Josef Stalin is remembered for many things – establishing a brutal dictatorship over the Soviet Union, his determination to create a buffer zone in Eastern Europe and thus close the iron curtain, the capriciousness and cruelty of the security system he set up and brutalising terror of the gulag system. It is, therefore, not surprising that Stalin’s wit and raw intelligence are rarely focused on. But […]
Josef Stalin
The city of Chelyabinsk is situated to the south-east of the Urals, close to Kazakhstan and serves as a gateway to Russia’s vast Asian expanses. It lies on the Trans-Siberian Railway and is one of a string of railway towns that grew to service this immense trans-continental corridor. It was this geographic location that ensured Chelyabinsk would grow to become a town of 45,000 by 1913. […]
Tankograd – Chelyabinsk and the salvation of the Soviet Union
Political turmoil can result in thousands, even millions, of people being displaced and becoming refugees. Driven into cross-border wanderings or beating a hasty exile, they form a diaspora that is testament in misery to the upheaval in their homeland. But it is not only the living that are affected by such devastating changes in the political wind. The bodies of the politically active or symbolic can […]