Springtime for the Soviets

by Jim Buckley

The world was Russia’s oyster in the spring of 1961.

Barely a year earlier, on May 1, 1960, Soviet forces had shot down a U.S. Air Force-CIA-sponsored spy-plane, flying at the 70,000-ft level and piloted by former U.S. Air Force Captain Francis Gary Powers. The U.S. intelligence community believed Powers’ Lockheed U-2 spy plane would be out of reach of Soviet MIG-15s.

They were wrong.

Although no missile had actually hit the plane, one exploded near enough to cause the aircraft to go into a nosedive and plummet to earth. After a harrowing escape from entanglement in his oxygen hose, Powers, dressed in astronaut gear, managed to extricate himself and activate his parachute.

Against all odds, he landed safely but was quickly dispatched to Soviet authorities. There were no long-range radio capabilities on the craft, so the U.S. command had no idea of what may have happened to the pilot or the plane. The assumption was that, if the U-2 had been destroyed by a missile or in a crash, Powers would surely not have survived. The light craft was meant to disintegrate in that kind of event.

They were wrong about that too.

Not only did the pilot survive, but so did many pieces of the airplane. And the Russians were busily collecting the evidence as the U.S. State Department was issuing its false cover story.

The ensuing mix of half-truths and outright lies, when finally exposed, caused much embarrassment to President Dwight Eisenhower, and substantial diplomatic fallout among the countries complicit with the U.S., particularly Pakistan, from where the U-2 had taken off and Norway, where it was scheduled to land. The incident also led to the cancellation of a Paris Summit on divided Germany, ended a possible arms control or test ban treaty, and a planned Khrushchev-Eisenhower meeting meant to ease tensions between the two countries was scrapped.

In other words, it was a complete and utter diplomatic disaster for the United States.

Russia Wins the Space Race

Despite every U.S. attempt to be first in space, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had overtaken the United States of America in the Space Race.

In 1957, the American public had woken up on an early October morning to the impossible news that the Soviet Union had become the first country to have successfully launched an artificial satellite into Earth’s orbit (Sputnik 1 on 4 October).

Yuri Gagarin, 1961. Source: Uuden Suomen kokoelma

Another big surprise occurred on April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin, a 5’ 2” Soviet pilot, zoomed to the edge of Earth’s thermosphere (nearly 400 miles) at the tip of a Vostok-K 8K72K rocket on that morning (9:07 am Moscow time), and orbited around Earth once. His flight lasted an hour and 29 minutes before he ejected from his craft and parachuted the remaining 17,000 feet alone. Gagarin touched down on dry land in western Russia minutes later, becoming the first human to have ever gone into “space.”

U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard achieved a sub-orbital flight less than a month later to become the second man to travel into space. Shepard’s flight lasted all of 15 minutes, and it would be nearly a year before John Glenn orbited Earth.

The U.S. was officially in second place.

On Top of the World

The Soviets were ecstatic, and that year – 1961 – can be earmarked as the pinnacle of Soviet prestige and power. There could not have been a prouder nation than the USSR on May 1, 1961, as the annual May Day parade made its way through Red Square, past Soviet generals and officials, headed up by Russian hero Yuri Gagarin, Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and President Leonid Brezhnev.

On January 1, 1959, Fidel and his brother Raul Castro marched into Havana, Cuba, having dispatched Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista after five years of fighting. The Castros ultimately introduced communism to the island and by January of 1961, the U.S. and Cuba had broken off all diplomatic relations.

Communists were winning revolutions on every continent and now they were only 90 miles from the North American continent.

It looked as though communism and the Soviet system would own the future.

It didn’t quite work out that way. It would be, in fact, for the Soviets, all downhill from there.

But the moment was fun while it lasted.

“Morning in America”

At 2 am on August 12, 1961, the construction of what became known as the Berlin Wall began with barbed wire and rudimentary fencing, but it was soon to become a concrete barrier that would cut off access to West Berlin to those living east of the obstruction. More than 125,000 East Berliners had moved from east to west the year before and East Germany couldn’t afford to lose any more of its population to the allure of the West.

Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, whereupon a different U-2 had spied the delivery of missiles to Cuba. Khrushchev was publicly humiliated by the success of the U.S. embargo of all shipments to Cuba and the Soviet dismantling of its nuclear arsenal from the island.

For the U.S., much trouble lay ahead.

Such as Vietnam.

Detroit riots.

The 1968 Democrat Convention in Chicago.

Watergate.

But, but, but.

Ronald Reagan, the cowboy, the actor, star of “Bedtime for Bonzo,” was elected President of the United States.

He beefed up the military.

He unleashed the nearly dormant American entrepreneurial spirt.

He oversaw deep and meaningful tax cuts by bringing the top rate down from 70% to 28%.

He crushed the inflation that had pushed the 30-year mortgage interest rate up to 18.4% by October 1981.

He reduced the unemployment rate from 11% to 5%.

In other words, he brought back “Morning in America.”

The End of the Future

It was different in the Soviet Union.

The 1987 May Day parade in Moscow, meant to celebrate the success of communism, featured a group of laborers near the very end of the procession carrying a sign reading “Marching 70 Years to Nowhere,”

Two years later, in November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, Germany was re-united, and two years after that, 1991 saw the complete dissolution of what had been the largest empire the world had ever known.

The Soviet Union was no more.

And America was as prosperous as it had ever been.

New Heroes are Emerging

I recount this small bit of history to try and lift the spirts of friends, followers, and those who’ve abandoned all hope of recovering the success and spirit of what Donald Trump brought with his victory in 2016, which was, in many ways, a continuation of Ronald Reagan’s unlikely victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Good things can happen, and to illustrate in no particular order:

Shipyard electrician Lech Walesa headed up the Polish Solidarity Movement in the early 1980s as a challenge to Soviet control over the labor movement, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and became President of a free Poland in 1990.

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned by the apartheid government of South Africa for 27 years; he was released from prison in 1990, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and served as South Africa’s President from 1994 to 1999.

In the summer of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., galvanized a movement and a nation with his Great March on Washington and his I Have a Dream speech given at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.

And now, we Americans are faced with the blood-curdling reality that a cabal of extremely wealthy globalists are about to wrest control of all the remaining levers of power in the U.S.

The Democrat Party in collusion with this group now controls the mainstream media, the entertainment industry, social media, the intelligence community, academia, the public education system, the financial sector, the justice department, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. Presidency, and are four House seats away from control of the House of Representatives,

Those in power have managed to make a mockery of the U.S. electoral system, wherein some states allow six weeks for ballot casting, others allow unsupervised and uncontrolled ballot harvesting, unsupervised and uncontrolled voter drop boxes, unsupervised and uncontrolled mail-in ballot procedures, and, well, with this kind of time to arrange things, anything can and will happen with those ballots and the results.

Just as the Soviets seemed to have it all in 1961, Democrats certainly do seem like they are about to have it all.

And yet.

Argentina’s President-Elect Javier Milei. Source: Vox España

Flaxen-haired Geert Wilders just won an overwhelming victory in the Netherlands. He’s been dubbed “Holland’s Trump.” The entire Dutch establishment is aghast.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is “Italy’s Trump.”

Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orban is, apparently, “Hungary’s Trump.” Bureaucrats in Brussels are… aghast.

And even more surprisingly, chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei, Argentina’s likely new president will, according to our own Trump, “Make Argentina Great Again.”

All the above are pro-capitalist, anti-uncontrolled immigration, and pro-American.

So, buck up friends, we’ve got an election to win!

Next week we’ll focus on a new group of American heroes, and don’t be surprised if some are and have been Liberal Democrats.

Until now.