"Right to the Button"
The "nuclear suitcase" draws in for 100,000 rubles a month.
"From here, lads, our homeland dictates its unyielding will to the rest of the world's community." Thus Sergey Artsibashev's hero spoke about our army to recruits in a well-known film comedy, while pointing to a ballistic missile launcher. MK'scorrespondent visited the site, about which one can say the same words with a clean conscience -- the Central Command Post of the Russian RVSN [Strategic Missile Troops], which is located in a "secret" place in suburban Moscow. Last Sunday the TsKP [Central Command Post] celebrated its 50th anniversary.
The first thing that surprises an outside observer is how close together a daily, routine life and a place where a nuclear war can be led are. The train station in suburban-Moscow Odintsovo is on an ordinary route. The passengers pay the usual 25 rubles for the trip. Mama explains to her son that he needs to go to kindergarten and that all of the children are already there. Grandmother complains about the high price of cherries. A young man sitting in a rear seat tells a friend that he is in ecstasy. Suddenly, the route stops at the KPP [checkpoint], a soldier opens the door, and all of the ordinary passengers show him their passes for the specially-guarded territory.
The city in which the TsKP is located is walled off from the rest of the world not only with fences and a checkpoint, but by a dense forest. There are many green areas and a lake within the city itself, and every day the soldiers maintain model cleanliness on the streets. Compared with gas-polluted Moscow, this is definitely a corner of paradise.
But those who built this place were not thinking at all about paradise. A two-...
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...s schedules. Basically from Friday through Tuesday, and from Tuesday through Friday. Time for eating, rest, and exercise are foreseen for each duty shift. TsKP officers receive increased pay in accordance with Order No 400.
"With bonuses I receive a little more than 100,000 rubles a month," Palchevskiy shared. "This is the average level. My wife and I did not even know what to do with such money at first. We decided to save it for schooling for our son."
Despite the fact that the TsKP was built half a century ago and serious modernization has not been undertaken since then, one is left with the distinct impression from the visit that everything that should work, works well, and the officers know their business at the "excellent" level and are proud of their work. As the commander of the watch shift said: "Don't worry; the weapons are in reliable hands.”
Most of us would like to think that history is based on civil negotiations between representatives from around the world. The fact is, war has always been a disease that spreads not only in the battle field, and infects all those who come in contact with it. In the case of nuclear weapons, the United States, like many countries, raced to produce some of the most deadly weapons. Kristen Iversen shares her experiences surrounding a nuclear production facility in Boulder Colorado called Rocky Flats. The events at Rocky Flats are fuelled by secrecy and widespread hazards, it is the integration of these concepts to various aspects of her life that are at the center of Full Body Burden.
COL Freeman’s first step in the operations process was to understand the operational environment and the problem he was facing. The mission of the 23rd RCT at Chipyong-ni was to dominate the road intersection at the center of the village and occupy the high ground ringing t...
John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev deciphered KGB documents in order to present ideas about Soviet espionage in the U.S. during the time of the Cold War. This book covered the basic tactics and drive behind Americans who spied for the Soviet Union. This source concentrated on uncovering the unexpected U.S. spies on the Soviet’s side and the rise and fall of the KGB due to the penetration of America’s government during the Cold War.
“Stalingrad is the scene of the costliest and most stubborn battle in this war. The battle fought there to its desperate finish may turn out to be among the decisive battles in the long history of war…In the scale of its intensity, its destructiveness, and its horror, Stalingrad has no parallel. It engaged the full strength of the two biggest armies in Europe and could fit into no lesser framework than that of a life-and death conflict which encompasses the earth”
Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" is a thriller that goes into the life of a Soviet submarine captain who lost his wife to a drunken Russian surgeon. This tragic case of negligence was ignored because the surgeon was the son of a communist party high official. The loss of his wife has caused Captain Marko Radius’s hatred of the corrupt U.S.S.R. for years. But now, Ramius has the chance to take action. Captain Ramius has been given command of the newest Soviet prototype sub, the Typhoon-class missile submarine. When the Americans are given photographs of it, they are extremely curious as to why it is so special. Jac...
Soviet intelligence services went on watchful in 1981 to observe for US preparations for initiating a shocking nuclear hit against the USSR and it allies. This warning was escorted by a new Soviet intelligence collection program, known by the acronym RYAN, to observe signals and provide early warning of US target. Two years later a major war scare exploded in the USSR and this study traces the beginning and capacity of Operation RYAN, its relationship to the war scare and Reagan administration's strategic defense initiative (SDI) heightened Cold War tensions.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s two short stories, ‘All the Kings Horses’ and ‘Manned Missiles’, he tried to reflect on the actual international backdrops of the time the stories were based on, in two different ways. While both stories reflected on the events that took place during the Cold War, the author managed to portray the actors involved the United States and Russia, in different ways in order to show the historical implications the stories had, and how it could be related back to that time period. Even though the stories had certain similarities like the actors involved and the time period it was based on, it also differed in the way the actors were portrayed and how they impacted the Cold war.
The possible employment of nuclear weapons between the two superpowers during the Cold War was unprecedented. The power of this stalemate shattered the paradigm of warfare and demonstrated how significant this military revolution’s effects were even at the mere threat of nuclear weapons use. Regarding this standoff between t...
Civilization. Jan./ Feb. 1995: 30 - 39. Smirnov, Yuri, Adamsky, Viktor. “Moscow’s Biggest Bomb: The 50-Megaton Test of October 1961.” Cold War International History Project.
The realism that will be the focus of this paper is that of Kenneth Waltz. Kenneth Waltz presents his theory of realism, within an international system, by offering his central myth that, “Anarchy is the permissive cause of war”. Kenneth Waltz’s central myth helps answer the question as to why war happens in the first place. During the cold war, there was a heightened sense of insecurity between Russia and the United States due to presence of nuclear weapons. The Movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb used cold war tension between the two countries to tell the story of a general who went crazy and decided to unleash his fleet of nuclear bombers onto Russian military bases.
...es the American and Soviet officials for the lack of tolerance for one another and how that led to unnecessary military tension. Additionally, he uses the story to criticize military-industry complex that led to the Nuclear Arms Race. However, this tale is not only applicable to the Cold War. The wall between the Yooks and Zooks parallels the racial divide that dominated the US. While a seemingly depressing book for children, Geisel ends the book on a hopeful note. As the Yooks and the Zooks are on the verge of destroying each other, the book ends with a blank page to follow. This blank page represents the unwritten future—that the problems of ignorance and unnecessary militarization could be changed. As a novel to the future generations, Geisel’s cliff hanger provides children the opportunity to create their own ending, both for the butter battle in in real life.
... and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems." U.S. Department of State. U.S. Department of State, n.d. Web. 06 May 2014.
Yerzhan's uncle is able to work at the nearby nuclear facility creating nuclear bombs for the war. Between the years of 1949 and 1989, the huge Soviet nuclear test site deep inside Kazakhstan, where Yerzhan lives was known to emit radioactive fall-out measuring up to 2,500 times more powerful than the single bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Their goal was to produce more than the Americans. This is a very powerful description that helps put the danger of this site into the eyes of the reader. This is very ...
While some may consider paradise an otherworldly place where all one’s dreams and desires are fulfilled, I have a very different, more earthly view, on the matter. My vision of paradise has no singing angels and no endless amounts of whatever. The Governor’s Palace in Colonial Williamsburg contains several acres of ornate gardens and a small canal. On one end of the canal is a wooden bridge with crackled and peeling paint, and almost expected is the bench that is built into the side of that bridge. Here, sitting in this bench, I am at peace.