From WWII to End of Soviet Union and Beginning of Russian Federation
October 5, 2026
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2026/10/omni-russia-anthology-11-from-wwii-to.html
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. 
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.
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
| “Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev’s Kremlin” by Pietro Shakarian. “ ACURA (Feb 22, 2026). The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel and Columbia University’s Khatchig Mouradian join author Pietro Shakarian for a discussion about his groundbreaking work on Anastas Mikoyan, an architect of the Khrushchev Thaw, the USSR’s nationalities policy as well as a key player in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis. The event was sponsored by the American Committee for […] Read in browser » |
“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