In the Shadow of Mordor

NOTES

1

…disabled veterans, whose continuing need for more support was unwelcome evidence of the Soviet state’s inability or unwillingness to adequately provide for all citizens’ needs. During the late 1940s and 1950s disabled veterans were dispersed from Moscow and other large cities for forced resettlement in remote areas. According to Fieseler (2006:51), kolkhoz supervisors in rural areas, in order to shed inefficient disabled workers, sometimes turned them in as “parasites;” such workers were then deported, presumably to labor camps. Penal camps were established in the Soviet Union for disabled prisoners and disabled veterans of the Russian Civil War and the two World Wars. The most infamous of these is the Spasskaya labor colony near Karaganda, Kazakhstan, to which 15,000 disabled prisoners were sent in the late 1940s and early 1950s (Solzhenitsyn 1985). Similarly, disabled veterans of the Second World War were secretly exiled from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Leningrad oblast’ to the Valaam archipelago, in the Republic of Karelia (Russian Federation). Valaam and the fate of those veterans are still shrouded in mystery (Fefelov 1986:51-57).

2

Americans. From the ancient Greek Πίνδος

3

Leader

4

Secure Compartmented Information Facility — pronounced “skiff.”

5

Fatback

6

Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin aka “Strelkov,” a Russian GRU colonel who played a prominent role in the invasion and occupation of Ukraine and the eventual formation of the so-called “Donbas Peoples Republic.” He was sanctioned by the EU for his actions.

7

Right Sector was a far-right, Ukrainian nationalist organization with fascist tendencies.

8

УкроСМИ: “Ukrainian mass media.” In Russian, “СМИ” stands for “Средства массовой информации,” i.e. “mass media.”

9

“Thieves in the law” a traditional Russian term for certain criminals

10

KRYSTAL, Michael R. Davidson, 2014

11

Aleksandr Valterovich Litvinenko was a rogue FSB officer who went public with accusations of assassination committed by the FSB. He escaped to London where he was murdered through polonium poisoning.

12

Wahabis — the term used in Chechnya and Dagestan to refer to Islamist terrorists.

13

Главное управление специальных программ Президента Российской Федерации — General Directorate of Special Programs of the President of the Russian Federation is located at Staraya Square, 2/14, Ulitsa Ilinka in Moscow.