It Is Stalingrad ...

 ... you cannot shake this name off. This is how this city will always be remembered. Now its airport is officially Stalingrad. You cannot change things like crypto khohol SOB Khrushchev did--history is stronger. Bringing back the name of the city is coming, maybe. 

What a Coincidence.

As I repeat ad nauseam--the root of the mythology of modern combined West is in WW II, where it was effectively saved from itself by primarily Red Army, and this fact completely messes up this whole idea of the United States exceptional "liberation" of Europe from the evils of Nazism, a strictly European invention, by those Stalin's dirty Asiatic hordes. Like in 1814 with Russian Army triumphantly entering Paris, Red Flag over Reichstag in May of 1945 doesn't allow many in the West to sleep and face the reality of the XX century, in which the West decided to commit a suicide. Removal of those Soviet/Russian "hordes" and those who led them in liberation of the death camps and Europe from the history, or re-framing their role in this process of liberation, is a task which Western historiography and propaganda machine got engaged with immediately after the WW II. This revisionism is vital for the existence of  Pax Americana, because modern world of ours was born in the crucible of WW II in which America was a second, however important, fiddle in ridding world of Nazism. 

There are several ways of how Western revisionists--a euphemism for barely literate people with agenda (a defining characteristic of Russia Study field in the West)--do their job.

1. They completely exonerate Nazi Germany and Axis from its crimes (e.g. visit Unz Review and see one of a highest concentrations of crypto-nazis dominating discussion boards there), often it goes hand-in-hand with Holocaust issue and total ignoring of Axis being responsible for 27 million lives of Soviet citizens and millions upon millions of other lives. These are the most insane and illiterate people and they are incapable of tracing basic causalities. 

2. They equate the responsibility of Nazi Germany with that of the USSR for unleashing the WW II. This cohort, including "professional historians" has a lot in common with those mentioned in p. 1. They also are on the position of stressing that even if Nazis were guilty, Stalin's USSR was so horrible and so Mordor that "hell with them, they had it coming". These people also are not strong in history, nor do they have a military background which would allow them to grasp technical, operational, strategic and economic realities of WW II, and as in p.1 in circle they place guilt on Stalin and Soviet Union.

3. Russian "voices" such as Rezun, Solzhenitsyn, adjacent to them Western voices, such as "mass rape specialist" (a euphemism for falsifier) Antony Beavor, other "Russian" dissidents who have an army of followers in the West, despite their sophomoric writing and open falsification of the history and who go for the jugular and deny Soviet/Russian people any agency and ability to distinguish right from wrong, which is wholesale attributed to "communist" ideology and Stalin is singled out as a main culprit. 

4. Pursuers of "Jewish-centric" version of Russian history, in which Russian October 1917 Revolution was a Jewish conspiracy and because of that Russians, as in p.2 "had it coming" and too bad Nazis didn't wipe Russians out.

All this is a result of a combination of factors of both very low and constantly declining intellectual level of Western societies in general, and of ideological imperatives of a Cold War which disregards actual, still available but shrinking, scholarship in favor of pure propaganda. Plus, of course, a visceral hatred of Western "elites" of Russians as an obstacle to West's delusional dreams of domination. This is a very brief review of this phenomenon and I dedicated two thirds of my first book to this issue. 

But evidently, there are still some people out there who are bothered by a murky stream of a grotesque pseudo-history in the United States and who cannot keep silent anymore. Ian Dowbiggin makes a review of yet another pseudo-historical excrement which passes in the United States for scholarship.

Rewriting History for the New Cold War. A Bard College professor has produced a sweeping, revisionist history of the Second World War that places the blame at Russia's doorstep.

Read the whole article, and pay attention to Unz "team" immediately appearing there to defend the book being reviewed and Dowbiggin arrives to a conclusion which for my readers shouldn't be a secret for many years:

Stalin’s War fits comfortably into a world where it is now fashionable to hate Russia. Earlier this summer, Nick Carter, Britain’s top military commander, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that Putin’s Russia was “an acute threat” to European peace. The CBC’s coverage of Carter’s comment was the latest in a series of media stories in recent years about Putin’s foreign policy, his clampdown on dissent in Russia, and his alleged “meddling” in the domestic affairs of other countries. Last March, President Joe Biden even called Putin a “killer.” The twist on anti-Russianism today is that, unlike during the anti-communist years of the 1950s, it’s now the Soros-backed progressive left that demonizes Moscow.

Russians are keenly aware of that and here is a coincidence. Sergei Lavrov, speaking to veterans of Great Patriotic War in Volgograd (Stalingrad) today stated:

ВОЛГОГРАД, 30 августа. /ТАСС/. Попытки выставить Иосифа Сталина главным злодеем его эпохи являются частью атаки на отечественное прошлое, на итоги Второй мировой войны. Об этом заявил в понедельник министр иностранных дел России Сергей Лавров на встрече с ветеранами Великой Отечественной войны в Волгограде. Он подчеркнул, что осуществляемые извне нападки на историческое прошлое России нацелены не только на то, чтобы переписать историю, но и политически ослабить РФ. "[Вы упомянули] Иосифа Сталина, который <...> всеми процессами должен был руководить. Я абсолютно согласен с тем, что историю нельзя трогать. Кстати, нападки на Сталина как на главного злодея, сваливание в одну кучу всего, что он сделал в довоенное время, во время, после войны - это ведь тоже часть той самой атаки на наше прошлое, на итоги Второй мировой войны", - сказал министр.

Translation: VOLGOGRAD, August 30. / TASS /. Attempts to portray Joseph Stalin as the main villain of his era are part of an attack on our country's past, on the results of World War II. This was stated on Monday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a meeting with veterans of the Great Patriotic War in Volgograd. He stressed that outside attacks on Russia's historical past are aimed not only at rewriting history, but also politically weakening the Russian Federation. "[You mentioned] Joseph Stalin, who <...> was supposed to lead all the processes. I absolutely agree that history should not be touched. By the way, attacks on Stalin as the main villain, lumping together everything he did in the pre-war period, during, after the war - this is also part of that very attack on our past, on the results of World War II, "the minister said.

Lavrov's statement is not going to change anything in the West, least of all in the United States which as a society has no concept of a war as such nor is capable to think outside America-centric world, including its elites and most of "scholarship". This gap is unbridgeable and it will continue to grow. I guess the West needs new Solzhenitsyn, which is not easy to find in times of internet and social networks. Lavrov's statement is for Russians primarily, new generation, that is, which increasingly wants and demands to see the history of their country as a continuous process in which Soviet period, with all of its failures and achievements, is just another step in Russia achieving her greatness. Plus, can we cut the crap? Few westerners have any idea what Soviet period was and how it played out in the past and plays out in present day Russia. They just don't get it. They will not get it. But even registered foreign agent Levada Center and a cloaca of The Moscow Times cannot hide the fact:

A record 70 percent of Russians approve of Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s role in Russian history, according to a poll published by the independent Levada Center pollster on Tuesday. Stalin’s image has been gradually rehabilitated in the 2000s from that of a bloody autocrat to an “outstanding leader.” President Vladimir Putin has revived the Soviet anthem, Soviet-style military parades and a Soviet-era medal for labor during his presidency.

Why this happens is beyond the grasp of people described above in this post (pp. 1-4), as per "Western history", I am on record--the whole clusterfuck which modern West is today is a direct result of a complete lack of self-awareness and of operational knowledge of the outside world across the whole spectrum of activity from economics, warfare, politics, culture and history. With "historians" like Sean McMeekien West as we know it doesn't have much time left anyway.

Yet Another Dud?

Here is the biography of the author, who is praised in The American Conservative for his new book Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All is Lost. Here it is:

Michael A. Walsh is an American music critic, author, screenwriter, media critic, and cultural-political consultant. 

In other words, he is a man who knows about military and warfare primarily from the books and movies. Fine. There is a cultural aspect to the warfare and last stands when everything is lost often are connected to the sense of brotherhood in arms with buddies in the unit and of the esprit de corps, and of simple masculine doggedness, which often manifests itself in extreme circumstances such as war, where defiance in a face of death is well documented. But that is all well-known and books on the warfare and acts of defiance and heroism are plentiful. But Walsh decides to concentrate on such acts, in the words of the reviewer, for: 

A new book takes stock of history's last stands and draws questions about Americans' will to defend their nation today.

Here is where the whole thing goes haywire immediately, while Bradley Anderson who wrote the review continues:

The qualities of which Walsh writes are real, and they are every bit as vital to a civilization as he says. They are, however, virtues that can be cynically exploited by those who have little interest in the defense of the United States against the kinds of existential threats that would inspire American men to take up arms and go willingly to their deaths if need be.   

Wait a minute, what? There is no doubt that US Armed Forces have enough courageous men many of who did perform acts of an incredible heroism, be that men of 2nd and 99th Divisions in Ardennes in December 1944, or the crew of immortal USS Samuel B. Roberts DE 413, just to name a few acts of American heroism in WW II. But we are talking about different times and different circumstances. The truth is, that what Walsh tries to explain in his book, all those last stands, were driven by more than just masculinity-based cohesion of the unit and courage. This is not the whole story and it never was whole behind what Tolstoy--yes, this unremarkable artillery officer, who wrote few unremarkable books, nobody knows about, in which he specifically pointed out to: 

The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk hill and all that day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He now understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up for him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen, and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly, and as it were lightheartedly. 

Yep, this thingy, which usually comes from primarily sense of duty and love for the nation, country, when they are in the grave danger. And here is a thingy, of which I speak ad nauseam--the United States lacks this "thingy", since no American soldier ever fought under the circumstances (not since 1814) of the United States proper being under any danger which comes with enemy's victory and him occupying the country. This distinction is crucial in psychological terms and it was and is being demonstrated since Korean War, because unlike most occasions which Walsh chose to describe, the United States remains impervious to any invasion and a nightmare which follows and can afford to lose interest in wars, which in the American case are all, without exception in the XX Century, were wars of aggression and conquest. 

But then again, Walsh is a... music critic by occupation and expecting prudent and precise view on the history of wars and human condition in them from such a "historian" is an exercise in futility, and Walsh aptly proves it. He decides to review a famous Pavlov's House defense during the Battle of Stalingrad, whose description is drowned in ideological noise, and then Walsh blows in a spectacular manner:

He uses grossly inaccurate, politely speaking, Hollywood BS of a movie as a historic reference point. The myth of Red Army soldiers having one rifle for two conscripts is a purely Western propaganda creation which was debunked so decisively that it is inconceivable that the man, a music critic by occupation no less, who decided to write anything on Stalingrad, doesn't know it. But Walsh, certainly, doesn't. Obviously, Western military "historians" never could understand that the only complain General Vasily Chuikov had in his memoirs was about shortage of fully automatic weapons, which were better for the fight in the rabble of Stalingrad, in famous Rodimtsev Division. But the Red Army fighters all had their rifles and enough munition to fight off the onslaught of the Paulus' 6th Army and its allies. This, so called, "black myth" (in Russian) is yet another demonstration of a deliberate distortion used by the Western "historians" to portray Soviet Union's decisive contribution to the victory in the WW II as merely through piles of dead bodies and rivers of blood. Using Hollywood's grossly inaccurate propaganda as a source for conclusions on a matter of a serious military history arouses immediate question--why music critic by education decided that he can pass any sound judgement on matters which require a serious knowledge and experience within military? I don't know, but that is what general American view on war is--a Hollywood picture. 

Moreover, last stands while having not just your buddies, but your home, your families, you loved ones, your culture is what drives men to perform acts of self-sacrifice in those proverbial last stands when everything seems to be lost. This is not the experience the United States military can relate to, despite having its own share of heroism and sacrifice, but in the end, as, I believe, Chesterton stated--the soldier must not so much hate what is in a front of him, as love what is behind his back. This is precisely why the United States couldn't win in Korea, lost in Vietnam, lost Iraq and lost in Afghanistan, because as this insignificant combat officer noted:       

"But all the general and soldiers of [Napoleon’s] army…experienced a similar feeling of terror before an enemy who, after losing half his men, stood as threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The moral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not that sort of victory which is defined by the capture of pieces of material fastened to sticks, called standards, and of the ground on which the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral victory that convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent and of his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino…The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was Napoleon’s senseless flight from Moscow… and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit had been laid" 

But what does he really know, this loser Tolstoy, he didn't have Hollywood to refer to, because we all know, Hollywood can always "vividly illustrate" just about any bullshit it wants to. That's the entertainment.