Victory Day - 10 Soviet Postcards Celebrating the Triumph Over the Nazis

May 9th is Victory Day in Russia and many other countries in Eastern Europe and is the day that the triumph of the Red Army over the Nazis in World War II is celebrated and honoured.

While May 7th or 8th is commonly regarded as VE Day in the west, in Eastern European countries it is the 9th as it was in the early hours of that day that news of the Nazi surrender reached Moscow.

There is no question that the Soviet peoples and the Red Army bore the brunt of the suffering and sacrifices in the titanic struggle to defeat Nazism and Fascism. It was the Red Army that ultimately turned the tide at battles like Stalingrad and Kursk and that drove to and captured Berlin, ending the war.

Victory Day remains a major holiday there to reflect and honour those who died fighting Hitler's barbaric regime.

These are 10 postcards from the 1980's in the USSR that celebrate Victory Day. They include images of the monument at Stalingrad, the Soviet Order of Victory and of the celebrations in Moscow after the triumph.

(click on images to enlarge)

See also: 10 May Day Posters to Celebrate International Workers' Day!

See also: From Revolution to Stalingrad to Space - Historical Sketches of the USSR for Young Adults

Is Chicago a turning point against the Trump campaign?

He encouraged the chaos.

Donald Trump has spent months at his rallies denouncing his opponents in the most ugly and demagogic terms and encouraging his supporters to, quite literally, attack protesters at his events -- even going so far as to promise to cover their legal costs should they be arrested!

Trump's antics and bombast have echoed some aspects of the mass European fascist movements of the 20's and 30's but under very different conditions -- a critical point. In the end Trump's campaign only echoes these movements. It is not analogous more broadly. The drawing of overreaching parallels are not simply historically inaccurate but also exaggerate the danger posed by Trump versus that posed by Republican hopefuls like the religious zealot Cruz.

This does not mean that Trump is not dangerous. He certainly is. But he poses a threat very different from the existential threat to American society that Hitler and Mussolini, for example, posed to theirs.

Despite ahistorical and frequently specious commentary to the contrary there is a profound difference in the historical situation and objective conditions existing in the US today and the conditions of Wiemar Germany or post-WWI Italy that led to the rise of Nazism and outright fascism.

The United States is a dramatically more diverse and dynamic society with far stronger nominal and actual forms and traditions of liberal democracy than either of those.

We are a very long way from what happened in the March on Rome, with the Brownshirts and mass organized fascist paramilitary wings (which were openly affiliated to and directed by their political masters), or with the acquiescence of key pillars of the state, political and economic elite, police, military and armed forces that allowed the collapse of democratic government in Wiemar Germany and Italy. It is entirely clear that the powers that be will not yet either capitulate to or actively aide the rise of a movement of this type in the United States -- which was, in fact, an historical precondition to its triumph in both of those other countries.

Trump, however, certainly reminds one of some of history's demagogues like Huey Long or Peron, and mimics -- intentionally or instinctively -- their anti-elitism, self-aggrandizement, egomania and attempts at strongman intimidation tactics. He has relied upon a blatant attempt at a personality cult and the blind and almost fanatical devotion of his followers. Their near worship of and reverence for him personally. This type of politician is profoundly dangerous in their own right as they are driven by narcissism as much as ideology. In Trump's case this is especially pronounced.

As with all politicians of this type his phenomena rests on a certain mythology, built-up over time, and after first having been written off (entirely mistakenly) as a sideshow farce, he has been very successful in delivering this mythology.

But something happened last night in Chicago that may prove a dramatic and possibly derailing detour on the road to Washington for Trump.

Thousands of protesters shut him down.

Trump (and not the police as he tried to claim) was forced to cancel a planned rally and went on to back away from and attempt to tone down his previous violent rhetoric.

As Dave Zirin of The Nation put it:

It's now confirmed that Donald Trump is lying when he says he consulted with Chicago PD and they told him to shut his rally down. He never even left his hotel. This was so clearly staged by Trump as a show of power, a show of violence by his supporters, and an open provocation in the heart of major city. And he lost. Thank you Chicago.

This is the critical point. He lost. His bluff was called by the people of Chicago and with a state and armed wing of the state that will not indulge mass violence on the part of his supporters (even were they organized enough to effectively practice it) to the degree that would be needed to stop future protests on this scale, this could end up being a real turning point.

The appeal of a demagogue partly depends on their ability to appear unstoppable and to be able to, or to claim to be able to, project their "will" through both force of personality and the naked force of their supporters.

Now that he has been stopped in the streets of Chicago, the facade becomes far more difficult to maintain and protesters and organizers in other states and cities will have been greatly emboldened by what unfolded.

Trump's rally scheduled for Cincinnati on Sunday has been cancelled in the wake of Chicago and in his comments to the press the edge has fallen away from Trump's bluster.

He may well still win -- and is indeed very likely to win -- the Republican nomination, but the legend of the invincible strongman Trump lies shattered in his hotel room and in the streets -- shattered not by other Republican candidates or by political or media elites, but far more importantly by mass popular resistance and anger.

See also: There is nothing funny about Donald Trump. And he is dangerous as hell

See also: ISIS is not Nazi Germany and the "appeasement" argument is ludicrous

ISIS is not Nazi Germany and the "appeasement" argument is ludicrous

Every time "pundits" with little to no historical knowledge or understanding of any kind want to malign moves by a given leader to chose a path that is not explicitly militarist when confronting whatever new enemy the Western apologists for imperialism have decided needs attacking, the old canard of "didn't they learn anything from attempts to appease Hitler" is hauled out.

This ludicrously ahistorical analogy -- which one might note was used to justify the staggeringly ill-advised attack on Saddam Hussein in 2003 that helped to create ISIS --  is being used to condemn Justin Trudeau's decision to pull Canadian fighter jets out of bombing missions in the present conflict.

An example of the line of "reasoning" at play here can be found in this article from Christina Blizzard in the Toronto Sun:

In the wake of the Friday the 13th terror attacks in Paris, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became the selfie-taking appeaser as the rest of the world declared war on ISIS.
It’s a role reminiscent of former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who in 1938, returned from a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich declaring “peace in our time.”
That worked out well.
Chamberlain famously waved an umbrella. Trudeau waved a smartphone.
History has shown that those who appease murderers and terrorists simply enable more murder and terror.

Sounds suitably erudite and frightening right?  I mean those efforts to appease Hitler obviously backfired didn't they?

Except that there is absolutely no meaningful way, other than to the stunningly simplistically minded, that the two historical situations can be remotely compared.

The first obvious difference is that Nazi Germany was one of the most powerful and advanced industrial and military nations in the world. It was capable of not only mass producing guns, artillery pieces, aircraft, tanks, submarines and so forth on an immense scale but was also able to deploy them via a disciplined military in a nation united in purpose (however evil that purpose turned out to be).

The Germans not only proved capable of taking on the French and invading and defeating them, they took on the British, United States and Soviet Union and very nearly won. They conquered and occupied France.

To note that this is so far beyond the capability of ISIS that it simply beggars belief that anyone attempts to compare the two would be a vast understatement.

To be clear, and it is crucial to understand this, even if left to its own devices entirely ISIS would never even conceivably pose the type of existential threat to countries and nations like France or Britain that Nazi Germany did. They could never invade and conquer France in a matter of weeks. They could never occupy most of Europe and drive militarily deep into Russian territory to the very gates of Moscow and beyond.

To suggest they could is beyond asinine and alone makes the comparison not simply specious but intellectually stunted and nothing more than the propaganda of the historically illiterate.

While the murders of over a hundred innocent civilians at restaurants and concerts in  Paris was horrific, the notion that it is anyway similar to the threat posed by Nazi Germany is offensive morally and intellectually.

This essential fact aside, the other difference -- and it is a massive one -- is that Nazi Germany set a course for war and genocide in the political context of the 1930's and actually began to invade and absorb entire countries in Europe, starting with Austria and Czechoslovakia, and then, with the invasion of Poland, brought matters to a head so that the Western powers at the time finally took a stand.

Nazi Germany was the aggressor on all fronts.

ISIS, however, is a product of aggression. Unlike Nazi Germany it is not attempting imperialist aggression but is actually a creation of imperialist aggression. It only exists due to the decision of the United States to invade Iraq under false pretenses (something eerily similar to the actions of the Nazis in justifying the launching of their wars) and due to the now obviously misguided decision of the West to intervene in undermining the Syrian regime.

While France nonsensically talks about the attack by ISIS as a "declaration of war" the West, including France, have been involved in military interventions and attacks in this conflict long before these attacks in Paris and these actions by the West have killed far, far, far  more innocent people than have terrorist attacks.

Not only has no effort been made to "appease" anyone, Western military action and mass violence in the region resulted in the very threat that reactionaries now rant about.

ISIS is a byproduct of military intervention and action. It is very, very hard to see how it, or something else similar that will replace it, will be ended by such actions.

History is often distorted to serve narratives, though seldom this moronically. To be clear, while ISIS is a profoundly vile, destructive and violently reactionary force, neither its origins nor capabilities bare any comparison to Nazi Germany, it is wrong and deeply offensive to the victims of Nazi Germany to suggest otherwise, and it displays a staggering lack of knowledge of historical context that would almost be darkly humorous -- like theories about "ancient aliens"-- were it not, in this instance, being used to justify more incredibly wrongheaded attacks and killings and a Western militarist agenda that is a straight up lie.

See also: Non-violence -- There is a way to stop the cycle