Soviet Union

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Trump Wanted to Be Ambassador to USSR: Report

Nobel Prize winner met with Trump in 1986 to talk about Soviet leader

(Newser) - Donald Trump, already showing signs of "Russia mania," planned to ask President Reagan for an ambassadorship to the Soviet Union so he could negotiate nuclear disarmament. Or so a 95-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner tells the Hollywood Reporter in an exclusive interview. Bernard Lown, who invented the defibrillator,...

Taste for Beer May Be Saving Lives of Russian Men

Brief booze crackdown in 1980s got young men to shift away from vodka

(Newser) - Russian men have an unfortunate tradition of drinking themselves to an early death. As bleak as the number are—life expectancy for Russian men was 65 in 2012, compared with 76 in the US and 74 for China, notes Quartz —researchers have spotted improvement of late. And oddly, they...

Sharapova Used Same Drug as Soviet Troops in the '80s

Soldiers took meldonium for stamina while fighting in Afghanistan

(Newser) - The drug at the center of Maria Sharapova's doping case was regularly given to Soviet troops in the 1980s to boost their stamina while fighting in Afghanistan, the AP reports. The tennis star said Monday she failed a doping test at the Australian Open in January for meldonium, which...

Putin Bashes 'Delirious' Soviet Founder Lenin

Says Lenin placed 'time bomb' under Russian state

(Newser) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday criticized Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, accusing him of placing a "time bomb" under the state and sharply denouncing brutal repressions by the Bolshevik government. The harsh criticism of Lenin, who's still revered by communists and many others in Russia, is unusual (though...

US Releases 'Grim' List of Nuclear Targets

US would have targeted population centers in war with Soviet Union

(Newser) - "Grim and frankly appalling." That's how one expert describes a recently declassified list of potential US targets in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, the New York Times reports. The list titled “Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959" was written by the Air Force in...

How 1st Woman in Space Nearly Never Returned

Her spacecraft was programmed to go up but not come down

(Newser) - Fifty-two years after becoming the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova reflected on her historic trip and how she very nearly never returned. When the Soviet Union launched Vostok 6 in 1963, cosmonaut Tereshkova exclaimed, "Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way!" the BBC...

WWII Bomber, Crew Emerge From Polish River

Soviet plane went down in tributary of Bzura River in 1945

(Newser) - The remains of a Soviet fighter-bomber plane and two crew members shot down by Germans in 1945 have been found in a river in central Poland amid extremely low water levels associated with a drought. Explorers made the find in the muddy tributary of the Bzura River, near the village...

'Soviet Spy' Ethel Rosenberg May Have Been Innocent

Ethel Rosenberg's brother defended her a year before her conviction

(Newser) - The newly released 1950 grand jury testimony of David Greenglass , who helped cement the executions of his brother-in-law and sister Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, offers new evidence that Ethel was innocent in the most intense spying case of the Cold War. Both Rosenbergs were convicted of conspiring to steal atomic...

Polish Dig Unearths Decades of Killings

 Polish Dig Unearths 
 Decades of Killings 
in case you missed it
Oct 11, 2014 10:57 AM CDT

Polish Dig Unearths Decades of Killings

Discovery of hundreds of bodies prompts little conversation

(Newser) - Polish authorities have been digging up remains behind a prison in the city of Bialystok—and the 280 bodies discovered so far offer a grim reminder of an array of painful periods in the early 20th century. Many of the dead were killed under Nazi or Soviet control, but others...

Papers: Kissinger Made Plan to 'Smash' Cuba

Infuriated secretary of state sought airstrikes because of Angola incursion

(Newser) - The co-author of a new book about negotiations between the US and Cuba says Henry Kissinger was the secretary of state who tried the hardest, in secret, to establish normal relations with Havana, NPR reports. So when Castro launched a military mission in Angola in late 1975, Kissinger was "...

Alaskans Were Trained as Secret Agents Against Soviets

Fisherman, trappers called on in operation 'Washtub'

(Newser) - In the 1950s, the US feared a Russian invasion via Alaska—so the government trained regular folks, from fishermen to trappers, as secret agents. The plan involved coordination by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, the CIA, and the military, the AP reports based on hundreds of partially-redacted documents obtained via...

How Howard Hughes Helped CIA Hunt a Sunken Sub

The public believed he was crazy enough to do it

(Newser) - Howard Hughes: billionaire, aviator, engineer … and CIA asset? Yep. Hughes once provided the necessary cover for a secret operation codenamed Project AZORIAN, in which the CIA tried to retrieve a Soviet sub from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean without anyone being the wiser, the Houston Chronicle reports. The...

US Troops Carried 'Backpack Nukes' for 25 Years

Elite units were trained to use these weapons on battlefields

(Newser) - The US kept quite an arsenal of nuclear bombs and missiles during the Cold War, but not everyone knows about its plans to use "backpack nukes," reports the Smithsonian via Foreign Policy . Elite troops learned to use the bombs—called B54 Special Atomic Demolition Munitions (SADMs)—in case...

This Is the World&#39;s Tallest Abandoned Structure
 This Is the 
 World's Tallest 
 Abandoned 
 Structure 
in case you missed it
Jun 29, 2013 12:57 PM CDT

This Is the World's Tallest Abandoned Structure

Meet the leaning (TV) tower of Yekaterinburg

(Newser) - It's not the kind of engineering milestone that anyplace wants to have, but the Russian city of Yekaterinburg has learned to live with it—the world's tallest abandoned structure. As kuriositas.com explains, the 720-foot tower that dominates the landscape is actually a half-finished TV tower. Soviet engineers...

Congressman Likens Sex-Ed to Soviet Police State

Louie Gohmert of Texas thinks the government should keep out

(Newser) - It's not the fact that Republican Louie Gohmert of Texas voiced his opposition to sex education that's making headlines. It's the eyebrow-raising parallel he drew with the old Soviet Union that has triggered stories at sites such as Roll Call and Right Wing Watch . In his podcast...

Soviet Soldier Found in Afghanistan—33 Years On

Rifleman now practices herbal medicine

(Newser) - Veterans' groups trying to track down the 264 Soviet soldiers still listed as missing in Afghanistan have scratched one off the list. Bakhretdin Khakimov, a rifleman who went missing months after the 1979 Soviet invasion, has been found living among Afghans in the western province of Herat, the BBC reports....

What's World War II? Siberian Family Lived Isolated for 40 Years

Smithsonian recounts tale of geologists finding them in 1978

(Newser) - Smithsonian has a fascinating story about a family of six that lived deep in the Siberian wilderness for 40 years with zero contact from other humans until geologists found them in 1978. Meaning they missed, among other things, all of World War II. The father, who belonged to a...

Man Honors Protester by Setting Fire to Himself

Czech man commemorates one immolation with another

(Newser) - A man set himself on fire in Prague today, apparently to commemorate a student who died by self-immolation there some 44 years ago, Reuters reports. Today's incident occurred in front of the National Museum in Wenceslas Square, where a Czech 36-year-old set fire to his jacket and had it...

Soviet Spy Under FDR Likely Set Off Pearl Harbor

Harry White subtly influenced policy on Japan

(Newser) - Not all of us know about the Soviet mole who apparently inspired the attack on Pearl Harbor. Harry White was a top Treasury official in FDR's government when he began leaking information to Russian intelligence in the 1930s, reports Time . His Russian handler, Vitalii Pavlov, had one goal in...

Fidel Castro Had Secret Nukes: Transcript

But Soviets removed the tactical nukes after relations soured

(Newser) - Think the threat of a nuclear Cuba ended with the Cuban Missile Crisis? Apparently not—because the Soviets had only removed their medium-range nuclear missiles under US pressure in November of 1962, and left about 100 tactical nukes unknown to the United States, Foreign Policy reports. But the Soviets decided...

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