Vadim Birstein

Dr. Vadim J. Birstein is a historian and geneticist. He is the author of over 300 scientific papers and books and has written two scholarly historical works, "The Perversion of Knowledge: The True Story of Soviet Science" and "SMERSH, Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII". He received the inaugural "St. Ermin's Intelligence Book Award" in 2012 for SMERSH.

Author Archives: Vadim Birstein

Uncertainty with Vladimir Medinsky’s Dissertation Continues

The doctoral dissertation controversy of Vladimir Medinsky, Russian Minister of Culture and Chairman of the Russian Military-Historical Society that supported the recent publication of Ivan Serov’s controversial memoir Notes from a Suitcase, continues to be uncertain. In April 2016, two Russian historians, Drs. Vyacheslav Kozlyakov and Konstantin Yerusalimsky, specialists on the Russian history of the 15th-17th Centuries, and… Read More »

Memorial Society and its Members Persecuted

Russian authorities have recently intensified attacks on Memorial, the Russian human rights organization whose main objective is to preserve the original memory of political repression in the recent past of our country. On December 7, 2016, the Tverskoi Regional Court in Moscow ruled that the International Society Memorial (the historical and educational branch of the Society) should pay a… Read More »

Sokolov Wins Libel Case, “Discovery in the Wall” Debunked

On December 23, 2016, the third court session of the case against the Russian historian Boris Sokolov and Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy took place in Krasnopresnensky Regional Court in Moscow. The lawsuit was filed by Vera Serova, the granddaughter of the first KGB Chairman Ivan Serov, and Aleksandr Khinstein, the editor of Ivan Serov’s Russian memoir Notes… Read More »

Unearthing the Responsible

For four years, Denis Karagodin, a graduate from the Philosophical Faculty of the Tomsk University (Siberia), searched for the names of every person involved in the execution of his great-grandfather Stepan, in 1938, from a NKVD woman-typist to the NKVD investigators who signed the death sentence. The story of the local peasant Stepan Karagodin in those years was quite… Read More »

Names of NKVD Tortures and Executioners from 1935 to 1939 Are Exposed

On November 24, 2016, the Moscow human rights group, “Memorial”, published a book on the web, authorized by the “Memorial” member Andrei Zhukov, entitled “Staff of the State Security of the USSR. 1935-1939”. This reference book includes biographies of 39,950 NKVD (People’s Interior Affairs Commissariat) officers who were promoted to special state security ranks from 1935 to mid-1939. Under the… Read More »

A New State Ideology?

On November 18, 2016, in Moscow and the city of Volokolamsk near Moscow ceremonial events were held in honor of the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the counter-offensive of the Red Army near Moscow in 1941. Vladimir Medinsky, Russian Minister of Culture, opened an exhibition “War and Myths” in Moscow central exhibition hall “Manezh”, and gave a… Read More »

Russian Foreign Ministry: Jewish Money Elected Donald Trump

Maria Zakhrova, director of Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Ministry’s official representative, displayed blatant Antisemitism in her comments on the U.S. presidential elections. On November 13, 2016, she explained on the Russian TV (Channel 1) talk-show “Sunday Evening” (hosted by Vladimir Soloviev) that the Jews and their money were the decisive factor in the… Read More »