What's new? (Recent additions to the Cyber-USSR) [updated 20030307]
Skip ahead to Cyber-USSR index.

The following recommended optional background music selections have been put in (quick-loading) MIDI format by Comrade P.K. Volkov of VOkSovProlKompMuz.:
Play L. Revutskii's "Song about Stalin."
Play A. V. Aleksandrov's "Living Has Gotten Better."
Check music index for these and other selections, with words and musical scores.

Mission statement

Due to events too painful even to think about, the earthly USSR no longer exists. Nevertheless, wherever progressive people meet, there will remain the USSR of our fond aspirations, a realm where no kulak goes un-liquidated, no five-year-plan goes un-overfulfilled, and no Great Leader and Teacher goes un-venerated. This land of our dreams exists on the Internet, the Cyber-USSR (po-russki: Kiberneticheskii Soyuz S.S.R.)

We are looking for Soviet kitsch and oddities, especially from the Stalin era.

Do you have links to or knowledge of:

comically obsequious Stalin flattery?
What was Stalin's favorite song? ("Suliko," according the film "Inner Circle" [1991])
What other of his likes and dislikes were reported to adoring fans?

Chekist trivia? (NKVD, KGB, etc)
Did they have their own songs?
flattering plays and films?

What's new? Recent additions and changes to the Cyber USSR.
Press releases

Index of background songs, with words and musical scores
1936-1938, the Golden Age of Applied Socialism!
Later years (1939-1953)
N.I. Yezhov
I.V. Stalin
Pavlik Morozov
songs and films


The "Internationale"
25 Soviet favorites

literature [980509]

Karl Marx, "The Communist Manifesto"

"Workers of all nations, unite!"

A glossary of ideologically-correct insults

Education
Philosophy -- Atheism, of course!
Russian antiquities
Saltychikha
Pobedonostsev

Archives of the Cyber-USSR (not available yet)
Some sources used in this site
Correspondents
Index by topic (incomplete)

1936-1938: The Golden Age of Applied Socialism!

"Utro Nashej Rodiny" ("The Morning of Our Motherland," 1948), by F.S. Shurpin.
A radiant Great Leader and Teacher stands in the foreground of a prosperous collective farm and countryside. Some info on the artist and a larger copy of the painting are available at this site:

Never have so many enjoyed such glorious opportunities for rapid advancement, as the Great Leader and Teacher instructed N.I. Yezhov to create new vacancies!

Never in human history has anyone ever been so unanimously loved by His people (apart from a few Trotsky-fascist scum who aren't allowed to vote anyways) as the Great Architect of Socialism! Don't forget to vote for your deputy to the Supreme Soviet on 12 Dec 1937!

Never in human history has any people been led by such a brilliant galaxy of talent as our Politburo (apart from two traitors who would shortly be unmasked and liquidated)!

The world's most enthusiastic workers know the fruits of their labor come directly back to them, rather than filling the money-bags of capitalist exploiters! Their enthusiasm is naturally helped by the world's most advanced labor laws.

In 1936, Comrade Stalin brought us the freest Constitution in the world. A site with the Russian original has disappeared but an English translation is still available.

Our own writers, eg M. Gor'kij and Dzhambul, are joined in admiration of our new civilization by the leading intellectuals of all foreign countries, including among many others,

Andre Gide
Theodore Dreiser
The Right Reverend Hewlett Johnson
Lion Feuchtwanger
George Bernard Shaw
Romain Rolland
Walter Duranty
W.E.B. DuBois
H.G. Wells

later:


Frédéric Joliot-Curie

We have the world's

most brilliant chessmasters
most intrepid pilots
most loyal composers (despite occasional slanderous claims to the contrary)
Dmitri Shostakovich
and most ideologically advanced scientists

T.D. Lysenko

Even many foreign capitalists have been forced by our achievements to overcome class prejudices.
U.S. Ambassador Joseph E. Davies intercedes for I.B.M. (1937)

Inspiring anniversaries are listed in a calendar for 1941
The dates are described in both Russian and English.

The Great Patriotic War (1941-1945)

The fascist Himmler admits that Comrade Stalin was correct to remove the traitor Tukhachevsky.

The glorious Red Army contributed much more than Western armies to the defeat of Hitler.

Comrade Stalin's victory toast to the Russian people

The Cold War

2 US Progressives endorse the Mindzenty trial (1949)

The struggle against rootless cosmopolitanism

Articles we hope to post (at least in part) in the future. We have them in our possession, but typing them in takes time, and most of the print is not good enough for scanning.
From a decree of the Central Committee (CC) of the Party, 14 August 1946, "O Zhurnalax «Zvezda» i «Leningrad»" ["About the journals 'Zvezda' and 'Leningrad'"].
The CC reprimands literary authorities for allowing the publication in Leningrad of ideologically harmful authors, eg Mikhail Zoshchenko ("Adventures of a Monkey") and Anna Akhmatova. This was one of the first public steps in efforts to regain control, after a certain slackness appeared during the Great Patriotic War. These efforts are sometimes associated with A.A. Zhdanov.


From "Pravda," Friday 28 Jan 1949, p. 3
«Ob odnoj antipatrioticheskoj gruppe teatral'nyx kritikov» ("About one antipatriotic group of theater critics")
Available in both English and Russian.

F. Golovenchenko, «Vysoko derzhat' znamya sovetskogo patriotizma v iskusstve i literature» ["Hold High the Banner of Soviet Patriotism in Art and Literature"], Bol'shevik #3, 15 fevralya 1949(?) g., str. 39-48.

F. Chernov, «Burzhuaznyj kosmopolitizm i ego reakcionnaya rol'» ["Bourgeois Cosmopolitanism and Its Reactionary Role"], Bol'shevik #5, 15 marta 1949 g., str. 30-41.
If readers substitute "globalization" for "cosmopolitanism" in this article, they will appreciate the timelessness of the Party's wisdom.

V.V. Danilevskij, editor, Iz Istorii Otechestvennoj Texniki: Issledovaniya i Materialy [From the History of Technology in the Fatherland: Investigations and Materials], Leningrad, 1950.

Published explicitly to "overcome the ever more common slavishness and groveling before all things foreign, for the nurturing of a powerful Soviet patriotism" (p. 3), this volume claims Russian primacy in numerous inventions that would surprise many eg. airplanes. Such claims provoked amusement in the West at the time, eg the Boston Herald's cartoonist Francis W. Dahl featured a Russian inventor named Reg.u.s. Pat.off.
So far, we have the table of contents, introduction, and a few excerpts available.

The Doctors' Plot (1953)
In 1952, Comrade Stalin's personal physician Vladimir Vinogradov diagnosed Comrade Stalin to be at risk of a stroke [he eventually turned out to be correct], and was foolhardy enough to recommend "Complete rest, freedom from all work." Comrade Stalin, recognizing a conspiracy to remove Him from power and betray the Motherland to imperialism, ordered a clean sweep of Vinogradov and just about every other leading doctor in Moscow, especially those with rootless-cosmopolitan names.

"Pravda" article reports arrest of "killer-doctors", 13 Jan 1953 (English translation)
Russkij tekst (original Russian text)

Nikolaj Gribachev, «Oshchipannyj «Dzhojnt»» ["JDC plucked"] in Krokodil, 1953 #5, p. 10.
Despite the title, this article says relatively little about the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Instead, it puts the Zionist Doctor's Plot in the worldwide context of American imperialist aggression.
Russkij tekst. (original Russian text)

Biographical information about N.I. Yezhov:

Authorized version
Counterrevolutionary version
Flattering Soviet cartoon of N.I. Yezhov

Professional achievements of N.I. Yezhov:

"The Case of the Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre", the Moscow trials official court proceedings, August 19-24, 1936.
"Kirov"-- a screenplay by Oliver Stonesky (not to be confused with "JFK" director Oliver Stone ). How N.I. Yezhov saved the Soviet people from catastrophe!

Description of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1934 version), used by N.I. Yezhov to prosecute "enemies of the people" (1936-39).

Text of Section 58 ("Counterrevolutionary Crimes") of the 1934 Criminal Code,
in English and Russian.

The "Song about Stalin" -- words and musical score.
Many of the Great Leader and Teacher's works are available at this site

http://gate.cruzio.com/~marx2mao/Stalin/Index.html

A small photo gallery.
Flattery, in English and Russian [revised 980820].
Some outrageous slander by Osip Mandelshtam.

This delightful cherub denounced his father to the secret police, and was adopted as a patron saint by the "Young Pioneers" (the Soviet equivalent to the "Boy Scouts").

D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education)-- According to an article by James Brovard in the "Washington Post" (29 Jan 94), D.A.R.E. "education" materials from time to time incite US children to inform on parents they suspect of drug possession.

Denounce an enemy of the people!

The text of the "Internationale" was originally composed in French by Eugene Pottier (1871) to celebrate the Paris Commune, and set to music later (1888) by Pierre DeGeyter.
Six stanzas is too long for all but the most committed singers.
The Russian text uses stanzas 1,2 and 6, as does the German.

In the French original, note the last two lines of stanza 5: [government warmongers] "will soon learn that our bullets are for our own generals." This obviously was unsuitable for the Soviet national anthem of 1918-1943. Nevertheless, one foreign cynic (whose name escapes me) noted how appropriate it was to Stalin's slaughter of his general staff in the Tukhachevsky affair (1937).

Various languages, including Russian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and English are available at this site.

Jerry Engelbach has made a PDF-format musical score of the "Internationale" available at URL:
mus/internationale_pno_arr.pdf
He may also be willing to e-mail copies to those who are interested (music@jerry engelbach.com).

A collection of 25 Soviet-era favorites unfortunately seems to have dropped off-line . For what it might be worth, we keep a Latin transcription of the songs formerly available.

The "Internet Modern History Sourcebook" at Fordham University offers the words and a RealAudio recording of "Ça ira", a favorite anthem of the French Revolution (1792-1796).


Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,	We will win, we will win, we will win!
Les aristocrates à la lanterne	Take the aristocrats to the lamppost!
Ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira,	We will win, we will win, we will win!
Les aristocrates on les pendra	The aristocrats will be hanged!