Sixty years ago, the Soviets put the first satellite in space, sparking concerns about technology and weapons superiority
On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union set the world agog with the launch of Sputnik, the first space satellite. And the pioneering achievement sent much of the United States into a panic. Assumptions about American superiority in science and technology were suddenly called into question. The hostile Soviets were winning the space race and…
Historians are divided on Josef Stalin’s intent in the Ukraine that resulted in millions of deaths. Anne Applebaum’s new book has revived the dispute
Chances are Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine will set the cat among the pigeons with respect to the horrendous Ukrainian hunger of 1932-33. It’s already touched off a rhetorical skirmish between the author and an early reviewer. Applebaum is an American journalist-historian whose Gulag: A History won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Russia is a particular specialty of…
While it might be silly to argue the Berlin Wall came down because of Ronald Reagan, he demonstrated unusual prescience about the Soviet Union’s fragility
The relationship between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev has been described as “among the most remarkable forged by any two world leaders in modern history.” And one of its most famous public moments occurred just 30 years ago. Speaking in front of the infamous Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987, Reagan issued a challenge: “Mr.…
60 years this month Nikita Khrushchev blew the whistle on (the safely deceased) Josef Stalin’s crimes
It’ll be 60 years this month since Nikita Khrushchev blew the whistle on (the safely deceased) Josef Stalin’s crimes. And while the revelations were no surprise to savvy observers, it was a punch in the gut for many true believers and fellow travellers, particularly in the West. What they’d fondly imagined as a Marxist utopia…
Today, principled conversation is impossible, and that’s dangerous
Recent threats on the world stage cause me to wonder whether perhaps we should be mourning the passing of the Soviet era. With the eruption of ISIS in the Middle East and the ongoing autocracies in Russia and China, pause for a moment and think back to the last century and compare the challenges then…
On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union set the world agog with the launch of Sputnik, the first space satellite. And the pioneering achievement sent much of the United States into a panic. Assumptions about American superiority in science and technology were suddenly called into question. The hostile Soviets were winning the space race and…
