Comment on the article in a British daily the Telegraph by the Polish Ambassador in the UK. Polish authorities pretend to oppose Russia and to be friends with western democracies in general and the UK in particular. However, this is not true. Poland is ruled by the same Communist class as before 1990. My wife … Read more
Comment on the article The Lebedevs are freedom fighters, not Kremlin cronies by Dmitry Muratov in The Times, 17 March 2022. The word ‘former’ is a very important and flexible word in the Communist/Russian dictionary. It is applied on opposite sides of the axis of memory and importance. When used in reference to … Read more
Comment on the obituary of Flight Lieutenant Dennis Bryden pilot shot down in 1944 […] in the Telegraph 11 November 2021. “Bryden […] and his crew took off from Brindisi on the night of September 10 1944 to drop supplies to the Polish underground movement in Warsaw.” ‘Movement’?! This sentence is a serious distortion. On … Read more
Comment on the article Vladimir Putin bans comparisons between Soviets and Nazi Germany in Second World War by Tom Parfitt in The Times, 1 July 2021. ‘The latter is likely to anger former Soviet states like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which say they were occupied by the Red Army and then coerced into joining the … Read more
Comment on the article Lenin’s architect of red terror rises again by Ben Macintyre in The Times, 16 September 2017. I used Google Maps recently to try and locate monuments to Felix Dzerzhinsky in Russia. There is lots of them all over the country. Here is a sample. The tweets quoted below are part of … Read more
Polish version: Film BBC Pożyczone Pastwisko z 1960 The men in the BBC documentary Borrowed Pasture, Eugeniusz Okołowicz, photographer, and Włodzimierz Bułaj, electrician, were in the Polish Army during September 1939 campaign of WWII, then crossed into Lithuania where they were interned, to avoid capture by either Germans or Russians. Soviets occupied Lithuania in Spring … Read more
Comment on the article We must support the citizens of Belarus during this brutal state crackdown by Renatas Norkus, Arkady Rzegocki, and Dr Jonathan Eyal in The Sunday Telegraph 7 February 2021. Polish version: Produkcja fałszywych narracji. [1] Lithuanian Ambassador to the UK [2] Polish Ambassador to the UK [3] Associate Director at the Royal … Read more
My comments on the article Joanna Stingray, the California girl who rocked Russia and spread the word by Marc Bennetts in The Times, 1 January 2021. Stingray stuffed reel-to-reel tapes and lyrics into her leather jacket and boots to evade Soviet customs guards. “I was so enchanted by the music that I was completely blind … Read more
My comment on Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees review: a tale of two tyrants by Robert Gerwarth in The Telegraph, 26 October 2020. Polish version: Neuronalne korelaty świadomości. WWII and associated developments are typically viewed from mostly a military perspective. Started on [date], ended on [date]. [number] mln killed. My family comes from eastern … Read more
My second comment on Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees review by David Aaronovitch in The Times, 23 October 2020. Polish version: Druga wojna światowa zredukowana do karykatury. 26 October 2020 I would like to return to the second paragraph of the review, on which I commented already earlier. The entire article is based on … Read more
My comment on Hitler and Stalin by Laurence Rees review — bloody fantasy versus cruel rationalism, book review by David Aaronovitch in The Times, 23 October 2020. Polish version: Komunistyczna narracja drugiej wojny światowej w The Times. This review starts with a caricature and is a bit of a caricature of history itself. It is … Read more
My comment on the article Exploring Poland’s Lake District by Emma Thomson in The Sunday Times, 27 September 2020. Polish version: Narracja komunistyczna w The Sunday Times. The article is representative of the Communist narrative. This is a region whose inhabitants either escaped or were expelled later in a totalitarian action. Practically the entire population … Read more
My comment on the article My great aunt, the spy Ursula Kuczynski by Rosa Ellis in The Times, 11 September 2020. Here are my reflections. We are served a story of a family of intellectuals who worked for the genocidal Communist regime and who don’t care about responsibility for their actions. It seems they are … Read more
My comment on Michael Binyon’s Belarus has gone its own way without the fires of nationalist rage in The Times, 22 August 2020. The author writes about his visit to Belarus in 1967. I was denied permission to see my relatives in 1984. The author was clearly acceptable to the Communist authorities. I was not. … Read more
My comment on the article The Pope is Beijing’s unlikely admirer by Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times, 26 July 2020. 4 August 2020 I would like to take issue with a couple of items in this article. the pre-eminent Catholic commentator George Weigel On May 14, 2020 The Wall Street Journal published a false … Read more
Another Sergei Khrushchev obituary. The Times, July 1, 2020. I posted nearly identical comment as under his obituary in The Telegraph. I added the first sentence Sergei Khrushchev clearly continued to serve Soviet Russia during his years in the US. I also posted another comment in response to a reader’s remark. Someone in a comment … Read more
My comment on the article Polish president looks for US troops to give him edge in election by Oliver Moody in The Times, 25 June 2020. There is a misunderstanding about the changes of 1989-90. It was not, as it is usually presented, a ‘transition to democracy’. The ruling Communists maintained the same firm grip … Read more
My comment on Sergei Khrushchev, son of Soviet leader Nikita who ended up swearing allegiance to America – obituary in The Telegraph, 22 June 2020. Both Sergei Khrushchev and his father Nikita Khrushchev lived at the center of the Soviet dictatorship, built it and served it to the best of their ability. Millions of people … Read more
Prisoners of History by Keith Lowe review — pulling down statues isn’t the answer by Richard Preston in The Times, June 20, 2020. Here is my comment on the book and its review in The Times. I looked up the book at its publisher’s website and read a few pages about the Soviet military monument … Read more
My comment on the article Agent Gustav: Geoffrey Goodman, the Fleet Street titan who spied on Harold Wilson by Gabriel Pogrund, Martin Dixon and Tom Calver in The Sunday Times, 13 June 2020. The text includes the comment I made following the June 8, 2019 article by Jake Kerridge in The Telegraph, ‘Why should my … Read more