Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been resurrecting Russia’s (and the Soviet Union’s) biggest blunders and trying to repackage them into an alternate reality in which Russia (or the Soviet Union) saves the world. This has been going on, more or less, since August 23, the 80th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which Stalin and Hitler in 1939 agreed on how they would split up the territory between them after the war. This gave Hitler the security to attack Poland, and then things were on. Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, and that’s the part that Russia had preferred to recall until this year.
The argument is that the Western powers wouldn’t ally with the poor beleaguered Soviet Union, so what else could Stalin do?
The @MFA_Russia Twitter account was running all last night (Saturday morning in Russia), and I couldn’t see any particular reason why, beyond distraction from other international discussions. The bots and trolls have been running, and I’ve blocked a few. Several of Russia’s embassies have long been shit-talking against other countries, but lately it’s all ramping up.
Sample tweets:
Owing to the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, the war started on the frontiers that had more strategic advantages for the USSR and population of those territories were subjected to Nazi terror two years later. Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved. ?https://t.co/WfbtC4mI52 pic.twitter.com/Ba624V6vLr
— MFA Russia ?? (@mfa_russia) September 22, 2019
75 years ago #OTD in 1944, #InformationBulletin issued by the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC reported about
▪️ Certain Lessons of Versailles
▪️ Fighting in Latvia
▪️ Armistice Agreement with Finland (https://t.co/Sg1JBJQjZt)▶️https://t.co/APwZrdDnQV
Read #TruthAboutWWII #WWII pic.twitter.com/LTSooU6iuR— Russia in USA ?? (@RusEmbUSA) September 27, 2019
?#Opinion by Maria #Zakharova:
Considering that it is Nancy Pelosi who overhyped the “scandal surrounding the telephone conversation between the president of the United States and Ukraine,” it can be argued that she was the one on the receiving end?https://t.co/WPByqPnijn pic.twitter.com/RfyBxiweZ6— MFA Russia ?? (@mfa_russia) September 28, 2019
Maria Zakharova is the spokesperson for MFA Russia.
Director of the MFA’s Latin American Department Alexander Shchetinin:
?No matter how much Washington tries to flex its muscles,the limp hand of a former US president in a strong grip of Raul Castro became the image of its policy effectiveness in Cuba▶️https://t.co/3Tjoo1JUN6 pic.twitter.com/et4I38kRtY— MFA Russia ?? (@mfa_russia) September 28, 2019
Open thread, comrades!
mrmoshpotato
Huh? Are the Russkis having a sad that we’re impeaching their Soviet shitpile mobster conman?
PsiFighter37
The one about WWII is simply stupendous. The Soviet Union got lucky to end up on the right side of history because of Hitler’s hubris. They were a willing accomplice that was happy to take a slice of Poland and look the other way as part of the nonaggression pact. Contrast that to the Germans, who are still busy self-flagellating willingly when any WWII anniversary comes up.
FlyingToaster
Color me confused.
To my knowledge, no US president (former or current, living or dead) has ever shaken Raul Casto’s hand.
Huh?
randy khan
@FlyingToaster:
It’s a metaphor? I don’t know. It’s nearly as strange as the Pelosi post,
PsiFighter37
@FlyingToaster: Almost certainly a reference to Obama in some way, shape, or form. I’m pretty certain Obama shook Raul Castro’s hand at some point.
mrmoshpotato
@FlyingToaster: Is Confused next to Mango Tango in the Crayola box?
noncarborundum
@FlyingToaster: @PsiFighter37: Castro and Obama met & shook hands at the UN in September, 2015.
dr. bloor
That’s an odd translation of “Stalin slaughtered them instead.”
Cheryl Rofer
@FlyingToaster: Here’s a first Obama-Castro handshake.
But this is probably what they are talking about.
trollhattan
Had anybody done a welfare check on Cole?
#NotEveryHomecomingIsSurvivable
FlyingToaster
@noncarborundum:
@Cheryl Rofer: Thank you!
This whole sequence is effing surreal. Like “Man in the High Castle” surreal.
MattF
So.
Stephen Kotkin has published two (out of, one assumes, three) parts of a biography of Stalin that, when completed, will be the standard for some time to come. The second volume ended just before the invasion of the Soviet Union– consequently, this recent lecture by Kotkin at the IAS, Stalin At War, was a big deal, giving a preview of how Kotkin will treat the subject. Kotkin is a terrific, lively lecturer– this is well worth an hour of your time
FlyingToaster
@mrmoshpotato: In the new ones, I suspect it’s in the neon box. I don’t keep up with it now that WarriorGirl’s in Middle School. I’m spending my time in “ScreenTime” setting her devices to NOT let her watch YouTube 4 hours each weeknight…
Bill Arnold
That MFA stuff that you linked is embarrassingly inept. Mostly that twitter account seems better though.
Since open thread, I f’in love the The Orb photo:
Checking in on the information security administration (Scott Lemieux, September 28, 2019)
You tell kids today that according to the nation’s political press the defining issue of the 2016 elections was an alleged lack of communications transparency (that didn’t actually exist) of Trump’s opponent and they won’t believe.
Laurence Doering
@PsiFighter37: Yeah, I guess after our Great Leader (the greatest, greatest ever! I hear many people saying how great he is!) sparked a literal Nazi torchlight parade in Charlottesville, it was only a matter of time before Putin and pals decided it totally makes sense to celebrate the military genius of Comrade Stalin.
ВСЯ СЛАВА ТОВАРИЩУ СТАЛИНУ!
Cheryl Rofer
@Bill Arnold: All the shit-talking Russia accounts intersperse mostly good stuff throughout, and then these weird or nasty ones pop up in between. I would say that’s how you do propaganda – intersperse the propaganda into legitimate stuff – but this is so obvious that it feels like something else is going on.
Mike in NC
Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941.
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
Interesting. (Will deep-look now, thanks for the comment.)
PsiFighter37
@Cheryl Rofer: For being up to speed on how to manipulate people’s perceptions online, they sure have zero idea about how much people retain about stupid incidents like these in the age of Twitter and social media. It has to be really stupid – like Tan Suit Scandal stupid – for people to remember.
Either that, or the fevered minds of Trump’s base spends all their mental capacity on shit like this and literally cannot function in any other way outside of necessary vital human functions.
PF37 +1 (but it’s an imperial stout, so probably double or triple the impact)
patrick II
@mrmoshpotato:
I see now where Donald learned that the second half of a sentence need not make any sense in the context of the first half
Cheryl Rofer
@Mike in NC: Thanks. Corrected.
Quinerly
Has anyone posted this new Lawfare piece about the FBI knowing nothing about WaPo’s scoop last night?
“Shortly after the story broke, I received a message from a person directly involved with the FBI’s decision to open a counterintelligence and obstruction investigation of President Trump in the immediate aftermath of the firing of FBI Director James Comey. To say this person, who had clearly learned about the matter for the first time from the Post, was angered by the story would be to understate the matter.
The message read in relevant part: “None of us had any idea. Multiple people had opportunity and patriotic reason to tell us. Instead, silence.”
https://www.lawfareblog.com/collusion-after-fact
I’m on my phone. Apologies for the format.
Leto
@Cheryl Rofer: pretty good thread here on how Russia uses bots and trolls to influence on Twitter, and how to potentially spot them
New Deal democrat
@Cheryl Rofer:
Well, here’s a complete uninformed guess….
Ever since 2016 I have thought that Russia and China were going to make their geopolitical moves this year, against Ukraine and maybe Taiwan(?). They’re never going to get a more compromised, inept US President, and they would want their moves to be faits accomplis by the time of the 2020 US election.
Trump’s line in his UN press conference about how Ukraine and Russia were shortly going to be able to resolve their issue had undertones of this for me.
But the events of the past week, in which US complicity in selling out Ukraine has just blown up spectacularly, may have disrupted some plans. So maybe Russia is feeling a little out of sorts.
PsiFighter37
@Leto: IMO, as someone who frequents FB enough to tell…it’s not hard to spot a bot. First, it’s the extra spaces in the sentences and the terrible grammar that give it away. If that’s been perfected, click on the actual profile and see the history. That’s the biggest giveaway – bots have zero real background, even if they are imitating a real user.
Most folks in the boonies, unsurprisingly, are not smart enough to grasp this.
Leto
@Quinerly: I saw that. It goes back to what Adam, and a few of us, spoke about: “upclassifying” information in an attempt to hide it. That’s illegal. Not telling investigators about this information, I’m sure that’s illegal too. I can only hope multiple heads will roll.
Captain C
@PsiFighter37:
While completely destroying the USSR would have been quite a monumental task, if Hitler had been even half as tactically and strategically ept as Guderian and Rommel he could have done a lot more damage to the Soviet Union, and perhaps taken the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line. If this had happened, any Soviet reconquista would have been a very difficult task. If he had dropped the cruel, batshit ideology and allied with the Belarussians and Ukranians, the USSR likely would have either collapsed completely, or remained in existence as a weak rump state east of the Urals, unable to retake its European lands.
Thankfully, Hitler was an egotistical dunce, so we only had a huge war with tens of millions of casualties.
debbie
Putin’s getting nervous…
Leto
@PsiFighter37: True. The bots can be fairly easy to spot. He goes on at length detailing trolling operations as conducted by Russian military. If nothing else, it’s always good as a refresher course. It’s also pretty useful in letting rather inexperienced people know what to look for.
Gravenstone
They seem like nice people!
Quinerly
“When Barr did learn of that call a few weeks later, he was “surprised and angry” to discover he had been lumped in with Giuliani, a person familiar with Barr’s thinking told The Associated Press. This person was not authorized to speak about the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.”
https://apnews.com/7d134da3dadd497e9af37c60278d68dc
Has anyone read when Barr is coming back from Italy?
QUINERLY
Mulvaney on shakey ground. “What Trump and other aides are frustrated with, according to the sources, is that Mulvaney did not have a strategy for defending and explaining the contents of those documents as soon as they were publicly released.”
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/09/28/politics/mick-mulvaney-impeachment-inquiry-donald-trump/?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.memeorandum.com%2Fm%2F
Bill Arnold
@Quinerly:
Another quote from that lawfareblog piece:
Indeed. (Bold mine.)
QUINERLY
“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reportedly advised President Donald Trump to release the memo this week on his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mcconnell-convince-trump-release-ukraine-call-memo
Jay
@Leto:
@PsiFighter37:
Keep in mind that a bunch of the bots, are bot networks that retweet a real persons tweet to amplify it and push it up in mentions. More and more of them are domestic “inauthentic” accounts.
Cheryl Rofer
@Leto: tl;dr
I really dislike threads that long, even when they’re rolled up like that. There are better ways to get the information across, but if you found it helpful, I’ll say that I saw nothing obviously wrong with it in about the first 500 words I read.
But yes – we’re going to have to be smart about social media. The trolls I blocked this morning (looked like real people supplying dreck) on Twitter were pretty obvious – generic avatars, names with a string of numbers at the end. They aren’t always that obvious.
QUINERLY
Totally off topic. I love this idea. Turning cremation ashes to stones:
https://www.krqe.com/news/albuquerque-metro/santa-fe-company-creates-first-of-its-kind-alternative-for-human-remains/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_KRQE_News_13
Jay
Mike in DC
I can’t wait for the historical “revisions” to the signing of the Warsaw pact and the invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. If Putin’s in power long enough, I’m sure that we will hear about his mother’s virgin birth.
Jay
For Tony Jay’s pleasure:
Jay
MoxieM
Well, shit howdy. Call me surprised that the propaganda arm of the Govt of the beloved grandson of Uncle Joe’s Personal Chef (readers, he lived!) might try to pull off some, uh, “Stalinesque” PR. Wake me up when they start erasing Trump from the photos. (FWIW, my dearest dad was a historian of 18th c. Russia, so I grew up around refugees (very old, very tiny ones–no for reals!) refugees from the Bolshevik Revolution who found safe harbor in American Academia. Interesting and wonderful people, but tuned in to the channel the rest of us would call “reality” they were not. RIP Uncle George & Aunti Nina.
Jay
Jay
Jay
ThresherK
I’m a bit shaky on other country’s official nomenclature sometimes.
Show of hands: I thought “Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs” was simply another bot twitter account until it didn’t end in “…for Trump”. Anyone else?