First prediction of 9/11? How about 1909!

[praktik]

I'm currently dealing with an addiction to any material dealing with WWII right now and especially the Eastern Front.

The most recent book I was reading referenced Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and I had already read a glowing review of his more recent Young Stalin - so in Chapters recently I picked up both, and figured I'd start chronologically. In Young Stalin Montefiore starts with Stalin's upbringing in Georgia and his career of gangsterism and revolutionary terrorism.

He provides some insight into the Okhrana, the intelligence arm of the Tsar, who were engaged in a complex game of cat and mouse with a burgeoning collection of revolutionary groups. The Okhrana were good what they did, Montefiore suggests potentially the best in the world at the time for intelligence, and some 6 years after the Wright brothers' first flight they were on guard against planes loaded with explosives being flown into a national monument. Here's the quote:

The Okhrana could not afford to ignore the ingenuity of the SR assassins. In a foreshadowing of al-Qaeda and 9/11, the success of aeroplane flight suggested these new machines as weapons. SR terrorists considered flying a dynamite packed biplane into the Winter Palace, so the Okhrana in 1909 ordered the monitoring of all flights as well as people learning to fly and members of aero-clubs. It is a mark of the OKhrana's excellence that in 1909 it was imaginative enough to envisage a crime that was beyond the scope of the FBI and CIA in the twenty-first century. (p 88)​

I'm just devouring this book too and am blown away by the quality and freshness of the author's sources - lot's of access to heretofore missing memoirs of close personal acquaintances of Stalin in Georgia and plenty more from recently opened archives. What a crazy place. The town he grew up in had ritualized town brawls, a day of fighting with people from two sides of town pitched against each other: first the toddlers, then the teenagers, then the adults would go at it. Widespread looting and serious injury, sometimes going til the next morning. Really hard to contemplate what living with that kind of violence would be like.

Anyway, thought I'd share that tidbit the author's site is here: here's the site for the author: Simon Sebag Montefiore - Books

I'm only 100 pages in but I'm absolutely gripped by this book right now.

 

[Chris]

I'm currently dealing with an addiction to any material dealing with WWII right now and especially the Eastern Front.

The most recent book I was reading referenced Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, and I had already read a glowing review of his more recent Young Stalin - so in Chapters recently I picked up both, and figured I'd start chronologically. In Young Stalin Montefiore starts with Stalin's upbringing in Georgia and his career of gangsterism and revolutionary terrorism.

He provides some insight into the Okhrana, the intelligence arm of the Tsar, who were engaged in a complex game of cat and mouse with a burgeoning collection of revolutionary groups. The Okhrana were good what they did, Montefiore suggests potentially the best in the world at the time for intelligence, and some 6 years after the Wright brothers' first flight they were on guard against planes loaded with explosives being flown into a national monument. Here's the quote:

The Okhrana could not afford to ignore the ingenuity of the SR assassins. In a foreshadowing of al-Qaeda and 9/11, the success of aeroplane flight suggested these new machines as weapons. SR terrorists considered flying a dynamite packed biplane into the Winter Palace, so the Okhrana in 1909 ordered the monitoring of all flights as well as people learning to fly and members of aero-clubs. It is a mark of the OKhrana's excellence that in 1909 it was imaginative enough to envisage a crime that was beyond the scope of the FBI and CIA in the twenty-first century. (p 88)​

I'm just devouring this book too and am blown away by the quality and freshness of the author's sources - lot's of access to heretofore missing memoirs of close personal acquaintances of Stalin in Georgia and plenty more from recently opened archives. What a crazy place. The town he grew up in had ritualized town brawls, a day of fighting with people from two sides of town pitched against each other: first the toddlers, then the teenagers, then the adults would go at it. Widespread looting and serious injury, sometimes going til the next morning. Really hard to contemplate what living with that kind of violence would be like.

Anyway, thought I'd share that tidbit the author's site is here: here's the site for the author: Simon Sebag Montefiore - Books

I'm only 100 pages in but I'm absolutely gripped by this book right now.

Great synopsis, Im going to take a look for this one.

 

[atbell]

Central Asia is such an odd place, I didn't realize that it was Stalin's home though.

Explains a lot.

I've read very little about the region but one good starter is 'The New Great Game', it's all about the regions around the Caspian which includes that messy part in the Caucus.

 

[praktik]

Cool thanks for the tip - I think this is gonna be a particularly deep and dark rabbit hole for me..

can't get enough!

 

[Lurker]

Thanks for the book tip! I love history like this. I'll be ordering it soon for sure.

Daniel Yergin's great book - The Prize - touched on Stalin's role in the Baku oil field before the revolution. Really interesting history for sure.

 

[basilisk]

This is no surprise. The NWO have been around since the 1600s after all!

 

[derek]

]

.... The town he grew up in had ritualized town brawls, a day of fighting with people from two sides of town pitched against each other: first the toddlers, then the teenagers, then the adults would go at it. Widespread looting and serious injury, sometimes going til the next morning. Really hard to contemplate what living with that kind of violence would be like.

sounds like the irish in nyc in the 19th century.

 

[unique2100]

I don't think that 9/11 was "out of the scope of the F.B.I.". Hindsight is a mofo.

 

[praktik]

I don't think that 9/11 was "out of the scope of the F.B.I.". Hindsight is a mofo.

Another way to put it is that the American authorities, in aggregate (there were individuals on the ball) underestimated their opponent. The Okhrana - organizationally speaking - did not.