Kuril Islands: Japan & Russia in 1945

“In 1945, two days after America bombed Hiroshima, Joseph Stalin declared war on Japan and Soviet troops attacked Japanese-held territory. They grabbed the southern Kuril islands, even though Russia had acknowledged them as Japanese since 1855. For two years the islanders lived alongside the occupiers. A touching photograph in an exhibition in Nemuro shows Russians… Read More

Statistics: One in a Million…

“A single death is a tragedy, a million is just a statistic.” Joseph Stalin (1878 to 1953) Joseph Stalin, Russian in full Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, original name (Georgian) Ioseb Dzhugashvili, secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922 to 1953) and premier of the Soviet state (1941 to 1953), who for a quarter… Read More