"pasture of incidental tones and half-ripped photographs"". ""BBC Music Review"" reviewed the album favorably, stating, """"Witch Cults of the Radio Age"" is laced with enough wonder and intrigue to keep you coming back. It doesn't make perfect sense, but the sense of mystery is a key in itself"". ""Drowned in Sound"" called the album ""chaotic, overstimulating, like opening a dusty wardrobe and having an entire childhood tumble down on your head"". ""Pitchfork"" critiqued the album as ""predictable"" and said that the collaboration between Broadcast and the Focus Group was like ""trying to cast their spells at the same time: Some"
"All the CIA numbers on the USSR's economy were wrong. Too often the CIA relied on people inexperienced with that which they were supposed to be the expert. Bob Gates had preceded Doug MacEachin as Chief of Soviet analysis, and he had never visited Russia. Few officers, even those stationed in country spoke the language of the people they were spying on. And the CIA had no capacity to send agents to respond to developing situations. The CIA analysis of Russia during the entire cold war was either driven by ideology, or by politics. William J Crowe, the Chairman of"
"the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations issued a press release contending that a single person could not have started or prevented a nuclear war, stating in part, ""Under no circumstances a decision to use nuclear weapons could be made or even considered in the Soviet Union or in the United States on the basis of data from a single source or a system. For this to happen, a confirmation is necessary from several systems: ground-based radars, early warning satellites, intelligence reports, etc."" But nuclear security expert Bruce Blair has said that at that time, the"
"Germans initiated Operation Barbarossa 15 months later. During the period between the Winter War and ""perestroika"" in the late 1980s, Soviet historiography relied solely on Vyacheslav Molotov's speeches on the Winter War. In his radio speech of 29 November 1939, Molotov argued that the Soviet Union had tried to negotiate guarantees of security for Leningrad for two months. The Finns had taken a hostile stance to ""please foreign imperialists"". Finland had undertaken military provocation, and the Soviet Union could no longer abide by non-aggression pacts. According to Molotov, the Soviet Union did not want to occupy or annex Finland; the"
"Stalin's alleged speech of 19 August 1939 This article covers a speech allegedly given by Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, on 19 August 1939 to members of the Politburo, wherein he supposedly described the strategy of the Soviet Union on the eve of World War II. The historicity of the speech is still the subject of academic debate. Plausible textual evidence of this speech found in various reputable archives has been academically studied and published, however no formal first-hand evidence of a Politburo ""meeting"" held on 19 August 1939 or the delivery of the quoted speech has yet"
"late 1980s, Soviet historiography leaned solely on Vyacheslav Molotov's speeches on the Winter War. In his radio speech of 29 November 1939, Molotov argued that the Soviet Union had tried for two months to negotiate guarantees of security for Leningrad. However, the Finns had taken a hostile stance to ""please foreign imperialists"". The Finns had undertaken military provocation and the Soviets could no longer hold to nonaggression pacts. According to Molotov, the Soviets did not want to occupy or annex Finland; the goal was purely to secure Leningrad. Another source, later used widely in Soviet historiography, was the Molotov speech"
"his White House staff and radio technicians that was accidentally leaked to the US populace. At the time, Reagan was well known before this incident for telling Soviet/Russian jokes in televised debates, many of which have now been uploaded to video hosting websites. The joke was a parody of the opening line of that day's speech: Following his trip to Los Angeles in 1959 and being refused entry into Disneyland, on security grounds, a dejected Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev joked, ""...just now I was told that I could not go to Disneyland, I asked ""Why not?"" What is it, do"
"Joseph Goebbels announced the invasion to the waking nation in a radio broadcast with Hitler's words: ""At this moment a march is taking place that, for its extent, compares with the greatest the world has ever seen. I have decided today to place the fate and future of the Reich and our people in the hands of our soldiers. May God aid us, especially in this fight!"" Later the same morning, Hitler proclaimed to his colleagues, ""Before three months have passed, we shall witness a collapse of Russia, the like of which has never been seen in history."" Hitler also"
"World War II, the Japanese ambassador to Nazi Germany, General Hiroshi Oshima was well-informed on German military affairs. His reports went to Tokyo in Purple-enciphered radio messages. Examples include a comment that Hitler told him on June 3, 1941 that ""in every probability war with Russia cannot be avoided"". In July and August 1942 he toured the Russian front, and in 1944 the Atlantic Wall fortifications against invasion along the coasts of France and Belgium, and on September 4 that Hitler told him that Germany would strike in the West, probably in November. Since these messages were being read by"
"Yuri Levitan Yuri Borisovich Levitan (, 2 October 1914 – 4 August 1983) was the primary Soviet radio announcer during and after World War II. He announced on Radio Moscow all major international events in the 1940s–60s including the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the surrender of Germany on 9 May 1945, the death of Joseph Stalin on 5 March 1953, and the first manned spaceflight on 12 April 1961. Levitan was born to a Jewish family in Vladimir to a tailor and a housewife. In the early 1930s he traveled to Moscow hoping to"
"CIA's Chief of Soviet analysis said that even if the CIA had told the President, the NSC, and Congress about the cuts beforehand, it would have been ignored. ""We never would have been able to publish it."" All the CIA numbers on the USSR's economy were wrong. Too often the CIA relied on people inexperienced with that which they were supposed to be the expert on. Bob Gates had preceded Doug MacEachin as Chief of Soviet analysis, and he had never visited Russia. Few officers, even those stationed in country spoke the language of the people they were spying on."
"party co-founder Georgy Bovt wrote: State-controlled television revealed as little information as possible to the public about the fires and smog. Its primary goal was to prevent panic. This eerily reminded me of how the Soviet government reacted to the Chernobyl explosion in April 1986. In a similar manner, the authorities withheld information about the extent of the nuclear fallout to “avoid panic"". In some cases, no information about villages affected by wildfire was available for two weeks. Doctors from several medical institutions in Moscow, interviewed by an Interfax correspondent, acknowledged that medical professionals were now forbidden to make a"
"that? According to McFarlane, the president responded with ""genuine anxiety"" in disbelief that a regular NATO exercise could have led to an armed attack. To the ailing Politburo—led from the deathbed of the terminally ill Andropov, a man with no firsthand knowledge of the United States, and the creator of Operation RYaN—it seemed ""that the United States was preparing to launch ... a sudden nuclear attack on the Soviet Union"". In his memoirs, Reagan, without specifically mentioning Able Archer 83, wrote of a 1983 realization: Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top"
"of 1945. Even though the information submitted to higher headquarters did not lead to logical, tactical, strategic, and political decisions, communication intelligence cannot be blamed for the subsequent events. Once again the usual pattern of Russian radio communication unveiled itself in front of the eyes of the German spectators. German communication intelligence, by then an instrument capable of distinguishing the finest nuance, perceived once more all the unmistakable signs of an impending offensive. First, the arrival of army engineers and the deployment of artillery, heavy mortar, and rocket launcher units which prematurely revealed the points of main effort of the"
"changed to ""uncertain."" George Orwell, author of ""Animal Farm"" and ""Nineteen Eighty-Four"", wrote in 1946 that """"the Russian regime will either democratize itself or it will perish"""". He was regarded by US historian Robert Conquest as one of the first people who made such a prediction. According to a Conquest article published in 1969, ""In time, the Communist world is faced with a fundamental crisis. We can not say for certain that it will democratize itself. But every indication is that it will, as Orwell said, either democratize itself or perish...We must also, though, be prepared to cope with cataclysmic"
"the existence of such a speech. Stalin's alleged speech of 19 August 1939 This article covers a speech allegedly given by Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, on 19 August 1939 to members of the Politburo, wherein he supposedly described the strategy of the Soviet Union on the eve of World War II. The historicity of the speech is still the subject of academic debate. Plausible textual evidence of this speech found in various reputable archives has been academically studied and published, however no formal first-hand evidence of a Politburo ""meeting"" held on 19 August 1939 or the delivery"
"83. Gordievsky and other Warsaw Pact intelligence agents were extremely skeptical about a NATO first strike, perhaps because of their proximity to, and understanding of, the West. Nevertheless, agents were ordered to report their observations, not their analysis, and this critical flaw in the Soviet intelligence system—coined by Gordievsky as the ""intelligence cycle""—fed the fear of US nuclear aggression. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, who at the time was chief of the main operations directorate of the Soviet General Staff, told Cold War historian Don Orbendorfer that he had never heard of Able Archer. The lack of public Soviet response over Able"
"in 1949? And what use can the director in 1989 derive from knowledge of the prices of 1949? One of the founders of the USSR, later expelled by Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky devoted much of his time in exile to the question of the Soviet Union's future. In time, he came to believe that a new revolution was necessary to depose the nomenklatura and reinstate working class rule as the first step to socialism. In 1936 he made the following prediction: In 1941 Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany decided to attack the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa). In June 1941 the"
"propaganda out of the 1939 unpublished essay ""The Mystery of the Russian Revolution"" (on Dostoyevsky's ""Demons"" novel), bits and pieces thrown in. The researcher insists such speech could not have been broadcast in the late June: the couple resided in Biarritz and for an elderly person to give everybody a slip and somehow get to Paris was hardly probable. Adding to the confusion is the well-documented fact that Merezhkovsky has already made one speech mentioning Hitler and Joan of Arc in one breath. It happened in August 1940 at his 75th birthday celebration in Biarriz, and in a different context."
"Filipp Golikov Filipp Ivanovich Golikov, (Russian: Филипп Иванович Голиков; July 30, 1900 – July 29, 1980) was a Soviet military commander. He is best known for not taking seriously the abundant intelligence about Nazi Germany's plans for an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, either because he did not believe them or because Josif Stalin made it very clear he did not want to hear them. He was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1961. Golikov was born into a peasant at Borisova. His father served as a medical orderly with the garrison"
"""Unquestionable Facts of the War's Beginning"", where a speech by Zhdanov, one of Stalin's intimates, expressed that the Soviet Union had already started an ""aggressive foreign policy"" in 1939, with the decision to attack Finland. This article also mentions that the defense efforts of the Soviet Union were impeded by the prevailing aggressive thinking of the Soviet General Staff. These plans were extending to 1943 and to such an extent, that no effective measures against the German assault could be taken. Bunich does not at all intend to polish up the image of Adolf Hitler. His first intention is to"
"just after a Warsaw Pact meeting, and the country was on high alert for any surprise attacks. On September 26, 1983, in the aptly named 'Petrov Incident', Stanislav Petrov was an on-duty officer in a Soviet nuclear warning center where there was a purported launch of American nuclear missiles. Petrov opted not to alert the Soviet high command because the system malfunctioned indicating that the Soviets narrowly avoided war. Ronald Reagan's speech on March 23, 1983, outlaid the plan for ‘Star Wars’ which served to infuriate the Soviet Union, with Andropov proclaiming that the United States was continuing their search"
"in October 1938, where he made arrangements with Comintern chief Georgi Dimitrov to establish shortwave radio communications in the event that international conflict made direct communication impossible. No communications of this sort were made until late in September 1939, when the CPUSA's political line on the dramatically changed European situation would be specified. European geopolitics were fundamentally altered on August 23, 1939, when Foreign Ministers of the USSR and Nazi Germany formally signed a mutual non-aggression treaty known to history as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The agreement included secret protocols providing for the Nazi invasion and division of Poland. Germany's September"
"collective security, which was marked by the reported remark about an inevitable fourth partition of Poland made by Litvinov's deputy Vladimir Potemkin in a conversation with French ambassador Robert Coulondre shortly thereafter. The turn towards Germany could also have been made in early 1939, marked by Stalin's speech to the 18th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1939, shortly after the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, when he warned that the Western democracies were trying to provoke a conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union and declared the Soviet Union's non-involvement in inter-capitalist quarrels, which is"
"The Russians are coming ""The Russians are coming"" is a phrase attributed to United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in 1949. In full, Forrestal said ""The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. They're right around. I've seen Russian soldiers."" Forrestal allegedly uttered those words while suffering from mental illness, not long before purportedly committing suicide. The allegation originated with Forrestal's bitter political enemy, columnist Drew Pearson, and has been verified by no other person. This is what Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley have to say about the episode in their 1992 book, ""Driven Patriot, the Life and Times"
"forward to a war between Germany and Russia. The Labour Party leader Clement Attlee claimed in one political speech in 1937 that the National Government had connived at German rearmament ""because of its hatred of Russia"". British Communists, following the party line defined by Joseph Stalin, argued that appeasement had been a pro-Fascist policy and that the British ruling class would have preferred fascism to socialism. The Communist MP Willie Gallacher said that ""many prominent representatives of the Conservative Party, speaking for powerful landed and financial interests in the country, would welcome Hitler and the German Army if they believed"
"was to be the price of the Soviet alliance. On 2 June 1939, when the Soviet government offered up its definition of what constituted ""aggression"", upon which the intended alliance was to come into play, Bonnet sided with the Soviets against the British, who felt that the Soviet definition of ""aggression"", especially ""indirect aggression"" was too loose a definition and phrased in such a manner as to imply the Soviet right of inference in the internal affairs of nations of Eastern Europe. On 1 July 1939, in response to a message from the Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov about what"
"close"". (For a summary of Ticktin's approach, see Wikipedia's Stalinism entry.) David Fromkin wrote of Raymond Aron's prediction, I know of only one person who came close to getting it right: Raymond Aron, the French philosopher and liberal anti-Communist. In a talk on the Soviet threat that I heard him give in the 1980s at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he reminded the audience of Machiavelli's observation in ""The Prince"" that 'all armed prophets have conquered and all unarmed ones failed.' But what happens, Aron asked, if the prophet, having conquered and then ruled by force of"
"had directed them not to take opposition stances in 1944. The French communist party, as others, was then to redirect its mission to ""destroy capitalist economy"" and that the Soviet Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) would take control of the French Communist Party's activities to oppose the Marshall Plan. When they asked Zhdanov if they should prepare for armed revolt when they returned home, he did not answer. In a follow-up conversation with Stalin, he explained that an armed struggle would be impossible and that the struggle against the Marshall Plan was to be waged under the slogan of national independence."
"for an offensive in 1941. Vladimir Nevezhin Vladimir Nevezhin () is a Russian historian (""Doctor of History Sciences""), is working as a professor in Moscow, chief scientific collaborator at the ""Institute of Russian History"" (of the Russian Academy of Science) and member of the editorial board of the journal ""Отечественная история"" (""History of the Fatherland""). During the 1990s, he took part in the discussion and dispute over the pre-history of the Great Patriotic War. Nevezhin has analysed the content of Stalin's speeches, propagandistic directives in spring 1941 and notes of the contemporaries, drawing conclusions that the numerous documents unambiguously expressed"
"considering invading Poland from March 1939 onward, giving the orders for an invasion of Poland in May. On 13 March 1939 Scheliha reported to Moscow that he had conversation with one of Ribbentrop's aides, a Peter Kleist, who told him Germany would probably attack Poland sometime that year. In his reports to Moscow, Scheliha made clear that the ""Auswärtiges Amt"" had attempted to reduce Poland down to a German satellite in the winter of 1938-39, and the Poles had refused to play that role. At the same time, the chief Soviet spy in Japan, Richard Sorge had reported to Moscow"
"sign of this happening would be the rise of unknown Mikhail Gorbachev through the party ranks. A CIA analyst said that the presentation was fine, but there was no way the Soviet Union was going to break up in his lifetime or his children's lifetime. The analyst's name was Robert Gates. On the other hand, in hearings before the U.S. Senate on March 19, 1986, when Gates (then head of the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence) was asked ""what kind of work the Intelligence Community was doing to prepare policymakers for the consequences of change in the Soviet Union,"" he responded:"
"until 1946. The most influential spokesmen were Georgy Chicherin (1872–1936), Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951), Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986), Andrey Vyshinsky (1883–1954) and Andrei Gromyko (1909–1989). Intellectuals were based in the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. The Communist leadership the Soviet Union intensely debated foreign policy issues and change directions several times. Even after Stalin assumed dictatorial control in the late 1920s, there were debates and he frequently changed positions. The first stage (1917–1921), assumed that Communist revolutions would break out very soon in every major industrial country, and it was the Soviet responsibility to assist them. The Comintern was the weapon"