Soviet History – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

The Soviet Life Style
(Collier’s Magazine, 1947)

The standard of living in Russia has never been very high, but even despite his natural stoicism, the average citizen feels he has a good reason to be disgruntled with his life… Like any other totalitarian state, the Soviet state has done its best to paint a larger than life-size picture of its citizens. It likes to describe them as steel-hard heroes with an inflexible will, living for nothing but the great ideal of a Communist future, laughing at difficulties, gaily grasping with hard ship – a continent of Douglas Fairbankses. This is just a bit too good to be true, and the last one to be taken in by it is the average Russian.

Starvation in the Worker’s Paradise
(Current Opinion, 1921)

The first Soviet famine lasted from 1919 through 1923; some historians have placed the death toll as high as five million:

[Lenin] is held responsible for the policy which has brought about a consumption of so great a proportion of the seed wheat that the fields cannot be sown. For the first time since Bolsheviki gained power, says the Berlin Lokalanzeiger, Lenin is a cipher.

Click here to read about the blackmail and extortion tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression…

Another Purge?
(Quick Magazine, 1951)

A short list of the assorted difficulties that faced the Russians in the early Fifties, with two additional news paragraphs that told of additional setbacks on both sides of the iron curtain.

Posters Will ”Sovietize” the People
(Literary Digest, 1921)

Three years into the Soviet experiment, the ruling Bolsheviks were finding it difficult to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the proletarian masses they so deeply loved (but refused to feed).

Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.

Soviet Slave Labor Camps
(Pathfinder & America Magazines, 1947)

Although the true horrors of Stalin’s Russia would not be known until his death in 1953 (and then again with the opening of the Soviet Archives in 1990), bits and pieces were coming to the light as thousands of refugees and defectors swarmed the government offices of the Western Powers in search of asylum following the end of the Second World War. These small report from 1949 and 1947 let it be known how long the Soviet labor camps (Gulags) had been operational (since 1918), who was in them, how many different types of camps existed (there were three different varieties). As to the question concerning how many inmates were interred, there was no decisive count, somewhere between 14,000,000 to 20,000,000.

Since they came into being, the Soviet [forced labor] camps have swallowed more people, have exacted more victims, than all other camps – Hitler’s and others- together, and this lethal engine continues to operate full-blast…

The Drive on Undesirables
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

Some were called Lishentsi, some were called land lords, Romanov lackies, the rich, the elite or simply the middle class; no matter what the ruling Soviets labeled their preferred bogeymen, they wanted them out of the way. The attached article goes into some detail as to how this was done.

‘The Emancipation of Women in Soviet Russia”
(Soviet Russia Magazine, 1919)

Like a lot a guys, Vladimir Lenin said many nice things about feminism, but, alas, all his sympathetic talk just blended in with all the other Utopian promises he made – and couldn’t deliver.

The First Five Year Plan
(The Literary Digest, 1933)

A 1933 magazine article that reported on the success of the Soviet Union’s first (of many) Five Year Plans.

The myriad five year economic development plans dreamed-up by the assorted butchers of the dear dead Soviet Union all had one thing in common that was never lost on the Russian people: they always involved the construction of new factories, but never the construction of new housing.

Additional magazine and newspaper articles about the Cold War may be read on this page.

An Interview with Leon Trotsky
(Rob Wagner’s Script Magazine, 1938)

This magazine interview with Leon Trotsky (né Lev Davidovich Bronstein: 1879 – 1940) was conducted by Gladys Lloyd Robinson: Beverly Hills doyenne, matron of the arts and wife of actor Edgar G. Robinson – in the parlance of the dearly departed Soviet Union, she was what would have been labeled a useful idiot. Easily impressed by the goings-on at the worker’s paradise, she avoided such uncomfortable topics as the Soviet famine, the class privileges extended to Party Members or his own war on private property, but regardless of that, and much to her credit, she was able to get the most famous of Soviet refugees to speak about the 1938 world stage while conducting this interview.

Click here to read an article about the NKVD agent who murdered Trotsky.

Read an article explaining how the Soviets used early radio…

‘Russia Has a Congress”
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1949)

Many Americans do not realize that Soviet Russia has an elected congress. As its powers are set forth in the present Russian constitution, this congress has the appearance of being both representative and democratic… ‘The Supreme Soviet’ is somewhat similar to that of our national legislature. It has two chambers, like our house and senate. The author points out that regardless of the appearances, we all know that there is a catch somewhere’.

Click here to read about the blackmail and extortion tactics that American Communists used in Hollywood during the Great Depression…

The Out of Date Red Navy
(The Literary Digest, 1937)

While strong on land and in the air, [the Soviet Union] is weak on the water. Most Russian ships are World War or pre-War in origin, and many of her best vessels are in the Baltic, facing Germany, or in the Far East, where Japan looms up.

The five-times divided Red Navy operates four 1911 battleships, seven cruisers, 35 destroyers, between 30 and 60 submarines, 60 gunboats, etc. Total tonnage: 200,000.

Click here to read about a Soviet submarine called the S-13…

The Expansion of the Red Army
(Literary Digest, 1935)

Premier Vyacheslav M. Molotov (1890 – 1986) pictured the Soviet Union as a lusty young giant strong enough to defend itself from both the East and the West in the keynote speech of the Seventh All Union Congress of Soviets, the Soviet Parliament.

In proof of this claim it was shown that in the last two years the Soviet Government had increased the strength of the Red Army from 562,000 men in 1932 to 940,000 in 1934.

Stalin’s Successor, Georgi Malenkov, Forced to Resign
(Collier’s Magazine, 1955)

Crocodile tears were shed for Georgi Malenkov (1902 – 1988), a buddy of Stalin’s who was forced to resign as Soviet premier a few weeks earlier on the grounds that he had failed to produce any memorable reforms in agriculture (Nikita Khrushchev had drawn up a laundry list of additional Malenkov failings as well). The author sweetly pointed out that the Premiere was not to blame; after all,the entire system of government had been schemed by a dreamer who intended his utopia to be built in Germany or Britain.

Click here to read about Stalin’s Five Year Plan.

Read an article explaining how the Soviets used early radio…

A Few Days With Lenin and Trotsky
(Liberty, 1920)

Often published by the editors of Liberty, Life and Judge, was the American cartoonist Ellison Hoover (d. 1966) who poked some fun at the instability and blood-lusting thirst of the still-born Soviet Union in 1920.

Click here to read an article about the NKVD agent who murdered Trotsky.