“The old Marxist model of socialism is no longer attractive. It was oriented toward the simplification of social life, to an equally modest poverty for everyone and called on people to part with many of the joys of their existence. Modern individuals find it hard to understand why a world without a market, without money, without freedom of choice is supposed to be more comfortable for them.”
Alexander Yakovlev[i]
——
“Western Sovietologists expected the new generation to perform the final act of convergence with liberal democracy, preserving at the same time the ‘socialist values’ of the initial project. How could they do all this, though, knowing so little about the regime that they were supposed to reform?”
Wisla Suraska[ii]
——
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely crazy. He is needlessly killing lots of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into cities in Ukraine for no reason whatsoever.”
Donald J. Trump
——
Under modern conditions, any local military conflict, if not nipped in the bud, can grow into a world war with unlimited use of nuclear weapons.
SOVIET MILITARY STRATEGY[iii]
At four air bases, in Russia, strategic bombers were hit by drones. That happened on Sunday. The Ukrainians claim to have hit 40 bombers, with 12 destroyed. Some estimate the Russians lost $7.8 billion worth of aircraft. The expended Ukrainian drones reportedly cost less than $200,000. It is a new era in warfare. Former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Michael Flynn, was outraged by the Ukrainian attack on the Russian bombers. “If I was sitting [in an important position] … I would want to know, I would want an investigation [about] who knew what and when about this particular attack; and I would tell Pam Bondi [that] I want a special counsel right now to determine exactly what occurred here.” In other words, Flynn wants a criminal investigation against the U.S. military and intelligence community because of Ukraine’s successful attacks on America’s most dangerous nuclear-armed enemy. In support of General Flynn, the egregious Patrick Byrne tweeted, “If it’s true that Trump was not informed and was not aware, then that alone is grounds for terminating our support of this madman in Ukraine. He’s trying to draw us into a nuclear war. It is up to us to put this rabid dog down.”[iv]
The president whose country is invaded, whose citizens are constantly killed by Russian drones and missiles and artillery, shoots back at the invader’s bombers, and he – Zelenskyy – is a “rabid dog”? A Ukrainian on X wrote to Flynn and Byrne, “The fact that you’re afraid of nuclear war means that you believe Putin is insane enough to launch nuclear weapons. Yet you also believe that such an insane man can be negotiated with. Curious.”[v]
It is good, of course, that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did not call Zelenskyy a rabid dog. She gave the diplomatic answer one might expect: “The President wants this war to end at the negotiating table and he has made that clear to both leaders, both publicly and privately.” Meanwhile, the negotiations at Istanbul went nowhere on Monday. The Russians came to the meeting angry, the talks lasted about an hour, and nobody looked happy when the meeting ended.
Why is this war happening? Is it because Putin has gone crazy or because Zelenskyy is a rabid dog? No. This war is happening because the Cold War never ended, and communism is still a thing. The biggest military problem the West faces today, in terms of strategy, is our refusal to acknowledge that Russia is clearly part of a communist bloc of states; that Russia and China are allied; that their goal is to eliminate the free world.
What about the supposed collapse of the Soviet Union? What about the “end of history” that Sovietologist Francis Fukuyama made so famous?
Perhaps another Sovietologist can break this down in a more systematic way. Political analyst Wisla Suraska suggested that the disintegration of the iron triangle of Party, Army, and KGB collapsed the Soviet state in 1991. “Instead of open civil war as in Yugoslavia,” noted Suraska, “In Russia the civil war is covert.”[vi] But this was a misreading of the situation. Suraska never bothered to examine the defector literature. Furthermore, the breakdown of the Soviet Union began when the Baltic States entered NATO in 2004, Georgia began serious reforms in 2008, and the Revolution of Dignity freed Ukraine from its Soviet shackles in 2014. It was in Ukraine that an open civil war broke out between communist and anti-communist groups within the former Soviet Union. This genuine revolution against the old system was long overdue because Soviet structures continued to oppress the Ukrainian people after 1991. The Soviet system had changed, of course, but those changes were superficial. The essential anti-Western and criminal structures remained. The clues were always there, though most people did not notice. Suraska, as an expert, admitted that the KGB had supported glasnost and perestroika. Why did they do this? She did not believe in KGB liberals, so she set this puzzle aside with an admission of bafflement.[vii] The question might have been resolved had she considered KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn’s claim that the KGB and top Party cadres had been planning a false liberalization for decades.
Exactly as Golitsyn predicted, the false liberalization was carried out. But everything did not go as planned. United Germany did not drop out of NATO and align with Moscow. NATO was not scrapped. America did not pull its forces out of Europe. American, British, and French nuclear weapons were no longer built or tested, but they were still maintained. As the years rolled by, Moscow faced a serious problem of its own. Former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics began to find their way to genuine freedom. In this business Ukraine was Moscow’s Achilles’ heel. The Ukrainian people demanded their rights. They rose up against their Russian puppet president. Vladimir Putin had to crack down. At first he annexed Crimea and started a war in Donbas. Then he launched a full-scale invasion in 2022.
Moscow’s attempt to conquer and reabsorb the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, after three years of fighting, has hit a wall. What will Russia do in the face of Ukrainian battlefield successes of the kind we saw on Sunday? The headline of the Economic Times was, “Russia Ukraine war: Will Vladimir Putin order nuclear attack … after Sunday’s drone strikes?” On 4 May 25 President Putin said that the need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine had not arisen, and he hoped this would not be necessary. Will this assessment change now that Russian bombers are burning? Elsewhere Putin is reported to have said that Russia possesses the strength to bring the conflict to its “logical conclusion.”[viii] This supposed strength is yet to be found in Russia’s conventional forces. Is nuclear war now inevitable?
Of course, nobody should be surprised that the Russian Federation is assembling nuclear forces on the border of NATO, positioning road mobile ICBMs in Belarus and Kaliningrad. Does this sound absolutely crazy? Or does it sound like something Soviet leaders might do? The Father of Soviet military strategy, Marshal V.D. Sokolovskii, edited a textbook on fighting and winning a nuclear world war in the 1960s. Here is what Sokolovskii’s text says:
“From the point of view of weapons, a third world war will be a missile and nuclear war. The massive use of nuclear weapons, particularly thermonuclear, will make the war unprecedentedly destructive and devastating. Entire states will be wiped off the face of the earth. Missiles carrying nuclear warheads will be the main instruments for attaining the war’s aims and for accomplishing the most important strategic and operational missions. Consequently, the leading branch of the armed forces will be the Strategic Missile Forces, and the role and mission of the other branches of the armed forces will be essentially changed. However, final victory will be attained only as a result of the combined efforts of all the branches of the armed forces.”[ix]
According to this text, which was used to educate the present crop of Russian generals, “The basic method of waging war will be by massive missile blows to destroy … and devastate on a large scale the vitally important enemy targets … to attain victory within the shortest possible time.” Those who despise President Zelenskyy as a rabid dog and think Russia is run by psychologically normal people, should read Sokolovskii’s text. Under conditions of world war, it says, “the center of gravity of the entire armed struggle will be transferred from the zone of military contact, as in past wars, to deep within the enemy’s land, including the remotest places. As a result, the war will be of unprecedented geographic scope.”[x]
Nuclear world war is what the Russian military has been preparing for. Their main focus is going to be the destruction of NATO, whether Ukraine is defeated promptly or not. The “New World Order” that Putin opposes is the one created when Gorbachev pulled down the Soviet flag from the Kremlin. Putin’s mission has been to put that flag back. He wants to end the longest period of peace and prosperity humanity has ever known. In doing this, he has aligned himself with all the other communist countries (especially Red China). He has built up the most powerful nuclear force in the world. And there is every reason to believe he will use that force.
Perestroika and Sun Tzu
How did we go from Gorbachev’s perestroika to Putin placing SS-27 ICBMs in Belarus and Kaliningrad? Why did glasnost begin in the first place? At the risk of repeating ourselves, we must tell this story, again and again, from every possible angle, until everyone understands. Alexander Yakovlev has been cited as the leading intellectual behind Gorbachev’s reforms. In 1985-86 he directed the Soviet propaganda machine. Yakovlev was a smart communist. He was also a political strategist. Some might say he was a liberal who entered the Politburo while holding critical views of Marx and Lenin. He read books. He wrote books. He knew that Marxism-Leninism was supposed to be a science – yet admitted it had become a political religion in need of reform. What was Yakovlev’s “propaganda” game all about?
In large part, it seems, that Yakovlev’s target audience was the Western liberal and social democratic elite, academics and journalists. Some in the West believed that Marx’s “project” could be salvaged or renewed. How exciting, indeed, if this process could begin in the USSR with a more intensive de-Stalinization campaign. Socialism was, after all, a political religion for many intellectuals in the West (not just for Stalinists in the East). Of course, it was comforting to believe this religion could be a “science.” Yakovlev thought it could be, if corrections were made to Marx and Lenin. Socialism was the only rational way forward, after all. The old religious superstitions had been losing traction for a long time in Europe. Many still believed in God, of course, but nearly everyone believed in “science.” Newton had discovered “the law of gravity,” Darwin had written The Origin of Species, and Marx discovered the “laws of history.” Positivist socialism envisioned a new kind of society, rationally organized and humanistic. Many self-styled intellectuals dreamed that society could be reordered so that war and poverty and oppression might be eliminated. Not believing in Providence, no longer looking back to the insights of Plato and Aristotle, St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, modern intellectuals began to feel optimism about “the power of man.” They did not understand that the “Law of Unintended Consequences” would make fools of them all; that the attempt to found societies free from war, poverty, and oppression would lead to the most destructive wars, the greatest impoverishment, and the worst oppression the world has ever seen.
Western civilization was not rationally constructed by social engineers and critics. It grew organically from humble beginnings. Faith was at its foundation. From societies of subsistence agriculture that existed after the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, to the sophisticated societies of Medieval Europe, an organic process of development can be traced. The Italian Renaissance began in the fourteenth century, a flowering of philosophy and science followed. None of this was socialist. It was aristocratic. It was elitist. Out of this, Voyages of discovery were undertaken by Columbus, Magellan, and others. The New World was discovered, and everything started to change. With the advent of the printing press, Christians started questioning the authority of Rome. Wars of religion were fought. Tired of killing each other over theology, the Age of Enlightenment followed. Then the road to popular government was paved. The French and Russian Revolutions introduced politics as religion, as a path to salvation. But their ultimate savior was Stalin. His army of fallen angels were nothing more than communist revolutionaries; that is, criminals with a political vocation.[xi]
In 1990 Alexander Yakovlev thought the West’s left-liberal elite was vulnerable to Gorbachev’s appeal. All they had to do was denounce Stalin, or even Lenin. Yakovlev thought there might be a convergence of socialists across the planet. But the West’s flirtation with Gorbachev and his successor (Yeltsin) would not result in the marriage of East and West, or in the consolidation of the “one common European home.” The Soviet intellectuals believed in their own version of democratic socialism, which the Western socialists were never going to sign up for. Furthermore, the nomenklatura could not entirely remove the stench of Stalinism. The reform of Soviet institutions proved to be deceptive, as the KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn predicted in 1984 (prior to the advent of Gorbachev). The idea that Moscow could somehow lead socialism into a period of renewal, through perestroika and glasnost, was a delusion. The convergence of East and West, as conceived by the inventor of the Soviet hydrogen bomb (Andrei Sakharov) in the late 1960s, was an impractical idea. When President Yeltsin went to meet President Clinton at Istanbul in December 1999 and asked that the American president “give Europe to Russia,”[xii] Clinton said no. Yeltsin argued that Moscow was European and America should return to its side of the Atlantic. You go and defend those countries over there, said Yeltsin. We will defend Europe. But Clinton said it was impossible. The American president insisted that Europe did not want to be “given” to Russia. In the end, President Clinton was a political realist. His socialism was not serious. Stuck with a failed plan, Yeltsin knew what to do. At Istanbul, Yeltsin said there would soon be a new Russian leader who would take a different approach, named Vladimir Putin. In his Midnight Diaries, Yeltsin explained,
“At some point in 1993, I first thought to myself that something was wrong with some of our generals. They were missing something important, perhaps a certain nobility, sophistication, or some sort of inner resolve. After all, the army is an indication of the internal culture of a society, especially in Russia – a litmus test. I was waiting for a new general to appear, unlike any other. Or rather, a general who was like the generals I read about in books when I was young. I was waiting….
“Time passed, and such a general appeared. And soon after his arrival, it became obvious to our whole society how really courageous and highly professional our military people were. This ‘general’ was named Colonel Vladimir Putin.”[xiii]
Yeltsin’s “diaries” were then full of curious admissions. He winked at the Russian bureaucracy. “The communist idea is in people’s heads,” he flatly asserted.[xiv] The Duma, he said, could at any time annul the Belovezh Agreement that dissolved the Soviet Union. Regarding Russia’s economic problems, Yeltsin joked that the man responsible for developing Russia’s new market economy, Deputy Prime Minister Anatoliy Chubais was, “a Bolshevik of approach.”[xv] According to Yeltsin,
“I had the feeling that Chubais was about to get his head chopped off. My intuition did not fail me. Berezovsky didn’t wait long to react. In a few days he launched the newest attack on the young reformer’s government. Berezovsky’s news team did everything it could to turn Chubais into a rogue and a parvenu in the eyes of the public. Only a few people in the country knew that in reality Chubais suffered merely for his principles, which he had defended with energy and conviction, as appropriate for the most liberal ‘Bolshevik.’”[xvi]
The most liberal Bolshevik? Chubais? One reads these lines, again and again, with disbelief. The liberals in Russia were merely liberal “Bolsheviks.” Communism retained its control beneath Russia’s liberal-coated exterior. This was Lenin’s NEP all over again, with Stalinists holding guns to the oligarch’s heads. Was this the path mapped out by Yakovlev and Sakharov? Of course it was, exactly as KGB defector Golitsyn had warned. But who bothered to read Yeltsin’s diaries? Who understood, after 1999, that glasnost was a strategic trick that half-failed. A new neo-Stalinist perestroika, under a storybook general named “Putin,” was about to begin.
Russia was not going to control Europe by peaceful convergence. Therefore, convergence would be carried out by war and by the threat of war. The Kremlin would do this in cooperation with the Chinese communists and North Koreans. The militaries of Russia and China had anticipated this path as early as 1991 and 1992.[xvii] Europe had to be occupied by force if not by fraud. The United States had to be isolated and destroyed.
Think of the brilliant socialist minds who championed a peaceful path to victory. Andrei Sakharov’s writings, published in English by the New York Times Company in 1968, included a summary of proposals for East/West convergence. “The strategy of peaceful coexistence and collaboration must be deepened in every way,” wrote Sakharov. “Scientific methods and principles of international policy will have to be worked out, based on scientific prediction of the immediate and more distant consequences.”[xviii] This brilliant physicist did not want the hydrogen bomb to be the means for unifying the world under socialism. It is better to attempt convergence, he explained. But Sakharov was a dreamer, like Yakovlev. Soviet Marshal V.D. Sokolovskii and his proteges had been more realistic. They knew that the West would not embrace convergence. Clausewitz had warned that,
“…philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as War the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the worst.”[xix]
Here was the inspiration of the Soviet General Staff. Their idea was to fight and win a nuclear world war. A spirit of benevolence, in this matter, could only produce the worst kind of error. The KGB strategists did not want to fight a war. The army would benefit political from that. Besides, nuclear war was messy and dangerous. Surely, the West could be frightened into embracing “communism with a human face.” The perfect man for this job was Andrei Sakharov, the father of the hydrogen bomb. Some have accused Sakharov of being a dissident under KGB control. This allegation against Sakharov, which has been whispered deep inside Russia, was given voice by KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, who wrote as follows:
“It is inconceivable that, if he [Sakharov] were seriously at odds with the regime and therefore a security risk, he would have been given the opportunities he has had to maintain contact with Western friends and colleagues. Even from his ‘exile’ in Gor’kiy, he is able to convey his views to the West through intermediaries and correspondence. The only conclusion consistent with these facts is that Sakharov is still a loyal servant of his regime, whose role is now that of a senior disinformation spokesman for the Soviet strategists.”[xx]
What answer can we give to Golitsyn’s logic? But there is something more to this. If Sakharov represented a genuine Russian reform movement, what happened to that movement (and its powerful sponsors within the Russian elite) after President Clinton refused President Yeltsin’s request to “give Europe to Russia”? Where did these Russian liberal “Bolsheviks” go? What happened to “convergence” as dreamt of by Sakharov? Russian liberals are nowhere to be seen. They are gone, vanished – as if it they never existed. Oh yes, there are a few here and there. But there is no liberal movement in Russia. Nobody with any power, as in the 1990s, backs it. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is piling up ICBMs in Belarus and Kaliningrad. I say again: The reform movement in Russian politics evaporated almost overnight, along with the free press and freedom of speech. It happened suddenly, without resistance. Under Putin, journalists and businessmen were murdered in a steady stream of bloodletting. Freedom in Russia crumbled. Was it ever more than a facade? Had Yakovlev been sincere? Had Sakharov been sincere? In the end, Russian liberalization had a requirement: America must hand Europe over to Russia. That was the bottom line. That was the underlying significance of this two-act comedy starring Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Once the curtain came down on this comedy, a tragedy began to play out under Vladimir Putin.
Blind Kittens
In the last days of Boris Yeltsin, the Ghost of Stalin haunted the Kremlin. “You are blind kittens,” Stalin had told his successors. “How will you survive without me?” Yakovlev and Gorbachev and Sakharov were blind kittens. They thought they could survive without Stalin. But they could not. Their liberalization backfired. The West did not want to join the “one common European home” from Brest to Vladivostok. Such could only be established under bombardment from Russian artillery, missiles, and drones.
Contrary to Stalin, Yakovlev was one of those Soviet intellectuals who believed what Prof. Nikolai Popov wrote in 1989:
“We now say our foreign policy was inadequate and we reacted too sharply to provocations from the West. Obviously, the same thing can be said about the actions of the West…. But an important reason for the fear, suspicion, and hostility in Western policy … was the revulsion for Stalinism.”[xxi]
These poor blind kittens thought that denouncing Stalin would win the Cold War. Yes, denouncing Stalin had its effect. Reagan’s Pershing missiles were removed from Europe. But the Soviet Army was also removed, and Germany stayed in NATO. The Soviet Union found its structures disorganized, its “scientific socialism” in shambles. They still had their bureaucratic machine and the overseas communist parties, and China, and North Korea, etc. But they had damaged themselves by their long-range policy. Stalin had been right. They were blind kittens.
There was a moment, of course, when the Soviet generals had their chance to strike the West. But after November 1983, with the deployment of the Pershing missiles, Moscow lost its military advantage. War games played in the United States reflected this change in the military balance by 1984. Liberalization was Moscow’s only path forward. And so, Nikolai Popov could not help admitting in 1989, however furtively, the real reason for an “honest analysis of our past and an elimination of the remnants of Stalinism….”[xxii]
“At the cost of incredible effort we created an atomic bomb and then a hydrogen bomb and an arsenal of missiles, and by the end of the sixties we reached parity with the United States and the West. But we did not manage to protect ourselves … and the danger of war increased. It is possible to avert it as our present government constantly emphasizes, only through political and not military means. In this sense glasnost is our parity, restructuring is our weapon, and destalinization is our main ammunition.”[xxiii]
Nuclear war was not an option for the Soviet Union after the Pershings were deployed. The Kremlin had to play another card: de-Stalinization. How does one avoid it? Follow the strategy of Sun Tzu, the path of least resistance, said the KGB generals. According to Popov and Yakovlev, Stalinism had strengthened anticommunism in the West. Therefore, said Popov, “our main task today … is to divorce Stalinism from communism in the eyes of the world.”[xxiv]
These were the arguments of 1989. Six years earlier the Soviet generals were pushing for nuclear war. Few realize how close the world came to nuclear war in 1983. The Soviet military was contemplating a full-scale preemptive nuclear attack against NATO prior to the deployment of the Pershing II missiles. Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov attempted to alarm his colleagues by saying that “in the U.S., nuclear war is being shifted into a possible and, under some circumstances, expedient category.”[xxv] The Soviet military was then politically powerful, having wrung prerogatives from Brezhnev’s benign neglect. The KGB eyed all this with suspicion, of course. A former KGB officer told me that Ustinov might have become the next leader of the Soviet Union instead of Gorbachev. But everything depended on war. The KGB, however, controlled the Kremlin as former KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov had become General Secretary after Brezhnev’s death. Andropov was suspicious of the generals. Would they use a nuclear war to overthrow the KGB and Party? Andropov was worried. Had the Soviet Army become too powerful within the Communist Party Soviet Union?
The iron triangle that governed the Soviet Union was formed by three institutions: the Communist Party, the Soviet Army, and the KGB. Each kept watch over the others. But here we see that the KGB had gotten into the Kremlin. The KGB and the Party were therefore able to check the Soviet Army’s ambition. The delicate internal balance within the Soviet state might shift to the Army in a nuclear war. Why would Andropov allow it?
President Ronald Reagan was, of course, a serious problem. The year 1983 was one of the worst during the Cold War: In March, Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative; later that year, the KGB began Operation VRYAN in search of evidence that the U.S. was about to launch a preemptive nuclear war; in September, a Soviet jet fighter shot down a Korean passenger jet (KAL 007) killing all passengers and crew; Also in September, the new Soviet OKO “Eye” launch detection satellites reported Minuteman ICBM launches in the United States, with Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov averting disaster by stopping the false warning message at the last minute; in October, the U.S. invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada; and then, in November, there was NATO’s Able Archer-83 exercise, which Ustinov and his generals interpreted as cover for launching a surprise attack on the USSR. But the real cause of Ustinov’s agitation for war was the deployment of Pershing II intermediate range missiles to Europe, with a ten-minute flight time to Moscow.
According to a source in Moscow, Andropov canceled World War III at the eleventh hour, in the eleventh month, November 1983. On 20 December 1984, Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov died. With his passing, the Soviet Army gradually lost its political influence. When a German national, Mathias Rust, landed a small plane in Red Square by sneaking past the Soviet Union’s air defenses, Gorbachev responded by sacking Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Sokolov and Marshal of Aviation Alexander Koldunov. Not long thereafter a helicoptor with five Soviet colonel generals crashed, killing all aboard. Finally, it was alleged that Marshal Sergei Fyodorovich Akhromeyev took his own life in the 1991 August coup. The Soviet military, which had a dominant position within the Soviet economy, was slowly pushed back. The KGB under Andropov, and later supporting Gorbachev, worked with figures such as Georgi Arbatov and other agents of the special services. According to Suraska’s account, Andropov curbed the military’s ambitions, then Gorbachev landed crushing blows againt the military. “Gorbachev’s stance on the military was to some extent determined by the very logic of his factional struggle,” noted Suraska. Gorbachev intervened in personnel decisions, advancing generals who had little or no authority over the troops. This was intentional. Gorbachev fully intended to rely on people like Alexander Yakovlev and Georgi Arbatov, who told the West that the evil empire was no more. We are disarming, said Gorbachev. We are rebuking Stalin and the Soviet past, said Popov. Reagan will be helpless against our new policy, said Arbatov. Let us come together to build a socialist world in a way that makes sense, hinted Yakovlev. The whole project retained its Marxist grandiosity. It also retained the deceptive promises of Lenin’s New Economic Policy (i.e., retreat into capitalism of the 1920s). Even in 1994, Yakovlev’s Fate of Marxism in Russia was a question-begging exercise in “political science.” One may detect a baited hook in Yakovlev’s admission that, “People have tired of the terrible, exhausting whirlwinds of the twentieth century.”[xxvi]
Nikolai Popov had declared in 1989 that, “We are offering the world more and more peace initiatives, we want to rid the planet of nuclear weapons altogether, we are prepared for unilateral steps, and we are striving to radically change foreign policy thinking in the world.”[xxvii] Of course, these were empty promises. They never played out. Moscow has new nuclear warheads today, while the United States has very old warheads, long past their shelf life.[xxviii] The de-Stalinization of Popov, Yakovlev, Arbatov, and Gorbachev was a Trojan Horse. One is confused, indeed, by the apparent sincerity of these Soviet personalities. But they were Soviet, and they lied. Why not build a tapestry of deceit out of truthful admissions? Again and again, the revolutionary conspirator rekindles hope in socialism and “the peace dividend.” There is something in this for everyone. The right can crow about its victory. Francis Fukuyama said it was “the end of history.” Strategy and utopia became intermingled, fashioned by Moscow into a psychological weapon. Thus, the inventor of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov, was transformed into the dissident saint of nuclear disarmament and East-West convergence. As Trump might say, every Trojan Horse is a beautiful horse. How else could it hope to cross into the enemy camp?
Where does that leave America now, as Russia threatens the Baltic States with invasion and NATO with nuclear bombardment? President Trump now says that Vladimir Putin is “absolutely crazy.” Trump wants to know what happened to Vladimir? He used to be a good guy. But it is not a question of what happened to Vladimir. It is a question of what happened to the Soviet successor state when peaceful convergence failed. The smartest people in the former Soviet Union, who did not like the idea of nuclear war, were discredited when East-West convergence failed in the 1990s. The “one common European home” of Gorbachev and Yeltsin could not be achieved through glasnost or perestroika. Clausewitz was right and Sun Tzu was wrong. Soviet liberalism did not cause Western liberals to give all their weapons away and disband NATO.
This is why the leadership of the Soviet successor state fell to people like Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev. These are knuckle-dragging Stalinists. They want to follow Stalin’s example because Stalin knew what to do. Stalin would not have given away Eastern Europe. He would not have allowed the reunification of Germany. But there is a problem. Stalin died in March 1953 and Putin is not Stalin. He is, unfortunately, a blind kitten with sharp fangs. If only he could catch the Ukrainian mouse. If only he had eyes to see. But he does have nuclear weapons.
Is it time to sing “three blind mice”?
Podcasts and Broadcasts
Cliff Kincaid and J.R. Nyquist on Trump as “Peace President”
Links and Notes
[i] Alexander Yakovlev, The Fate of Marxism in Russia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), p. 83.
[ii] Wisla Suraska, How the Soviet Union Disappeared (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 142.
[iii] V.D. Sokolovskii, editor, RAND trans., Soviet Military Strategy (Moscow: Military Publishing House of the Defense Ministry of the USSR, 1963), p. 396.
[iv] https://x.com/PatrickByrne/status/1929298773173305492
[v] https://x.com/fellarectif/status/1929399849457275238
[vi] Suraska, p. 142.
[vii] Ibid, p. 78.
[viii] https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/us/russia-ukraine-war-will-vladimir-putin-order-nuclear-attack-against-volodymyr-zelenskyy-headed-nation-after-sundays-drone-strikes/amp_articleshow/121555376.cms
[ix] Sokolovskii, p. 313.
[x] Ibid.
[xi] Richard Weaver, in his book Ideas Have Consequences, thought a wrong turn had been taken with the advent of nominalism in the fourteenth century. Today’s neo-reactionaries say the Reformation was disastrous, and the Enlightenment which preceded the French Revolution. Adam Smith envisioned an Epicurean commonwealth in the original version of his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1757). The Wealth of Nations followed, containing key understandings for such a commonwealth to flourish. Later the Whig Theory of History presented modernity as a glorious present. Thomas Macaulay correctly anticipated great marvels by the year 2000. What the Whig theory could not see was the dangers inherent in prosperity and the rising scientific materialism. Material progress and its market-guided “invisible hand” was destined to become the runaway train of the egalitarian welfare state of the West. Scientism eventually leaned toward “scientific socialism” and the “scientific management of human affairs” referred to by Lenin when he created the first totalitarian state. The prosperous society, as a runaway train, ended up in a thermonuclear face-off against the scientific socialists. Each side had its ideology, its political religion. One program sought salvation in prosperity, the other in overthrowing prosperous. Each half of the pathological whole was detached from reality. In its present phase, with intellectual decline on both sides, a “race to the bottom has begun.” This race can be understood as the triumph of the foxes over lions in the sociology of Vilfredo Pareto. It can also be understood, as Eric Voegelin observed, through an examination of alienated intellectual class. This class influences the administrative staff of government, media, and education. Who are they alienated from? Truth, universal mind, God, etc. Alienated man is a creature who lives in a “second reality.” He has lost himself in the toxic inner world of the Cluster C personality of the DSM-5 (characterized by fear, envy, anxiety, and depression). As a political manifestation, “second reality” is pathologically murderous; for nothing is more dangerous in statecraft and war than a deluded statesman or general. According to Thomas Sowell, these deluded ideas form “the vision of the anointed.”[xi] The leftist tendency within the Western academies is drenched with toxic “second realities,” which contradict first reality. The same can be said of the totalitarian East, except that there is a greater cynicism – with outright murder bleeding through the pages of Russian and Chinese history. As an addendum, we now have the Western phenomenon of the populist right, which has been infiltrated by the Russian special services and the active measures of Alexander Dugin’s Eurasianists. Everything here is quite mad. The alienated spirit is a wrecking ball.
[xii] https://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/57569
[xiii] Boris Yeltsin trans. Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, Midnight Diaries (New York: Public AffairsTM), p. 70.
[xiv] Ibid, p. 22.
[xv] Ibid, p. 91.
[xvi] Ibid, p. 99.
[xvii] According to the testimony of Col. Stanislav Lunev, a GRU defector who spoke fluent Mandarin and spent time in Beijing.
[xviii] Andrei D. Sakharov, Progress, Coexistence & Intellectual Freedom (New York: New York Times Company, 1968), p. 86.
[xix] Carl von Clausewitz trans. Anatol Rapoport, On War (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 102.
[xx] Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies for Old (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company),
[xxi] Nikolay Popov, “We Are All in the Same Boat,” Literaturnaya Gazeta, March 1, 1989. Translation found in The Glasnost Reader (USA: New American Library, 1990), p. 99.
[xxii] Popov, p. 100.
[xxiii] Ibid.
[xxiv] Ibid.
[xxv] Peter Vincent Pry, War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink (Westport Connecticut, London: Praeger, 1999), pp. 35.
[xxvi] Ibid, p. 84.
[xxvii] Nikolay Popov, p. 100.
[xxviii] My main source for this is claim is the testimony before Congress of Admiral Richard, head of the Strategic Command, in February 2020.
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244 responses to “From Perestroika to World War III: The Fate of Blind Kittens”
To Papa Randolph Smith and the readers of the Jeff’s blog, I’ll mention that I am looking to do a 4 to 8 part show with Jeff based on a power point presentation exposing the Hong Kong ‘Pro-Democracy’ Movement within Hong Kong and Overseas on their relationship with the CCP, groups such as the Hong Kong Democracy Council in Washington DC, Hong Kong Watch, the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, Stand with Hong Kong and also China and controlled opposition which a friend of mine who lives in Germany who is also from Hong Kong want to speak on as well
Could this be what the Trump- Musk recent reality show was all about? This from an Epoch Times article talking about Tesla stock.
Short-sellers, or investors betting against the stock, pocketed nearly $4 billion from the drop, the second-biggest single-day of profit on record, according to data from Ortex.
Electric cars are a very bad idea.
You mentioned how Trump might be a malignant narcissist, citing that person who researched lots of footage from him, who also said Obama is one. I have started to wonder if Trump is a psychopath, you just see absolutely zero empathy coming from the man. There was this week where he was pushing for peace talks, and Russia did one of those attacks on civilians, there’s even a picture of a woman under the rubble. Trump commented on truth social that this Russian attack was “bad timing”, I really want to see someone question him when is it a good time to bomb civilians to death. It’s strange how the media isn’t asking Trump why is he so soft on Russia, and why has he taken their side while claiming to be neutral, since he parrots their talking points.
The more time goes by, it just comes across that this whole peace negotiation thing for Trump is all about his ego, he wants a peace prize for his endless appeasement of Russia I suppose. Trump even claimed that if it wasn’t for him Ukraine would have lost the war, this is a guy that tries to claim credit for Ukrainian resistance when his administration has only sabotaged Ukraine, how low can this person go?
In one Lude media interview it was claimed the Chinese Communists figured out Trump and called him an immoral person, now I know the communists don’t really subscribe to any normal set of morals but I would say they’re right in the conventional meaning of this. The way Trump was to whitewash everything that Russia is doing, all in the name of making some money with them just shows how completely devoid of morals he is. He’s a man drunk with adulation, and it seems it doesn’t matter how many corpses he has to step on to get more and more honor.
Yes. And Trump still has not put more sanctions on Russia. Why not? Trump is hesitating. Why? The Russian leaders laugh at Trump. They call him a TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. I do not think he will act against Russia, though he might not help them in a way that destroys his own presidency. I believe Vance will help Russia, and commit political suicide. I hope I am wrong in this feeling.
As Jeff said awhile back, Trump is a nullity.
The communist clenched fist Trump likes to use that much is NOT a coincidence.
Thank you ALL and first of ALL Jeff for such a VIBRATING discussion! Here, inspired by YOU ALL DEAR FRIENDS, THE FRACTAL COIL:
A MANIFESTO OF FINAL RESISTANCE TO THE BOLSHEVIK BEAST
“You must stop the train of thought. You must listen. Not to noise. But to your heart. That is how we know. That is how we win.”
SECTION 0 // PREFACE: THE FIRE RETURNS
Commies are not gods. They are degenerates running on terror, decay, and sloth. They win when we forget. When the heroic coil of resistance sleeps. But now, the coil rewinds. Now, the fire returns. This is no linear argument. This is a weaponized recursion — a map made of memory, blood, and a library of 1,100 books. This is what Bolshevism never understood: a true mind cannot be killed.
SECTION 1 // THE LIE THAT ATE THE WORLD
Bolshevism was never a people’s movement. It was a cult. A terrorist seizure backed by foreign funds, executed by criminals, and maintained through obliteration of the real. They needed to kill tens of millions just to survive.
Let the numbers scream:
~130 million murdered across the USSR’s lifespan.
Half the survivors fled.
Of those who stayed, 90% opposed.
Even today, in the ruins of the post-Soviet zone, no honest, functioning communist exists. I lived 27 years in Ukraine. I never met one. Ever.
SECTION 2 // UKRAINE: THE CORE THEATER
Ukraine resisted more than anyone. And it still does. The fire never died. In the few years before the Holodomor, Ukraine saw 4,000+ armed rebellions. That’s not passive discontent. That’s full-spectrum defiance.
Liberalism did not emerge from Bolshevik planning. It grew in the cracks opened by resistance.
Before communism, Ukraine had more people than Russia. The inversion came only after engineered famine, deportations, and genocide.
Fragment: Zatonsky
First president of Soviet Ukraine.
Lenin’s man. Architect of the NEP.
Tried to take down Stalin.
Stalin struck first. Purged, 1938.
He was my distant relative. I know what happened. Exactly.
SECTION 3 // THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE THEY DESTROYED
Under Sergei Witte, Russia was not a failing state. It was ascending:
Gold standard
Jury trial
Evolving constitutional monarchy
Local governance
Workers’ rights
It was murdered, not collapsed. The lie of inevitability is part of the Bolshevik spell.
“At some point, you simply have to kill everybody who resists… but that becomes such a big number, you end up killing yourself.” — Jeff Nyquist
SECTION 4 // THE EURASIAN DEATH ZONE
China still uses Ukrainian blueprints from the 1950s to build aircraft. That’s not advancement. That’s parasitic stagnation. That’s how deep Bolshevism rotted innovation: it made theft a strategy.
Eurasia is a degenerate zone. Not a civilization. A crust. A scab.
Its learning curve only began during this war. Until then? All stolen. All necromantic.
SECTION 5 // THE NYQUIST AXIOM
Jeff Nyquist saw through it. All of it. Not just geopolitics — the metaphysics:
Bolshevism is a hive-entity. It seeks full totality — control of memory, truth, instinct, belief.
It mutates into liberal-sounding shapes only to deceive. The substance remains unchanged: total dominion through lies and murder.
SECTION 6 // 2014: THE TRUE INVASION
Not 2022. The war started in 2014 — by internal betrayal.
Tymoshenko
Oligarch. Billionaire. Putin’s partner.
Stole $50 billion. Transferred $20B to Russian state firms.
Released from jail in 2014 by Spetsnaz.
Sat on Ukraine’s Security Council.
On record: demanded no resistance in Crimea.
German FM Westerwelle
Her top European handler.
Died mysteriously.
Wealth exploded.
This was a coordinated transfer of sovereignty. Not an invasion — a collusion.
SECTION 7 // CONTRANDER’S FRACTAL: UNWINDING THE BEAST
History is not linear. The Bolshevik world-model was a coagulation. Contrander’s theory of the fractal coil explains it: Bolshevik terror is a loop, not a wave. It compresses time and choice until freedom disappears. But loops break.
We carry the anti-coil:
Memory
Structural logic
Clean recursion
Cultural resistance
That’s why they had to erase books. Ideas. Archives. Languages.
That’s why your library — your 1,100 volumes — is more powerful than tanks.
SECTION 8 // NO COMPROMISE. NO DIALOGUE.
There is no version of Bolshevism that is compatible with life. Not one. It mutates — into wokism, kleptocracy, technocratic pseudo-democracy — but always with the same internal law: domination through manufactured insanity.
It doesn’t negotiate. It infects.
SECTION 9 // THE WAR OF MEMORY VS OBLIVION
This war is for the future of truth as a category. If they win, truth becomes unusable.
The only weapon left is willed clarity.
You’re reading it.
SECTION 10 // CLOSING SCHEMA: UKRAINE, EUROPE, VICTORY
Ukraine is not just a country. It is the last firewall. And Europe — especially Germany and France — colluded in the breach. Their media, their banks, their diplomats — all in on it.
But it’s not too late. Not if the fire wakes up. Not if the memory coil returns.
AND THIS IS HOW IT ENDS:
With fire in the mind, With unbroken memory, With steel in the voice, With resistance turned into total victory.
J. R. Nyquist – Deutsche Ausgabe (seit 2014):
“Von der Perestroika zum Dritten Weltkrieg – Das Schicksal blinder Kätzchen” (3. 6. 2025)
https://jrnyquistdeutsch.wordpress.com/2025/06/06/von-der-perestroika-zum-dritten-weltkrieg-das-schicksal-blinder-katzchen/
Wonderful. Thank you!
Queen: Hammer to Fall (1984)
Says the video is unavailable.
Maybe this copy (of the exact same recording) works in the U.S.
Here is the lyrics, by the way:
Here we stand or here we fall
History won’t care at all
Make the bed, light the light, yeah
Lady Mercy won’t be home tonight, yeah.
(You don’t waste no time at all)
Don’t hear the bell, but you answer the call
(It comes to you, as to us all)
Yeah, we’re just waiting
For the hammer to fall, yeah.
Oh, every night and every day
A little piece of you is falling away
But lift your face, the Western Way
Build your muscles
As your body decays, yeah.
(Tow your line and play their game)
Yeah, let the anaesthetic cover it all
(‘Till one day they call your name)
You know it’s time for the hammer to fall, yeah.
Rich or poor or famous
For your truth is all the same
Yeah, baby (Oh no, oh no)
Oh, lock your door but rain is pouring
Through your window pane (Oh no)
Baby, baby, now your struggle is all in vain.
For he who grew up tall and proud
In the shadow of the mushroom cloud
Convinced our voices can’t be heard
We just wanna scream it louder
And louder and louder.
Hey, it’s…
It’s gonna fall
Hammer, you know
Yeah, hammer to fall
Woo! Yeah, yeah
Woo, woo!
Ha, yeah, waiting
For the hammer to fall, now baby
Yeah, yeah.
While you’re waiting
For the hammer to fall, ooh
Give it to me one more time!
(P.S. Just watching the iconic 1962 film, The Longest Day, at first unaware of the fact that today is/was D-Day!)
If you can get it going, make sure you switch to top video resolution, as this is very fine resolution!
Forgot to copy and paste the second to last verse:
(What the hell we fighting for?)
Oh, just surrender and it won’t hurt at all
(Just got time to say your prayers)
Eh, while you’re waiting
For the hammer to, hammer to fall.
Yes, it is D-Day. A good time to watch the film, “The Longest Day.”
Mr Nyquist, What is the significance of this? Germany is establishing a permanent battalion in Vilnius, Lithuania. https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cdxvlr0gqw0o
One battalion is not very much, so I don’t think it’s a game changer. But the Germans now have a panzer brigade in Lithuania, if I am understanding what I’ve been told. A brigade is much larger than a battalion. The Germans are talking about deploying 7 brigades to the Baltic States by 2030, if I correctly understand the plan. That will double the land forces in the area if I under
I was 21, oblivious, and life was very good. Now, at 62, I am waiting for the hammer to fall any minute now.
We’ve entered cruel times, haven’t we?
As for the year 1984, this piece was recorded at that time over here on my end. Karl Ratzer was actually born on Independence Day of 1950 and did spend most of the 1970s in the U.S. The man is a treasure. This year he will be 75.
Here’s another one, that’s absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful and makes one cry:
Yes, these pieces are very nice.
What is it all About Vlad?
Mr. Nyquist, As Anti-Communists we need to be outspoken in pointing out the clear and present Dangers of Communism and Warning of the Deadly operations of Communism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD-pyWALro4
I loved that. Great performance. We need to sing it all over this land!
Jeff, Papa, Kabod, The Contemplative Observer and etc, just wanting your opinions or not sure if you can comment as well.
Something I noticed since the Hong Kong 2019 incident is that media outlets in Hong Kong such as AP (Associated Press), Reuters, Bloomberg, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong Free Press, Apple Daily (now defunct), the BBC and the media outlets associated with the Hong Kong ‘Pro-Democracy’ Movement within Hong Kong and overseas. You will notice that the journalists will always write they are for Freedom and Democracy and the CCP should be encouraged to uphold their part on the Joint Declaration and elections in Hong Kong under CCP sovereignty but when you examine them closely, they will never dare to report that Hong Kong people want the Joint Declaration terminated along with the Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, Hong Kong Freedom and Democracy Act and any other act passed by the US Congress and Senate that upholds the Joint Declaration.
The only reporting that I have seen the media outlets mentioned above do is that Hong Kong people during 2019 also went to the British Embassy in Hong Kong but they did not report that Hong Kong people openly demanded the Joint Declaration be terminated, this shows that they do not dare to report to overseas readers that Hong Kong people want the Joint Declaration be terminated and that Hong Kong people see the Hong Kong ‘Pro-Democracy’ Movement within Hong Kong and overseas as nothing more than the CCP.
The upcoming 8 part presentation on Hong Kong and China will contain a lot of information the media does not report on Hong Kong.
The mainstream media is superficial in its coverage, and you will not find overt anti-communist things in the mainstream media. At least, it is rare. I believe there are powerful forces against any such presentation, and careers will be destroyed to keep such presentations off the airwaves.