[Today] many countries mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the UN in 2005. Yet at the same time, there is a movement afoot to proclaim another day to commemorate the victims of the Nazis, but in this new movement to commemorate them along with the victims of Stalinism.

There is ground for deep concern about repeated attempts to equate the Nazi regime's genocidal policies [...] with other murderous or oppressive actions, an equation that not only trivializes and relativizes the genocide of the Jews perpetrated by the Nazi regime, but is also a mendacious revision of recent world history.

[There] was brutal and murderous oppression [in the Soviet Union], but not genocide either toward [the Jews] or toward the other ethnic groups. [...] A certain proportion of the persecuted [...] had in fact been Nazi collaborators. However, to compare this with the murder of many millions of Europeans by the Nazi regime is a distortion of history.

The greater threat to humanity was Nazi Germany; [...] the Soviet army liberated [...] and saved Europe from the Nazi nightmare. [...] World War II was started by Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, and the responsibility for the 35 million dead in Europe [...] is that of Nazi Germany, not Stalin. To commemorate their victims equally is a distortion.

If today East Europeans can enjoy membership in the EU, it is due to the fact that they were oppressed and ruled for 45 years by a basically inefficient, corrupt and barbarous dictatorship, but not by the Nazis. They were liberated by the Soviets. The West recognizes that, and so do many East Europeans.

One certainly should remember the victims of the Soviet regime, and there is every justification for designating special memorials and events to do so. But to put the two regimes on the same level and commemorating the different crimes on the same occasion is totally unacceptable. Not only to Jews.

http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?id=166904

Nostalgia for the Soviet past, which is spreading like "an epidemic" through Russian society, reflects the dissatisfaction of most Russians with the current situation and could lead to a civil war if the government does not show visible progress soon in areas of greatest concern to the population, according to a Russian psychologist.

In comments to the Novy Region news agency on 11 January 2010, Marina Patova, a psychotherapist in Chelyabinsk, says that it is entirely "normal" when members of the older generation experience nostalgia for the past. And it is also understandable when younger groups do so out of an interest in "a retro style."

Yet it is "much more a matter of concern when an entire society falls into a state of nostalgia" because "this means that people are uncomfortable and unhappy with the times in which they are now living," a psychological state than when widespread often leads to convulsions if the problems that have given birth to the nostalgia are not rectified.

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2010/01/window-on-eurasia-epidemic-of-nostalgia.html

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is enjoying a resurgent popularity in Russia. The Russian government has been sending clear signals in recent years that Stalin's achievements must be revered. What is behind the government's move to rehabilitate his image? Some opposition politicians believe it is tied to the efforts of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party to solidify its power.

"The state is hinting that Stalin's tactics are also part of its arsenal for controlling the country," says Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the opposition Yabloko party. The widespread sympathy toward Stalin, he adds, is also a result of the lingering impact of Soviet propaganda, which the Russian government never tried to erase from the public consciousness after communism fell.

"All countries emerging from totalitarianism and evolving into a normal form of government carried out a long and difficult program of reforms and re-education, of coming to grips with the past," Mr Mitrokhin says. "Germany is still carrying out de-Nazification, while we never even began this process." The government is succeeding in dispelling the outrage toward Stalin's terror-filled reign.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1949500,00.html

The following is an approximate description of the effects of a global nuclear war, written by William Robert Johnston. For the purposes of illustration it is assumed that a war resulted in mid-1988 from military conflict between the Warsaw Pact and NATO.

This is in some ways a worst-case scenario: total numbers of strategic warheads deployed by the superpowers peaked about this time; the scenario implies a greater level of military readiness; and impact on global climate and crop yields are greatest for a war in August.

Some details, such as the time of attack, the events leading to war, and the winds affecting fallout patterns, are only meant to be illustrative. This applies also to the global geopolitical aftermath, which represents the author's efforts at intelligent speculation.

1 July 1988: Gorbachev is killed when his plane is attacked by a Stinger surface-to-air missile in East Germany; military heads take control in Moscow, accuse the CIA of responsibility for the assassination, impose a news blackout in the USSR, and send troops to East Germany and Poland to impose martial law.

15 July 1988: West Germans propose intervention in East Germany following reports of violence there; clashes occur along the border between the two Germanys; NATO puts its forces in West Germany on alert.

19 July 1988: A massive Soviet invasion of West Germany begins: NATO airfields are attacked by missiles with chemical warheads as tanks pour across the border. US nuclear forces are put on alert: Bergstrom Air Force Base (AFB) near Austin receives 4 B-52 bombers dispersed from their home base.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/nuclearwar1.html