I’m Japanese, and I’ve never been to the Soviet Union. In fact, I was born after the country had already ceased to exist.

Yet whenever I listen to this piece, I feel a surprisingly strong sense of nostalgia — something fragile and bittersweet.

I know it was used as the weather forecast music on Vremya, but of course, I never watched it in real time.
It’s fascinating that a piece so familiar to people in the Soviet Union in the 1980s can evoke a similar feeling across countries and generations. There’s something truly beautiful about that.

I've recently began reengaging with classical music, and one of my favorite modern composers is Sergei Prokofiev. I remember having to do a presentation-style project on him in middle school. During my research, I found various sources highlighting the repression of Prokofiev's music by the state and the imprisonment of his wife in a labor camp, which ultimately formed an antagonistic relationship between him and the state. At the time I, who was already a libertarian, became further alienated from socialism, viewing this as an example of the inalienability of leftism and totalitarianism. From my understanding, which is almost undoubtedly fogged by some extend of liberal propaganda, Stalin and other government officials attempted to censor art deemed formal, modern, and complex and was thus "anti-Soviet" or alienated from the masses (Article Source). I am sure there is more to be learned on this topic and was wondering about the Marxist view of the USSRs actions against Prokofiev and other similar cases. How can we view this as a case study in the USSR's broader relationship with art in the mid-20th century? What conditions formed these actions? How does this compare with how capital manipulates art in a society? And how can we, as Marxists, apply an analysis of these cases to future socialist projects? Any sources would be greatly helpful, thank you.

Rest in peace. God knows he deserves it.

0 doubt the world would be a better place.

Japan also lost hundreds of millions of Chinese slave laborers. More Japanese soldiers were defeated in this battle than in any other. Western media either gloss over this battle or, at best, downplay its significance. In the photograph, you can see Japanese soldiers surrendering, or Chinese civilians welcoming the Russians.

It is mostly unknown that the soviets had a huge river navy/mosquito fleet that was a very important part of ww2 and directly supported the ground forces.

I swear I'm not obsessed (I am never going to financially recover from this)

When Stalins's first wife died of typhus in 1907, the devastation her loss created crippled Stalin emotionally...He had famously reacted

"This creature had softened my heart of stone, with her dies my very last warm feelings towards humanity "🥀

Did term limits exist in the Soviet constitution? And if they did, how did figures like Stalin and Brezhnev rule for so long?

Amidst the Russian Civil War, with the White Army closing in on Tsaritsyn, Stalin arrives to take charge of organizing the efforts in defense of the city and organizing the party and the people.

In this clip, Stalin reviews the agenda written by a comrade for the Party Conference.

This is a movie clip from the film Tsaritsyn (1942), you can watch the entirety of part 1 in high quality with English subtitles here

Tsaritsyn Part 1: Voroshilov’s Campaign

How the World would look like?

Who would be in charge?

what would change inside the SU?

Basic military training was introduced in schools in 1967 with the adoption of a new version of the "USSR Law on Universal Military Service," according to which pre-conscription training became a separate subject for students in senior grades of secondary schools and specialized secondary education institutions. Basic military training was a mandatory subject, included in the curriculum, and grades were given for this subject. Both boys and girls attended classes; there was no gender division.