📆#OTD in 1963, Valentina Tereshkova of USSR became the world’s first and youngest woman to travel into outer space with a solo mission.

🧑‍🚀The decision to select women for female cosmonauts group was taken in 1961. Having passed a number of rigid tests, V.Tereshkova was enrolled in the group. She embarked on her space flight onboard the Vostok-6 spacecraft. Her call sign in this flight was “Tchaika” (Russian for “seagull”).

⏳ She orbited the Earth 48 times and spent 2 days, 22 hours, and 50 mins in space. Her mission was used to continue the medical studies on humans in spaceflight and offered comparative data of the effects of space travel on women.

The next woman’s spaceflight took place only 19 years later with the second female cosmonaut also being Soviet citizen Svetlana Savitskaya.

#spaceexploration #USSR #Soviet #Russia #firstinspace #Tereshkova #firstwomaninspace

📆 83 years ago, when #Nazi forces were in the close vicinity of #Moscow, a legendary fight at Dubosekovo railroad station took place which went down in history as the feat of the 28 Panfilov’s men.

On 16 Nov 1941, Nazis launched a new assault on the #Soviet capital expecting to bring the blitzkrieg to a victorious conclusion by the end of the year. In the morning that day, after a preliminary artillery shelling the Wehrmacht’s 2nd Tank Division attacked the units of the Red Army’s 316th Rifle Division led by Major General Ivan Panfilov.

The 4th and the 6th companies of the 2nd battalion of the 1075th regiment took the brunt of Nazi offensive. Having ran short of ammunition, both companies showed unparalleled courage against superior enemy’s forces and repelled several tank attacks with remaining grenades and Molotov cocktails. The Panfilov’s men withstood the Nazi onslaught for 4 hours while the reserves came to cover the capital.

☝️ During the battle, 18 German tanks were destroyed, but almost all Soviet defenders laid down their lives.

🌟 It was during the battle of Dubosekovo that the commander of the 4th company V.Klochkov said the legendary phrase “Russia is vast, yet there’s nowhere to retreat – Moscow is behind us”.

#WW2 #WWII #Victory79

⭐️ THE RUN TO THE ODER ⭐️

📆 80 years ago, #OTD in 1945, the #Soviet Vistula-Oder strategic offensive was commenced, one of the major operations against Nazis conducted in the territory of #Poland and Germany.

Due to the rapid pace of the Red Army’s advance (up to 30 kilometres daily) it came down in history as ‘the run to the Oder.’

☝️ Initially, the operation was to be started on 20 January 1945. But in early January, due to the failure of UK and US troops in #Ardennes (read more), #Churchill asked #Stalin for an urgent offensive on the Eastern front in order to divert Nazi forces.

❗️ The results of the offensive surpassed all expectations – Soviet troops advanced westwards by over 500 km and in early February found themselves 60 km from Berlin.

⚔️ Within the 23 days of the operation, 35 Nazi divisions were completely destroyed, other 25 divisions lost 50-70% of their personnel, 150,000 #Nazi soldiers and officers were taken POWs.

🌟 Soviet troops took Krakow and encircled enemy forces in Poznan, liberated prisoners of #Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Red Army secured a foothold on the Oder River bank – to later start the Berlin offensive from there.

#Victory80 #WorldWar2 #WW2

⭐️ UNPARALLELED OPERATION ⭐️

80 years ago, #OTD in 1945 the East Prussian Strategic Offensive of the Red Army started with the purpose to defeat the enemy’s grouping in the East Prussia and the northern Poland. It was carried out by Soviet troops of the 2nd, the 3rd Belorussian and the 1st Baltic fronts, supported by the #Baltic Fleet.

East Prussia for ages had been the bastion of German militarism (this is how ‘The Big Three’ leaders – Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt – referred to it during the Yalta conference). Several defence lines were created there, each consisting of three trenches, also including minefields, barbed wire, pillboxes etc.

⚔️ The #Soviet command intended to breach Nazis’ defence in directions Koenigsberg and Marienburg and cut the Army Group “Centre” from the main Wehrmacht forces, then trap it against the Baltic Sea and defeat in parts.

To withstand the Soviet advance, Nazi command conscripted people of 14-70 years to Volkssturm batallions, bringing the total number of the resisting troops to 800,000.

⚔️ Within the offensive, 6 smaller operations were conducted. As a result of the Red Army’s efforts, #Nazi forces were dissected into 3 isolated parts all of which were liquidated by 25 April 1945. 25 Nazi divisions were eliminated and 12 more depleted. The enemy lost over 480,000 killed and wounded, with some 220,000 taken POWs. Soviet troops also suffered heavy losses.

❗️ Success of the offensive was of a great military and political significance. Having gained East Prussia, the Red Army eliminated the eastern outpost of German militarism and liberated the northern regions of #Poland. The Third Reich lost an economically important region. The enemy’s maritime communications were completely disrupted and supplies to the Courland grouping blocked in the Baltic region stalled.

#Victory80 #WorldWar2 #WW2

🎙 Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria #Zakharova:

The proof of mass murders of Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, tortures, slave labour and other manifestations of the inhuman #Nazi ideology, which has been collected during the investigation of the war crimes perpetrated by the Nazis and their accomplices in the occupied Soviet territories since 2020, serve as confirmation of deliberate, systematic and unprecedented genocide. This work is of fundamental significance for proving and formalising the facts of Nazis’ genocide of the Soviet peoples during the war. It will provide grounds for calling the culprits to account and help preserve the historical memory of those events.

❗️According to the materials of the Russian law enforcement authorities, civilian deaths in the #SovietUnion during the Nazi occupation amounted to more than 13.6 million. It is a matter of principle for us that the international community recognises the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis in the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War as the genocide of the #Soviet people.

🔗Read Maria Zakharova’s interview ‘The Legal Front of Memory’

#WorldWar2 #Nazism #history #memory #WeRemember #HistoricalMemory #MemoryMatters

❗️Official Vilnius openly pursues a course of falsifying the history of the World War II and glorifying Nazi collaborators, equating them with national heroes, which contradicts the conclusions of the Nuremberg Tribunal.

🚫 In recent years, this discriminatory policy has been supplemented by the inculcation of hatred against Russians and everything connected with the USSR and modern Russia, including monuments in honour of Soviet soldiers who died liberating Lithuania from Nazism.

Along with the traditional long-standing processions held by Lithuanian neo-Nazi organizations and right-wing forces on the occasion of the public holidays of 16 February ("Day of Restoration of Lithuanian Statehood") and 11 March ("Day of Restoration of Lithuanian Independence"), the political establishment of the Republic of Lithuania, in an impulse of historical revisionism, has set a course for the demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers located at the burial sites of Red Army soldiers throughout the country in 2022.

☝️ The authorities motivate this policy by the desire to get rid of the "totalitarian heritage". There is a legal basis for this: Soviet symbols are forbidden by law in Lithuania. After the communist period of the country's history was officially recognized as an "occupation" on a par with the Nazi occupation, all objects reminiscent of that time, primarily monuments, became targets for destructive efforts of leaders at all levels.

📖 Read the report by the MFA of Russia regarding the situation with the desecration and destruction of monuments dedicated to those who fought against Nazism in the years of World War II

#Soviet #SovietMonument #WorldWar2 #Nazism #MemoryMatters #HistoricalMemory

❗️🇵🇱 Poland is among the nations whose authorities are actively demolishing monuments and memorials in tribute to Red Army soldiers who lost their lives during the country's liberation from Nazism in World War II.

Cause-and-effect linkages between the events of that tragic period for all mankind and their assessments are deliberately distorted to suit political interests.

⚠️Ideas denying the decisive contribution of the Red Army to the defeat of Hitler's Germany are being propagated, and efforts are being made to eradicate the Soviet/Russian war memorial heritage in Poland. The Polish authorities have set out to erase from public consciousness the memory of the liberating role played by the Red Army (600,000 soldiers and officers of the Red Army died liberating Poland from the Nazis) in saving the Polish people from physical extermination by the Nazis.

In the Polish media, Soviet soldiers are portrayed in a negative way only, and are accused of committing crimes against civilians and civilian infrastructure out of historical context. Furthermore, the narrative of a "double occupation" of Poland by Nazi and Soviet forces is being promoted. Local propaganda portrays Poland itself exclusively as the main victim of "two totalitarianisms".

🔗Read the report by the MFA of Russia regarding the situation with the desecration and destruction of monuments dedicated to those who fought against Nazism in the years of World War II

#Soviet #SovietMonument #WorldWar2 #Nazism #MemoryMatters #HistoricalMemory