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BlogAnatoly Karlin Archive
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Soviet History
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Soviet History

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#BaltLivesMatter
•�November 7, 2015
•�600 Words •�71 Comments
Muh reparations! Muh slavery! This is nothing new. Demands for reparations have been issuing from the Baltics since the 1990s, the most energetic party typically being Latvia. Nothing will ever come of them, not least because Russia could always send them the bill for Soviet-era infrastructure and subsidized gas. Even so, cringeworthy whining regardless, do... Read More
Nobel Prize Winner Svetlana Alexievich Praised Cheka Founder Felix Dzerzhinsky
•�October 30, 2015
•�900 Words •�13 Comments
One of the consequences of selecting a literary nobody for the world's most prestigious intellectual prize is that people will begin digging into their biographies. And find some very, very interesting things. This is what has been happening in regards to 2015 Nobel Literature Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, whose main distinguishing feature seems to be... Read More
Cathedral Foreign Policy: My NRx Podcast with Surviving Babel and Nick B. Steves
•�July 11, 2015
•�1,200 Words •�13 Comments
Artwork by Vsevolod Ivanov. A few months ago, I had the pleasure of participating in an "Ascending the Tower" podcast produced by neoreactionary luminaries Surviving Babel and Nick B. Steves. We talked about foreign policy, especially as it pertains to Russia, modern European and American history, the rise of Western universalism, neocons, and the Ukrainian... Read More
On Defending the Soviet Union
•�July 12, 2012
•�1,100 Words •�197 Comments
Contrary to what some might try to take from my post on the longterm failure of the Soviet economy, I am not an anti-Soviet ideologue. I loathe lies about its achievements and the blanket condemnations directed its way by moralistic poseurs every bit as much or more than I detest reality-challenged attempts to paint it... Read More
Russian Anti-Semitism, or Just Affirmative Action In Action?
•�June 29, 2012
•�1,200 Words •�14 Comments
While writing this post on Da Russophile about why Russians do not (for the most part) hate Jews - a post that will also be of interest to AKarlin readers - I came across very interesting historical data on literacy and educational accomplishment by ethnic groups in the USSR. Per 100 people of respective nationality... Read More
Ayn Stalin: Soviet Inequalities In 1929-1954
•�June 24, 2012
•�500 Words •�14 Comments
While researching my article on Soviet economic performance relative to the US (it was bad), I came across this fascinating graph showing income inequality in the USSR since 1946. As you can see, the 10% richest Soviet citizens in the first postwar year were more than seven times as rich as the 10% poorest. That... Read More
The Soviet Economy - Charting Failure
•�June 22, 2012
•�1,600 Words •�143 Comments
Many Communists, leftists, and even patriots (I'm sorry to say) have a pronounced tendency to make out the Soviet economy as not quite the resounding failure it really was - or even to paint it as a success story that was only brought down by perestroika and liberal reforms. The above chart - based on... Read More
The Transition 20 Years On: the Reckoning
•�March 10, 2010
•�3,000 Words •�17 Comments
It is now nearly 20 years since market reformers began liberalizing the economies of Eastern Europe, or as some smart-ass put it, trying to revive the fish in the centrally planned fish stews. These stews, cooked to diverse recipes from goulash socialism to Soviet "structural militarization", were subjected to a wide spectrum of overlapping treatments... Read More
Defending the Loop
•�November 24, 2009
•�1,600 Words •�4 Comments
Following my posting of Russia's Sisyphean Loop, the influential East-Central Europe expert, Vlad Sobell, wrote up an interesting critique at the Untimely Thoughts Russia Discussion Group. It addresses what may be considered some weak, or at least not thoroughly explained, points from the original article, so I thought it would be useful to reproduce it... Read More
Russia's Sisyphean Loop
•�November 17, 2009
•�15,900 Words •�6 Comments
Anatoly Karlin @ www.DaRussophile.com PDF version | DOC version Russia’s Sisyphean Loop The Eternal Return to the Future? In this article I attempt to explain Russia’s historical cycles of failed Westernization and to project its future socio-political trajectory. First, I note the nature of and linkages between Russia’s geography, cultural traditions and imperial cycles. Second,... Read More
Review of "Moscow War Diary" by Alexander Werth
•�October 16, 2009
•�2,100 Words •�3 Comments
Review of "Moscow War Diary" (A. Werth) Werth, Alexander – Moscow War Diary (1942) Category: history, Soviet Union, WW2; Rating: 4/5 Soviet Resilience under Fire On 22nd June 1941, the armed columns of Nazi Germany began rolling into Russia, heralding the start of the Great Patriotic War. For Alexander Werth, a correspondent for the British... Read More
Review of "Behind the Urals" by John Scott
•�September 3, 2009
•�2,000 Words •�8 Comments
Scott, John – Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel (1941) Category: history, Soviet Union, Stalin; Rating: 5/5 The Great Depression of the 1930’s, with its iconic images of well-dressed bourgeoisie in soup lines and gaunt figures with hopeless eyes from the Dust Bowl, challenged the prior American consensus that their... Read More
Is the US In 2009 Like the USSR In 1989?
With increasing signs of economic collapse, military overstretch and political problems, is the US doomed to go the way...
•�February 26, 2009
•�4,700 Words •�8 Comments
Inspired in no small part by the political charade over the bail-outs and boondoggles that plague the TV screens and electronic ether, I've compiled a top 10 list of ways in which the US increasingly resembles the collapsing Soviet Union for your information / despair / entertainment / Schadenfreude / ridicule / etc. A list... Read More
"Soviet History" Items Across Entire Archive
Anatoly Karlin
About Anatoly Karlin

I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.

One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.

Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.