Quotulatiousness

October 29, 2026

Yezhovshchina – “the Yezhov times”

Filed under: Government, History, Russia — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Krzysztof Szczawinski outlines the career of the man who was indispensable to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, until he suddenly wasn’t … and got erased in his turn:

Yezhov – The Butcher.

His old boss once said he had never met a more ideal worker: “Give him a task and you don’t need to check on him – he’ll get it done. He has only one shortcoming: he doesn’t know when to stop.”

Nikolai Yezhov was a small man, barely five feet tall, a former factory worker with little schooling who rose through the Party as a diligent, obedient bureaucrat. He was exactly the man the system needed.

A small and vicious man – in power, he drank heavily and liked to go down to the prisons to watch interrogations – sometimes joining the beatings himself. When his wife had an affair with the novelist Mikhail Sholokhov, Yezhov had their hotel room bugged and listened to the recordings. He watched his own bedroom just as he watched over the whole country.

His philosophy fit in one sentence: better that ten innocent people suffer than one spy escape. English law had said the opposite for centuries: better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent suffer. That one reversal is the whole difference between a civilization and a terror.

In 1936, Stalin put him at the head of the NKVD. The old boss who had praised him was shot in the terror that followed.

The West calls it the Great Purge. Russians remember it as the Yezhovshchina – “the Yezhov times”. But it was not a frenzy. It was a plan.

An order of July 1937 gave every region a quota: so many to be shot – the “first category” – and so many to be sent to the camps – the “second category”. Local chiefs competed to fulfill the plan and asked Moscow to raise their limits. Moscow usually agreed.

Torture was authorized from the top. Then came the national operations – Germans, Latvians, Finns, and above all Poles. Order 00485, signed by Yezhov, hunted an organization that did not exist. The verdicts came in albums, a few lines per person. In Moscow, two signatures sealed them – Yezhov’s and the prosecutor Vyshinsky’s – hundreds of death sentences at a sitting.

The wives of the condemned went to the camps. Their children went to orphanages.

Propaganda posters showed him crushing a many-headed snake in a spiked glove. His name means “hedgehog”, and “hedgehog gloves” is the Russian idiom for an iron grip.

In two years, around seven hundred thousand people were shot.

Then the machine needed a culprit. In 1938, Beria arrived as his deputy, and by November Yezhov was out. In April 1939 he was arrested, tortured with the methods he had perfected, and made to confess to being a spy. At his secret trial, he asked that Stalin be told he would die with his name on his lips. He was shot in February 1940.

Then he was erased – from the photographs, from the records, from the story. The terror kept his name, Yezhovshchina, so that it would not carry the Master’s.

His adopted daughter was sent to an orphanage, like the children of his victims.

The machine is never satisfied. It always needs the next name on the list – and, when the time comes, the name of the man who made the lists.

Feeding the Last Tsar of Russia – Pelmeni for Nicholas II

Filed under: Food, History, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 5 May 2026

Pan-fried pelmeni with smetana and fresh dill

City/Region: Russia | Siberia
Time Period: 1861

For one of the most powerful people in the world, Tsar Nikolai Romanov, or Nicholas II, preferred rather unassuming foods. Instead of the extravagant French dishes that were served in the Russian court, he liked simple traditional dishes, like these Siberian pelmeni.

They are simple, but they are very good. With just beef, onion, salt, and pepper, these dumplings are delicious. I think the best way to prepare them is to boil and then pan fry them so you get a nice crispiness, but you can serve them as a soup as well. The only thing I’d change is to make them a little smaller. Elena Molokhovets is very specific on the size they should be, but I think you should make them whatever size you prefer.

    Using a knife, scrape 1 1/2 lbs first-quality beef from the short loin. Add 1 finely chopped and squeezed-out raw onion, sieved black pepper, and salt. Use this filling to make pelmeni … If the beef is lean, use 1 lb beef and 1/2 lb finely chopped kidney suet. Boil the pelmeni in salted water or in bouillon in a separate saucepan … These pelmeni are best made the size of kolduny or shaped like small ears … Siberians prepare pelmeni for several occasions at once, sprinkling them lightly with flour so they do not stick together. Then they are frozen and boiled in salted boiling water as needed.
    — A gift to young housewives by Elena Molokhovets, 1861

(more…)

October 27, 2026

The Russo-Ukraine conflict is driving technological change on the front line

Filed under: Europe, Military, Russia, Technology, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Over the weekend, Peter Caddick-Adams had a post in The Critic discussing how the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces has been changing in response to new technologies and capabilities:

Ukrainian Border Guard operating a DJI Mavic drone, 13 February 2024.
Ministry of Defense of Ukraine photo, CC BY-SA 4.0

At the same moment Zelensky’s Starshield cover was disintegrating, I was being briefed by military colleagues just back from Ukraine. They began with the observation that there is no such thing as a front line any more. The forward edge of the battle areas — the so-called fortress belt, shielding Ukraine from Russian forces in the Donbass — are held very lightly, with none of the density of troops or foxholes found in either world war. Instead, they have been replaced by a dense mesh of unmanned systems, optical devices and other sensors, some concealed on the ground, which can cover forward areas 24/7, day and night, in all weathers. Dozens of kilometres can now be held by a few hundred well-equipped defenders, who can call on precision-guided artillery and/or drones in the event of trouble. Small raiding parties of interlopers from both sides, often armed with tactical quadcopters, occasionally filter through the notional front on foot, having navigated minefields and concrete anti-tank obstacles, but cannot achieve much and do not linger. My friends believe the days of banning anti-personnel mines appear to be over.

To skimp on manpower, both sides have found it expedient to cover terrain by fire, rather than the traditional methodology of humans dug deep into the earth. Painful memories of days wasted on NATO exercises digging trenches flashed through my mind. Furthermore, outside of urban areas, combat zones with an ever-present risk of drone or artillery interception may stretch as deep as 20km, so the concept of front and rear has also disappeared. However, such tactical depth is not always available to small countries, such as the Baltic states. In urban areas, whenever Russia claims possession of a new settlement or objective, its troops are rarely able to move around above ground by day, due to opposing drone activity. New gains announced by Moscow are in fact merely of cellars and subterranean passages. It takes us back to the old adage that to take and hold ground, you need ‘boots on the ground’, not a few nervous moles. My colleagues suggested, “It’s like claiming control of an ocean, from the seabed”.

And those drones? The latest figures from Ukraine are suggesting 85 per cent of Moscow’s human and equipment casualties are allegedly caused by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or artillery and mortars directed by them. According to retired General David Petraeus, including long-range strikes and air defence, Kyiv is routinely expending between 9,000-10,000 UAVs per day and aims to manufacture 7m in 2006. On that basis, any NATO partner that boasts of being drone-ready for the next war, will need an arsenal of a minimum of 3.5 million cutting-edge UAVs and the manufacturing capability to replace them, to conduct operations for a year.

Often of the First Person View (FPV) type, identifiable by the spools of gossamer-thin wire they carry (which keeps them proof against electronic interference, but limits their range) UAVs come with the advantage of being cheap and easy to assemble. Crucially, these cunning little devices and their longer-range brethren have largely replaced (often American-built) cruise missiles, regarded as exorbitantly expensive by comparison, with long lead times. It is, put simply, the economics of interception, and a logic that is starting to spread to Western navies.

Via UAVs and waterborne drones, Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), Kyiv now controls huge swathes of the Black Sea. Recently a Ukrainian USV successfully intercepted and destroyed a Russian USV in a world-first tactical clash of this type. This activity has pushed the Russians to begin to use their Caspian Sea flotilla to launch long-range missiles, as their Black Sea warships are so degraded. Practical combat experience is also suggesting that all soldiers, in every arm or service, will need to be trained in small drone operation, which is proving to be as basic a required skill in war as operating a rifle. Furthermore, the most important figure to whom troops now report seems not to be the ranking infantry officer, but the network engineer or coder. They are the ones who need to know of the success or otherwise of their various integrated unmanned systems and can make on-the-spot adjustments, or send the necessary reports up the command chain.

Tweaks might include the ability of drones to take prisoners (Russians are now known to be surrendering to machines), and the availability of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to not only bring up all manner of logistics, but return with casualties. All the engineers have a price on their heads, and as a result, their workshops are better protected than traditional headquarters because their signature across the electromagnetic spectrum is huge. This is becoming a perennial problem for the Ukrainians but one they have exploited amongst Russian positions for some time.

Another drone development was unveiled very recently by Kyiv’s 475th Assault Regiment who sent a Challenger 2 tank and a Bradley M2 infantry fighting vehicle against Russians in a forward area. Normally this would result in instant destruction, but addition to being surrounded by protective metal cages (‘turtles’) and armed with welded-on spikes to trigger incoming warheads (‘hedgehogs’), the armoured vehicles were protected by new classes of crewless aerial scouting and escort craft, devised to protect friendly ground assets from air interference. Drone apparently fought drone, while others dropped grenades to suppress Russian positions and clear mines.

Update, 29 October: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

October 25, 2026

The Little Panzers That Said I Think I Can – Panzer I & II – Rearmament 11

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Russia, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 24 Oct 2026

How did the Panzer I and Panzer II help Germany defeat armies equipped with more powerful tanks? Armed with machine guns or a 20mm cannon, these little panzers helped spearhead a very big, very ugly war.

In this episode of Nazi Rearmament, Spartacus Olsson follows Germany’s early light tanks from their interwar development and the Spanish Civil War to the invasions of Poland, France, and the Soviet Union. We examine their design, armament, armor, production, and battlefield performance, and how they helped build the Panzerwaffe before more capable tanks were available in sufficient numbers.

Against opponents such as the French Char B1 bis and British Matilda II, their limitations were severe. But tank battles alone did not decide campaigns. Training, communications, concentrated mobile formations, and cooperation with infantry, engineers, artillery, and aircraft helped turn these modest vehicles into effective instruments of conquest. In France in 1940, those advantages combined with a risky German operational plan and Allied command failures to produce a devastating victory.

Their story also exposes the growing gap between Hitler’s ambitions and Germany’s industrial resources. Early victories encouraged further aggression, bringing occupation, exploitation, and mass murder to millions while drawing Germany into a war against an increasingly powerful coalition.

October 24, 2026

The Winter War, 1939-40

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

After joining with Hitler’s Third Reich to dismember Poland, and occupying the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Stalin turned his attention to Finland. From the Soviet point of view, the Finnish border was uncomfortably close to Leningrad and the fortified defensive lines along the Karelian Isthmus were a reminder that the Finns could cause trouble if a war came. Stalin’s solution was to demand that the Finns give up the region northwest of Leningrad (including the defences), along with several islands in the Gulf of Finland and allow a Soviet naval base to be established on the Finnish coast near Helsinki. All this in exchange for a larger chunk of Soviet territory north of Lake Ladoga and the “firm friendship of the Soviet Union” for whatever that might be worth. The Soviets backed up their claim with an overwhelming military superiority in men, tanks, artillery and air power. The Finns declined the generous offer, which took Stalin aback:

Not actually much of an exaggeration: Finnish snipers were a constant threat to Soviet military operations in Finland during the Winter War and the Continuation War.

On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland through an immensely samey, tree-covered morass. Across hundreds of miles of deep snow and borderland, the Red Army unleashed 450,000 men, roughly 1,100 tanks, and hundreds of combat aircraft, expecting to overwhelm its smaller neighbour through sheer weight of armour, heavy artillery, and manpower.

Joseph Stalin overturned the original campaign plan, discarding the slower but sounder 4-month plan for a lightning campaign in just two months. Beneath that rigid political deadline lay an atmosphere of terror. No senior Soviet commander dared challenge Stalin, correct his unrealistic timetables, or point out that the Red Army was unready for a winter invasion. Officers who raised logistical concerns risked being branded defeatists or traitors—a real possibility the purges proved.

This fear spread in the ranks.

Despite the low state of morale, the Red Army struck along three operational axes:

  • The Southern Main Effort (Karelian Isthmus): The heavy Soviet 7th Army would drive toward Helsinki, intent on punching through the main Finnish defences: the Mannerheim Line.
  • The High North (Lapland & Arctic Coast): The 14th Army would advance across the tundra to seize Finland’s ice-free Arctic port at Petsamo, to cut off fears of foreign supplies inbound to aid the Finns.
  • The Central Thrust (the “Waist” of Finland): The Soviet 9th Army would strike west across the country’s narrowest stretch toward Oulu on the Gulf of Bothnia.

Soviet pressure in three main spots, excuse my art!
Image and caption from WW2 Matters

In the central sector, Soviet planners harboured an ambitious but possible objective: advance west toward Oulu, reach the Gulf of Bothnia, and slice Finland in two.

The plan looked reasonable on map overlays at Leningrad headquarters. The target was Suomussalmi — a quiet logging settlement enveloped by lakes, swamps, and primaeval pine. Its importance lay not in its economic value, but in its position on the regional dirt road network running west toward Oulu. A successful Soviet drive here would sever the rail network connecting northern and southern Finland, cutting the vital land artery to neutral Sweden through which western supplies flowed.

To execute this strategic cut, Soviet planners committed two heavily reinforced divisions under the 45th Rifle Corps — the 163rd Rifle Division and the 44th “Blue” Rifle Division. With their attached tank battalions, corps artillery, and massive logistical columns, this combined force brought nearly 50,000 men into the narrow forest corridors.

In the Suomussalmi sector, the Finns initially faced fewer than 1,000 local Civil Guardsmen, later reinforced into Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo’s 9th Division to total 11,000 to 17,000 men. Outnumbered more than four to one, the Finns had no tanks and only 11 outdated artillery pieces — some dating back to the 1904 Russo-Japanese War — and severely rationed shells.

The Soviet plan depended on numerical dominance. But in the dense taiga forests of northeastern Finland, it became a bloody lesson in the difference between possessing a large army and knowing how to use it.

October 22, 2026

QotD: The “numbers fallacy” in World War II

Filed under: Australia, Britain, China, Germany, History, Japan, Military, Russia, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Some historians, and many politicians, have simplified World War Two into a few stupid statements. “The war in the west was won on the Russian steppes” is one that springs to mind. They usually base such statements on traditional political incompetence — bad use of statistics. The truth is that numbers have rarely overthrown a technological edge (though the Americans under Custer and the British at Isandhlwana might have reservations on this), and World War Two is certainly not the best sample case to argue such a thing.

During the war the smaller campaigns tended to get less credit — though it is sometimes suspicious that numbers are valued in some circumstances, and area in others. The Mediterranean Front against the Axis was an extraordinarily long campaign over an extremely large area, yet many – particularly Americans who often fail to understand the Mediterranean’s importance to intercontinental strategy – discount its scale and significance. (A British general visiting the Soviets responded to toasts about the battles of Stalingrad and Moscow by offering a toast to El Alamein. The bemused Soviets asked how big the battle was, and then commented “we would call that a skirmish” – a point which emphasises the fact that the hundreds of Soviet divisions embraced by historians of the Eastern Front were rarely as big as a British brigade or American Regimental Combat Team. To get a real comparison western divisions should be compared to Soviet corps.)

Similarly the Burmese and New Guinea theatres are incredibly undervalued in their role against Japan. There were more Japanese divisions fighting longer and harder in either place than everywhere that American troops fought the Japanese put together. (The fact that in New Guinea it was Australians rather than Americans who did most of the successful fighting – the American troops first assigned disappointed their vainglorious Füaut;hrer MacArthur enormously at first – might have had an influence on this ranking.)

By contrast the Western Front against Germany in 1944 to 45 is overstated both in the area it covered, and in the number of troops involved (almost half the US troops listed for that campaign did not arrive until it was already almost over. A dozen divisions had barely landed in France before the Germans surrendered.) Which puts it in the same category as the Pacific campaign, which, if the allied troops are discounted – as they so often were by the Americans – rarely saw more than a couple of American divisions at a time engaged anywhere.

The confusion is added to by the enigma that remains China, which is simultaneously undervalued and overvalued. It is undervalued in that China and Manchuria occupied the attention of 80% of the Japanese army throughout the war. Which means that by the standards applied by some historians, China was the Soviet Union of the East, and deserves all the glory that was lavished on communist Russia by the trendy historians of the last generation. On the other hand it was overvalued, in that China achieved virtually nothing in the war against the Japanese apart from occupying large numbers of very low-grade garrison troops. In fact when the US Air Force in one of its fits of vainglory, attempted to bomb Japan into submission from bases in China: the Japanese garrison troops stirred themselves enough to sweep forward and conquer – without any trouble at all – the provinces being used as bases (Operation Ichi-Go).

Nigel Davies, “Oversimplification: The Numbers Fallacy in WWII”, rethinking history, 2009-03-08.

October 12, 2026

A minor action for the Kriegsmarine in the Soviet Arctic

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

This is a minor enough action that I had never heard of it before, but as I’ve said in the past I haven’t studied the titanic struggle of the Soviet Union and the Third Reich in detail. Mapping History charts (see what I did there?) the Admiral Scheer‘s attempt to take the Soviet Union’s most northerly airstrip on Dickson/Dikson/Диксон island during Operation Wunderland [Wiki}:

“Chief Air Lines of the U.S.S.R.” created in 1939 by Alexander S. Grigorovich, Ivan V. Sautin, Ivan P. Ivanitsky, Valentina M. Podgornova, and Lazar M. Lissitzky.

There’s a tiny error on this map. Made around the time of the New York World’s Fair in 1939, it shows the airports and air routes of the Soviet Union at a time when the USSR was keen to show visitors a country stitched together by aeroplanes. Follow the lines north until they run out and you arrive at a dot near the mouth of the Yenisei, labelled Dickson. But in 1939, it should — of course — be marked “Dikson”.

Should be “Dikson”, of course.

Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld named the harbour in 1875 after Oscar Dickson, a merchant from Gothenburg who’d paid for his foray north. Russian usage dropped the “c” almost at once, and Dikson has been the official name since 1884 — which means on the day it was printed, this map was fifty-five years behind the curve.

You’ll have spotted this is an air map: Dikson is still the northernmost airstrip on any continental mainland, and from 8 December to 5 January it gets no daylight at all, not even twilight — but that’s almost a moot point.

I’m about to describe a fight between a cruiser, an icebreaker and two guns parked on a pier. The only aeroplane in what follows is a German floatplane, and even that gets wrecked before the shooting starts — but I liked the map, and I’ve been posting notes and tweets and whatever-it-is-bluesky does about Soviet mapping today, so this is the map you’re getting. It’s that little red dot, that deserves our attention.

In August 1942, Dikson was the scene of what is usually described as the only battle fought against German forces beyond the Urals. The Germans arrived by sea, certain they could take the land base without too much trouble, and they left, having been put firmly in their place – and without putting a man ashore.

Recognition diagram for the Admiral Scheer

BREAKING THE ICE

The German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer left Narvik on 16 August 1942 for the Kara Sea. As one part of Unternehmen WUNDERLAND, her task was to find and sink the convoys using the Northern Sea Route along the Siberian coast.

Operation WONDERLAND was considered a first, key stage in establishing control over the western Arctic. As is often the way, Mother Nature didn’t attend the same briefings. Pack ice turned the Admiral Scheer back from the Vilkitsky Strait, fog hid the convoys her floatplane had found, and then the floatplane itself was lost in what might be called a “landing accident”. Her captain, Wilhelm Meendsen-Bohlken, also discovered his charts could not be trusted. Rocks stood where open water was marked, and shoals where the chart promised depth.

Maps, huh.

But then on 25 August, her lookouts sighted a single ship, the Alexander Sibiryakov, a Glasgow-built steamer of 1909 that had started life hunting seals off Newfoundland.

Soviet postage stamp of 4 kopecks from 1977, showing the Aleksandr Sibiriakov

In 1932 the Alexander Sibiryakov had made the first single-season passage of the Northern Sea Route, finishing it under improvised sails after losing her propeller. The Soviet Navy had requisitioned her in September 1941 and given her a handful of light guns – which is something of a coincidence.

Alexander Sibiryakov, the Siberian gold merchant she was named for, had been Oscar Dickson’s partner in funding Nordenskiöld. Sixty-odd years later, one patron’s ship was about to die warning the other patron’s island. She carried six 11-inch guns and a crew of 1,150 — it wasn’t enough.

Meendsen-Bohlken wanted the Alexander Sibiryakov intact. Her codebooks and ice reports would tell him where the convoys were. He ordered her – presumably in signals of one syllable — to strike her flag, and Captain Anatoli Kacharava gave his answer with a plain-speaking message from his deck guns. Not the best idea, when face to face with the Admiral Scheer, which promptly responded with the few salvoes needed to set the Alexander Sibiryakov on fire. Her crew opened the seacocks so that nothing useful could be salvaged, and most of the 104 people aboard died – but not before they had radioed the nearest military base, with a report on what was happening, and where. Within hours every Soviet ship and station in the Kara Sea knew that a German raider was loose, and the busiest transmitter of all was at Dikson.

The Great Game for Asia 1894-1905

Filed under: Britain, China, Germany, History, Japan, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Real Time History
Published 15 May 2026

The 19th century is a time of violent global imperial competition. The Scramble for Africa and the Great Game between the Russian and British Empires over influence in Central Asia are among the best-known examples. But the 2nd half of the century also involved another Great Game – the Great Game for Asia.

00:00 Intro
05:35 1st Sino-Japanese War 1894-95
30:02 Boxer War 1900-01
55:40 Russo-Japanese War 1904-05
01:22:14 Conclusion
(more…)

October 5, 2026

QotD: Socialism and the world wars

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, History, Quotations, Russia, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

What gave socialism a shot was that the hypertrophic nationalism of the first half of the twentieth century plunged the world into not just one but two world wars. Without these catastrophes, it is inconceivable that so many devotees of Marx would have come to power in the seventy years after 1917. The world wars made the case for socialism in multiple ways. First, they seemed to confirm the destructive tendencies of “imperialism, the highest form of capitalism”, in Vladimir Lenin’s words. Second, they greatly expanded the role of the state, which became the principal purchaser of goods and services in most combatant countries, creating precisely the kind of state-controlled economy that socialist theory claimed would perform better than free markets. Third, the wars acted as a great leveler, imposing very high marginal rates of taxation, wage controls, and price controls in ways that tended to reduce wealth and income disparities. Fourth, in 1917 the German government financed the Bolshevik coup in Russia that brought Lenin to power.

The tragedy was that those who promised utopia generally delivered hell on earth. According to the estimates in the Black Book of Communism, the “grand total of victims of Communism was between 85 and 100 million” for the twentieth century as a whole. The lowest estimate for the total number of Soviet citizens who lost their lives as a direct result of Stalin’s policies was more than 20 million, a quarter of them in the years after World War II. Mao alone, as Frank Dikötter has shown, accounted for tens of millions: two million between 1949 and 1951, another three million by the end of the 1950s, a staggering 45 million in the man-made famine known as the Great Leap Forward, yet more in the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution. Even the less bloodthirsty regimes of Eastern Europe killed and imprisoned their citizens on a shocking scale. In the Soviet Union, 2.75 million people were in the Gulag at Stalin’s death. The numbers were greatly reduced thereafter, but until the very end of the Soviet system its inhabitants lived in the knowledge that there was nothing but their own guile to protect them from an arbitrary and corrupt state. Other communist regimes around the world, including the very durable dictatorships in North Korea and Cuba, were strikingly similar in the miseries they inflicted on their own citizens.

The various socialist regimes could not even justify their murderous behavior by providing those they spared with higher living standards than their counterparts living under capitalism. On the contrary, they were economically disastrous. The collectivization of agriculture invariably reduced farming productivity. A substantial proportion of the victims of communism lost their lives because of the famines that resulted from collectivization in the Soviet Union and China. North Korea had a similarly disastrous experience. Central planning was a miserable failure for reasons long ago identified by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Janos Kornai, amongst others. Indeed, the economic performance of strictly socialist countries got worse over time because of rigidities and perverse incentives institutionalized by planning.

Moreover, the evidence is clear that, as countries moved away from socialist policies of state ownership and toward a greater reliance on market forces, they did better economically. The most striking example — but one of many — is that of China, which achieved a true great leap forward in economic output after beginning to dismantle restrictions on private initiative in 1978. After the collapse of “real existing socialism” in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was widespread recognition (the “Washington consensus”) that all countries would benefit from reducing state ownership of the economy through privatization and from lowering marginal tax rates. […] the highest marginal personal income tax rate was reduced in nearly all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries between the mid-1970s and mid-2000s.

Niall Ferguson, “Capitalism, Socialism and Nationalism: Lessons from History”, 2020-02.

September 29, 2026

War drums echo again in Britain

Filed under: Britain, Media, Military, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Steyn on the renewed interest in going to war against Russia by the British establishment (let’s not point out just how Britain’s existing armed forces are being required to skip “non-essential” training to save money):

“British Army working during the Field Training Exercise” by U.S. Army Europe is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0 .

On the other hand, the Iran war has, apparently effortlessly, brought Britain to economic ruin, which may be why the UK’s hitherto all-powerful iron-fisted caudillo has not been seen since late July, even by his favourite Ukrainian rent boys.

Still, the good news is that every day Russia inches closer to that 2022 collapse:

    The Novoshakhtinsk refinery in the southern Russian region of Rostov was hit by drones and had to be taken offline, regional governor Yury Slyusar said in a post on Telegram early on Friday.

    As a result of the drone attacks, the Novoshakhtinsk refinery, which has the capacity to process 110,000 barrels of crude oil per day, was damaged and halted operations, the official said …

    Ukraine continues its campaign to cripple Russian refining capacity, fuel supply, and export revenues. Due to the low refinery production, Russia has been forced to ban diesel exports for months and is likely to extend the ban beyond September 30. The ban was initially introduced in July as Ukraine has continuously taken Russian refineries offline.

That’s great news, isn’t it?

Whoops, my mistake: in another exciting plot twist, bringing the Russian economy to its knees is now a bad thing. Because the, er, Houthis have done a Lindsey Graham and put their flip-flops on the ground:

    The Houthis’ capture of Mocha has transformed the war in Yemen – and the geopolitics of the Red Sea

Are you a renowned geopolitical expert? Are you free for a quick Zoom hit on what happens if the Iran-backed Iraqi militias bomb the strategically vital Saudi port of Macchiato? Ha! Gotcha!

Notwithstanding these distractions, what rank-and-file voters want to know is who’s two points up in Iowa. After all, we live in a golden age of popular self-government where Abdul el-Sayed is “America’s next Obama” and Elif Eralp is “Germany’s Zohran Mamdani” and Sadiq Khan is the next Sadiq Khan. Iowa-wise, Republican control of the Senate is all down to Nicki Minaj.

As you’ll have gathered from all the foregoing, news is bollocks. And yet, to return to where we came in, the strange persistence of certain recurring themes is itself newsworthy. It is curious, for example, that every western European leader insists on alerting his citizenry that “war with Russia could begin at any moment“.

Why? It’s fairly obvious that Moscow has determined to conclude the Ukraine war on the battlefield and to hold what it has taken: to the victor the spoils, as President Trump remarked at the UN General Assembly. In the course of an agreeable week or so in Odessa, it took me a day or two to notice that seventy per cent of the locals speak Russian and that the preferred items I painstakingly learned from the breakfast menu were not in fact in Ukrainian. So I can see why the Kremlin might jib at letting Nato turn it into the Lindsey Graham Memorial Headquarters for the new forward operating bases that used to be in the Gulf. In the weeks since my pre-coma vacation, Putin has destroyed the town’s port and reduced Ukraine to a de facto landlocked country.

Tough for the Ukrainians. So the European political class has volunteered you — yes, you, Clive Higginbotham of Rotherham, and you, Jean-Marie Durand of Clichy-sous Bois, and you, Stig Karlsson of Malmö — to go and fight the Russian bear. The Pakistani minicab-driver will take care of your wife and daughters while you’re away. When the Donbass is in peril, what fainthearted ninny worries about his own territorial integrity? In London the government’s busy giving away Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, the British Indian Ocean Territory and the English South Coast to, respectively, Brussels, Madrid, Port Louis and every sex-fiend in Somalia, so your sovereign territory is hardly at issue, is it, you whiny loser?

Even so, you’d think impending nuclear armageddon would be a wee bit politically controversial. Au contraire, it’s impeccably non-partisan. Here, for example, is a discussion about next month’s blitzkrieg against Russia between the Rt Hon Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, former Lord President of Her late Majesty’s Privy Council and a “conservative”, and Mr Paul Richards, former chair of the Fabian Society and a “socialist”:

Got that? If you oppose war with Russia, the “conservative” wants to throw you in gaol because Britain suspended habeas corpus during the Napoleonic Wars and the “socialist” wants to throw you in gaol under the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act.

Because that’s all the choice anyone needs in a functioning democracy. So good luck findng a Neither Of The Above candidate who’ll be permitted to take power. After all, the winning party in this month’s German elections is, per the intelligence agencies, a “Russian sleeper cell”.

But but but, splutter my correspondents, aren’t you worried that Iran is two weeks away from a nuclear weapon? Actually, I assume the deceased ayatollahs have used the seven months since February 28th to acquire nukes. Wouldn’t you?

AK-12: The Improved 2019 Model

Filed under: History, Military, Russia, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 25 May 2026

NOTE: I goofed the selector positions, and mistakenly described them backwards: from the top, it is safe, full, 2-round-burst, and then semi at the bottom. In addition, there is supposed to be a segmented cleaning rod stored inside the handguard, which is missing on this example. Sorry!

The AK-12 went through an extensive development program that attempted to substantially change the AK design, but failed. In 2015 the early design plans were scrapped, and the project reverted to simply making some changes to the AK-100 series. This resulted in the AK-12 being adopted as the new Russian standard infantry rifle in December 2017. Within a short time a number of shortcomings were found in the rifles, and an improved model was accepted in 2019, with deliveries beginning in 2020.

The rifle in today’s video is that improved 2019 pattern. It has a redesigned stock, a new style of rear sight, and new pistol grip. Many thanks to the IRCGN (Institut de Recherche Criminelle de la Gendarmerie Nationale) for allowing me access to film this very rare rifle for you!

Balanced-recoil AK-107:
• Balanced Recoil AK-107 / Kalashnikov SR-1:…
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September 27, 2026

Harsher than Versailles: The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Russia, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Great War
Published 24 Apr 2026

On March 3, 1918 the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) and Bolshevik Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending the First World War on the Eastern Front. The terms were harsher than those the Germans offered in December, and much harsher than the later Treaty of Versailles. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was only in force until November 1918, when the Central Powers’ defeat nullified it. But it had a major impact inside and outside Russia.
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September 25, 2026

How True was Lord of War? Surplus from the Warsaw Pact (w/ Val Forgett)

Filed under: Business, History, Military, Russia, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 May 2026

When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a gold rush for the surplus guns held by all the various newly independent republics, as well as the Warsaw Pact nations. Lord of War is not far off … and Val Forgett was there, bringing guns into the US for Navy Arms.

September 20, 2026

There are wedding gifts and there are wedding gifts

Filed under: Media, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Gift-giving has been a thing since caveman days, they say, but sometimes gifts carry strings along with them that are impossible to ignore, or as The Grim Historian puts it, “never let a mobster pay for your wedding”:

Nothing says “just a wedding gift” like the benefactor whose role stayed secret until ProPublica had to put an arrow over his head.
Photo: Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram; annotation/source: ProPublica.

My Grandma Ella had a rule about gifts, usually delivered while waving a wooden spoon over a white apron so stippled with tomato sauce it could have been entered into evidence.

She would say, “Never accept gifts. That’s how a rich man turns you into a beggar.”

That may sound cynical, but no Italian survives a lifetime of weddings, funerals, Sunday dinners, and relatives saying “forget about it” without learning that generosity has a very long memory.

A gift creates an imbalance. You give me something. Now I am indebted to you. Sure, you may insist it is “just a gift.” But I have seen enough crisp white envelopes exchange hands to know there are gifts, and then there are … gifts.

Say I give you a hundred dollars and tomorrow you hand me a hundred dollars back, congratulations…we have invented banking. Or say you sign up for my breathtakingly grim history newsletter. I have provided you a service in exchange for your 5 ducats, but we are all clear on the bargain.

But suppose I give you something you can’t return. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Now the books stay open. And a man who keeps your books open is not your friend. He owns a piece of you.

Which brings us to Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding and who owns him.

ProPublica reporters Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski reported this week that Umar Kremlev — a Russian businessman closely associated with Vladimir Putin — gifted Trump Jr. and Bettina Trump quite the wedding shindig in the Bahamas.

According to records and interviews ProPublica reviewed, Kremlev paid to rent a private island, covered an elaborate fireworks show, and had his team help organize the festivities. There were helicopters, seaplanes, oceanfront villas, and a five-tier funfetti cake flown in from Florida. So not exactly the crystal punch bowl from Aunt Linda.

Fortunately, after ProPublica published its story, the newlyweds fessed up. Yes, Don Jr. and Bettina Trump have a wealthy Russian benefactor (sorry, “friend”) granting party favors. Then they made a statement that would have my Italian grandmother shaking her mano fica.

“Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.”

Just a gift.

September 17, 2026

You don’t hate the relic media nearly as much as they deserve

Filed under: History, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The relic media in Canada has — thanks to generous government subsidies — become a maple-flavoured version of the North Korean news media, but even in the United States where there’s still a somewhat competitive market, most media outlets are delighted to act as unpaid propagandists … and have been that way for generations:

Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for lying about Stalin’s Ukraine famine while millions starved. His employer, the New York Times, never returned that prize. The institutional rot ran deeper than one reporter.

In 1936, Times Moscow correspondent Harold Denny watched the first of Stalin’s Great Purge trials and reported the proceedings as credible. The defendants, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev among them, confessed to plotting murder and sabotage. Denny saw no obvious coercion and wrote accordingly. The NKVD had spent weeks breaking these men through sleep deprivation, threats against their families, and relentless psychological torture until they would say anything in open court.

Every confession was fabricated. Every defendant was executed anyway. Stalin murdered roughly 750,000 people during the Great Purge between 1936 and 1938, and the Times gave the operation a veneer of legitimacy at its most critical moment.

Central planners require a monopoly on information to survive. When the newspaper of record in the most powerful capitalist country on earth launders your show trials as fair proceedings, you buy yourself years of Western political goodwill. Stalin purchased that goodwill with useful idiots who confused proximity to power with insight.

You pay for this dynamic today every time an institution that failed catastrophically keeps its credentials, its prizes, and its authority to declare what counts as credible journalism.

Duranty would have been proud of Time magazine had he been alive today.

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