The Two Hinkleys

TESTS SET FOR MAN CHARGED IN THREAT

By JOSEPH B. TREASTER

Published: April 9, 1981

A Federal judge yesterday ordered a psychiatric examination for the 22-year-old unemployed man who was charged in Manhattan Tuesday with threatening to kill President Reagan. Other authorities said the man had indicated he was motivated to commit violence by a ''prophetic dream.''

The accused man, Edward M. Richardson of Drexel Hill, Pa., told of the dream in a letter that was delivered to Jodie Foster, the actress, at Yale University last Monday, Federal law enforcement officials said.

In the letter, Mr. Richardson indicated that in the dream he had received instructions to kill the President from John W. Hinckley Jr., the 25-year-old man who has been charged with attempting to assassinate Mr. Reagan in Washington on March 30.

''I will finish what Hinckley started,'' the letter said in part, according to the law enforcement officials. 'A Wave of Assassins'

''RR must die,'' the letter continued. ''He (JWH) has told me so in a prophetic dream. Sadly though, your death is also required. You will suffer the same fate as Reagan and others in his fascist regime. You cannot escape. We are a wave of assassins throughout the world.''

A number of parallels between Mr. Richardson and Mr. Hinckley have emerged. Both had apparently been captivated by the 18-year-old Miss Foster, the star of such films as ''Taxi Driver'' and ''Carny.'' Both stayed briefly at the Park Plaza Hotel in New Haven and sent letters to Miss Foster. Both had recently lived in Lakewood, Colo., just outside Denver. Both had been unable to find work and appeared to have been drifting around the country with little purpose in the weeks before they allegedly took action against the President.

But Federal authorities reiterated yesterday that they had found no evidence that the two men had ever met. Furthermore, the authorities said that Secret Service agents administered a polygraph, or lie detector, test to Mr. Richardson, which indicated he had no connection with Mr. Hinckley.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Washington said yesterday afternoon it still had been unable to learn where Mr. Richardson obtained the gun he was carrying when he was arrested. Gun Sold March 20

But in an interview, Paul Eichenberg, a gunsmith at the Llanerch Gun Shop in Drexel Hill, two miles from the modest white house where Mr. Richardson lived with his parents, said that Mr. Richardson had purchased a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson with a four-inch barrel from the shop on March 20, 10 days before the attack on President Reagan for which Mr. Hinckley has been charged. Mr. Eichenberg said Mr. Richardson paid ''$80 to $85'' for the used weapon made in ''the 1930's or earlier,'' and picked it up on March 27.

In addition to the letter that was delivered to Miss Foster, the police and Secret Service agents found two other letters Tuesday morning in Room 608 at the Park Plaza, where Mr. Richardson had been staying since the previous Friday. One of the letters repeated the name ''Jodie'' over and over followed by ''I love you.''

On Mr. Richardson's first evening in New Haven, four days after the attack on President Reagan, he attended a performance of a play, ''Getting Off,'' in which Miss Foster plays the role of a tough woman recently released from prison, the New Haven police said. He saw the show for a second time on the next evening, the police said. Letters Left at Hotel

In the other letter found at hotel, Mr. Richardson said he was leaving for Washington ''to bring to completion Hinckley's reality.'' ''Ultimately,'' the letter continued, ''Ronald Reagan will be shot to death and this country turned to the Left.'' The letters in the hotel had been left in plain view on a night table, along with three .32-caliber cartridges. They were discovered by a maid shortly after Mr. Richardson left the hotel without paying his bill. He was arrested in the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan a few hours later, armed with a loaded .32-caliber revolver.

In Federal District Court in Manhattan yesterday, Mr. Richardson, the son of a retired postman, appeared alert and calm as Judge David N. Edelstein ordered his psychiatric examination and directed that the study be carried out by Dr. Stanley L. Portnow, a forensic psychiatrist at the New York University Medical School.

When Judge Edelstein asked if Mr. Richardson had any questions, the young man responded in a firm but polite voice: ''You honor, I just ask the court to bear with me and try to understand who I am and what I believe.''

Mr. Richardson said nothing further to explain his request. The judge replied, ''I'll do my best.'' At Upper Darby High School, Jean Smith, an English teacher, recalled Mr. Richardson as one of her favorite students. He had graduated in 1976 and returned to visit her last spring.

He seemed ''disconnected from reality,'' then, Miss Smith said. ''He was incoherent,'' she continued, ''He seemed to have lost the thread of his life. He seemed lost. He didn't seem aggressive and hostile.'' ---- Another Arrested in a Threat

RALEIGH, N.C., April 8 (AP) - A man convicted of threatening to kill Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford was arrested today on charges of threatening to assassinate President Reagan, the Raleigh police said.

The man, Harry Thomas Smith, 34 years old, of Siler City, allegedly told an off-duty Raleigh police officer last night at the Greyhound bus terminal that ''President Reagan won't live long ... if I get my hands on him,'' according to James Blackburn, the United States Attorney.

After spending 15 of her 18 years in the glare of show business, Jodie Foster desperately wanted to be just an ordinary college freshman. Her choice of schools was not that surprising. With its mock-Gothic spires, ivied courts and boola-boola spirit, Yale has always seemed like a Hollywood version of a tranquil college campus. Foster, by all accounts, was eager to shuck the nymphet roles she had developed in movies for the studious life of an Ivy Leaguer. "Yale actually invited me—little smog-ridden me—to sink my blond teeth into its dusty brick and ivy," she joked in an article she wrote for Esquire last fall. "I'm trading my lifeguard shades for that good ol' New Haven grime." 

Armed with an Olympia electric portable, a reading lamp and her dream of normalcy, Foster came East to the Connecticut campus last September—and, except for the fact that she paid the $9,000 tuition, room and board fee out of her formidable acting earnings, she began doing a creditable interpretation of an average Jane College. After an initial period of discreet gawking, Foster's fellow Yalies quietly decided to accept the star of Taxi Driver and The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane as one of their own. 

Then, cruelly, the bullets that threatened the lives of President Reagan and three other men in Washington two weeks ago also shattered Jodie's academic idyll. The disturbing suggestion that alleged assailant John Hinckley Jr. may have been motivated by an erotomanic obsession with Foster so exposed the 18-year-old to the spotlight of public attention that Yale's appalled President A. Bartlett Giamatti called it "an ancillary horror to what happened in Washington." Foster has been forced to leave her dorm temporarily for more secure quarters and to accept plainclothes protection. Then, in yet another bizarre twist, 22-year-old Edward Michael Richardson, who according to the Secret Service shared Hinckley's obsession with Foster, was arrested last week in Manhattan while carrying a loaded handgun. He was charged with threatening the President's life and reportedly had written a letter to Foster. Federal prosecutors said Richardson also admitted to telephoning a bomb threat, demanding the release of Hinckley, that caused a brief evacuation of Foster's dorm. Understandably, as the pressure has mounted, Jodie has missed classes. "She can't do her work, it's really too much," one friend reports. Says Yale junior Artie Isaac: "Everybody here feels sorry for her." 

John Hinckley's particular motivation may never be understood (see following story). A family acquaintance has pointed out that his mother's nickname is Jodie and that Foster bears a striking resemblance to Mrs. Hinckley when she was young. In any case, Hinckley has haunted Foster for months. Last fall he wrote to screenwriter Paul Schrader, author of Taxi Driver, the 1976 film about a crazed cabbie (Robert De Niro) who tries to assassinate a political candidate to prove his love for a teenage prostitute, played by Foster. In the letter, which Schrader ignored, Hinckley requested an introduction to Foster. More recently Hinckley dropped a series of notes into the actress's mailbox and pushed others under the door of her suite in a Yale freshman dorm. Although Foster receives hundreds of fan letters a month in her box at Yale's postal station, most go unanswered. But Hinckley's scrawled hand-delivered protestations of love alarmed Foster so much last month that she showed them to her dean, who turned them over to authorities. Foster never received Hinckley's last love letter. Found in his hotel room after the assassination attempt, it read: "Dear Jody [sic]...there is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan...I love you very much." The New York Times reported that Hinckley may have taped a phone call he had with the actress (although she could recall no such conversation later). 

Fan interruptions are anathema to Jodie, a serious-minded student who graduated class valedictorian from Los Angeles' rigorous Lycée Français. At Yale, she is enrolled in such courses as upper-level French and diplomatic history. A proud accomplishment: an A on a freshman English paper. "I chose Yale basically for writing and literature," she says. "Of course, you can't be sure—you get your first D and could decide to be a chemistry major." 

Dorm food and midnight pizzas—plus forays like a pajama-clad visit to a campus sweetshop—have added 20 pounds to her slight frame, and college has changed her style of dress as well. "When I first saw her, she wore gauzy tops and brief briefs," says one Yalie. "Now she dresses in muted colors, in kind of a preppie health-food look." Scoffs another—apparently disappointed—fellow student: "She doesn't look like a movie star. A lot of the guys here don't think she's as special as she's supposed to be." Foster has no steady boyfriend; although she dates a variety of Yale men, her evenings are more likely to be spent in the underground bunker-like Cross Campus Library, where she prefers the smoking section. 

Foster lives modestly on campus. She shares a newly rehabbed, loft-like suite in her 1891-vintage dorm with three randomly assigned freshmen women. A good friend is producer Ely Landau's daughter Tina. Next September Jodie will move to Calhoun College, an upper-class residence with a jockish cast whose master, Davie Napier, is a professor of Bible and ministry. Nor has she demanded special privileges: Foster handed out programs at a Bonnie Raitt concert and auditioned like anyone else for a role in a local production of last season's off-Broadway hit Getting Out. She got the second lead—the part of a prostitute being released from prison after serving a term for robbery and murder—but only after proving herself to censorious fellow thespians. "She had a couple of problems at first intrinsic to her work in film," the producer, senior Andrew Paulson, says. "She didn't project and she understated. But shortly after rehearsals began, these problems vanished." The play was halfway through its two-week engagement when President Reagan was shot; Foster finished out the run. It was, she said, one of her favorite roles: "I got to scream a lot, which I've never done before. The parts I've had almost always are as an articulate kid who is brighter than her years, like Bugsy Malone." 

As the shock waves of the assassination attempt subside, Jodie will once again attempt to fade into student obscurity. Even now, she is preparing for next month's final exams—though this summer she will be filming O'Hara's Wife, co-starring with Ed Asner. Friends report that she has regained the poise that was temporarily shaken after the shootings: "She's cool as a cucumber," reports an admiring Paulson. All of Yale seems to share that admiration—and a determination to give her the protected student life she wants. "She's just a normal student as far as I'm concerned," says senior Lawrence Hatch. "I grant that she's news—but she shouldn't be disturbed." Foster's unassuming demeanor has earned her that kind of loyalty—and Yale's president is proud that his college has rallied around her. "Students here have always been a kind of family," says Giamatti. "That's the way it should be." 

In 1981, Jodie Foster was freshly pledged to Scroll & Key, the most prestigious of the Second-Tier Yale Secret Societies, second only to Skull & Bones.

Newhaven, Cn. is the City of the Nine Squares - and it's more than just a little bit Devilish.

Purim

Purim (Hebrew:  פּוּרִים (help·info) Pûrîm "lots", from the word pur פור,[3] related to Akkadian pūru) is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire where a plot had been formed to destroy them. The story is recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther (Megillat Ester מגילת אסתר in Hebrew).

According to the Book of Esther, Haman, royal vizier to King Ahasuerus (presumed to be Xerxes I of Persia), planned to kill all the Jews in the empire, but his plans were foiled by Mordecai and his adopted daughter Esther who had risen to become Queen of Persia. 

The day of deliverance became a day of feasting and rejoicing.

Based on the conclusions of the Scroll of Esther (Esther 9:22):

 "[...] that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor" Purim is therefore celebrated by:

Exchanging reciprocal gifts of food and drink known as mishloach manot.

Donating charity to the poor known as mattanot la-evyonim.

Eating a celebratory meal known as a se'udat Purim'.

Public recitation, usually in synagogue, of the Scroll of Esther known as kriat ha-megillah.

Reciting additions to the daily prayers and the grace after meals known as Al HaNissim.

Other customs include drinking wine, wearing of masks and costumes, and public celebration.

Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (and on Adar II in Hebrew leap years that take place every 2 to 3 years), the day following the victory of the Jews over their enemies. In cities that were protected by a surrounding wall at the time of the Biblical Joshua, Purim is instead celebrated on the 15th of the month of Adar on what is known as Shushan Purim, since fighting in the walled city of Shushan continued through the 14th day of Adar. 

Today, only Jerusalem celebrates Purim on the 15th of Adar.

Crimea - Rumour Control

This is Rumour Control - So here they are, the facts:

1) A Russian naval presence in Crimea dates to 1783 when the port city of Sevastopol was founded by Russian Prince Grigory Potemkin. Crimea was part of Russia until Nikita Khruschev gave it to Ukraine in 1954.

2) In 1997, amid the wreckage of the USSR, Russia & Ukraine signed a Partition Treaty determining the fate of the military bases and vessels in Crimea. The deal sparked widespread officer ‘defections’ to Russia and was ratified by the Russian & Ukrainian parliaments in 1999. Russia received 81.7 percent of the fleet’s ships after paying the Ukrainian government US$526.5 million.

3) The deal allowed the Russian Black Sea Fleet to stay in Crimea until 2017. This was extended by another 25 years to 2042 with a 5-year extension option in 2010.

4) Moscow annually writes off $97.75 million of Kiev’s debt for the right to use Ukrainian waters and radio frequencies, and to compensate for the Black Sea Fleet’s environmental impact.

5) The Russian navy is allowed up to

- 25,000 troops,

- 24 artillery systems with a caliber smaller than 100 mm,

- 132 armored vehicles, and

- 22 military planes, on Crimean territory.

6) Five Russian naval units are stationed in the port city of Sevastopol, in compliance with the treaty:

- The 30th Surface Ship Division formed by the 11th Antisubmarine Ship Brigade. Comprises the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship guard missile cruiser Moskva as well as Kerch, Ochakov, Smetlivy, Ladny, and Pytlivy vessels, and the 197th Landing Ship Brigade, consisting of seven large amphibious vessels;

- The 41st Missile Boat Brigade includes the 166th Fast Attack Craft Division, consisting of Bora and Samum hovercrafts as well as small missile ships Mirazh and Shtil, and 295th missile Boat Division;

- The 247th Separate Submarine Division, consisting of two diesel submarines – B-871 Alrosa and B-380 Svyatoy Knyaz Georgy;

- The 68th Harbor Defense Ship Brigade formed by 4 vessels of the 400th Antisubmarine Ship Battalion and 418 Mine Hunting Ship Division respectively.;

- The 422nd Separate Hydrographic Ship Division boasts the Cheleken, Stvor, Donuzlav and GS-402 survey vessels and hydrographic boats.

7) Russia has two airbases in Crimea, in Kacha and Gvardeysky.

8) Russian coastal forces in Ukraine consist of the 1096th Separate Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment in Sevastopol and the 810th Marine Brigade, which hosts around 2,000 marines.

9) Russian naval units are permitted to implement security measures at their permanent post as well as during re-deployments in cooperation with Ukrainian forces, in accordance with Russia’s armed forces procedures.

Authorities in the Ukrainian Autonomous Republic of Crimea – where over half the population is Russian – requested Moscow’s assistance after the self-proclaimed government in Kiev introduced a law abolishing the use of languages other than Ukrainian in official circumstances.

Last week, Russia’s Federation Council unanimously approved President Vladimir Putin’s request to send the country’s military forces to Ukraine to ensure peace and order in the region “until the socio-political situation in the country is stabilized.”

However, the final say about deploying troops lies with Putin, who hasn’t yet made such a decision, stressing that deploying military force would be a last resort.

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Soviet Ukraine

"Since 1654, when the tsars began steadily to extend their control over Ukraine, Ukrainians had lived in two distinct worlds: one ruled by the Russians and the other by Poles or Austrians. As a result of the Second World War, the East/West Ukrainian dichotomy finally ceased to exist, at least on the political level. The process of amalgamation—of unification of two long-separated branches of the Ukrainian people—was not only a major aspect of the post-war period, but an event of epochal significance in the history of Ukraine."

—Orest Subtelny, a Canadian historian of Ukrainian descent

A Soviet propaganda poster depicting the Red Army's advance into Western Ukraine as a liberation of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian text reads: 

"We stretched our hand to our brothers so that they could straighten their backs and throw off the despised rule of the whips that lasted for centuries." 

The person thrown off the peasants' backs, shown wearing a Polish military uniform and holding the whip, could be interpreted as a caricature of Piłsudski.

Location map of the Ukrainian SSR and its boundary at the time of formation of the USSR.

The caption reads: "Eternally tying its fate with the brotherly Russian people, the Ukrainian people saved themselves from foreign enslavement, allowing the possibility of their national development."

German Nation Building

The Young Poland of Lelewel and Worcell demands the re-creation of the Polish state and rollback of the 1772-95 partitions of Poland. But they go much further, laying claim to Poland in its old Jagiellonian borders, stretching from the shores of the Baltic to the shores of the Black Sea. 

This includes an explicit denial that any Ukrainian nation exists. 

In the orbit of Young Poland is the poet Adam Mickiewicz, a close friend of Mazzini’s who was with him last year during the Roman Republic. Mickiewicz argues that Poland is special because it has suffered more than any other nation; Poland is “the Christ among nations.” Mickiewicz dreams of uniting all the west and south Slavs against the “tyrant of the north,” the “barbarians of the north.” By this he means Russia, the main target. Young Poland’s program also foreshadows the obvious conflict with Young Germany over Silesia.

Young Russia means the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and the aristocratic ideologue Aleksandr Herzen. Herzen is an agent of Baron James Rothschild of Paris. Right after the Crimean War, Herzen will start publishing “The Polar Star” and “The Bell,” both leak sheets for British secret intelligence that will build up their readership by divulging Russian state secrets. 

Herzen’s obvious target is Czar Alexander II, the ally of Lincoln. Herzen prints the ravings of Bakunin, who preaches pan-Slavism, meaning that Russia will take over all the other Slavic nations. “Out of an ocean of blood and fire there will rise in Moscow high in the sky the star of the revolution to become the guide of liberated mankind.” Vintage Bakunin. If Mazzini relies on the stiletto, for Bakunin it is “the peasant’s axe” that will bring down the “German” regime in St. Petersburg.

Herzen is interested in sabotaging Alexander II and his policy of real, anti-British reform in Russia. To block real industrial capitalist development, he preaches reliance on the aboriginal Slavic village, the mir, with “communal ownership of the land” plus the ancient Slavic workshop, the artel. The mir will never build the Trans-Siberian railway. Herzen sees Russia as the “center of crystallization” for the entire Slavic world. 

Herzen, although he is usually called a “westernizer,” is totally hostile to western civilization. He writes of the need for a “new Attila,” perhaps Russian, perhaps American, perhaps both, who will be able to tear down the old Europe. In the moment when the British will seem so close to winning everything, Herzen will support Palmerston’s Polish insurrection of 1863, and will lose most of his readers. Once the American Civil War is over, the British will have little use for Herzen. 

By then, London will be betting on the nihilist terrorists of the Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), who will finally kill Alexander II, plus the Russian legal Marxists, all British agents. But already today we can see the conflicts ahead between Young Poland and Young Russia. In the conflicts among Mazzini’s national chauvinist operations, we can see the roots of the slaughter of World War I.

German Imperial troops capture Kiev, March 1918

"It is the most comical war I have ever known. 

We put a handful of infantrymen with machine guns and one gun onto a train and rush them off to the next station; they take it, make prisoners of the Bolsheviks, pick up few more troops, and so on. 

This proceeding has, at any rate, the charm of novelty."

Diary of General Hoffman, March 1918

I quote The Enemy:

""The Bolshevik capitulation on 3 March only ended the advance along a line from Narva to Northern Ukraine, as with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Soviet government gave up all rights to Southern Russia. During the next few months, the southern Central Powers forces advanced over 500 miles further, capturing the whole of Ukraine and some territory beyond.

German operations also continued in the Caucasus and Finland, where Germany assisted the White Finnish forces in the Finnish Civil War.

Under the treaty all Russian naval bases in the Baltic except Kronstadt were taken away, and the Russian Black Sea Fleet warships in Odessa were to be disarmed and detained. The Bolsheviks also agreed to the immediate return of 630,000 Austrian prisoners-of-war.

With the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Soviet Russia had given up Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, and the Ukraine, enabling those territories to develop independently from Russian influence. Germany's intention was to turn these territories into political and territorial satellites, but this plan collapsed with Germany's own defeat within a year.

After the German surrender, the Soviets made an attempt to regain lost territories. They were successful in some areas like the Ukraine, Belarus and the Caucasus, but were forced to recognize the independence of the Baltic States, Finland, and Poland.

In the Bolshevik government, Lenin consolidated his power; however, fearing the possibility of a renewed German threat along the Baltic, he moved the capital from Petrograd to Moscow on March 12. 

Debates became far more restrained, and he was never again so strongly challenged as he was regarding the Brest-Litovsk treaty."

Bolshevik propaganda poster of Polish-Soviet war (1920). 

Texts in the picture:

Above:

RSFSR

That is what Polish lords' undertaking will end with

On flag: Long live Soviet Poland!

The Allied Supreme Council tasked the Commission on Polish Affairs with recommending Polish eastern borders. The Allies forwarded it as an armistice line several times during the war, most notably in a note from the British government to the Soviets signed by Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon of Kedleston. 

Both parties disregarded the line when the military situation lay in their favour, and it did not play a role in establishing the Polish-Soviet border in 1921. Instead, the final Peace of Riga (or Treaty of Riga) provided Poland with almost 135,000 square kilometres (52,000 sq mi) of land that was, on average, about 250 kilometres (160 mi) east of the Curzon line.

With minor variations, the northern half of the Curzon line lay approximately along the border which was established between the Prussian Kingdom and the Russian Empire in 1797, after the third partition of Poland, which was the last border recognised by the United Kingdom. Along most of its length, the line followed an ethnic boundary - areas west of the line contained an overall Polish majority while areas to its east were inhabited by Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Jews, and Lithuanians.

Its 1920 northern extension into Lithuania divided the area disputed between Poland and Lithuania. There were two versions of the southern portion of the line: "A" and "B". 

Version "B" allocated Lviv to Poland.

Russian Nation Building

"I'll say that the Ukrainian people treated me well. I recall warmly the years I spent there. This was a period full of responsibilities, but pleasant because it brought satisfaction ... But far be it from me to inflate my significance. The entire Ukrainian people was exerting great efforts ... I attribute Ukraine's successes to the Ukrainian people as a whole. I won't elaborate further on this theme, but in principle it's very easy to demonstrate. I'm Russian myself, and I don't want to offend the Russians."

Nikita Khrushchev,

Former Premier of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, 

First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Europe in 1648 - Peace of Westphalia; showing especially :

(a,) The Possessions of the two branches of the house of Habsburg at the end of the Thirty Years War (purple). 

(b,) The possessions of the house of Hohenzollern, (union of Prussia with Brandeburg [blue.]). 

(c,) The Swedish Empire on both shores of the Baltic and in Northern Germany.

 (d,) The Danish Monarchy, Denmark, Norway, and Schonen. 

(e,) The British isles, with the battle-fields of the civil wars. 

(f,) France, with the battle-fields of the civil wars [red]. 

(g,) Germany with the battle-fields of the Thirty Years War. 

(h,) The republic of Poland in its greatest extent. 

(i,) The Western Boundary of Russia.

Soviet map of expanded Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (year 1940). 

Scale: 1:5,000,000. 

The territories annexed from occupied Poland marked in yellow. The adjacent parts of Second Polish Republic occupied by Nazi Germany are labeled "area of state interests of Germany".

Soviet map of expanded Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (year 1940). 

Territories captured during the Soviet invasion of the Second Polish Republic in 1939 marked in yellow: renamed as Volynska, Drogobych, Lviv, Rivne, Stanislav, Tarnopil and Chernivitsi Oblasts. 

The adjacent parts of Poland occupied by Nazi Germany are labeled: area of state interests of Germany. 

Scale 1:6,000,000; in Russian.

Map of Ukraine presented by Ukrainian delegation on Paris Peace Conference, 1919

The Second Polish Republic, 1919-1939

Poland

Bolshevik propaganda poster of Polish-Soviet war (1920). 

Texts in the picture:

Above:

RSFSR

That is what Polish lords' undertaking will end with

On flag: Long live Soviet Poland!

The Allied Supreme Council tasked the Commission on Polish Affairs with recommending Polish eastern borders. The Allies forwarded it as an armistice line several times during the war, most notably in a note from the British government to the Soviets signed by Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon of Kedleston. 

Both parties disregarded the line when the military situation lay in their favour, and it did not play a role in establishing the Polish-Soviet border in 1921. Instead, the final Peace of Riga (or Treaty of Riga) provided Poland with almost 135,000 square kilometres (52,000 sq mi) of land that was, on average, about 250 kilometres (160 mi) east of the Curzon line.

With minor variations, the northern half of the Curzon line lay approximately along the border which was established between the Prussian Kingdom and the Russian Empire in 1797, after the third partition of Poland, which was the last border recognised by the United Kingdom. Along most of its length, the line followed an ethnic boundary - areas west of the line contained an overall Polish majority while areas to its east were inhabited by Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Jews, and Lithuanians.

Its 1920 northern extension into Lithuania divided the area disputed between Poland and Lithuania. There were two versions of the southern portion of the line: "A" and "B". 

Version "B" allocated Lviv to Poland.

Belarusian caricature decrying Peace Treaty of Riga as a partition of Belarus by Poland and Soviet Russia

Caricature for Riga Peace 1921. Shows a Pole in old-style officer's uniform and sword-belt, and an ammunition-bandoliered and skull-faced Red Army soldier, together tearing White Russia or Belarus into two, while stomping on Ukraine.

(Reuters) - NATO allies will hold emergency talks on the crisis in Ukraine on Tuesday, for the second time in three days, following a request from Poland, the alliance said on Monday.

In calling the meeting, Poland, a neighbor of Ukraine, invoked a NATO rule allowing any ally to consult with the others if it feels its security, territorial integrity or independence are under threat, the so-called Article 4.

"The developments in and around Ukraine are seen to constitute a threat to neighboring Allied countries and having direct and serious implications for the security and stability of the Euro-Atlantic area," the alliance said in a statement.

NATO meetings under Article 4 are rare. Only Turkey has used the option before, calling for consultations three times, once during the 2003 war in Iraq and twice, two years ago, over the Syrian conflict.

In Sunday's discussions, the NATO allies urged Russia to withdraw its troops back to their bases but failed to agree any significant steps to rein it in.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces tightened their grip on the mostly Russian-speaking Crimea region on Monday after seizing the Ukrainian peninsula, and Putin has secured parliamentary approval to send other forces to Ukraine.

Poland has taken a more aggressive stance against Russia than some of its European peers, pushing for more decisive response, including possible European Union sanctions.

It has a special interest in Ukraine. They share a border, their languages are similar, and large parts of western Ukraine were Polish before World War Two. Polish foreign policy is driven by a fear of Russia, its former overlord, pushing west into Ukraine.

NATO also requested a meeting with Russia on Wednesday and Moscow's ambassador to the alliance, Alexander Grushko, said he would consider the proposal, the alliance said.

(Reporting by Justyna Pawlak and Adrian Croft; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

"Into the Valley of Death..."

"Into the Valley of Death, rode the 600.... 

NATO to the left of them, Mujahid to the right of them;

Here I am - Stuck in the Middle with Pu'.

The Union and Russia

The Russian-British rivalry was of course the central antagonism of European history after the Napoleonic era, and the Russian attitude towards London coincided with the traditional American resentment against the former colonial power. Benjamin Platt Thomas’s older study shows that the US-Russian convergence became decisive during the Crimean War; while Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire attacked Russia, the United States was ostentatiously friendly to the court of St. Petersburg. He depicts Russian minister to Washington Éduard de Stoeckl as a diplomat “whose sole aim was to nurture the chronic anti-British feeling in the United States.” (Thomas 111) According to Thomas, Stoeckl succeeded so well that there was even a perceptible chance that the United States might enter the Crimean War on the Russian side. The US press and public were all on the side of Russia, and hostile to the Anglo-French, to the chagrin of the erratic US President Pierce (who had been close to Admiralty agent Giuseppe Mazzini’s pro-British Young America organization) and the doughface politician James Buchanan. The latter, at that time US envoy to London, embraced the British view of the Tsar as “the Despot.” (Thomas 117) Thomas finds that “the Crimean War undoubtedly proved the wisdom of Russia’s policy of cultivating American friendship, and in fact, drew the two nations closer together.” (Thomas 120) But Thomas glosses over some of the more important US-UK frictions during this phase, which included British army recruiting in the US, and the ejection of the British ambassador as persona non grata. (Thomas 120)

Turning to the conflict of 1861-65, Thomas points out that “in the first two years of the war, when its outcome was still highly uncertain, the attitude of Russia was a potent factor in preventing Great Britain and France from adopting a policy of aggressive intervention.” (Thomas 129) He shows that the proposed British-French interference promoted by Lord Russell, the Foreign Secretary, in October 1862 was “deterred at this time mainly” by the Russian attitude, and cites Russell’s note to Palmerston concluding that Britain “ought not to move at present without Russia.”⁶ (Thomas 132)

The critical importance of Russian help in deterring the British and Napoleon III as well is borne out by a closer analysis. As early as 1861, Russia alerted the Lincoln government to the machinations of Napoleon III, who was already scheming to promote a joint UK-France-Russia intervention in favor of the Confederacy.⁷ As Henry Adams, the son and private secretary of US Ambassador to London Charles Francis Adams, sums up the strategic situation during Lee’s first invasion of Maryland, on the eve of the Battle of Antietam: These were the terms of this singular problem as they presented themselves to the student of diplomacy in 1862: Palmerston, on September 14, under the impression that the President was about to be driven from Washington and the Army of the Potomac dispersed, suggested to Russell that in such a case, intervention might be feasible. Russell instantly answered that, in any case, he wanted to intervene and should call a Cabinet for the purpose. Palmerston hesitated; Russell insisted….” ⁸

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln used the Confederate repulse at Antietam to issue a warning that slavery would be abolished in areas still engaged in rebellion against the United States on January 1, 1863. The Russian Tsar Alexander II had liberated the 23 million serfs of the Russian Empire in 1861, so this underlined the nature of the US-Russian convergence as a force for human freedom. This imminent Emancipation Proclamation was also an important political factor in slowing Anglo-French meddling, but it would not have been decisive by itself. The British cabinet, as Seward had predicted, regarded emancipation as an act of desperation. The London Times accused Lincoln in lurid and racist terms of wanting to provoke a slave rebellion and a race war,

Gladstone’s Open Hostility to the United States, October 7, 1862

On October 7, 1862, despite the news that the Confederates had been repulsed at Antietam, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone, who spoke for Lord John Russell, pressed for British intervention against the Union and on the side of the Confederacy in a speech at Tyneside, saying: “. . . We know quite well that the people of the Northern States have not yet drunk of the cup [of defeat and partition] — they are still trying to hold it far from their lips — which all the rest of the world see they nevertheless must drink of. We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made, what is more than either, they have made a nation… We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as regards their separation from the North”⁹

It was practically a declaration of war against the Lincoln government, and it also contained a lie, since Gladstone knew better than most that the only navy the Confederacy ever had was the one provided with British connivance.

On October 13, 1862 Lord John Russell called a meeting of the British cabinet for October 23, with the top agenda item being a deliberation on the “duty of Europe to ask both parties, in the most friendly and conciliatory terms, to agree to a suspension of arms.”¹⁰ Russell wanted an ultimatum to Washington and Richmond for an armistice or cease-fire, followed by a lifting of the Union blockade of southern ports, followed then by negotiations leading to Washington’s recognition of the CSA as an independent state. If the Union refused, then Britain would recognize the CSA and in all probability begin military cooperation with the Confederates.

US Ambassador Charles Francis Adams asked Russell in advance of the October 23 cabinet meeting what he had in mind. As his son and private secretary Henry Adams recounts, “On October 23, Russell assured Adams that no change in policy was now proposed. On the same day he had proposed it, and was voted down.” Henry Adams was doubtless correct in his impression that “every act of Russell, from April, 1861, to November, 1862, showed the clearest determination to break up the Union.”¹¹

At this point, Napoleon III of France invited London to join him in a move against the Union. According to Adams’ memoir, “Instantly Napoleon III appeared as the ally of Russell and Gladstone with a proposition which had no sense except as a bribe to Palmerston to replace America, from pole to pole, in her old dependence on Europe, and to replace England in her old sovereignty of the seas, if Palmerston would support France in Mexico…. The only resolute, vehement, conscientious champion of Russell, Napoleon III, and Jefferson Davis was Gladstone.”¹² Napoleon III had conferred with the Confederate envoy Slidell and proposed that France, England, and Russia impose a six-month armistice on the US and CSA. Napoleon III believed that if Lincoln did not accept his intrusion, this would provide a pretext for Anglo-French recognition of the CSA, followed by military intervention against the Union.¹³ There was no real hope of getting pro-Union Russia to join such an initiative, and the reason Napoleon III included Russia was merely as camouflage to cloak the fact that the whole enterprise was a hostile act against Washington.

Russia Rejects the Anglo-French Intrigues for Interference

The clouds of world war gathered densely over the planet. Russell and Gladstone, now joined by Napoleon III, continued to demand aggressive meddling in US affairs. This outcome was avoided because of British and French fears of what Russia might do if the continued to launch bellicose gestures against the Union. On October 29, 1862 there occurred in St. Petersburg an extremely cordial meeting of Russian Foreign Minister Gortchakov with US chargé d’affaires Bayard Taylor, which was marked by a formal Russian pledge never to move against the US, and to oppose any attempt by other powers to do so. Taylor reported these comments by Gortchakov to the State Department: “You know the sentiments of Russia. We desire above all things the maintenance of the American Union as one indivisible nation. We cannot take any part, more than we have done. We have no hostility to the Southern people. Russia has declared her position and will maintain it. There will be proposals of intervention [by Britain and France]. We believe that intervention could do no good at present. Proposals will be made to Russia to join some plan of interference. She will refuse any intervention of the kind. Russia will occupy the same ground as at the beginning of the struggle. You may rely upon it, she will not change. But we entreat you to settle the difficulty. I cannot express to you how profound an anxiety we feel — how serious are our fears.”¹⁴

The Journal de St. Petersbourg, the official gazette of the Tsarist government, denounced the Anglo-French intervention plan against the US, which had been inspired by Russell. This article helped prevent a wider war: the British cabinet, informed of the Russian attitude by telegraph, voted down Russell’s aggressive project. Russell made his last bid to swing the British cabinet in favor of a policy of interference together with Napoleon III against the Union on November 12, 1862, but he was unable to carry the day, and this turned out to be his last chance for the year.

Seward thought that if the Anglo-French were to assail the Union, they would soon find themselves at war with Russia as well. He wrote to John Bigelow early in the war: “I have a belief that the European State, whichever one it may be, that commits itself to intervention anywhere in North America, will sooner or later fetch up in the arms of a native of an oriental country not especially distinguished for amiability of manners or temper.” (Thomas 128)

Adams to Russell: Superfluous to Point Out this Means War

The summer of 1863, despite the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, was marked by another close brush with US-UK war. It was on September 5, 1863 that US Ambassador Charles Francis Adams told Lord Russell that if the Laird rams – powerful ironclad warships capable of breaking the Union blockade which were then under construction in England — were allowed to leave port, “It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.”¹⁵ Lord Russell had to pause, and then backed off entirely. The Laird rams were put under surveillance by the British government on September 9, and finally seized by the British government in mid-October, 1863. (Adams II 147) They never fought for the Confederacy.

A revolt against Russian domination of Poland, incited by the British, started in 1863 and lasted into late 1864. Crook points out that it was Lord Russell who told Lord Lyons in March 1863 that the Polish issue had the potential to create a Russo-American common front and thus revolutionize world power relations, evidently to the detriment of London. (Crook 285) Such a prophecy was coherent with the then -fashionable ideas of de Tocqueville about Russia and America as the two great powers of the future.

The Russian Fleets in New York and San Francisco

The most dramatic gestures of cooperation between the Russian Empire and the United States came in the autumn of 1863, as the Laird rams crisis hung in the balance. On September 24, the Russian Baltic fleet began to arrive in New York harbor. On October 12, the Russian Far East fleet began to arrive in San Francisco. The Russians, judging that they were on the verge of war with Britain and France over the British-fomented Polish insurrection of 1863, had taken this measure to prevent their ships from being bottled up in their home ports by the superior British fleet. These ships were also the tokens of the vast Russian land armies that could be thrown in the scales on a number of fronts, including the northwest frontier of India; the British had long been worried about such an eventuality. In mid-July 1863, French Foreign Minister Droun de Lhuys was offering London the joint occupation of Poland by means of invasion. But the experience of the Confederate commerce raiders had graphically illustrated just how effective even a limited number of warships could be when they turned to commerce raiding, which is what the Russian naval commanders had been ordered to do in case of hostilities. The Russian admirals had also been told that, if the US and Russia were to find themselves at war with Britain and France, the Russian ships should place themselves under Lincoln’s command and operate in synergy with the US Navy against the common enemies. It is thus highly significant that the Russian ships were sent to the United States.

US Navy Secretary Gideon Welles: “God Bless the Russians”

Coming on the heels of the bloody Union reverse at Chickamauga, the news of the Russian fleet unleashed an immense wave of euphoria in the North. It was this moment that inspired the later verses of Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most popular writers in America, for the 1871 friendship visit of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis:

Bleak are our shores with the blasts of December,
Fettered and chill is the rivulet’s flow;
Thrilling and warm are the hearts that remember
Who was our friend when the world was our foe.
Fires of the North in eternal communion,
Blend your broad flashes with evening’s bright star;
God bless the Empire that loves the Great Union
Strength to her people! Long life to the Czar!¹⁶

The Russians, as Clay reported to Seward and Lincoln, were delighted in turn by the celebration of their fleets, which stayed in American waters for over six months as the Polish revolt was quelled. The Russian officers were lionized and feted, and had their pictures taken by the famous New York photographer Matthew Brady. When an attack on San Francisco by the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah seemed to be imminent, the Russian admiral there gave orders to his ships to defend the city if necessary. There were no major Union warships on the scene, so Russia was about to fight for the United States. In the event, the Confederate raider did not attack. Soon after the war, Russia sold Alaska to the United States, in part because they felt that an influx of Americans searching for gold was inevitable, and in part to keep the British from seizing control of this vast region. Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote in his diary, “The Russian fleet has come out of the Baltic and is now in New York, or a large number of the vessels have arrived…. In sending them to this country at this time there is something significant.” Welles was fully justified in his famous concluding words, “God bless the Russians!”¹⁷.

This exceedingly cordial Russo-American friendship set the tone of much nineteenth-century historiography; Thomas indicates that a darker view of Russian motivation began to be heard around 1915 with the work of Professor Frank A. Golder, who emphasized that the Russians were only following their own national interests.¹⁸According to Thomas, it was “not until Professor Golder published the result of his researches that the matter was finally cleared up and those who were less gullible were found to be correct.” (Thomas 138) Surely no one needs to be reminded that great nations defend their national interests. Disinterested philanthropists are admittedly rare in foreign ministries. However, when the interests converge, alliance de jure or de factomay result, and these can have far-reaching significance. During the American Civil War, the Russian attitude was the most powerful outside factor deterring Anglo-French interference. The need of Russia to prepare its own defenses during the Polish crisis of 1863 was perfectly legitimate and a secret to no one. Nevertheless, Thomas feels compelled to harp repeatedly on point that “the policy of Russia was dictated solely by self-interest.” (Thomas 127)

For Crook, the visiting squadrons were not a fleet, but a “fleet,” and a “not very seaworthy” one at that. In his view, the entire matter can be written off as “popular hysteria” and “folklore”. (Crook 317) The attempt to play down the Russian angle is evident. When Simon Cameron is sent to St. Petersburg as US Ambassador, Woldman and others can see nothing in this but an “exile in Siberia.” (Woldman 115) Another favorite target is Cassius Clay, the very capable US Ambassador to Russia for most of the Civil War (apart from the brief Simon Cameron interlude). Crook retails Bayard Taylor’s crack to Horace Greeley that Clay was “better suited to the meridian of Kentucky than of St. Petersburg.” (Crook 44) In reality, St. Petersburg was on a par with London as one of the two most sensitive and important diplomatic posts the Union had. Cassius Clay, who called himself a “remote relative” of Lincoln’s great American System mentor Henry Clay, was a distinguished American diplomat who played a critical role in saving the Union. Another important US diplomat of the time was the Bostonian John Lothrop Motley, who became a friend of the future Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck while studying at the University of Goettingen. Motley served in US legation in St. Petersburg and from 1861-1867 as the US minister to the Austrian Empire, and later wrote an important biography of Oldenbarneveld, the father of the Dutch Republic, and other studies of Dutch history.

Woldman, at the height of the Cold War, devoted an entire book to denigrating the importance of the US-Russian entente cordiale and of the Russian fleet in particular. In addition to Golder, he cites Professor E. A. Adamov as a key precursor of his views.¹⁹For Woldman, the Russia of 1863 was already an international pariah, “the most hated nation in Europe,” whose policy reflected “no concern or friendship for the United States.” At the hands of Woldman, the well-established Russo-American amity of the 1850s, 1860s, and beyond is reduced to a “myth.” (Woldman, 156-7) This is not history, but propaganda laced with bile.

Russian friendship provided an economic as well as a military brake on the Anglo-French. Statistics provided by Crook show that in 1861-64, the US and Russia together provided more half or more of all Britain’s wheat imports (16.3 million cwt out of a total of 30.8 in 1863). In case of war with either the US and Russia (and a fortiori in case of war with both), the British would have faced astronomical bread prices, insufficient supply, and an overall situation of famine which would have been conducive to serious internal revolt against the privileged classes — all in all a situation which aristocrats and oligarchs like Palmerston, Russell and Gladstone had to think twice about courting. King Wheat was therefore more powerful than King Cotton.²⁰

Confederate commerce raiders built and fitted out with the help of the British had a devastating and long-lasting effect. As Chester Hearn details, Confederate raiders fitted out in Europe, including the Alabama, Shenandoah, and Florida, destroyed 110,000 tons of US merchant shipping, and were factors in the transfer of 800,000 tons to foreign registry, thus partially crippling the merchant marine of the North over decades.²¹ On July 11, 1863 Adams indicted London for “active malevolence” on the question of the Laird rams, which were ironclad battleships capable of breaking the blockade; as noted, on September 5 he told Foreign Secretary John Russell, “It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.” (Crook 324, 326) Forty years later, Henry Adams remained “disconcerted that Russell should indignantly and with growing energy, to his dying day, deny and resent the axiom of [US Ambassador] Adams’s whole contention, that from the first he meant to break up the Union.”²²

Any international history must tackle the question of the effectiveness of the Union blockade of Southern ports. Crook does a workmanlike job of refuting the Owsley thesis that the blockade was not effective. He reminds us that the statistics used by Owsley and Marcus W. Price are far from conclusive. Crook suggests that the aggregate tonnages of successful blockade runners need to be examined rather than simply the number of ships getting through, since blockade runners were designed to sacrifice cargo capacity for speed. He notes that many successful runs took place during the first year of the war, “before the cordon tightened.” (Crook 174) Many successful runs counted by Price were actually coastwise traders bound for other parts of the Confederacy. “More realistic,” Crook sums up, “would be an attempt to compare wartime clearances with pre-war figures.” (Crook 174) Using Price’s figures for South Carolina, Crook suggests that the blockade may have cut the number of ships leaving the ports of that state by one half during the first year of the war, and by almost two thirds over 1862-1865. Crook’s finding is that “modern naval opinion is inclined to the broad view that the blockade achieved its major objectives by scaring off a potentially massive trade with the south.” (Crook 174)