Category Archives: Russia

Books, Britain, Government, History, Military, Russia

Book Review: The Red Atlas

The Red Atlas

The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World

Intro: As the Head of The British Army predicts that Russia may start a war, a new book reveals they’ve had detailed maps of our secret military complexes for decades

FOLLOWING the events such as the storming of the Winter Palace in 1917, and the execution of the Tsar and the imperial family, the Russian Revolution ushered in a world of horror and mass death.

It was Stalin, the then General Secretary of the Communist Party, who personally signed-off the lists of execution quotas. He had avidly read and annotated torture reports and was responsible for sanctioning what was to befall. In 1937 and 1938 alone, more than 681,000 people received a bullet in the back of the neck.

Terror was used by the KGB and its forerunner, the NKVD (the secret police), to ensure obedience and to suppress discussion and dissent. As capitalism was overthrown, businesses were nationalised, private property was confiscated, and the mass media was controlled.

Government regulations and bureaucracy intensified, the dictatorship of the proletariat was imposed, and Stalin’s purges eliminated political rivals, scholars, artists, and anyone else who was of mild intelligence. In the Ukraine, food, grain and livestock were requisitioned and some 4 million people were deliberately starved – implemented through an organised famine, or genocide, to punish “anti-party elements and saboteurs”.

Had NATO not kept them the other side of the Iron Curtain, it was Stalin and his successors’ resolute ambition and intention to have brought their Marxist ideology to London.

 

PART of the enormous and secret infrastructure of the Cold War involved the Soviets creating amazingly detailed maps – useful for invading armies and occupiers – which were designed and intended to support civil administrators when the “entire world is communist”.

On the evidence of their maps of Britain they imagined they could one day possess, the authors write that the “Russians didn’t miss much”.

Using high-altitude aircraft, satellite imagery and missiles bearing reconnaissance cameras, the Russians plotted every inch of our islands, continually revising and redrawing the maps “to keep up with the transformation landscapes”.

The Russians also deployed people on the ground, quietly walking down the streets, looking. This was enacted through Le Carre-esque like double-agents who relayed back to Moscow details of factories, including their production outputs and ownership. The size and shape of buildings were of great interest. Every high-rise and low-rise in Southampton, for example, was known by the enemy.

The utilities, industries and transport systems were fully documented and recorded – the width of roads, the height and dimension of bridges, their load capacity and construction materials used. Local terrain was scrutinised – forests, the types of trees, height, girth and spacing. Railway signals, timetables, and even disused tracks were drawn, in case they could be reinstated.

The Russians were also very keen on marine areas and navigable rivers. They marked spot depths, dredged canals and tidal ranges. The water speed and flow at estuaries fascinated them: the Mersey at Liverpool, the Forth at Edinburgh, and the Medway at Rochester and Chatham. In 1919, all mapping activities were put under state supervision by Lenin.

It was Stalin, however, who created the Military Topographic Directorate of the General Staff of the Soviet Army. It was a massive secret enterprise involving thousands of people. Up to 2 million maps were made of the West, which were kept under armed guard in a series of 25 humidity-controlled vaults.

Even within the Soviet hierarchy, military officers who were required to use maps for training and exercises had no idea of the extent and scope of Stalin’s project. Every map and chart had to be returned to the depot after use.

It is no quip to suggest that the Russians knew more about Britain than the average British citizen. On our own Ordnance Survey maps, for instance, there are frequent blanks, known as security deletions. Sensitive information is excluded from public view.

With the help of their spies and saboteurs, however, the Kremlin knew all about our secret military installations and complexes. In their Red Atlas they drew every hut and barrack at the Royal Naval dockyard at Pembroke, an RAF flying boat base.

They knew the berth length and channel depth at Chatham, where submarines were built and maintained. They could have found their way blindfolded around the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Burghfield, near Reading, where nuclear warheads are constructed. Even Google Maps omitted this place until recently.

John Davies and Alexander J. Kent grow melancholic and pensive as they recount the story of the Soviet cartographic enterprise. That story has never been told until now. The maps themselves, which began to be leaked to the West after the pulling down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, have rarely been publicly displayed.

The craftsmanship involved is tremendously skilled. We are told that the “sheer beauty of the maps makes them mesmerising… the use of colours, lines and geometric shapes lends them an Art Deco feel.”

The Soviets transliterated many towns and cities for Warsaw Pact commanders. Rochester became Roczyste, Chatham labelled as Czetem, Herne Bay denoted as Hen-Bei, Margate became Magyt and Maidstone converted to Mejdsten.

Like William the Conqueror, it can be guessed where the Red Army planned to arrive on our shore. Sussex and Kent were in the firing line. The Soviets were also very interested in Cambridge: “The lodging houses and their lecture halls are reminiscent of monasteries or ancient castles . . . there is rain on 12-14 days each month.”

The university is where all the spies were educated: Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt. Perhaps Moscow assumed their battalions would get a big welcome when they turned up there in force.

– The Red Atlas by John Davies and Alexander J. Kent is published by the University of Chicago Press for £26.50

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Military, NATO, Russia, United States

NATO chief says the world is now at its most dangerous

THE WORLD is more dangerous now than it has been for a generation, the head of NATO has said.

Jens Stoltenberg said terrorism, the crisis in North Korea and a newly-belligerent Russia under Vladimir Putin meant the political situation was more unpredictable than at any time in the past 30 years.

He said: “It is a more dangerous world… We have proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in North Korea, we have terrorists, instability, and we have a more assertive Russia.”

The secretary-general’s intervention, during a break from visiting British troops in Estonia, comes before the mobilisation of an estimated 100,000 Russian troops on the EU’s eastern borders.

Asked whether he had known a more perilous time in his 30-year career, Stoltenberg said: “It is more unpredictable, and it’s more difficult because we have so many challenges at the same time.”

From next Thursday, 14 September, over six days, Russian and Belarusian troops will take part in what is likely to be Moscow’s largest military exercises since the Cold War. An estimated 100,000 personnel will be active around the Baltic Sea, western Russia and Belarus without the supervision required under international agreement.

Meanwhile, North Korea has launched a ballistic missile over Japan, threatened the US Pacific territory of Guam and has tested a possible thermonuclear device, incurring the wrath of President Donald Trump.

Mr Stoltenberg, the former prime minister of Norway, would not comment on whether the US President’s bellicose threats to Pyongyang had exacerbated the current situation in south-east Asia.

He said: “I think the important thing now is to look into how we can create a situation where we can find a political solution to the crisis.

“At the same time, I fully understand and support the military message that has been implemented in the region… as they have the right to defend themselves.

“They have a right to respond when they see these very aggressive actions. I also support the presence of US troops and capabilities in Korea.”

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Russia, Syria, United Nations, United States

Was the attack in Idlib province really sarin – and, was Assad to blame?

SYRIA

The evidence that sarin nerve gas was used against civilians in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun largely comes from reports (from Turkish doctors) who treated survivors of the Syria attack earlier this month.

Victims were choking, foaming at the mouth, defecating and vomiting – all of which are consistent with sarin use.

Sarin, a colourless, odourless liquid at room temperature, is expensive and complex to manufacture.

The two key chemical compounds – a phosphorus variant and isopropyl alcohol – are mixed near the point of use, usually hours before it is released.

This is to avoid accidents and degradation in storage. The level of sophistication required in handling sarin would suggest state involvement.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was supposed to have surrendered his entire chemical weapons stockpile – including sarin – to Russia after an earlier attack on an opposition-held area near Damascus in 2013. More than 1,000 victims died and only a Russian-brokered deal – with Assad agreeing to give up his chemical weapons for destruction – prevented US airstrikes then. According to some reports which have now surfaced, a consignment of sarin was missing from the stockpile handed over.

At the same time, Assad signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention, a group of states which ban these weapons. However, chlorine gas, which produces similar symptoms to sarin, was not covered by the removal deal. And unlike sarin (which is 3,000 times more lethal) chlorine is easily accessible and has many everyday uses.

Medecins Sans Frontieres doctors, who treated some victims, have said that both a toxic nerve agent and chlorine may have been used. But until impartial experts establish whether, and what, chemical weapons were involved, sole reliance on the observations of doctors is insufficient.

Central to the issue for many is why Assad would use chemical weapons in a war that he’s clearly winning? It is a perplexing question. Since September 2015, when the Russians first intervened in Syria, Assad’s regime has made steady progress in defeating various rebel opponents, notably when his forces took Aleppo in December.

In recent days, the US has strongly suggested it was prepared to leave Assad in power, as it saw him as a potential ally in the fight against Islamic State. Syria’s military continue to categorically deny that it was responsible for the attack, but, of course, Assad has used various weapons indiscriminately against civilians, including barrel bombs (dropped from helicopters) and unfocused artillery bombardment. He has also ‘weaponised’ gases – for example, putting tear gas in shells used by police to quell rioters.

Many are likely to believe, however, that Assad would have to be insanely overconfident to have brazenly used sarin, not least because of the risk – since realised – of heavier US reprisals and greater involvement in the area. All the evidence is that this cruel and calculating man is not insane.

He has remained intent, though, on corralling the remaining rebels in Idlib province where the attack took place. This act of terror may have been a signal that he felt he could act with impunity, particularly following the call by the US Ambassador to the UN that America was no longer seeking for the Syrian president to stand down.

The natural follow-on question is if not Assad, then who was it and why?

Charges of using chemical weapons are a very useful propaganda tool to blacken the reputation of any opponent, however dark already. Conspiracy theorists will see various nefarious hands at work.

The Russians, who back Assad’s regime, claim the Syrian air force bombed chemical munitions held by rebel forces in a warehouse, which then exploded. Another claim is that it was a gas manufacturing plant.

Such a strike would probably have destroyed what sarin there was and distributed the rest over a smaller area, affecting fewer victims.

Given that the highly flammable isopropyl alcohol is one of the chemicals in sarin, a fireball might have been expected but there have been no reports of this.

The numbers of women and children caught up in the attack would also rule against a rebel-held munitions depot in the immediate area.

Sarin can be delivered via shells, but some witnesses saw ‘chemical bombs’ falling. The first reports from the site described a crater where a chemical-bearing rocket was said to have landed. There were no structural remains suggesting an explosion at a warehouse.

While it is possible that rebel forces acquired the chemicals to make sarin, or other nerve agents, these are unlikely to have been in large enough quantities to cause so many casualties.

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