, denouncing Sumulong as “a jerk, a stooge and a lackey.” Also, “a toady of American imperialism.” U.N. Assembly President Frederick Boland of Ireland ordered the pudgy, balding little Russian back to his room without supper as editorial cartoonists everywhere slapped one another on their backs, delighted at their sudden good fortune.
After Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba in 1959, the island government began tilting toward Communism, delighted with the support Khrushchev provided in Castro’s ongoing contretemps with the United States. Nikita was jumping up and down with glee to have an ally on the doorstep of his mortal enemy and decided to send the Cubans a boatload of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles just for fun. The ship was almost there when U.S. President John F. Kennedy waved a finger, set up a blockade and cautioned, “No shoes, no shirt, no service!”
The standoff between the two leaders lasted an excruciating 13 days while people in Florida paced up and down the coastline with binoculars and their neighbors in Texas began looking for choice real estate in Mexico. Nikita finally relented and turned the boats around when JFK gave him a pinky promise not to invade Havana. Despite all the merriment and mirth Khrushchev provided, the unappreciative Russians dumped him in 1964 and installed Leonid Brezhnev as Soviet leader. His term featured a massive buildup of nuclear arms at the cost of almost breaking the Russian economy. a period called The Era of Stagnation.
Ronnie To The Rescue
By the middle 1980s, the Germans were getting a little ornery about the wall dividing their country East and West. When Germany was divvied up after WWII, the Russians made off with the eastern part, which promptly fell into disrepair. The East Germans couldn’t help but notice the freedom and prosperity their western brothers were enjoying on the other side and began jumping the fence, leading the Russian government to install a high concrete wall and promptly shoot anyone who tried to climb over it. Talk about your grouches…
On June 12, 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan dressed up in a cowboy suit and rode his big pony right up to the Brandenburg Gate, where he pulled a large megaphone out of his saddle bag and shouted to the General Secretary of the Communist Party, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear town this wall.” Everybody just stood there looking at him, so Reagan turned his horse around and jogged back to the hotel for a few drinks. “At least they could have sent The Lone Ranger,” grumped Gorbachev.
Two years later, however, the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall, some with hammers and picks to chip away at the barrier. The reunification of Germany triggered the swift collapse of the other East European regimes and the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Cold War was essentially over.
Putin The Sailor Man
“I’m strong to the finish ‘cause I eats me spinach, I’m Putin the KGB man!”
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in 1952 in St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad. Just eight years had passed since the siege of the city, during which more than a million of its inhabitants died in WWII, or “The Great Patriotic War.” At the age of 16, a year before finishing secondary school, Putin moseyed into KGB headquarters in Leningrad. Most Russians had a stark fear of the place since it once housed the offices of Stalin’s Secret Police and supposed enemies of the state were casually executed in the bloodstained basement. Didn’t bother Vladimir one whit.
Putin asked the first officer he saw how to join up. He was told he needed to serve in the military first or graduate from a university. He chose the latter and earned a law degree in 1975. Knowing of his interest in the KGB, Putin thought they would contact him post-graduation but he never heard a peep. Vlad complained to a friend who told him, “Putin, you are dummy. They don’t just take volunteers at KGB.”
The Russian intelligence agency, of course, spent far more time spying on their own citizens than they did messing with the Western powers. Russian governments have always been obsessed with threats from within and there have always been ample informers prepared to rat out their friends and neighbors. The fact that a young buck is eager to belong to such a coterie of villains doesn’t speak too kindly to his motivations or character.
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the once-formidable Soviet Union shocked Putin to his core. Nonetheless, he moved up in the KGB ranks, made helpful connections with a few obscenely rich and corrupt oligarchs and became interested in what serves for politics in Russia.
In August 1999, Putin was appointed acting Prime Minister. In May, 2012 Vlad became the fourth Russian president. His campaign slogan was a jaunty “Vote for me or I kill you, ha-ha.” Putin decided the best way to get reelected in future years was to eliminate everybody who disagreed with him. Like these guys:
2003: Yuri Shchekochikhin. Journalist and author who wrote about crime and corruption in the Soviet Union. Shchekochikhin was investigating the 1999 Russian apartment bombings when he contracted a mysterious illness and died suddenly.
2003: Sergei Yushenkov. The affable former army colonel was gunned down outside his apartment in Moscow just after registering his Liberal Russia movement as a political party. Yushenko had been gathering evidence which proved the Putin government was behind one of the famous apartment bombings in 1999.
2006: Alexander Litvinenko. Putin likes poison. Litvenenko, a former KGB agent , died after drinking a cup of tea laced with deadly polonium-210 at a London hotel. A British inquiry found that Alexander was offed by Russian agents Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun who were acting on the orders of Putin. The latter later got a medal from Putin for “services to the motherland.”
2006: Anna Politkovskaya. Anna was a reporter for Novaya Gazeta, whose book Putin’s Russia accused the Kremlin leader of turning the country into a police state and also abusing Chechens. She was shot at point-blank range in an elevator in her building.
2009: Natalia Estemirova. Natalia was a journalist who investigated abductions and murders which had become commonplace in Chechnya, a result of a brutal security force crackdown to weed out Islamic militants. She was kidnapped outside her home, shot several times and dumped in nearby woods.
2009: Sergei Magnitsky. Attorney Magnitsky died in police custody after being savagely beaten and then denied medical care. He was arrested after uncovering evidence that suggested that police officials were behind a massive tax fraud.
2009: Stanislav Markelov & Anastasia Baburova. Markelov was a human rights lawyer known for representing Chechen clients in civil rights cases against the Russian military. He also represented journalists who found themselves in legal trouble after writing articles critical of Putin. He was slain by a masked gunman near the Kremlin. Baburova, a journalist from Novaya Gazete, tried to help him.
2013: Boris Berezovsky. Once a member of Putin’s inner circle and instrumental in bringing Vlad to power in the late 1990s, he later fell out with Putin and self-exiled in the United Kingdom where he vowed to bring down the president. The cause of death was undetermined.
2015: Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov led massive street rallies in protest of the 2011 parliamentary election results and was arrested several times. He was shot four times in the back by an unknown assailant.
2017: Denis Voronenkov, a former Russian Communist, began sharply criticizing Putin after fleeing Russia in 2016. Ukrainian President called the death an “act of state terrorism by Russia.”
Putin’s death squad wasn’t quite able to nail Alexei Navalny but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Russia’s most prominent opposition politician took five months to recover from near lethal poisoning with a powerful nerve agent in August 2020. A slow learner, Navalny returned to Russia to raise a little hell and was immediately clapped into jail, where he remains today.
Saving the best for last, Vladimir Putin has now invaded Ukraine, killing and maiming thousands, sending millions of women and children fleeing to nearby countries and destroying everything in his wake because this is what Russian despots do. It must be something in the water. Throughout history, starting with Sviatopolk the Accursed (980-1019) who killed his three brothers, Russia leads the league in evil villains. Ivan the Terrible’s most famous sidekick, Malyuta Skuratov (1541-1573) organized rape trips for the Tsar. Darya Saltykova tortured and killed over 40 of her serfs. Nikolai Yezhov (1895-1940) orchestrated Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937. And what about that rotten Ivan Drago who beat Apollo Creed to death in a boxing ring? These Russians are mean as mongooses and crazy as bedbugs. After Putin’s demise (which may come sooner than anyone thinks), the next Russian lunatic will come along, then another and another. There’s no end to it. We’ve got to take action. How about an LSD Air Force which drops millions of acid tabs all over Russia? What if we threatened to take Brighton Beach away from them, banned Soviet vodka and made them use grammatical articles like “the?” What if we didn’t let them in Disneyworld’s Mickey’s Toontown or put pennies on the tracks of the Trans-Baikal Railway? Work with me here, folks, before it’s too late.
Stinkin’ Russians.
That’s all, folks…,.
Bonus Ukraine War Coverage: Passing the border into Ukraine, a Russian general hears a loud voice in the distance. “One Ukraine soldier is better than a thousand Soviet troops!” it bellows. Annoyed, the general sends one hundred men over the hill in the direction of the boasting enemy. The sound of gunfire arises, many howling voices, a little bombing, then quiet. Then, the same voice rings out: “One Ukraine soldier is better than a thousand Soviet troops!”
Enraged, the Russian general sends a thousand men over the hill into battle. For half an hour, all hell breaks loose….bombing, explosions, gunfire, screaming and finally silence. One dusty lone Soviet soldier crawls back out of the chaos, severely wounded. When he sees his general, he climbs to his knees and warns, “Do not send any more troops, comrade General, it’s a trap! There are TWO of the bastards!”
