History Readings

In an unusual turn of events last week, a terror plot suspect's desire to talk to local media put him at odds with his attorneys and landed a Cincinnati television station in federal court.

Cornell is accused of plotting to attack the U.S. Capitol. The 20-year-old -- who claims in the interview that he is affiliated with ISIS -- was arrested on January 14, months after his social media habits and talk of jihad put him on the FBI's radar, according to court documents obtained by CNN at the time of his arrest.

"I would have took my gun," he said. "I would have put it to Obama's head. I would have pulled the trigger. Then I would unleash more bullets on the Senate and House of Representative members. And I would have attacked the Israeli Embassy and various other buildings full of Kafir who want to wage war against us Muslims."

In a military training class north of Kiev late last month, volunteer ­instructor Viktor Mosgovoi led 30 would-be officers through hours of jumps, breathing exercises and group massages — Ukraine’s first mandatory psychological training for recruits

Most of them followed along with blank looks or smirks on their faces. A few erupted into giggles. “Sing a song about what you see,” Mosgovoi suggested as a way to beat the battlefield blues. “And don’t drink.”

In nearly a quarter-century of independence, Ukraine’s military has seen so little combat that the country’s defense minister estimated the nation had only 6,000 battle-ready troops a year ago. Over the past 10 months, the Ukrainian army has drafted almost 70,000 soldiers in a war against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.

For the first time, Russians have the chance to examine the evidence surrounding the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family following the Russian Revolution almost 100 years ago.

He and his family and four members of staff were killed without trial by Bolsheviks in the early hours of 17 July 1918, in the cellar of a house in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

The remains of Nicholas, Alexandra and three of their five children were found in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Economic and social turbulence in Russia are the ramifications of the breakup of the planned economy and capitalist restoration

s the last decade of the 20th century was about to begin, gigantic events shook the so-called ‘socialist world’.

Economic and social turbulence in Russia are the ramifications of the breakup of the planned economy and capitalist restoration.

Few Germans question the achievements of the Iron Chancellor, as Bismarck was known

But many have come to associate him with the far right because of his politically authoritarian style of government and strong belief in nationhood.

He was embraced as a hero by Hitler

Thought the Soviet Union was anti-American? Try today’s Russia.

After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-U.S. bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say.

The anger is a challenge for U.S. policymakers seeking to reach out to a shrinking pool of friendly faces in Russia. And it is a marker of the limits of their ability to influence Russian decision-making after a year of sanctions.

Protesters in the Ukrainian capital have toppled a statue of Lenin

A crowd estimated to be hundreds of thousands strong gathered in central Kiev

protests against Mr Yanukovich's decision to reject a pro-EU association pact

Vladimir Putin never kept secret his intention to restore Russian power - what's less clear, he says, is how long the country's rise can continue.

If even leading Duma deputies couldn't remember the new prime minister's name, you couldn't blame the rest of the world if it didn't pay much attention to his speech. He was unlikely to head the Russian government for more than a couple of months anyway, so why bother?

That man was a former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin

It’s all in the face, apparently. Just check out that terrifying mug shot of Mohammad Atta, the so-called “ringleader” of the 19 hijackers who staged the 9/11 attacks. His face, wrote the novelist Martin Amis in a short story about Atta, was “gangrenous” and “almost comically malevolent.”

The idea that human evil is inscribed into the body and face of the criminal offender has deep rootsThe idea that human evil is inscribed into the body and face of the criminal offender has deep roots, and is in fact the animating throb behind modern scientific criminology and its founding document, Cesare Lombroso’s The Criminal Man, published in 1876

It is also an underlying assumption in much of the news coverage of the Kuwaiti-born Londoner Mohammed Emwazi, who was exposed recently as the ISIS executioner “Jihadi John.”

The thousands who marched in Moscow on Sunday in honor of the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov did so because they recognize just how much has been lost with his death. Nemtsov had been brave enough to tell the truth in Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

There is no evidence the Kremlin ordered Nemtsov's killing, and it would have as much to lose as to gain from such a public execution on one of the most closely surveilled sidewalks in Russia.

Nemtsov’s death may not change things in Russia; much of the population appears to be caught up in a nationalist fervor.

His killing has once again shaken the world of Russian politics and has shown just how sick it is with hatred, mistrust and intolerance -- even toward a former senior Russian official.

Many different theories concerning his murder have already been put forward, including an increasing number that point to the moral degeneracy of the people. It is difficult to shake the feeling that those who maligned Nemtsov while he was alive by, for example, publishing transcripts of his telephone conversations, continue that perverted abuse after his death.

However, the motives for the murder were never clarified: Investigators chose not to delve into the wilds of the complex relations between politicians and the St. Petersburg mafia. One line of inquiry that drew particular attention -- the theory that Vladimir Barsukov, the "dark lord" of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, was linked to the killing -- quickly fizzled out.

Under a near-constant barrage of artillery fire, Ukrainian forces and separatist rebels fought fierce street battles Tuesday for control of the strategic railway hub of Debaltseve, a battle impeding implementation of a peace plan.

Ukraine denied rebel claims to have taken control of the town but acknowledged the separatists had seized parts of it.

A key railroad junction between the separatist east's two main cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, Debaltseve has been the focus of fighting over the past two weeks and capturing it would be a prize for the Russia-backed rebels.

Russian military troops had taken control over Crime peninsula by blocking Ukrainian army and naval bases in March 2014. Now Russian efforts are underway to turn occupied Crimea into a 'giant military base'.

That's according to independent Crimean reporter Andriy Klymenko, who says the Kremlin soon plans to station 100,000 soldiers on the Black Sea peninsula, reports Unian

Women had stood shoulder to shoulder with men in the Russian Revolution of 1917, according to its leader Vladimir Lenin, and were said to be at the vanguard of the drive to build an equal society in the world’s first communist state; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Today, almost 25 years after the fall of the USSR, many problems faced by women across the post-Soviet states have a familiar ring in the west.

Though each country has formally expressed its commitment to equal rights, campaigners say they face a particularly tough job in many of the conservative, patriarchal societies that dominate the region, especially in those countries where the Kremlin’s family values agenda holds sway.

Rights groups worldwide celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on Sunday, as they commemorate women’s achievements and call for equality. But for an event championed by international nongovernment organizations and major global corporations, it may surprise some that IWD was borne out of the U.S. socialist movement in the early 20th century.

In 1917, Russian women went on strike for “bread and peace” in protest of the deaths of more than 2 million Russian soldiers in the war, according to the U.N. They demanded the end of czarism and Russian food shortages. After the Russian Revolution, the day was declared a holiday in the Soviet Union. From there, it was primarily celebrated in communist countries such as China.