The highest ranking ANC official assassinated outside of South Africa is hardly known in the country for which she gave her life. On 29 March 1988, Dulcie September, the ANC Chief Representative in France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, was killed with five rifle shots to the head as she entered the ANC offices in Paris.  To …

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Imre Nagy was a Hungarian leader, but he was hanged in Budapest on 16 June 1958 on the orders of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, as “a lesson to all other leaders in socialist countries.“ Nagy had not always been afoul of the Soviet government.  At birth a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Nagy was wounded …

  • June 16, 2021
  • Interesting
  • Comments Off on A Lesson to All Other Leaders in Socialist Countries

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At the same time of the turn of the nineteenth century that Franz Ferdinand and Sophie Chotek of Austria-Hungary were attempting to convince Emperor Franz Josef that their marriage would not lead to the end of the Empire, another culturally inappropriate marriage was taking place between Alexander I of Serbia and Draga Lunjevica Mašin.  Draga, …

  • June 14, 2021
  • History
  • Comments Off on The First Murder of the Black Hand

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Salami tactics refers to a divide and conquer approach, which aims to split up the opposition. The expression evokes the idea of slicing up one’s opposition in the same way as one might slice up a salami. — politicaldictionary.com The entire face of the world changed when Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy agreed to resign …

  • May 31, 2021
  • Comments Off on Salami Tactics and a Coup

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Groups like  uMkhonto we Sizwe and others struggling against colonialism and post-colonialism needed weapons for their struggles and, more importantly, training.  While a lot of this came from the Soviet bloc, many liberation movements were less-than-eager to jettison one colonial overlord in the west for one in the east.   It was into this gap …

  • May 21, 2021
  • Comments Off on Training the Revolutions

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It was an audacious plan.  A young South African man employed at the construction site of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant near Cape Town managed to steal the plans for the facility.  Then that same young man managed to get the plans to the militant wing of the ANC, uMkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the …

  • May 19, 2021
  • Comments Off on The Spear of the Nation

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My Dear Heart: Do not be too sorrowful and upset on account of this letter.  God’s will be done.  Tomorrow at ten they will cut off my head and your brother’s, too.  Today we pardoned each other with all our heart.  Therefor I ponder this letter and ask you for everlasting forgiveness.  If I have …

  • April 30, 2021
  • Culture , Folklore
  • Comments Off on The Patron Saint of Croatian Poets

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Rebellions against the Ottoman Empire were not solely the province of the Christian Ottoman subjects.  On 29 March 1831 an army of Bosnian subjects, 1/3 of them Christian, marched toward the Ottoman headquarters in Travnik.  At its head was the son of a Bosnian noble family, the Captain of Gradačac, Husein Gradaščević, the Dragon of …

  • March 29, 2021
  • Comments Off on Enter the Bosnian Dragon

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On 22 March 1992, the first democratically elected leader of Albania since 1924 came into power.   Sali Berisha, head of the Democratic Party of Albania, came to the helm of a nation struggling with the transition between communism and capitalism, between isolation and openness.   But Albania’s journey toward democracy wasn’t as easy as …

  • March 22, 2021
  • Interesting
  • Comments Off on From Isolation to Open

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Enver Hoxha died on 11 April 1985.  It was the end of more than an era.  Hoxha had ruled Albania with an iron fist since 1944.  More Stalinist than Stalin, Albania’s allies had all fallen away at various times in his rule; since the Sino-Albanian Split in 1978 Hoxha’s nation had been completely alone.   …

  • March 10, 2021
  • Albania
  • Comments Off on And the Walls Came Tumbling Down

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