Thanks, Steve! More pieces of many puzzles!
When Stalin died (~82 years old?) under extremely anomalous circumstances, he was apparently well into preparations for what would have been his greatest purge : Jews. Thus, the "Machiavelli on X @TheRISEofROD" blog comment that you provided fits my theme "Consumed by Monsters of our own making", as listed further below. I think I saw the Soviet purge of Jews tip-off in :
- Edvard Radzinski 1997
"Stalin: the first in-depth biography based on explosive new documents from Russia's secret archives" 1996 Doubleday division of Random House, 1997 1st edition by Anchor Books, 607pp ISBN 0-385-47954-9
Also in need of searching : for which area did Nikita Krichev famously request "Please sir, I want 5,000 more" (phrase adapated from Charles Dicken's "Oliver Twist") during a great purge?
- I wonder if this was in the Ukraine, and if the purge occured during the
Holomodore (~1931-35?, when the "Dirty 30's" also hit the North American Great Plains, probably the Ukraine-Russia, and regions of China) or during the great purge of ?1937-39?
- Apparently Kruschev was far from front-running to replace Stalin.
So in order to get the votes, Kruschev offered Ukrainians the band of territory ~200 km thick bordering the Black Sea, and became the Soviet ?Premier? (including Crimea, which was ?Tartar, not Ukrainian, at the time)?
- Very topical right now for the Ukrain-Russia war is Odessa and the delta of the Danube.
Stalin made this a priority, and gaves Russia a potential choke on shipping in [mid, Eastern] Europe. To me, it makes tiotal sense for Russia to ensure Ukrainian over-focus on the [Sucha, Eastern] regions, and prepare the taking of [Odessa, Danube], which went badly at the start of the Feb2022-present war. A Russian map-based youTube commentator recently speculated about this.
The not-yet completed WWII "revisionist" history project of Dad and I was leading into your information. I was also starting to build additional [concept, script]s for the following script sections :
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt - hero and traitor:
Roosevelt and his "quasi-dictatorial [colleague, civil servant]s" basically rebuilt Russia, China] post-Barbarossa, ostensibly to use Russia as the main [bulwark, killer] of Germany (this worked wonderfully!), but deeper strategies (possibly unbeknownst to the "puppet" Roosevelt, whiose family's fortune was apparently from an uncle's"Opium Wars" activities in China.
- "Consumed by Monsters of our own making":
inspired by the long-time Jewish pogrom history, including [?McAbee? rebellion against Rome, Black death, Holocaust]. However, with time I felt this has very general application, from individuals to civilisations.
- China's Mao was [pick, select]ed by Stalin?:
perhaps partially for this love of [torture, murder] of [individual, group, city, region, country]s? A "take control" type of guy.
- Note that the LibreWrite ".odt" format is readable in Microsoft Word in spite of it's initial complaints.
We had intended to produce a series of 10 main videos, but I gave up when it took me 1-3 months to do ~1 minutes of very simple animation ([pan, zoom] WWI military maps), and I feared how long it would take to do the whole series of videos. Dad also could no long [write, concentrate] and didn't have the energy to continue.
Our overall theme was catalysed by finding (thanks to Robert Orr of National Archives in Ottawa) :
Mom's Jewish friend ?Natalie Gavore? echoed the [Russian, Jewish] disapora in China. At some point she emmigrated to Sydney, but stayed in Calgary for a couple of years when Mom met her. Mom & I met her in Sydney after she returned there. She died there a few years later.
Bill Howell, Bill@BillHowell.ca 1-587-707-2027
Member of Hussar Lion's Club & Sundowners, (retired from volunteer FireFighters Jan2021)
http://www.BillHowell.ca/
(Your browser should show my root webSite directory, except [Windows, possibly Apple] browsers which may unfortunately force a webPage view.)
http://www.BillHowell.ca/home.html (start webPage browsing)
P.O. Box 299, Hussar, Alberta, T0J1S0
(please note that the hackers also had access to my webSite, and may have changed that. I haven't had the time to check it yet, as it would take far too long to fix at this time anyways.
18Feb2025, first posted 2 webPages describing my experiences :