Warm heart words, uttered by M.I. Kalinin at the time of handing over the order of the Red Banner of Labor, Tsiolkovsky was deeply excited. The award testified to his recognition of his moral support from the party and the government. But V.I.’s particularly great and decisive influence on the whole spiritual life of Tsiolkovsky was exerted. Lenin. By the way, in the text of Tsiolkovsky’s will, his name is mentioned.

For all the time of my close acquaintance with Tsiolkovsky (1926-1935) in sincere, frank conversations, he spoke a lot about Vladimir Ilyich.

Once, going to the Crimea, I visited Konstantin Eduardovich:

• Just imagine! The fourth dozen almost leavelessly live in Kaluga, - he spoke. - I was attracted from my youth to the Black Sea, in the steppe and to Karelia. And the Volga is beckoning today. I'd take a steamer and go from Rybinsk to Astrakhan! And certainly would make a stop in Simbirsk, in Ulyanovsk in the present. I only saw this city in pictures and photos. I fell in absentia love him. They say that there is apparently invisible cherry orchards and in spring everything is white from flowering. There I would certainly visit the house where Lenin was born and lived.

After pausing, he spoke about the monuments:

Now they put many monuments to Lenin, a granite mausoleum and marble busts, and bronze statues. But my heart is more told by such a monument as a house in Simbirsk or Ilyich’s office in the Kremlin. Lenin, although he is both a leader and a philosopher, cannot be separated from the people, as if he was arguing with someone, Tsiolkovsky said.

“If I were a sculptor, I would not have sculpted it alone with my hand, but necessarily with people, in conversation with walkers or accompanying the Red Army...

In the thirties I had to write more than once about Tsiolkovsky and for Kaluga newspapers and for Moscow publications. Before preparing an article or essay, I certainly went to Tsiolkovsky to talk, to check the facts, learn something new. When I wrote an essay for the Young Guard magazine, I went to Konstantin Eduardovich. He asked:

Do you have any statement about Lenin? I would like to quote it in the essay.

Tsiolkovsky smiled.

I am alive and sitting in front of you. Write down my words and quote them for health.

I wrote in the notebook the following words of the scientist:

Marx and Lenin are the true leaders of mankind. The world is fermented by injustice. Society has developed ugly because there is social inequality. There is a lower category of pests - bandits. They are caught, isolated, or exterminated. There is a higher category of pests - capitalists. This is also in the position of his bandits, bandits are all-planet and international. The fight against them is conceivable on an international scale. Marx and Lenin led this struggle with the bandits of the planet. The international created by Lenin is all the powerful that it calls for the struggle of the proletarians of all countries. I've been deaf since I was a kid. I am devoid of the joy of fighting. I give my strength to the workers against the drones, as I can do.

For loyalty, I read to Konstantin Eduardovich the words I have written and asked permission to take them into quotes, as it is done with quotes. Tsiolkovsky took my notebook and put quotes himself. So in quotes this record and printed in the "Young Guard".

In the essay “Pioneer of Starship”, published in the magazine “30 days”, the following words of Konstantin Eduardovich are placed:

“It is with the greatest delight and satisfaction that I have accepted the news of Lenin’s victory and his party. I believed that a new era would begin for science and educators. And I was not wrong."

Tsiolkovsky had a large archive and in it expensive records, documents, letters. But the most expensive he considered one cherished document.

Here he is:

“The resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars in the meeting of November 9, 1921, having considered the question of the appointment of you. Tsiolkovsky for life-long increased pension, decided:

In view of the special merits of the scientist-inventor, an aviation specialist, to appoint K. Evgeny Tsiolkovsky a life pension of 500 (five hundred) thousand rubles per month with the extension of all subsequent increases in tariff rates for this salary.

The original of this document was signed by V.I. Lenin. In it, the scientist saw the assessment of his works and merits to the people, given by Lenin himself!

From the first days of meeting with Tsiolkovsky, I set myself the goal of writing from the words of Konstantin Eduardovich a story about his life. But for various reasons, he was constantly refused.

In June 1928, I met with A.M. Gorky and had a long conversation with him about Tsiolkovsky. Bitterly advised me to write about him. Konstantin Eduardovich listened with great attention to my story about the meeting with Alexei Maksimovich, but this did not change his decision.

"What will we sit and pour from empty people?"

In the spring of 1930, I received a letter from Sorrento from Alexei Maksimovich Gorky:

“It would be good,” wrote Alexei Maksimovich, “if you gave an essay about K.E. Tsiolkovsky, i.e. about all his works, no more than a sheet and 40 thousand characters. This is for “our achievements”. And then it's time, long time! - write a book of sheets of 6, 10, write a lot, tell in detail about his works and the conditions in which he worked. What do you think of that? I would probably help you to publish this book.”

Having captured this letter, I went to Tsiolkovsky. He met me well. Talked. I asked him again to record stories about his life, and when he began to deny, he silently handed him a letter of bitterness. Konstantin Eduardovich carefully read it, looked at the Italian brand and, sighing, said:

• I give up! I can't say anything to bitter. Come with paper and pencil tomorrow. I'll start to tell. And what I remember, Varvara Evgrafovna will tell. We'll practice an hour a day.

For more than a month, I went to the wooden house at Oka and recorded stories about the life of this brilliant man, who has extraordinary modesty. Varvara Evgrafovna took a lively part in this case. She had a note-close memory.

Taking advantage of my right to question, I once asked Konstantin Eduardovich the question:

Who do you respect most of all?

One could expect that the scientist would call Lomonosov, Copernicus, Mendeleev, Kibalcic. But Tsiolkovsky, having removed his glasses and without hesitation, replied:

Lenin. - Lenin.

• You must have noticed, I am not respectable enough to authority: it happened not to agree and mentally argue with Shakespeare, Einstein, Newton. But Lenin’s authority is unshakable to me. There was time, I did not know Lenin, but having recognized him once and for all recognized him as a genius of the human race. You know? A great man.

You call Lenin the great. What is his greatness?, I asked.

When I was young, I thought a lot about great people. I remembered the names of the greats known to me from the books.

And then he told me about the following.

Alexander the Great man forcibly drove many people into the legions, armed them with swords and spears and led to conquer other people's kingdoms. Shed a sea of blood. That’s why they call him great. This is a misunderstood greatness. The same can be said about Julius Caesar, Kira, Tamerlane. Often great are called the rulers of states: Frederick the Great, Charlemagne, Catherine the Great. And after them, the nations lived out of hand badly. But they were given these undeserved titles. But I deeply revere Lenin and respect as a person who was the first in the centuries-old history of the Earth to enter into battle and overthrow the unjust order on one-sixth of the globe. Proceeding from the theory of Marx and Engels, Lenin found with unparalletily courage and gathered like-minded people into an organization that merged scientific theory and revolutionary practice together. Lenin’s holy work is clear to all people of any language, nationality, color without exception. Everyone is small to big! Lenin put the theory into action. He was able to arm the masses of the people with revolutionary theory.

I see the greatness of Lenin in the fact that he was a man of the future, for him science is a living, transforming the world a force that is not at all the impediment or limit. He led the people and won.

Lenin began a matter that would eventually embrace the whole Earth, its entire population. The further, the greater the greatness of Lenin will grow, because, as he himself prophetically predicted, democracy, socialism, and then communism will embrace an increasing number of people until all of humanity rises on this path. No one believed in the creative forces of the masses, and no one so faithfully and wholely expressed the cherished thoughts and aspirations of the people. He is pure with his heart, deepen with his mind, boundlessly just and clairvoyant. He saw not for decades, but for centuries to come. He was a great humanist, gently and fervently loved people – ordinary workers, whom the capitalists put lower than animals.

Lenin is the greatest of all mankind who ever lived and I call it great without any reservation. It is impossible without excitement to read the words about his attitude to his mother and sisters, how much love and care are in them. He was the same to his friends - responsive, sensitive, ready to sacrifice himself. At the same time, Lenin was a passionate and ruthless fighter against the imperialists, who today form detachments of robbery fascism.

• I knew about his modesty, simplicity and accessibility, heard about his enormous efficiency, about the breadth of interests, about his incomparable erudition. I have always believed, I think and I will consider him the greatest of the people. I can't forgive myself alone. I had to meet him at least once and shake his hand tightly. Then I would, I think, respect myself more and believe in my own strength.

Tsiolkovsky’s statements about Lenin are extremely sincere, there is no propression, rhetoric or profanity in them with a phrase.

K. Altai. Pioneer of Starvation. - "30 days", 1932, No. 9, p. 57

52 years ago, the Chilean president Salvador Allende was deposed. Let's keep his memory alive.

I remember reading somewhere (Wikipedia, maybe?) that the Soviets became aware of the invasion plans before it happened by a German communist in the Wehrmacht who defected and told them about Germany's impending invasion. The article claimed the authorities disbelieved him, assumed he was a spy, and quietly executed him.

All of which sounds like something an anticommunist would make up to smear the USSR and so I'm hesitant to believe it.

Another claim I've heard was that when the invasion began Stalin didn't believe the officials telling him the Nazis were invading and thought it was a hoax and that they were conspiring against him, even threatening them. I don't remember where I heard this one but I believe it was coming from a liberal I was arguing with.

This also sounds too much like bullshit to be believable, so I'm here looking to fact check this stuff. Is there any truth to this stuff or is it just more anti-Soviet nonsense invented to make them look bad?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35461155

Ah yes, Finland – the ‘neutral bystander’ of WWII. Just standing there, totally uninvolved, while Leningrad starved. Cute story. Too bad it’s pure fiction.

Reality check: Finnish troops sat on Leningrad’s doorstep for three years. Not sipping coffee, not staying “neutral”. They were holding one-third of the blockade line. Without Finland’s part, the Germans couldn’t have fully strangled the city. Together, they closed the ring that starved a 1.5 million people to death, including 400,000 children.

And Mannerheim the “savior”? Please. His orders were to bomb the Road of Life (which was not really a road but a frozen lake), the only route bringing food across Lake Ladoga.

On June 25, 1941, Mannerheim ordered the Finnish Army to begin hostilities against the USSR:

“I call you to a holy war against the enemy of our nation. Together with the mighty armed forces of Germany, as brothers-in-arms, we resolutely set out on a crusade against the enemy to secure a reliable future for Finland.”

Finland dreamed of expansion and had concrete plans. On the ‘Greater Finland’ dream map, you’ll find Russian cities like Murmansk, Leningrad, and Kandalaksha marked as theirs

Let's unpack the common myths and educate our fellow Finns about their own history.

Finland's Ties with Hitler in the 1930s

In 1934, Mannerheim went to London to push for fortifying the Aland Islands, despite Finland’s 1921 pledge to leave them unfortified. The next year he turned to Germany, joining a secret conference with Hermann Göring, Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Gömbös, and Tytus Komarnicki, head of the Polish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, to discuss joint action against the USSR (Times, Oct 15, 1935). By 1939 he was still entertaining German generals, personally showing Chief of Staff Franz Halder around Finland’s northern airfields and depots.

Meanwhile, the Finnish government tried to fortify the Aland Islands anyway. Everyone knew Finland couldn’t defend them alone, fortification meant handing them to Germany, which was already preparing for war with the USSR. So Helsinki asked Britain and Germany for permission, and both despite being at odds elsewhere eagerly agreed. The only country Finland didn’t consult was the USSR, the one most directly threatened.

After World War I, Germany was banned from building its own navy. But Helsinki stepped in to help. Already in the 1920s, Finland was secretly assisting Germany in rebuilding the Kriegsmarine in open violation of the Versailles Treaty. The so-called Vesikko class, launched in the mid-1930s, was nothing less than the prototype for Germany’s Type II U-boats, the backbone of the Reich’s submarine arm once rearmament began in earnest. Finland pretended it was merely expanding its tiny fleet, but in reality it was a cover operation: a testing ground for Nazi Germany’s return to naval power. These same Finnish submarines later fought against the USSR. One of them, Vesikko, still survives today as a museum ship in Helsinki, not a monument to “brave neutrality,” but to Finland’s complicity in Germany’s secret rearmament long before 1941.

Winter War: 1939–1940

Here comes the Winter War, the one Finns and online trolls love to cry about. Stalin was no fool: he understood perfectly well that Finland was not some innocent “neutral,” but a willing partner in Germany’s rearmament and a potential springboard for an attack on Leningrad. The Soviet leadership remembered the intervention years of 1918–19, when Mannerheim offered to fight alongside the British if he could seize Petrozavodsk, and when Finland even joined a blockade against Baltic states trying to make peace with Soviet Russia.

By the late 1930s, the danger was undeniable. The Aland Islands affair showed Finland openly coordinating with both Britain and Germany against Soviet security. Add to this the submarine program in Turku, secret talks with Göring and other anti-Soviet figures, and it was clear: if war with Germany came, Leningrad would be exposed to an attack from the north.

That is why Stalin proposed a territorial exchange in 1939, moving the border away from Leningrad in return for larger tracts of Soviet land in Karelia. He even offered alternatives, including leasing the territory. The goal was straightforward: to push the frontier far enough west so that the USSR’s second capital, with millions of people and critical industry, would not be within artillery range of a hostile Finland aligned with Germany.

When Helsinki rejected every compromise, it confirmed what Moscow already suspected: Finland was betting on Germany, not neutrality. Even during the Winter War, Finland’s ambitions were expansionist, seizing Karelia and pushing toward Lake Onega. The war was not an unprovoked Soviet land grab, but the brutal outcome of a security dilemma Stalin tried (and failed) to solve through negotiation.

From the Final Chapter to the Opening Scene

The Winter War wrapped up on March 13, 1940, with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland was forced to surrender around 11% of its land to the USSR, including Karelia, Viipuri (now Vyborg), and key areas along the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga. These acquisitions later proved critical in protecting Leningrad during its infamous blockade. Without them, the story of Leningrad, and perhaps the USSR itself, might have unfolded differently.

Just months after the treaty, Finnish leaders were already rekindling ties with Nazi Germany. By 1941, as Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa, Finland jumped into the fray, calling it the “Continuation War.” Under Mannerheim’s command, Finnish forces charged alongside the Wehrmacht, reclaimed Karelia, and ventured deep into Soviet territory, encircling Leningrad. Mannerheim’s grim intention was clear: Leningrad should be erased, “a plough must pass over the city.” Still, the Finns insist on their innocence, so let’s dig deeper into their myths.

Myth #1: “Finland only wanted to ‘get back lost land.

Myth busted. In late summer 1941, Finnish troops didn’t just “stop at the old border.” They pushed forward to meet up with Germany’s Army Group North, advancing toward Leningrad both through the Karelian Isthmus and around Lake Ladoga. By August 31, they were already crossing the old Soviet-Finnish border at the Sestra River.

In September, they seized towns like Beloostrov and tried to break through heavy Soviet fortifications. Losses piled up, soldiers even refused to advance deeper, and military courts cracked down harshly on dissent. Mannerheim’s claim that he “chose to stop” is a half-truth at best, the Finnish army was bleeding and bogged down.

Meanwhile, the Finns pushed east, occupying Petrozavodsk and renaming it Jaanislinna, as if to erase its Russian past.If that's "just reclaiming lost land," then what's next?

Myth #2. Mannerheim didn’t know Hitler’s plans.

Myth busted. He knew everything. Already on June 25, 1941, a secret telegram from Finland’s envoy in Berlin made it crystal clear: Göring promised Finland new territories “as much as it wanted” once Leningrad was destroyed. That same day, Mannerheim ordered his troops into the war alongside Germany, calling it a “holy war” and a “crusade.” Hardly the words of an innocent bystander.

Hitler’s own headquarters wasn’t hiding it either: in July 1941, Martin Bormann noted in his diary that the Führer wanted Leningrad wiped off the map and then handed to Finland. Finnish generals themselves were already sketching future borders along the Neva. A radio speech text was even prepared for Finnish radio in 1941, on the occasion of the capture of Leningrad.

The mood in Helsinki was one of anticipation. Finnish leaders openly spoke about the coming fall of Leningrad, rejected Soviet peace offers, and even debated what to do with the city once it was gone. President Risto Ryti himself said Petersburg “brought only evil” and should no longer exist as a major city.

Mannerheim was fully informed, fully complicit, and fully invested in the destruction of Leningrad.

Here's another piece of evidence: A telegram from Berlin to Helsinki on June 24, 1941, revealing that Finnish leaders were already clued in on the plans to obliterate Leningrad.

Translation: “To President Ryti. Today in Carinhall I presented Göring with the Grand Cross with Chain and congratulated him on your behalf and on behalf of Mannerheim. He said that military operations are developing unexpectedly well. By yesterday morning 2,632 aircraft had been destroyed, of which 700 were shot down and finished off on the airfields, where they stood in rows, igniting one another. Tank forces have taken Minsk, Vilnius, and Kaunas. A government commission of 2,400 people is proceeding to the occupied territory.

He asked about our prospects when ‘Alternative 5 and the Kola Peninsula’ were raised. He said that we can take whatever we want, ‘including Petersburg, which, like Moscow, is better to destroy. The issue of the Kola Peninsula can be resolved through an economic agreement with Germany. Russia will be broken up into small states.’ The war was unexpected for Russia, which was waiting for an ultimatum and building illusions in order to gain time. In fact, it was a surprise also for the local Soviet embassy, whose adviser as late as Friday at Lundénström’s was still planning to expand cooperation. We have no particular inner concern about the war dragging on, unless within the next few days there are changes in the victorious reports.”

(The telegram was sent to the President, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Mannerheim.)

Myth #3. Mannerheim saved Leningrad.

Myth busted. From day one, Finland was part of it. The very first bombs on Leningrad in June 1941 didn’t come from Germany. They came from Finland. German planes couldn’t reach the city from East Prussia, so they took off and landed on Finnish airfields.

On the night of June 22, thirty-two German bombers crossed in from Finland. Soviet anti-air guns near Dibuny shot one down right away. The rest panicked, dropped their bombs all over the place, and rushed back to Finland. By the next day, the Soviets already had their first German prisoners: pilots who came straight from raids launched out of Finland.

And the last air raid on Leningrad in April 1944? Also from Finland. That night, 35 Finnish bombers set out from Joensuu to strike the city across Lake Ladoga. Soviet air defenses shredded the attack, forcing the planes to drop their bombs wildly and retreat. Beginning and end: Finnish involvement.

Then there’s the “Road of Life.” On January 22, 1942, Mannerheim signed an order demanding “special attention to offensive actions against enemy communications in the southern part of Lake Ladoga.” That’s a direct order to target the lifeline feeding a starving city. So much for “mercy.”

The biggest attempt came on October 22, 1942, with the assault on Sukho Island, a key point for controlling Ladoga supply routes. The operation was prepared by the Germans, reinforced with German and Italian naval units, but staged from Finnish-occupied territory and coordinated with Mannerheim himself. The attack failed thanks to Soviet naval and air forces but Mannerheim still sent thanks to the Germans and Italians for their efforts.

No wonder Finnish historians tend to stay quiet about this episode. As researcher Helgi Seppälä bluntly admitted, it showed a “clear targeting of Leningrad by the Finnish military command.”

Hitler’s adjutant Gerhard Engel stated directly that Marshal Mannerheim let him know Leningrad was also his goal, and that later “the plow would have to go over this city.”

Here is a diagram of German bombing raids on Leningrad through Finnish territory on 22 June 1941.

Myth #4. Britain and the U.S. pressured Finland not to storm Leningrad.

Myth basted: Finland liked to pretend it was keeping friendly ties with the West. But once it teamed up with Nazi Germany, those “good relations” with Britain and America were gone.

Yes, Churchill actually sent Mannerheim a personal letter in November 1941 asking him to halt his advance. He basically said: “Stop now, don’t cross the old border, or we’ll have to declare war on Finland.”

And how did Mannerheim reply? Polite words, but a flat no: “We can’t stop until our troops reach the lines that guarantee Finland’s security.” Translation: we ain't gonna stop what we planned.

At the same time, the U.S. tried mediation. Washington passed Moscow’s offer: stop at the 1939 border, keep your land, and leave the war. Finland’s answer was a note sent back in November 1941 saying the opposite: Finland wanted a new border, taking Russian Karelia, Lake Onega, and more. In other words not defense, but expansion.

Later, in 1943–44, Helsinki kept playing double games, pretending to explore peace while signing the Ryti–Ribbentrop pact with Nazi Germany to keep fighting. The U.S. cut ties but didn’t declare war (The U.S. basically kept Finland in the “not-quite-enemy” box because it wanted to leave the door open).

Finland wasn’t pushed to stop; it was politely asked and simply declined, opting for more land.

Here’s Hitler’s own adjutant spelling out what Finland’s leadership was thinking: “The Führer speaks particularly highly of Mannerheim. He once distrusted him for being too pro-American and tied to the lodges. But he is a ruthless soldier, admired for keeping the socialists on a leash. His hatred of Russia isn’t just about communism, but about centuries of Tsarist rule. His recent remark that after the capture of Leningrad the city should be demolished and the plow driven over it, because it only ever brought misfortune to his people is typical.”

Myth #5. Mannerheim saved Finland in 1944

Myth basted: Not really. After Stalingrad and the Red Army breaking the siege of Leningrad, Mannerheim himself admitted Finland had to look for a way out. By February 1943 his own intel chief was telling the government: “We need to change course and exit this war as soon as possible.”

The Red Army smashed those “unbreakable” defenses in 1944 through the new Mannerheim Line on the Karelian Isthmus in just one week. Finnish soldiers deserted by the tens of thousands, about 24,000 men, equal to two whole divisions, ran off in two weeks.

Finland begged Berlin for help, and Germany had to send in divisions, assault guns, and even 70 planes to keep the front from collapsing. Why didn’t the Soviets roll straight into Helsinki? Because Stalin told Marshal Govorov: “Your task is not Helsinki, your task is Berlin.” Finland was a sideshow, Germany was the main goal.

That’s why Finland survived. Not because Mannerheim “saved” it, but because Moscow decided it had bigger fish to fry. The armistice was signed on September 19, 1944.

Diagram of the planned joint operations of German and Finnish troops on the immediate approaches to Leningrad, September 1941.

Myth #6. Trust Mannerheim’s memoirs.

Myth basted: After the armistice with the USSR, Finnish leaders started burning documents like crazy. Finland’s chief censor, Kustaa Vilkuna, openly admitted that “high officials” were calling nonstop to demand destruction of sensitive files.

Mannerheim himself torched most of his personal archive in late 1945 and early 1946. Tons of staff records, intelligence reports, and other incriminating papers were destroyed or shipped abroad during Operation Stella Polaris and then “lost” in Switzerland.

And hidden they remain. Access to many collections is still restricted unless relatives grant permission. Files on Finnish SS units are “missing,” even though they show up in archival catalogs. The records of the Helsinki war crimes trials of 1945–46 have never been published.

The myth of “Mannerheim the savior” rests on selective memories and shredded paper. If Leningrad had fallen, it would have been mass death and the city wiped off the map. That’s exactly what Mannerheim and his German partners were planning and acted upon.

The root of the Third Reich lies precisely in the Weimar Republic itself; a German Socialist Republic should have been established from the outset. The Freikorps, the SA, and the SS share a direct lineage—all are far-right terrorist organizations. Bourgeois democracy is ineffective against fascism; only communist revolution can prevail. Ebert, Noske, Hindenburg, and Hitler are equally counterrevolutionary butchers and criminals against the German nation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34116349

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34033493

The Eastern Front of WWII was not only a clash between Communism and Fascism, but a battle over the future of gender equality. Under Tsarism, Russian women faced patriarchal oppression, poverty, and legal subjugation. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution transformed this, enshrining gender equality, universal suffrage, legal abortion, maternity leave, and equal pay. Alexandra Kollontai, a key revolutionary feminist, helped build Soviet welfare state reforms and challenged capitalist patriarchy.

During WWII, over 800,000 Soviet women served in combat—unprecedented globally. The 588th Night Bomber Regiment (“Night Witches”), elite snipers like Roza Shanina and Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and partisans played critical roles in defeating Nazi Fascism. Women fought not just for survival, but for socialism, anti-fascism, and emancipation.

Gene Sharp, the “Machiavelli of nonviolence,” has been fairly described as “the most influential American political figure you’ve never heard of.” Sharp, who passed away in January 2018, was a beloved yet “mysterious” intellectual giant of nonviolent protest movements, the “father of the whole field of the study of strategic nonviolent action.” Over his career, he wrote more than twenty books about nonviolent action and social movements. His how-to pamphlet on nonviolent revolution, From Dictatorship to Democracy, has been translated into over thirty languages and is cited by protest movements around the world. In the U.S., his ideas are widely promoted through activist training programs and by scholars of nonviolence, and have been used by nearly every major protest movement in the last forty years. For these contributions, Sharp has been praised by progressive heavyweights like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, compared to Gandhi, and cast as a lonely prophet of peace, champion of the downtrodden, and friend of the left.

Gene Sharp’s influence on the U.S. activist left and social movements abroad has been significant. But he is better understood as one of the most important U.S. defense intellectuals of the Cold War, an early neoliberal theorist concerned with the supposedly inherent violence of the “centralized State,” and a quiet but vital counselor to anti-communist forces in the socialist world from the 1980s onward.

With the rise of the Reagan-era foreign policy of communist “rollback,” Sharp began promoting “strategic nonviolence” internationally through his Albert Einstein Institution (AEI). Sharp co-founded AEI with his former student Peter Ackerman, who was simultaneously right hand man to the notorious corporate raiding “junk bond king” Michael Milken. Later, Ackerman was a Cato Institute board member and advocate of disemboweling social security. AEI spent the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s training activists, policymakers, and defense leaders around the world in Sharp’s nonviolent methods, supporting numerous “color revolutions”—again and again in state socialist countries whose administrations were attempting to oppose the privatization, austerity policies, and deregulation being pushed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and U.S. Treasury-led “Washington Consensus.” Sharp’s “people-powered” nonviolent “ju-jitsu” would prove surprisingly effective, distinguishing itself as a powerful weapons system in the U.S. regime change arsenal. While AEI was an independent non-profit, it had significant connections to the U.S. defense and intelligence community. One prominent AEI consultant was Colonel Robert Helvey, former dean of the National Defense Intelligence College. AEI’s regular funders included U.S. government pass-throughs like the U.S. Institute for Peace, the International Republican Institute, and the National Endowment for Democracy.

The same year the NED was founded, Gene Sharp launched the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), a public-facing non-profit dedicated to advancing “the worldwide study and strategic use of nonviolent action.” Thomas Schelling, Sharp’s Cold War mentor from the CIA at Harvard, would sit on the board of directors. With neoliberalism at home and communist rollback abroad, Sharp and AEI staff would spend the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s tracking, studying, consulting with, and training nonviolent social movements calling for “democratic freedoms and institutions” around the world.

According to its own annual reports, AEI did not prioritize fighting dictators and promoting “democratic freedoms and institutions” in US client states like Saudi Arabia, Zaire, Chile, El Salvador, or Guatemala. These countries are either never mentioned, or mentioned only in brief passing, in two decades worth of AEI annual reports. Rather, AEI and its adjuncts consistently focused their efforts in countries where political leadership was resisting NATO’s geostrategic priorities and/or the economic liberalization programs being pushed by the World Bank, the IMF, and U.S. Treasury’s “Washington Consensus”: countries like the Soviet Union, Burma, Thailand, Tibet, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and post-collapse Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia. In a number of these cases, the movements trained in Sharp’s methods successfully executed nonviolent revolutions—sometimes called “velvet revolutions” or “color revolutions,” for the telltale use of an official movement color.

Follow-up articles:

• Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence (Part Two)
• Getting Gene Sharp Wrong

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) entered the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, and put an end to the Somoza dictatorship. Since its formation in 1961, the FSLN had waged an armed struggle against the dictatorial Somoza regime.

Thirty percent of the guerrillas were women and in the 1984 democratic elections, 67% of women voted for the FSLN.

Once in power, they launched the Sandinista Revolution. However, the CIA trained and financed exiled members of the National Guard to wage war against the leftist government. Thus began the Contra, a war that would last until 1990.

Sources -> https://gacetasandinista.com/dhn/

-> https://www.el19digital.com/articulos/ver/166601-de-julio-a-julio-siempre-19-acto-central-del-46-aniversario-de-la-revolucion-popular-sandinista

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33278729