Category Archives: “Cold War”

Back in late 2008, when Pajamas Media was still having me write articles on Russia (they’ve since stopped asking, I think, because I wasn’t anti-Russian enough), I noted that Americans and Russians long for the return of the Cold War.  Those were the days when “new Cold War” books were all the rage and Russia and American were engaging in some good old proxy warfare in Georgia and Ukraine.  In America, Russia was evil again and that was a good thing.  In Russia, America was evil again and that was a good thing too.  Americaphobes and Russophobes rejoiced in unison.

Enter Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev.  Two “thaw” presidents in their respective countries looking to reform their respective kingdoms in the wake of economic calamity.  The former called for a “new” America, the latter called for a “modernized” Russia.  Both were simply mimicking what their forefathers had strove to do, albeit ..read more

Are your backyard barbecues breeding Bolsheviks?  Deep cover agents posing as a two car garage, 2.3 kid, suburban, all-American family?  Mysterious sultry, salon dyed Slavic redheads friending you on Facebook?  Foreigners who dazzle with superb hydrangea pruning skills?  Watch out America, the Russians are coming, and one of them might look just like you.

There isn’t much to be said about the busted Russian spy ring at this point.  We all know the story of 11 secret agents planted by the “Moscow Center” to dig up information about nukes, policy, and backroom rumors in Washington.  We all have fawned, or read about the fawning over the PG-13 pics of “Anna Chapman,” the femme fatale of this real life Naked Gun movie (if the Chapman obsession wasn’t pathetic enough, now the Marines are now using her to warn sailors ..read more

When I first saw the ads Russia Today is using in its American and UK ad campaign, I immediately had the reaction that most Americans and British probably had.  Comparing Obama to Ahmadinejad?  That’s like comparing Christ with the devil!  Is RT crazy or just stupid!? Well, the last question is not a simple gut reaction since RT often runs stories that are both crazy and stupid.

But then I started to think about the ad, realizing my gut reaction is exactly what it was supposed to provoke. Welcome to the world of agitprop, or agitation-propaganda, the use of images and text to incite affective reactions and posit provocative intellectual points. “Who poses the greater nuclear threat?” the ad reads.  To most Westerners, their gut tells them it’s Ahmadinejed, though the man currently has no nuclear weapons at ..read more

Andy Garcia has been cast to play President Mikheil Saakashvili in the upcoming film Georgia.  I just hope that Garcia’s audition required to see how he looked chewing on his tie.

The film, directed by Renny Harlin, will revolve around the last year’s war between the Caucasian nation and Russia.  Though war remains extremely politically charged on both sides, the film promises to “not take sides” reports the Telegraph.  I have no idea how that will be possible considering that its executive producer is Papuna Davitaia, a pro-Saakashvili MP.  Nevertheless, Michael Flannigan, one of the film’s other executive producers, told Georgian TV: “Our main concern was to show war as a bad thing.  We had an opportunity to make a really anti-war film.”  We’ll see about that.  My prediction is that war will be shown to be a “bad thing” only when the Russians are involved.  But who knows?  I do ..read more

Scott Anderson’s article “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power” is a throwback to the 1990s when ex-KGBmen turned mafioso, private security, or hired hands to execute nefarious plots.  It is also a showcase of bygone figures.  Once powerful, influential, or at least in the public eye who have since drifted into memory only to be periodically conjured up as partisan weaponry of high politics.  You know the names: Boris Berezovsky, Alex Goldfarb, Aleksandr Litvinenko, and Mikhail Trepashkin.  The latter serves as the hero of Anderson’s tale.  The gatekeeper of a longstanding conspiracy that many Russians know well:  The FSB carried out the apartment bombings on Guryanova St. in Moscow that brought down eight floors and killed ninety-four residents in their beds.

It’s been a while since Trepashkin’s name graced an English language publication.  He’s spent the last several years serving two stints in the clank.  In 2003, he was arrested for ..read more

I highly recommend “Nikita Khrushchev Goes to Hollywood” from the Smithsonian Magazine.  Khrushchev, always the showman, charmed, bantered with American capitalists, and even took in the filming of Can-Can during his tour of America in 1959.  When the Soviet premier went to Hollywood, hundreds of stars appealed for tickets to attend a luncheon with him.  He met such Hollywood legends as Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, and Charleston Heston.

The event apparently had several memorable moments.  When Heston leaned over to Soviet novelist Mikhail Sholokhtov and said “I have read excerpts from your works.” The novelist replied, “Thank you. When we get some of your films, I shall not fail to watch some excerpts from them.”  When businessman Spyros Skouras used his immigrant rags-to-riches story to educate Khrushchev about capitalism, the communist retorted:

He turned to Skouras—”my dear brother Greek”—and said he was impressed by his capitalist rags-to-riches story. ..read more