Russian History Hub

[video] At first Gorbachev sneered at Putin as little more than an assistant to the mayor of St. Petersburg. He didn’t believe Putin could fix the mess he and Yeltsin had created. History proved Gorbachev wrong. Turns out you don’t have to be part of the nomenklatura to unite the

[image] NATO wrote a classified report in 1959. Subject: Soviet education. Conclusion: terrifying. They discovered the USSR was producing engineers and scientists faster than the U.S. and U.K. combined, with deeper training and better results. The report was so alarming it triggered an

[image] How Ukraine Tries to Rewrite History Let’s kick things off with a fun fact: during its prime, Kievan Rus wasn’t even called “Kievan Rus.” Nope, that’s a modern invention by historians who needed a catchy name to describe the medieval state that existed from the late 9th to the

[video] Imagine walking into a restaurant in Lvov in 2007. There’s no sign outside. You knock on a hidden door. An armed man dressed as a UPA fighter looks through the hatch and asks: “Any Jews, Muscovites or communists among you?” Welcome to Kryivka. Opened in 2007, the restaurant

[video] Imagine an “occupation” where the country is rebuilt with the occupier’s help. The Soviet Union didn’t destroy Poland but actually rebuilt it. Under Soviet support, the Polish army grew, new academies opened, and engineers, musicians, and scientists reached world fame. Newspapers

[video] If you think Berlin was divided in two after WWII because of the Soviets, think again. Also, did you know that the German peace treaty wasn’t signed right after the war? It actually happened in 1990! The newly declassified Soviet document says it all: “From the conclusion of a

[video] Russian tsar Ivan IV is known in the West as Ivan the Terrible and that’s precisely the image the West was selling, quite successfully, to Russia - that of a cruel, irrational tyrant. But like other Russian leaders later portrayed as pure evil - Stalin, Putin - Ivan IV also did

[video] They tell you the Romanovs didn't even speak Russian. Here’s Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, granddaughter of Alexander II, speaking English with an accent so thick you can immediately tell which language was native to her. She learned English and French, had English-speaking

[video] 12,000 Soviet children were used as living blood banks by the Nazis. You've never heard about them. Kids & teens between the ages of 8 and 14, mostly girls, were torn from their families, medically examined, classified by blood type, and marked with tags around their necks. Many

[video] Choose your fighter: Americans and Englishmen: bomb Dresden into rubble. Soviets: find and rescue 1,240 paintings, spend a decade restoring them in Moscow, and return all 1,240 of them back to Dresden museums.

[video] You are often told that Soviet commanders in WWII relied on sheer numbers, with little regard for casualties. Yet, in the autumn of 1941, when Moscow itself was under threat, one of the Red Army's defensive actions told a different story. Near Mtsensk, Colonel Mikhail Katukov's

[image] The USSR didn't invent universal healthcare. It stole the credit from the Russian Empire. Healthcare is a perfect example. Let’s unpack the facts about the pre-revolutionary Russian healthcare system that you’ve probably never heard about🧵👇

[video] World War II could have been prevented. But nobody except Stalin really wanted to stop Hitler. The USSR proposed a joint military front against Hitler. Britain and France stalled. Poland blocked transit. This video opens a series I’ve put together to take you through the few

[video] I translated this Soviet-era cartoon because it offers a glimpse into the history of Ukraine’s fight for independence since 1917, which has in fact always been a history of dependence on and serving the highest bidder. The cartoon's central theme is the idea that competing

[video] September 1939. You know the familiar picture: Stalin and Hitler carve up poor Poland, and the Red Army marches in as an aggressor. But there’s another picture from those same days - one that is shown far less often. People welcoming the Red Army — with flowers, banners and

[video] Every empire that tried to destroy the Kremlin failed. The Mongols burned it. The Poles occupied it. Napoleon tried to blow it up. Hitler tried to flatten it from the air. Where are they now? Over 800 years later, the Kremlin is still standing, and it remains the only fortress

[video] The Western narrative about Russia conveniently starts in 1917. That leaves out over 1,000 years. Russia's history did not begin in 1917. It was shaped over the course of more than a millennium by princes, tsars, emperors, reformers, military commanders, and statesmen. Here's a

[video] The world knows about Anne Frank’s diary - it was published everywhere. Tanya Savicheva’s diary is far less well known and was never published as a book - it’s just seven entries documenting the deaths of her family members during the blockade of Leningrad. Twelve-year-old Tanya

[video] They say “follow the money”, so let’s follow the ruble and the dollar. Before the First World War, the Russian Empire was one of the world's largest economies and maintained the gold-backed ruble, the world’s strongest currency. After WWI, Russia's economy was devastated, while

[video] She watched the bomb explode in her own dining room. Then watched her father argue with the Tsar. Then watched Lenin speak. Then watched Russia collapse. It is the daughter of Pyotr Stolypin describing what she personally saw, not a historian looking back decades later.

[video] The Russian Empire was so backward that it had a fleet of submarines in the early 20th century and even a submarine rescue ship, which was built to last and remains in service to this day!

[image] I don’t think many people realize that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal investigation into the murder of the Imperial Family. Over the past several years, a great deal of new evidence has emerged, along with confirmation of information that

[video] Kiev was not the first capital of Rus. This surprises people who think they know Russian history. The capital moved multiple times: Novgorod, Ladoga, Kiev, Vladimir, Moscow. Over centuries, as the state evolved, the center of power shifted. The United States had eight

[video] The French language has a Russian word for catastrophic failure. They named it after a river where Napoleon's army was destroyed. During Napoleon's retreat in 1812, the Battle of the Berezina became one of the most devastating episodes of the campaign. The Grande Armée suffered

[video] Hitler never wanted to fight Britain - at least not at first. He regarded the UK as Germany's natural ally in a future confrontation with the Soviet Union and, until the summer of 1940, did not even plan a war against it. Franz Halder recorded Hitler's view that defeating

[video] Russian stereotypes in Hollywood films. Part 1

[video] The Germans needed 250 days to take Sevastopol. The Red Army took it back in 35. In April 1944, Soviet forces smashed through the Axis defenses, liberated almost all of Crimea within a week, and drove the remnants of the Wehrmacht into the sea at Cape Khersones. Some history

[video] In October 1941, Moscow was preparing its own Metro system for demolition. As Hitler’s army approached, the capital was preparing for the possibility of capture. The Metro became a gigantic air-raid shelter, while parts of the system were prepared for demolition rather than

[video] The West razed Königsberg to the ground and now pretends the Soviets destroyed a beautiful medieval city. You’ve probably seen these before-and-after images of Kaliningrad: a postcard view of Königsberg before WWII and a grayscale photo of Kaliningrad shot on a rainy day in

[image] Westerners will confidently tell you that Scandinavians founded Russia. They teach it in schools. They write it in textbooks. They state it as historical fact. Except it's not a fact. It's called the Norman theory. And the key word is "theory." For the past several years,

[video] Germans knew Russia could not be defeated even before WWI. Why? Because one of the Russian superpowers - patience and endurance - beats the German superpower of racial superiority fair and square. When an entire nation shrugs at hardship, they are unstoppable.

[video] Unlike babies, languages are not conceived in vitro. Yet one language was treated as though it could be. In the mid-19th century, Panteleimon Kulish wanted to “give the Southern Russian dialect a nationality”. He believed all he needed was to write the language as you hear, plus

[video] What finally brought Japan to its knees in August 1945? Everyone remembers the atomic bombs. Far fewer remember what happened between them. After defeating Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union secretly transferred hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened troops thousands of miles

[video] Rare Interview: Lyudmila Pavlichenko on Stalin, Sevastopol, and the War.

[video] Olga Romanova, sister of Nicholas II, lived modestly for decades while Western banks held on to the Romanov family’s fortune. She never received a single ruble of what rightfully belonged to her.

[image] There’s a monastery in Russia carved almost entirely underground. Monks dug its caves by hand into soft chalk, following a Christian tradition more than 1,000 years old. Most people have no idea it exists.

[video] Do you know where the Ukrainian literary language actually comes from? Not Lvov, not even Kiev! It comes from St. Petersburg, Russia, where Panteleimon Kulish published his Kulishivka orthography in the mid-19th century. And where the journal Osnova - the only Ukrainian-language

[video] You’re often told Nicholas II played almost no real role in commanding the Russian army in WWI - that he left everything to Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich or even to his wife Alexandra. In reality, in August 1915, after the catastrophic Great Retreat, the Emperor personally

[video] During his visits to Crimea, Nicholas II often met veterans of the defense of Sevastopol, one of the defining campaigns of the Crimean War (1854–1855). A century later, Vladimir Putin would meet veterans of the Second World War. Separated by about 100 years and by profound

[video] 11 people were killed in that basement. Only 7 were Romanovs.

[video] In 1943, Donetsk residents filled the streets celebrating the Red Army's liberation from Nazi occupation. The city was called Stalino then. Workers, engineers, miners, all out in the streets. "Glory to the liberators! Glory to the undefeated people!" Today's Ukraine acts like

[text] What’s interesting about this is that Engels himself describes Russia as a rapidly developing country. As for calling it “barbaric” and talking about the “remnants of Slavs,” that was a very common discourse in Europe at the time, especially in Germany. Just like today.

[video] WWII Chronicles: Day -307 before the Second Front On August 5, 1943, Stalin ordered Moscow’s first victory salute of the war, celebrating the liberation of Oryol and Belgorod. The Wehrmacht had lost some of its finest formations and, more importantly, the strategic initiative.

[image] 10 facts about Nicholas II you were never taught:

[video] When the Germans were advancing on Moscow in 1941, two young women were wasting no time and learning how to shoot. Maria Polivanova and Natalia Kovshova had volunteered for the militia. By 1942, they were serving in the regular army as snipers, with dozens of German soldiers and

[image] The real history of Ukraine, the one they’ll never tell you.

[video] Did you know?

[image] The Russian Princess who became Queen of France

[image] Alexander Nevsky and the Beginning of Mongol Rule